To think most women have been victims of sexual assault? Has anyone not?

[Lighthouseturquoise]

Has anyone here honestly never been a victim of some kind sexual assault.

Even if not rape be it some drunk bloke groping you in a nightclub, a date getting heavy handed or pushy,

an ex boyfriend who just got carried away,

a sleazy boss or work colleague roughing your leg or making an appropriate remarks,

a friends boyfriend coming onto you,

a man thinking you were coming onto him because you were friendly then not taking no for an answer,

a boyfriend coercing you into sex or something as a teenager.

Getting beeped at or wolf whistled and feeling embarrassed and uncomfortable.

I think we sweep it all under the carpet and I bet the average woman during her life gets assaulted or harassed more than once.

a man thinking you were coming onto him because you were friendly then not taking no for an answer,

umm...everytime I go out

I can't think of any time it's happened to me. I can't say it never did in my clubbing days, because there were some times I was too drunk to remember, but knowing how I am drunk, I was more likely to have been the one harassing men than vice versa. It's also possible that if I were ever cat-called or wolf-whistled in the street, I would have assumed it was directed at someone else. I don't remember. What I do remember is other women complaining about unwanted attention from men, and me wondering what was different about me that it never happened to me. I haven't become invisible now I'm over 40 - I always was. I've been glad not to go through some of the things friends have, though, even if it does mean I'm weird in some way.

I've also experienced all of these and until very recently I also thought it meant I was attractive.

My own DF once said to a group of my friends that if I wasn't his daughter he would have sex with me (I was 15). My first ever kiss was with an older guy who tried to rape me. A teenaged boy grabbed my breast in broad daylight in a busy market and when I arrived where I was going and told my then BF he said it was because of the sexy dress I was wearing. I used to perform and multiple times men would get in my face and touch me/kiss me. At uni a BF raped me and now I can't have sex without having flashbacks.

What exactly is complimentary about a man not only judging your worth by the size of your breasts or your bum, but then also feeling they have the right to voice that dirty thought - as if you were just an object - to the world, including children?

When I was at school a priest used to put his hand on my knee and feel my leg. It was a girls' school and he was well known for doing it.

Regularly kerb crawled on my way home from school - wearing uniform.

17 and on holiday, followed down the Boulevard St Michel by a group of men trying to put their arms around me and kiss me.

At uni, grabbed by the vulva by a male student when I tried to sell him a charity raffle ticket.

Several 'peeping Tom' incidents when living in a shared, all female house.

Groped so many times on the tube / metro / in the pub that I've lost count. Also normalising it to such an extent that it was a standing joke.

Dosing off at the cinema then waking up to realise the man sitting next to me was wanking against my thigh. He ran out.

These are just the ones that immediately spring to mind. I'm sure there are many more. Whenever I've talked about this with other women, every single one of them has had similar or worse experiences.

I just keep thinking of more and more.

As a teenager with big boobs I couldn't even count the number of times I was groped, and it was often done with much laughing and 'my mate dared me to see if they are real, he says no one has tits that big' all complete with giving his guffawing friends the thumbs up and suchlike. And even though I wanted to cry and run away, I got to the point where I would laugh and play along because it seemed to be the less humiliating option. How grim is that?

Also, on thinking back to just how young this disrespect for women often starts, I have vivid memories of walking down the street when I was a teenager and two boys coming towards me who were maybe about nine or ten years old. They were making comments about my body when suddenly they caught sight of an elderly woman on the other side of the road and they whistled across the street (not a wolf whistle, one of those ear splitting high pitched noises) and when she turned her head to see where the noise had come from they started gesturing to their chests with their hands and shouted at her 'fuck me, your tits are massive, you should have a wheelbarrow for those, you're disgusting, you make me sick' . Fortunately for her, I don't think she could actually hear what they were saying. But I remember that day thinking to myself 'this will never end, this is how it is going to be for the rest of my life'.

I also had incidents in the swimming pool when I was in my early twenties where some primary school age boys were swimming up and down the pool and putting their hands down the front of women's swimsuits, and trying to pull them down to expose their breasts. When they did it on my, I panicked and actually kicked one in the face, which at least stopped them targetting me again. But it didn't seem worth reporting it to anyone because on the face of it it seems ridiculous that an adult woman should feel intimidated by boys who were still children. And yet weirdly I did.

