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.

I've just clocked the comment about letting men in clubs sexually assault you just a little bit, then if you mind, you can tell them to stop.

What concept of women's bodily autonomy do you have to think it works like that? Can I go up to men and smack them in the face just a little bit then if they don't like it, then can tell me to stop?

Blimey.

Here's to my second post deletion in 5 years:

Fuck off, Deb.

'Still as long as it makes you happy.'

Yeah ignorant victim blaming makes me delighted.

And what is Deb teaching her daughter

lets hope she is influenced by people who see women as equal to men

Having read Deb's post on the accent thread I think it's safe to say she's best left ignored.

Remembered another. Aged 10 I was dragged into the cloakroom at school and held down so that a gang of girls who were bullying me could feel my breasts, as I was one of the first to get them. Only they didn't just feel, the ring leader in particular squeezed, pinched and twisted my nipples.

That's 10 and 11 year old GIRLS. Yrs 5 and 6. Possibly the same age or younger than some of your DDs are now.

I'm almost embarrassed posting on here as this is so low level. But I think it's telling that I didn't even register this as sexual assault till I was reading a thread on here on sexual harrassment in schools and thought "hang on a minute" as an experience of mine that I'd forgotten suddenly popped back into my head. Primary school - aged 10 or 11. Two boys managed to corner me at the bottom of the school playing field and tried to pull my trousers and pants down - I distinctly remember the sensation of how far down they managed to get them - if I'd been post-puberty, there definitely would have been pubic hair on show. I fought like a demon and kicked both of them off me. And then there's the time the guy behind me on an escalator on the underground groped me. And the shopkeeper in a tourist area abroad who tried to force me to go into the changing rooms to try on a dress even though I kept saying repeatedly I didn't have the money to buy one - he only let me out the shop after he'd kissed me. Bleaurgh. I think I managed to turn my head at the last moment so he only caught the corner of my mouth. I was 15 for both these two.

The thing is, having supported a friend through the aftermath of her rape when we were first year students, I kind of forgot about all of these events because I felt it somehow demeaned their experience to even describe things that minor as sexual assault - but now I see they are all on the same spectrum.

Incidentally, I think people like Deb victim-blame as a form of magical thinking. The reasoning goes "If I read this thread with an open mind, I'd have to realise that there but for the grace of god went I, and that is so scary that I can't even begin to contemplate it. So instead, I'll invent a set of arbitrary rules for women's behaviour which magically will protect me and my daughter. Then I can persuade myself these awful things will never happen to either of us because we're following the rules..." Of course it's a shitty thing to believe, and is victim blaming, and is utterly fallacious as a piece of reasoning, but it's psychologically understandable. But there is the frightening possibility that it will come back to bite her in the arse. If the worst happens and her daughter gets assaulted, her daughter will feel like she can't confide in her mother.

Yy mostly.
Women with short skirts are assaulted > I don't wear short skirts > I am safe
Women who xyz are assaulted > I don't do this > I am safe

Women are assaulted by people they know, trust and even love > ...bugger.

At 9/10 repeatedly groped and I suppose what you might call dry sex (forced) by peers at school over the course of a few months. It was one boy in particular but he'd often get his friends to restrain me.

First witnessed an older man assaulting my friend in year 7. It was on the bus, he was groping her bum and when we moved away he followed and continued so we got straight off at the next stop. And we were in uniform. And other friend had a grown man stalking her in year 7 - would follow her home from school. Grown men wanking, following me, exposing themselves while I was in uniform. This was all throughout secondary school.

I've had other stuff since (though at 19 never been raped) but just wanted to point out how young it can start, I don't know if it was just really bad luck with the dynamics of the boys in my year at primary school but the sexually aggressive behaviour did start (properly) in year 5. The boys in my secondary school were the same as well though and this was a different set of boys, so...

I'm reading this and realising I really need to speak to my son about consent. I was thinking I could leave it a year or 2. He's only 8.

Mostlyhet, yes, there is a name for that delusion. I noticed it wrt j9b h7nting. Nobody could acknowledge that i might be job unting 'right' and not have a job.
Same with being single. I must be looking wrong. Or i dont love myself. Or i need to stop looking. Or start l9oking.

People find it impossible to digest the harsh truth that x y or z coyld happen to them too

God sorry, I'm dominating the last pages of this thread. But so many keep coming back.

Watching a man on the 'Haunted Edinburgh' ghost tour wotsit deliberately position himself behind my sister who was all of 12 and run his fingers up and down her back, just to the top of her jeans. He was nicely dressed and in his 50s. He was there with a friend. They both laughed to each other as my sister jerked away.

Being followed home twice whilst drunk at university by fellow students one of whom 'crashed' in my bed despite repeated attempts to get rid of him.

The thing is, what can we say to our daughters? Don't go here or there, don't dress like that. No, that is victim blaming. Do a self-defence class: marginally better. But what can we really do?

I despair.

The usual whistles etc from building sites.

Flashed at, at 13. Had someone follow me through a narrow, isolated road, riding slowly on his bike at walking pace inches behind me, breathing heavily, at 13.

