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 had my bum pinched on the wall in Chester. I was about 21 but it still horrified me.

If I was going by your own standards I'd have been sexually assaulted many times.

I don't feel like I HAVE been sexually assaulted because I have thicker skin and don't see it that way.

So no, I've never been sexually assaulted in my life.

I'm struggle to understand the mindset of those who think a very sad thread where women are sharing some very painful experiences and memories needs to be 'balanced' out in some way. Why would that be what you want to post, on reading accounts of women who have been raped?

Never been raped thankful for that but yes, not for a decade perhaps but I lost count of the number of times

Im not trying to justify it but i do think that todays standards are vastly different.
As a teenager in the 80's , it was normal to go out and be beeped at, wolf whistled etc.
I got groped at a concert.
Although different, i remember my brother telling me of his teacher digging her ring in his back. I was horrified but nothing ever came of that type of behaviour in the past. Its like a different world now. We didnt question things then but it didnt make it right.

Yebutnobut I wondered how long it would be before someone piped up with "what about the poor men".

Feel free to start your own thread, good luck with that.

Thicker skin or socialised into accepting assault and harassment from men?

Indecently exposed to as a pre-teen, attempted rape as a young teen by an adult male, coerced in to sex by more than one boy as a late teen, touched on the breast by an old man as a young adult (a fleeting memory which has blocked out the detail so I don't know for sure who it was) and groped and fingered several times in my sleep by a partner who "couldn't remember".

I don't live in some trashy dive of a drug infested council estate you'd see on a BBC drama. This stuff happens in all walks of life.

I think it is probably the majority of women. It's hard to tell how many because it is so under reported.

The first time I was assaulted was at school when I was 12 years old. A boy who didn't like me cornered me in the corridor and squeezed my breast very hard. It hurt. A female teacher saw and dismissed it with a boys will be boys attitude.

When I was in my early 20s, my ex fiancé attempted to rape and kill me. I didn't report it at the time because he manipulated me by threatening to commit suicide or since because it seemed like too much time had passed, there was no evidence, I didn't react the 'right' way at the time (stayed in the abusive relationship for a while afterwards) and I didn't want to be judged or disbelieved. A mutual 'friend' of ours found out anyway when I confided in the wrong person. He totally turned on me and sided with my ex, telling everyone I was lying about being assaulted and my ex “wouldn't hurt a fly” (ironically I hadn't actually told any of those people I was assaulted so they only heard about it from him). Attitudes like that are why victims are afraid to report assaults. I regretted not reporting for a while but when I read about a recent rape case I realised I did the right thing for me. I couldn't have coped with what the complainant in that case went through, she was practically put on trial with her exes called into court to testify about their sex life. Victims are shamed for reporting and shamed for not reporting, i.e.: the attitude that it will be your fault if he does it to someone else. No it won't, it will be the fault of a society and a justice system that doesn't protect victims so that some of us protect ourselves by not coming forward. I wouldn't recommend my decision but it was right for me.

A few years ago a creepy guy grabbed my bottom in the supermarket. He had asked me for directions earlier and I didn't think anything of it, then I noticed he kept turning up in the same aisle I was in, which was weird but I didn't want to cause a fuss, then I was looking at something on the shelf and felt him firmly squeeze me, definitely not an accidental brush past. I just left. I wish I had said something (or punched him) but I was in shock. You don't expect to have to protect yourself when you are doing your shopping.

And this is just the physical assaults, not including verbal street harassment, too many incidents of that to count.

No!!

Someone once slapped my bottom in the workplace!

But otherwise, actually, no. Never.

I have been verbally harassed and once was quite recently when I was out coaching runners in my running club. But I genuinely can't remember any unwanted physical contact at all. Maybe when I was a student and I was a bit tipsy but it was obviously untraumatic if I can't remember it. Most of the male students were really nice and would walk you home etc.

I am not sure if I would class it as assault. Not sure what it was.

