AIBU to have just realised that I have been sexual assaulted many times

[PippiLongBottom]

I had extremely large breasts as a young teen. I was a 30DD at 13 and my size 8 hour glass figure was very popular with the boys .

At 19 I had my breasts reduced on the NHS because my head was fucked.

It is only with many years of hindsight (I am 36) thanks to Mumsnet and a recently developed feminist perspective that I realise that all the 'incidents' that happened to me were sexual assaults/grooming and not my fault.

I have fb'd one of the cuntslprits tonight.

DuckDodgers - I C&P'd what had been posted, I didn't say what had been posted. I assumed the poster (it wasn't you was it?) was asking why women stay in abusive relationships? Was that not the case?

Most don't have a choice. And reading this thread in it's entirety is bringing back memories I had long since hidden and quashed into the back of my mind.

What's in it for men? What's in it for them to be less sexist or sexual toward women? There's no carrot and women have no stick.

We have to go to the courts, we have a duty to report every crime, report every comment at school, fight porn sites, fight magazines, fight lap dancing bars, fight glass ceilings....EVERYTHING. FRom sport shoe advertising to a bra pinged at school.

Teach women the assertiveness & confidence to object? As well as teaching boys it's wrong. I don't know?

This thread has brought many memories back to me that I had long since buried. I remember once at a work Xmas party I wore a dress which showed a bit of cleavage. At work the following Monday a photo had been taken without my knowledge - a close-up of my cleavage. This was passed around the office with much whooping & leering, and finally took up permanent residence in the drawer of a male colleague, who took pleasure in opening the drawer and showing me the photo whenever I walked past.

Why did I tolerate that? I didn't feel I could anything, I wouldn't have known how to object. It was cringworthy at the time. My partner at the time worked at the same place and was at the party, I was only a 34B bra size and it was a bank fgs - white collar workers who should have known better. Well, any man should have known better!

My husband would truly never ever do anything like this, he is totally un-leering and hates porn/disrespectful men/lapdancing clubs etc, so there are men out there that respect women. It is not all men.

Well, what's in it for men, is a better life as a better human being. More equal, loving relationships free from resentment about uneven power balances, more certainty that their partner is with them because she wants to be, not becaused she needs to be, more validation for their feelings - the right to express the full gamut of human emotions, not just a tiny part of it, a freedom from the fear that they can never be man enough, never measure up to the absurd hyper-masculine role models Hollywood et al present them with, a right to be themselves without slotting into some awful, draining role ... all quite nebulous stuff, really and giving up power is a big ask. So lots won't do it voluntarily but hopefully there are enough who do value human decency enough, to do so.

Good post Wooooooop.

A culture in which their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters don't suffer the kind of treatment we've discussed in this thread, perhaps.

For many men, that is something they want.

hugs to all those sharing their experiences.

If we teach girls at school age that unwanted touching/groping etc is something they have to learn to deal with and teach boys that it's something with no real consequences for them, why would it stop when they all leave school?

So from offices to public transport to walking down the street, women's bodies are seen as public property for men to comment on. And women who complain about being shouted at by drivers or wolf whistled are told, often by other women, to take it as a compliment - that they should be grateful for the attention.

And when that male behaviour is seen as something that's just part of life that girls need to learn to protect themselves from, what kind of thought proccess does that set up when looking at sexual assaults and rapes?

Yes that's also true. Men have to accept that if they want the freedom to abuse women like this, then other men will have the freedom to abuse their mothers, wives, daughters etc.

Of course a lot of them are willing to take that trade. That's how much they value the women in their lives. They're happy to tell them it's just a bit of fun, it's only if another man rapes "their" women that they get annoyed.

Obviously not all men engage in this behaviour, but for those who don't, actually challenging it in others can lead to them being ostracised or attacked as being 'gay' or in some way less of a man. So there is pressure to at least go along with it if not actively participate.

Yes there's massive pressure. And that is because of the construction of masculinity.

In a group of say, seven, you'll probably have only 1 or 2 men who have out and out misogynist attitudes. You might have 1 or 2 progressives. The other 3 or 4 are basically reasonable men who will go along with the prevailing viewpoint. Those 4 will line up with the 2 misogynists instead of the progressives, because the cultural pressure to conform to masculinist crap is stronger, than the cultural pressure to be a decent human being. So the people with the least decent values, always manage to dominate a group. And yet at the same time, men are supposed to be brave and courageous. Hmmm.

And again that's another benefit on offer - that men will no longer have to line up with the most vocal moronic bore in the group for fear of being found to be "not man enough".

I hope you'll all forgive me posting here but reading this thread has got me thinking about my own experiences (I recognise that I have nowt to "complain" about in comparison to some posters on here who have obviously been through hell). This post is likely to be quite muddled but I hope you understand that I just need to let is out.

I was bullied for 10 out of 12 years through my first, middle and high school. It left me feeling totally worthless, my self esteem and confidence were non existent. I had very few friends and would regularly use break times just to hide (mostly locked in a toilet cubicle).