Groped on the arse by an old family friend at 15.

Had a man rub his erection against me at 30.

Saw someone's dick on public transport soon after the previous incident.

Grabbed on the crotch incredibly roughly in the middle of the street at 35. He came at me from behind. Finally at that age I was not fucking having it, so I ran after the prick and walloped him over the head with my laptop bag. The most surprising thing to me then, was that he was wearing a suit and tie and looked like an accountant or a lawyer...or something. I don't know. He may well have been.

Oddly enough, on none of these occasions was I drunk.

Johnny, yes. I don't know what to tell mine. I have to have the conversation at some point, but how do I approach it? I have to tell them that men will do at least some these things to them at some point.

Currently the men in their lives are perfectly nice human beings. I'm going to have to burst their bubble at some point.

I've down some more thinking. Every time I was drunk and found myself in a dodgy situation, the bloke involved was perfectly lovely and backed off when asked.

It isn't about being drunk. It's about inadvertently finding yourself in the company of an arsehole.

Cisoff - sadly you will need to tell your girls soon, at least when they start primary school as this is when the sexual harassment usually starts . Girls as young as 7 or 8 are asked for naked photos or asked if they will perform sex acts on boys and verbally abused when they don't comply .

Cisoff - you made me think of all the times I did hair curlingly stupid shit and I was looked after by female and male friends. Men who looked after me and got me home.

The arsehole men are just crap humans who are bigger and stronger and entitled.

Johnny
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.

I think that for many (if not most) of the twats that do these things, the fact that they've forced a reaction out of a woman or girl - pretty much ANY reaction - is a huge turn on. They've made us notice them; they've forced us to change our behaviour, or to react in response to what they have done; and they live in our heads for a long, long time. Whether we freeze, fight, or flee - we've noticed them, the pathetic twats.

I'm not surprised when I read posts that start - "I'd forgotten this . . . " and end "How could I forget something so awful?"

We have to repress these horrors (and that is not too strong a word for many of them) because if we didn't, in our current political and social climate where we get little or no support and would be vilified, we would be afraid to leave our homes, go to work have a night out with friends . . . we would be afraid to LIVE.

So we push them to the backs of our minds, or we normalise them by saying "that's what men do" and develop a sort of "Stockholm Syndrome" and the behaviour and the reaction to it perpetuates itself. When we encounter a threadlike this, where we can share what has happened in as much or as little detail as we wish, it is tremendously liberating.

I wish we had a politician like Golda Meir - When there were a huge number of rapes taking place in Israel, she and her cabinet got together to try to work out a way of preventing them. One bright spark came up with a 6.00pm (or something) curfew for women, so that they would not be out on the streets and vulnerable after it got dark. This was enthusiastically agreed by the rest of them except for Mrs Meir. "I think it's a good idea - but we'll make it a 6.00pm curfew for the men. It is the men that are doing the raping."

Same Cisoff. My dds 7 and 10 and so sad to break it to them. I have more instances than I can be bothered to type out - luckily not rape but lots of street harrassment incidences. Remember eating my lunch in a park aged about 23 and a man came up and asked if I would sit on his face. Lovely.

DDs aged 7 and I were walking home the other day and a car ful of men beeped. DD turned to me and said "very sad to end up being someone that does THAT sort of thing". Which kind of broke my heart.

Also had the radio on - radio 4 news quiz and they were repeating what Trump had said about women. DD1 aged 10 flinched. I don't think she had ever heard anyone say anything like that before about women as a whole. Again I wanted to cry.

Why women don't report.

www.vox.com/2016/10/13/13274972/donald-trump-is-giving-us-a-master-class-in-why-womendontreport

An older colleague, now retired, once told me about the everyday harassment she'd endured for years from men in my former workplace. I won't repeat the stories as they're not mine to share. What I've never been able to straighten out in my head round is how the men concerned weren't random, anonymous arsesholes. I knew some of them and had always liked them. They had wives, children and mothers whom I assume they loved.

I was spat at by a man aged around 21 when I rebuked his advances.

Strangely I was wearing baggy jeans, jumper and flat shoes.
He also hurled storage of abuse at me because I didn't want to go out with him.

deblet

"I've only read the OP"
That is so rude, and makes you look really arrogant and stupid. To only read the OP. This is a conversation; one in which people have been recounting horrible experiences. And you barge in in the way you've done.

I was always careful not to be a drunk or put myself into situations where my intentions would be misconstrued so I have never been in a position to get into bother. I have taught and continue to teach my daughter to behave the same way.

Try wearing the uniform of a catholic girls' school - lots of men think that's showing your intentions to want to have sex.

And how should the poster who began being assaulted aged 2 or 3 have kept her self safe?

That is so rude, and makes you look really arrogant and stupid.

Given her reaction when people pointed out how shitty her post was, I'd suggest she doesn't just look arrogant and stupid.

I wasn't drunk when my exh punched me and then forced his penis into me in front of my small dd. I was taken to hospital though.