Sexual assault was commonplace in 90's?

[L0stinCyberspace]

Just pondering the (seeming) change in attitudes for young women in their 20's, now vs. the 90s, it hit me just how very normalised sexual assault, assault and sexual harassment was back then.

Walking down the street I'd be heckled from cars, building sites, buses. It all became normal and expected (dreaded).

A lad threw a full sandwich in tinfoil at my face with force from an upstairs bus window while shouting at me, a 12 year old threw ball-bearings at me when I was cycling down the road, a man punched me full force in the chest when I cycled by him one morning. A group of 10 trainee doctors told me to strip when I was in hospital, pulled the blinds and measured my breasts, while giggling, and I was too scared to complain. A man put his hand under me before I sat down on a packed bus one day, men groped and grabbed me when I was at gigs and clubs even when with boyfriends or friends, sleazy bosses tried it on, men tried to push clear boundaries. A man tried to break into my flat when I lived alone and I was advised to move immediately by police as they knew him.

Have things improved for young women now?

I know they have for me but that's my age to a great extent. Last year I was very upset to be heckled in a sexually abusive manner by 4 young men in a car as I walked with my teen in the daytime, but that was an unusual occurance. I really hope awareness is better now and there are less assaults. Are there?

Yes I very much recognise your points and experiences.

It was normal to be groped in nightclubs as you walked past or someone walked past you. I've had the unpleasant experience of a full crotch grab by a man as we walked past each other in a packed club.

I agree op. I was groped pretty regularly in nightclubs in the 90s.

It’s improved in public, but is probably a lot worse in schools, and social media, as well as harassment over messages, photos etc now. However men seem to have transferred all their aggression online, it feels more secret now, they can pretend to be anyone, which I find worse.

Groping in clubs went both ways there was a lot of women I knew who went round pinching mens bums as well

Lots of girls my age, late teens, were in sexual relationships with men I their 20s.

I remember I was dancing with a bloke in our local duve of a nightclub and he started fingerings me.

It was disgusting, but I was 17 and didn't know what the fuck to do, so I just kind of froze. And tried not to move so nobody could see.

I still find it upsetting when I think about it and how I should have done this or that.

I was very sexually inexperienced and after that experience, I had sex with loads of blokes I shouldn't have.

I don’t recognise that from my own experience either, but then I went to a girls’ school, hated clubbing and was a fairly plain lesbian as a teenager! Couple of incidents at university and much rampant sexism of other kinds as well, so I don’t doubt that it happened, just not so much to me.

It was prolific and I hope things have changed. My DDs are too young to have been exposed to this yet so I'm waiting to see what things will be like for them. I will certainly let them know that sort of behaviour is unacceptable, rather than just tolerating it like I did.

I was also raped while drunk and asleep (woke up mid way through) when I was a teen. It didn't occur to me that it was rape though - I just thought it was my fault for having drunk too much and fallen asleep next to this guy I knew. I hope there is greater awareness about consent among both young men and women now.

Same in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s 90’s. No doubt earlier too, in the late 1950’s I recall a young woman knocking on our door asking for help as she was being followed by a man, I was about ten at the time. She’d missed the last bus home and set off to walk, she said the man was calling to her, she crossed the road and he did the same, he grabbed her arm or something. She saw our light on and hammered on our door. My dad let her in and looked outside, the man was stood near our neighbours wall.
Dad told him to clear off or words to that effect.
My older brother and dad walked her home. Mum offered to make a bed on the sofa but she needed to get home.
I was only young and can’t recall all the details but that’s the gist of it.

I’ve been groped at a bus stop, flashed at, followed at a boot sale by a bloke who seemed very interested in whatever stall I was at, he wore a loose fitting coat that was unbuttoned but he had his hands in his pockets keeping the coat sort of close to him, he was so close behind me I could feel his breath on my neck, I turned round to tell him to back off only to see him masturbating, the pockets had holes in.

I got groped at Notting hill carnival about 10 years ago so I wouldn't say it was better then.

Yes, I believe that sexual assault, sexual attention and harassment was appalling for many years, and like to think that things have improved now. It was so normalised, and we just put up with it all.