I was going to say no I haven't but when I read the list actually I have! And I never even realised it! When I was 20 someone grabbed my head (ripping my earring out) and started kissing me. Completely unsolicited I actually had my back to the guy. Several times when I was a teenager I was groped when clubbing. Looking back it happened far more often and made me far more uncomfortable than I would have cared to admit. I never reported anything I don't think I actually ever told anyone other than my brother!

When we used to go on holiday and I was 12/13, my parents used to laugh at how the local men would come on to me and I'd tell them I was a lesbian. Because laughing at your daughter having to repel grown men is funny?

Haven't read the entire thread - only 33 or so pages of stories

So, yeah.

Being shouted at multiple times in the street when jogging or just walking. Probs from about age 13. Too many times to count. So that for years I tensed up walking past building sites. Including, unbelievably, at the university where I was a lecturer. Including by a car-ful of male 'friends' who thought it was hilarious to watch me jump out of my skin when they suddenly beeped the horn at me and shouted lewd things.

Being examined without proper consent by a male doctor, aged 12, and then told by that I needed a hymenectomy because otherwise sex would be too painful. There was nothing wrong with me in fact.

Being coerced into sex, in fact raped, aged 19.

Being grabbed in clubs, shouted at etc - par for the course when I was younger.

And what really gets me is the fucking massive male privilege. Following my paeds experience above, I have real issues around being intimately examined by male docs. In the past few years, I have had to have several lots of kidney surgery inc intimate examinations/ procedures whilst awake. It is absolutely clear none of the male consultants - and they are ALL male, ALL of them - have any training at all in how to deal with women who've been assaulted. In fact, it doesn't even register with them that it could be a possibility. I had one fucker surgical registrar get all PA head-tilty with me and start on about how I was 'clearly an anxious young lady' and 'why was I so anxious' etc. Basically all but saying 'you're a hysterical woman'. I felt like shouting at him that maybe if one of his colleagues hadn't coerced me into touching me intimately, without gloves, whilst telling me how he was going to cut me whilst I tried not to weep in fear, then maybe I wouldn't be so FUCKING ANXIOUS.

Oh yeah, and trying to raise this stuff during pregnancy because I couldn't bear the thought of an instrumental delivery. Told, with another PA smirk from registrar, 'all women want to avoid forceps'. Yeah, it's not the fucking same, is it? Tried to raise it with my male GP - he seriously advised me to change my title from Miss to Mrs with the hospital as 'married women get taken more seriously'. Tried to change GP to a woman - told by practice receptionist my GP was really nice and I was 'not being appropriate'. Tried to raise it with hospital MW as I was not sleeping or having nightmares about doctors trying to cut away my labia during labour. Told 'but all the male docs here are really nice, they'll all come and introduce themselves when they come on shift'.

Fucking boggling. In the end, self-referred to home birth team, actually got taken seriously and gave birth at home. When it was over, felt nothing for DD, just relief I'd managed to get through it without a man sticking his fingers in me or cutting me.

Britain is institutionally misogynistic the way the Met was institutionally racist pre-Stephen Lawrence. (It probably still is racist, btw, but I'm white and can't speak about that.) But yeah, the police, the NHS - run by men, for men, or at least by men with so much fucking male privilege that they are actually not qualified to do the jobs they are supposed to do, that they are PAID to do, of prosecuting sex crimes and medically caring for women.

I don't think I realised fully how angry I was till this thread - so thanks OP

albadross. I'm so sorry. For your own father to say that is truly horrendous.

johnny

Yeah like treacle loads keep flooding back.

Being grabbed by a boy of, I don't know, maybe 11/12 when I was 19. When I reported it later to some housemates being told 'I sounded like I'd enjoyed it'.

Being grabbed in my 20s, hard, between the legs, by a lad in his mid-teens walking with a bunch of his friends. I challenged him verbally but they just laughed and really, what was I going to do against 4-5 people so much bigger than me?

Being grabbed between the legs whilst waitressing. Reported it to manager, hoped she'd put one of the blokes on that table. Told to shut up talking about it 'as I'd make everyone jealous'.