As a 13 year old my neighbour used to draw porn images of me and what he wanted to do with me. He then wrote countless letters about how he needed to 'lick my pussy' and how I was a frigid bitch and a prick tease. It escalated to him telling me that if I didn't give him a blow job he would kill himself and I believed him and did it. It also got to the stage where he wrote a list of what sexual things I had to do in order to loosen me up and the suicidal threats ramped up. He also showed me his erect penis which I wasn't expecting at the time. I believe he was 16 years old at the time and I went through with it all because I didn't want him to kill himself and the photos of me were so gross I didn't want to show my mum because I didn't want her to see those disgusting graphic photos of him performing sexual acts on me.

She knows all about it now and wishes I had told her obviously. I used to tell her everything, that was the only thing I couldn't tell her because I didn't want her to see me in that way or find out I had been giving him oral sex etc.

I honestly have never experienced anything like this despite growing up in the 80's. Then again I am no oil painting and apparently pretty fucking terrifying to boot.

It doesn't mean I feel any less enraged about predatory monsters like Ched Evans though.

Yes to harassment and actual assault. I think most women have, sadly.

Neveradullmoment I don't think it really matters too much whether certain things were more socially acceptable years ago. They are likely to have still made the woman feel the same way.

These things are still going on today.

Then why do you think your post was needed yerbut? What made you think to say that on this particular thread?

I can't read the whole thread (too upsetting), but yes I've been sexually assaulted several times. To those who haven't, you're lucky. Pretty much all my friends that I have spoken to about this to have been assaulted in similar ways to me too.
I also hate the word groped. I feel like it's minimising it. It's sexual assault.

OP, why did you start this thread? What did you want to achieve?

Difficult one.

Groped on a busy tube train when I was 12 years old. That's the one that really stuck with me but lots and lots of episodes of harassment over the years including followed home as a pre-teen by an older man, flashed as a teen, skirt lifted up in the middle of the day as a university student, an uncle who always admired how I was growing up while looking me up and down. Never even thought of nightclub groping before as it was so depressingly common.

Woke up in a taxi once with the drivers hand up my top and numerous other uninvited assaults. Never reported any of them.

Sadly, for women my age (late 50s), I think that the OP is right. I can't believe that any woman who was around in the 1960s, 70s or 80s has not experienced at least some form of unwanted sexual contact in her lifetime.
Most of my incidents happened when I was young, in the 70s and 80s. I was groped, fondled, forcibly kissed, bottom pinched, bottom slapped as I walked past, lewd comments shouted out of passing cars, whistles, etc etc.

During my A-level year, I helped in the learning support class of the school - and one of the older boys grabbed me and stuck his hand in my knickers.

Even the minister of our church made a pass at me, whilst supposedly comforting me after a bereavement!

I used to help out an elderly widower, a neighbour. One day, when thanking me for doing his washing, he decided to have a quick grope as well!

Just when I thought it had all calmed down, about 10 years ago a friend's DH started sending me suggestive texts and then tried to fondle me when we next met.

And I have led a very sheltered life, so I dread to think how much others have had to put up with!

U2 that sounds like sexual assault to me

U2 what ever you want to call it, that is fucking appalling

I was going to say no, never, but there was an incident when I was about 20 that has stuck with me.

Morning commute, I was waiting on a packed tube platform (tubes were really delayed and it was heaving). I felt the person behind touch my arse; I moved away as much as I could thinking it was a mistake. He stayed close and he started rubbing his groin on me (erection was unmistakable). I elbowed my way out of where I was standing and headed to another part of the platform. When I looked back at him he had a smirk on his face.

I'm not sure how that would be defined, harassment maybe?, but it was an eye-opener to me. He was using the volumes of people to hide what he was doing. And it's so minor, so who's going to say anything?

I'm really not disputing this is obviously a more common problem than I realised, can honestly say I've never had anything as serious as sexual assault and none of my close friends (or not that they've disclosed). I was just trying to point out that in some cases, and since a lot of men think with their dicks, they do genuinely seem to think you're making advances toward them, a lady can't just be friendly it seems in some cases.