To struggle with #metoo

[BookyBook]

Is anyone else struggling with this?

I can't even articulate why and why I am so reluctant to post #metoo myself, although don't want to not either. My FB thread is full of it and I didn't realise it was a thing to do until yesterday and it has completely blindsided me.

Having said that I think it makes a very strong point, I just feel a little teary about seeing all the #metoos today in a way that is making me relive my own experiences that I have trained myself not to think about too much usually.

Is anyone else the same?

"Survivors don't owe you their story"

THank you! I now know why I couldn't post...I just felt it was too private.

It is definitely about a realisation that what you were subjected to fits the category. I have NEVER thought of myself as a victim but this has made me uncomfortable. as from the age of about 15 to 25 I put up with a lot of shit from various sources including work and put it down to the way things are - even subsequently there have been instances that count and I had brushed them off but actually that is as damaging as the instance itself in terms of accepting a culture where it becomes the norm

I would post MeToo on FB but I'm too embarrassed.. or ashamed.. to admit that, yes it's happened to me too.

Not sure why I feel like that when it's the perpetrators of assault & harassment who should be ashamed & embarrassed?

But I've seen SO many women on my Facebook saying variants of 'if you're not posting you're part of the problem.'

Horrible.

As a po said what with baby loss week and now being made to feel guilt because I don't want to turn my painful past in to a trending hashtag I'm sacking off social media for a while.

Had a conversation on this subject with the kids a few weeks ago, coincidentally. Might bring it up again. I wonder now a) if my son has experienced anything similar and b) if he has realised, from listening to girls' experiences, that harrassment is so common. I would like to think he does have some idea, even at age 17!

Wow, because a man has been sexually assaulted he's a prick?

Way to miss the point.

My son at aged 16 was sexually harassed, maybe assaulted. I'm not sure what you class it as and the policeman was just all 'boys will be boys shit'. It wasn't at the hands of women though, it was teen boys. The support I got from MN at the time was amazing.

I would be quite disappointed if he said the metoo was sexist. At 18 he understands that it is largely (understated!) a female problem and when men are sexually harassed or assaulted it's usually by other men.

I don't want to see men post their shit about how it is sexist, or how NAMALT or telling us it happens to men too. It's not the point of the hashtag is it? Men shifting the focus away from women is not the point of it.

Survivors don't owe you their story

Completely.

The only people that know mine are my DH my counsellor. That is how I want it to stay.

Bish - I really think you're misinterpreting what was said. There is a huge difference between the following two statements

1. Women should not have to put up with sexual harassment and shut up about it

and

1. Women choosing not to take part in #metoo are part of the problem. (Which hasn't been voiced here by anyone, unless I've somehow missed a post).

To equate the two ethically or semantically is to confuse two very different things.

tehmina that's why I was avoiding it. Have done it now, but it does feel like a dirty secret, doesn't it? :(

I just think about some of the women I work with and can see how writing #metoo or having to decide to opt out could be retraumatising.
We completely need to be having these conversations but we also need to place the mental health of vulnerable victims at the centre of that conversation.

This, in spades. Have the conversation with victims who put themselves forward and have a wider conversation about trends and statistics.
I work with victims who want to tell their stories and help them to do it in a way they feel comfortable and in control.

The social media thing is quite confronting.

I really agree with you OP and I'm glad you've started this thread. Much of what others have said resonates with me. I thought it was just me that felt odd about it.

I was sexually harassed/assaulted when I was 14. I've never ever told anyone about it, and I certainly don't want to plaster it all over FB and invite questions from close friends and family. I don't know why I've never revealed it, maybe shame? Not sure. But anyway, this isn't for me. And it's not exactly news that many -most?- women have experienced sexual assault or harassment at some point in our lives. I welcome the intention behind this but won't be adding to it.