I feel that, for me (and I wouldn't assume that this is a generalisation AT ALL) my confidence was so low that I almost became conditioned to accept all sorts - groping, comments etc - from the age of about 12 onwards. This was fairly "normal" in school (comments from other posters saying school was like a zoo have really hit home). I had men follow me home from school, leering out of their windows, beeping - one even sat outside my house for 45 minutes during a lunch break only to follow me back to school and try to corner me in the park. Arse pinching, groping my chest, suggestive comments - I saw everything at the time as just being "normal".

The culmination was when, at the age of 16, I was about to sit my GCSE's. A teacher (yes, you read that correctly) cornered me in a classroom and said "I wish I could tell you all the beautiful things I want to do to you but I would scare you away". I am not an athletic person by any stretch of the imagination but I legged it faster than I ever had either before or since.

I told no one until I was 24.

In the few weeks between school and college I made fantastic new friends (including my lovely now dh! ) and my confidence was boosted beyond recognition. So much so that when my father's work colleague (in his 40's) suggested, in front of both my parents, that at 16 he would do certain things for me in return for sexual favours I simply replied "piss off - I have got some standards". I don't know what my poor dad was more shocked at - his proposition or my response!

I suppose what I am trying to say that, for me, I put up with all sorts of shit when my confidence was at it's lowest and I felt that it was "normal" for me to be a victim in some way, shape or form (perhaps other people also saw me as a perpetual victim which contributed to a downward spiral?)

I don't know the way forward - maybe it's a confidence thing, maybe girls should be taught that there is a boundary of acceptability, maybe they need to be given the courage to stand up and make a fuss when something unacceptable happens, and maybe we need to teach boys what is and what is not acceptable and that there will be consequences for their actions. But to be quite frank, seeing how widespread this total lack of respect is and how many people have been through such awful experiences, it scares me shitless to think of what my (yet to be conceived) children might go through in the future.

You know I'm reading this thread and I have to agree with a poster further up, the more I'm reading and remembering from my own experiences, the more shocked I am!

I consider myself a confident and even gobby ( :) ) person. But when I think back to incidences in my past, what I considered to be NORMAL it's turning my stomach! Standing against a wall and having a boy come over and pull my top down to have a look and thinking this is just boys being boys!

I grew up from my teens through my twenties putting on this act all the time. The "man-eater" the "flirt" just being someone who appeared sexually available I guess because from my young teens, when I developed and got all this unwanted attention I felt like this was the role handed to me!

It's so, so sad. I have sons and a daughter and I hope to God they ALL know boundaries, standards and just respect! Because I think, as umcomfortable as it makes me, that as far as feminism has come, boys still grow up thinking that a girl's body is freely available.

Mrs tired, I was very confident and thought that I was very attractive but it was still important for me to be liked by men, always.

I can't see that site either mim and I'm not remotely surprised by the sentiments on it.

Basically, men who rape women want to pretend that they didn't. Which is why the "she regretted it" myth exists in the first place. It lets them off the hook. It stops them having to ask themselves questions - like why does she "regret" it? Because she didn't want it in the first place? So what were you doing penetrating her, if you weren't checking throughout that that's what she wanted?

Men don't want to ask themselves that, because the answer is uncomfortable. So instead, they pretend that women are these silly hysterical creatures, almost a different species from them in their inability to act rationally and be logical, who don't know their own minds. That is a very strong cultural stereotype of women and it was invented in order to justify rape and other abuse. Anyone who actually knows any women and isn't looking at them through misogynist glasses, doesn't recognise that characterisation of a woman because they don't know any like that. The reason being, is that they don't exist, they're a misogynist myth and anyone who claims that most of the women s/he knows are like that, is most likely a raging misogynist.

Christ, mrstired, how the hell did he feel that that was something he could say to you with your parents there? Talk about a sense of entitlement!

And to believe that your parents would pimp you out!

What did your parents say to him?

< reads and learns from woooopity's posts >

Another heartfelt belt of sympahty from me, for all those that have suffered the pain and indignity of being targeted just because you are a woman

Thanks Posies - that has made me feel like I was less "at fault" for want of a better term

Imperial - they didn't need to say a word - he went very quiet and scuttled off with his tail between his legs very quickly. I don't think ANYONE (myself included) expected me to come out with that response because everyone knew what a quiet little wall-flower I was......

Sorry I C&P'ed that last one from another thread by accident - I thought I'd posted it and got puzzled that I hadn't, so posted it here by accident - sorry if I"ve made anyone as confused as I am. [hgrin]

alice (long time passed now so epic x post) - i don't see how we can. it has to come from them wanting it, wanting the change. so either we believe that a core of decent, fully human men are going to stand up and offer a counter masculinity or it's fucked. because women are never going to rise up armed against men like oppressed groups with men in them were willing to do when the conditions were right.

men have to want this. now everyone talks about how their man is wonderful and lovely and evolved and etc etc well those lovely wonderful men need to step up. why don't they?

just to add to the voices who experienced sexual harassment from teachers - same as unfortunately.

sexual harassment from male teachers and sexual jealousy from some female teachers - massively confusing at the time seeing as i was a virgin and just didn't get it but pretty obvious looking back. i went from being the clever girl at primary with all the attention being on my ability to a whole different world at secondary where 'i' wasn't seen at all - a female was seen, supposedly pretty and sexual suddenly. took me a long time to really work out what happened at the time it was just massively confusing.

why do you mean by sexual jealously from female teachers swalloedfly? i'm just curious as to what that is. :/