Being stopped by a man who stepped in front of when I was running, wouldn't let me past until I agreed to 'let him take pictures of me' in his basement. Dodged between two parked cars and escaped into the road.

Having my bra strap snapped by pervy art teacher. He also used to get a stool (we all sat on stools) and sit behind the girls in the class with his legs spread so his dick was right against their bums iyswim. Was a standing joke in the class. Tried to report to school, they weren't interested. When we left school, we wrote a collaborative open letter about how much we hated him and left it in his pigeonhole. For years I looked back on that letter and cringed and thought how mean it was of me. But NO, it really wasn't.

And you know, what has happened to me is not that bad. Not compared to lots of women on this thread and IRL. Perhaps I should be fucking grateful.

I don't think I have had any physical assualt. I've had wolf whistles/beeps and annoying comments/advances, but nothing physical. Sounds like I'm pretty unusual

I have been present when it's happened to friends though.

Oh yeah, swimming aged about maybe 8/9 in the pool with my sisters. An older bloke, probably 40s, was there with his daughter. I was floating on my back and he said he would 'help' me. I was a very good swimmer and felt quite resentful of this but was too polite to refuse. He put his hand on my back and then moved it down, slowly.......I flipped over in the water and swam away. I still remember crystal clear his little smirk - he'd got what he wanted.

johnny

I was lucky enough to have my first baby in a hospital which deals with a lot of a particular group of asylum seekers, so they are extremely hot on the potential issues surrounding perinatal care for survivors of rape and sexual assault.

Still, I nearly threw up during this conversation:

MW: Your booking form says you have PTSD.
Me: Yes, I was raped.
MW: I'm sorry to hear that. This pregnancy?

They put me on to consultant-led care based on their experience of R/SA survivors. Female consultant, with female registrars. Very safe environment, and in the end the delivery was not triggering or distressing let's not talk about internal examinations so my later pregnancies were mw-led.

I'm so sorry to hear that you had such uncaring treatment - and from a fucking obstetric registrar of all people .

Sexually assaulted as a prepubescent child. Groped, stalked, flashed at, multiple times. The first incident, I never told anyone about, because even at that age, I knew the focus would be on my actions (none), not his. Thereafter, I'd treat it as a bit of a joke afterwards, however scared or humiliated I'd felt at the time. I was a very slim blonde with large breasts. There were a lot of jokes. Ha de fucking ha.

Oh, and can we please stop with the 'do not touch' vibes that seemingly repel assault. I had those, quite evidently, to the first few boyfriends who wanted to go a whole lot faster than I did. They had no trouble reading the vibes. To total strangers and drunks, I was just the carrier of a female body, and there was no intention to engage with my wishes.

No he is in the wrong for touching you in the first place

Its simple even for an idiot like yourself to understand

I've reported, I really don't think victim blaming belongs on this thread.

MrsPorter I'm so glad you had a better experience of care. You know, I have been shouted down many a time on MN under other names for this, but I really think there is a strong case for making OBS-GYN a majority-female specialism. There is still a real culture of me-male-God-doctor/you-stupid-female-patient.

Yeah, I didn't know what I would do about internals. I do not even have smears because it is too triggering (I've also been told how 'foolish' I am on MN for that too). Thankfully DD came v v fast and as I was at home there was no need for IEs. Urgh.

Don't even get me started on the bigger picture of how medicine pathologises and drugs women's bodies.........

Oh and people, just don't feel the MRA trolls. Don't care if that gets deleted.

Everything mentioned by OP and worse tbh. Never reported any of it but threatened to call the police on the worst one if he didn't stop what he was doing immediately. I tend to blank stuff like that out but it has probably contributed to my trust issues and lack of success in relationships.

"The way you behave in a nightclub dictates the way a man responds to you, if you don't like him touching you then tell him and if he doesn't back off THEN he's in the wrong. "

I'm in absolute shock to be reading this tbh, don't you think the way a man responds is HIS responsibility?

The way you behave in a nightclub dictates the way a man responds to you, if you don't like him touching you then tell him and if he doesn't back off THEN he's in the wrong.

A) wwwhhhatttttt??????

B) read the thread...all of it, not just one or two posts, the thread