The actress who made the comments t who started it (I can't remember her name) was making the point that the big scandals such as Harvey Weinstein etc seem to imply that there are few bad apples in some places. She was saying g this isn't the case, this is ingrained in society. Women face harassment and assault all the time at work, on the street, in bars, in gyms etc. The point she was making is this isn't just a few incidents. Wolf whistling, flashing, bum pinching might not seem serious, but they are part of a culture that allows men to exert sexual power over women. It makes women feel scared, fear rape.

The idea that lower level assault should be minimised means that women keep quiet, and I'm convinced adds to women feeling like a serious sexual assault was their fault (I shouldn't have worn that/walked that way/led him on etc)

It will make absolutely no meaningful difference. It might make a meaningful difference to someone who feels alone...

Besides, can't women stand in solidarity of each other without having to make a difference? Can we just be heard?

I think it's perfectly normal and natural to struggle with.

What we are seeing it so many women saying publicly I have been assaulted because i am a women. I have been a victim of a hate crime. We are used to these matters being "othered", being swept under carpets, or locked in quiet rooms. We are as a society used to demonizing women, victim blaming. We are used to seeing individual incidents, and what we are seeing now is a wave of pervasive abuse that is being documented as being all around us, all the time. Pretty much every woman has been assaulted by a man.

Personally I've "gotten by" in life not thinking about it too much - and then suffering some more because I was silent. Damage done, confusion, self damage, depression - a thread running through my life and it took years to even start to be able to recognise why.

Sometimes I spoke up and I was dismissed, or disbelieved. Or people didn't know what to say. Or occasionally someone did know what to say and it was like their kindness and empathy ripped me apart.

many of us deal with this with silence and repression. We turn our damage, anger and confusion inwards. It is a coping stratedgy in an uncaring world, but ultimately that helps no one.

So when I saw #MeToo, I just took a deep breath and did it - I didn't want to pause to analyse or overthink. It is true. I'm OK with that now, and my journey with it means I know it is better to name it, say it, and share it, than try to bury it within.

Please don't feel you have to say #MeToo. It's OK not too. But for your own life, perhaps this could be a beginning of getting some support and help to process and deal with what happened to you.

There's a lot of "women should... " and "women's assaults... " etc getting thrown around.

😟 I'd be more accepting of the movement if it strived to show the sexual abuse and harassment of HUMANS.

gendered violence is all too real OnnaturesCourse

Why don't you want to name it and see it?

So when I saw #MeToo, I just took a deep breath and did it - I didn't want to pause to analyse or overthink. It is true. I'm OK with that now, and my journey with it means I know it is better to name it, say it, and share it, than try to bury it within.

Same here. I'm glad no one has questioned why I chose to share it, because it's not something I wish to discuss on FB. However, having just seen my cousin, who was brutally raped, share it, I'm glad I did.

It is a problem that is overwhelmingly a women's issue, women are assaulted many times, on a daily basis, by men. Men are assaulted on a regular basis, but not nearly as often, also by men. Once in a while there is an outlier where the woman is the perpetrator.

Men's entitlement, aggression and destructiveness is to blame.

I will not have the issue blurred by making it about 'humans'. When one sex routinely preys on another sex, and further on its own sex, then THAT SEX has the problem, and THAT SEX needs to fix it.

The experience I'm thinking of in my metoo happened when I was 14 and I'm still very uncomfortable about posting it over 30 years later, even without explanation, so I really would not expect anyone to write it if they found it too hard.

Having to read it, though? There are so many references to experiences of this type in any sort of media, or in conversations with friends etc. that you're not going to avoid the subject. The intense repetition is not good, no. But intense repetition is also an excellent way to get a message across effectively. Am I entirely naive to think that maybe if this message is repeated often enough, then people's perceptions could be changed of what's harmless banter or insidiously poisonous, inacceptable behaviour. (Social opinion of the nastier end of the spectrum already being pretty clear.)

I think one important point is that no-one is being forced to confront anything that doesn't already exist by #metoo. If people don't want to participate, they don't have to.

The fact that there is an acknowledgement that sexual harassment is happening at an epic scale is the fault of those doing the sexual abuse, not those drawing attention to its existence. If we want to talk about traumatized victims, let's put the blame for their trauma where it belongs - with the men who behave this way. Not with people saying "Hey, sexual harassment is everywhere, isn't it time we did something about this?"

Part of my thinking behind this is that future victims have rights too. The needs of current victims (and like I said, I've been raped, so I'm in this group) have to be balanced against the potential future suffering if the current state of affairs is allowed to continue and we do nothing to protest the amount of harassment, assault, and rape in our culture. I don't think this burden falls on those who are weakest and least able to articulate their feelings or experiences in any way, but I don't think those who are stronger and able to take this on should be forced to shut up and put up because some vulnerable individuals might be triggered by it. (Others may find it a liberation). I just can't see how we are ever going to effect change by avoiding the fact that there is a pandemic of this abuse out there.

We should be resilient?! Wtf? Most of us already are. If we all crumbled every time some dickhead groped, cat called, sent a dick pic, bum pinched or whatever, we'd never leave the house. Instead we ignore it, or roll our eyes, or hide our distress and embarrassment and press on with life, and thus minimise it....but it's outrageous that we have to do it. And every time we are groped, cat called etc, we are belittled and put in a position where we wonder if we are entirely safe from worse.

Mostly I have forgotten the experiences that lead me to say #metoo (mostly....not gonna share here). But one that happened when I was 16 has come back to me. It was 'minor' - a group of slightly older guys on holiday were discussing my body loudly as I sat in a bar with them. One of them said 'you've got saggy tits' (I didn't, as it happens, but so what if I had?) and sneered. I was devastated. Embarrassed and humiliated. But I brushed it off. I even laughed.

Nothing to 'survive'. Nothing to report (who to?). An everyday incident. Part of the same spectrum that puts women at risk of assault, rape and murder, though.

"Some bloke on my facebook is saying that women who haven't been assaulted should pipe up with #NotMe so that people can see that for every woman who says #MeToo there is 100 who haven't been"

There has been a backlash on my FB by a few men, who are gathering support. Their main point is for "Women to lose their victim mentality", which shows how far we have got to go. These Men aren't single, either.

"I'd be more accepting of the movement if it strived to show the sexual abuse and harassment of HUMANS."

Well when I'm out shopping with my teen (and older DDs), I don't see many Women coming onto boys/men, in the way that my DDs suffer. This is just day-to-day shopping.

This isn't an equal problem.

So when I saw #MeToo, I just took a deep breath and did it - I didn't want to pause to analyse or overthink. It is true. I'm OK with that now, and my journey with it means I know it is better to name it, say it, and share it, than try to bury it within.

For you. Please don't fall into the trap of saying how victims should behave.

For some it is better to do that for some it really isn't.

It will make absolutely no meaningful difference

You have no way of knowing this.

But we do know, that doing nothing will make no meaningful difference

Attitudes change over time. There is much less overt racism and homophobia in the UK for example than there was when I was growing up.

There isn't one single thing that changes attitudes, but there can be pivitol moments. The news agenda is focused on this issue right now. The more we keep it in the spotlight (by doing things like this campaign) the more the media will keep it on the agenda and the wider the message will spread.

It's basic campaigning, and it works.

The media has a huge influence, as can social media.

Across the country people are having conversations about this stuff. Men ARE talking about it and learning. Not all of them, but a significant number. Just this morning I saw a man in his 20s reeling from seeing his mum write #metoo. He was asking his female friends what he could do to help, how he could be a good ally. I didn't see that conversation happening last week.

Conversations like these, across the country are what makes change.

You don't have to take part, if any one makes you feel bad for not taking part, they are missing the point.

But please stop knocking people who are trying to make a difference.

I hate this kind of thing usually, but this has been really good. I originally thought "I'm not a victim of this" and then realised, I am a victim of it all the time, it's just that I'm so used to it, it doesn't occur to me. It's made the boundaries far clearer to me too.