From my own early teens, I certainly had to put up with a lot of extreme inappropriateness (understatement), and I didn’t know how to deal with it at all.

What upsets me still is that my mother is quite vocal about how women are to blame because of the way they dress, and how they behave. She says that what we used to have to put up with was OK because that’s “just the way things were” and, if we didn’t like it, we should have stopped it happening. I’ve never told her about things which happened to me when I was still a very young teenager because I believed it was my fault then, and I know she would say the same now – even though I WAS A CHILD.

@TheLazyToad

Yes, I believe that sexual assault, sexual attention and harassment was appalling for many years, and like to think that things have improved now. It was so normalised, and we just put up with it all.

From my own early teens, I certainly had to put up with a lot of extreme inappropriateness (understatement), and I didn’t know how to deal with it at all.

What upsets me still is that my mother is quite vocal about how women are to blame because of the way they dress, and how they behave. She says that what we used to have to put up with was OK because that’s “just the way things were” and, if we didn’t like it, we should have stopped it happening. I’ve never told her about things which happened to me when I was still a very young teenager because I believed it was my fault then, and I know she would say the same now – even though I WAS A CHILD.

My own experiences are the same - seriously sexually assaulted for the first time at 10/11. My mothers attitude is also the sam. She wonders why I ‘never tell her anything’ oh and why my sister never tells her anything, oh and why I a very low contact with her, oh and why my dc choose no contact with her, oh and why my sister moved to New Zealand and rarely speaks to her on strictly superficial subjects.

My first assault was courtesy of my cousin (male, 17/18 then). There was no point in telling her. Hasn’t been since either.

I too came to the conclusion this was normal and had other bad experiences throughout the 90’s and early noughties in particular. I’m now 43 and have a DD of 15, DS of 11, I am trying to raise both v v differently.

💐💐💐💐💐💐

@OzziePopPop

I think that we have to be proud to be able to raise our own children in a much better way because of our own experiences.

Yes, there was a lot of harassment and assault. I never told anyone because I just tried not to think about it. I hope it's better for girls and young women now, but it probably isn't.

I was sexually assaulted numerous times as a teenager in the 90s. It was totally normalised, and a lot of the time I was embarrassed as I felt it was my fault. More than once while I was asleep at a party I was assaulted, hands down trousers type of thing. Me and a friend were date raped I suppose you'd call it when we were 16, by a group of men at a 'party' again, we put it down to it being our fault as we were drunk. Only the other day we were talking about it and being mothers to young daughters it hit home even more.

I was raped when I was 17 by a so called friend, at the time I didn't know it was rape as when he continued and I said 'please stop, you're raping me'. I thought it wasn't rape as he stop but I remember having an awful uti after it, again, I thought it was my fault. I'd gone back to his etc.

This doesn't include the gropes, cat calls, being stopped by older men when in school uniform. It felt like this was just normal.

I hope to god things have changed.

Yes sexual assault often in broad daylight in public were common place in the 90s. That’s why as much as I loved many of the cultural aspects of the 90s, I think many have rose tinted glasses on when they describe the 90s as things were quite backwards when it came to sexism and racism in some spheres.

Having lads throw tinfoil sandwiches in my face, or anything like that really, doesn't really remind me of the 90s. Tbh it sounds kind of bizarre no matter when it happened.

I think there were some differences in attitudes, I remember having harassment training in my male dominated workplace and it's rather different than what you get now, for example. Though in some ways the changes are a bit of a mixed bag. In some ways its less accepted, but that doesn't always play out in a straightforward way.

I also lost my virginity aged 14 to a 20 year old man. I was delighted because I really fancied him. Now I realise how fucked up it was.

I was also flashed on 3 separate occasions. The last time was in the mid noughties and it was quite scary as I was alone walking to work one dark morning. I called the police this time and the guy was caught and eventually charged as he was a serial flasher and the same morning he flashed me he was flashing young girls going to school.

God, writing it all down is really quite shocking.

I don't think it's changed.
My much younger cousin (early 20s now) gets a lot of hassle and she and her friends have to fend off gross guys in clubs.
People still get groped on public transport all the time.

I had hoped it was different now, but reading this thread maybe young guys aren’t so different. The real difference is (hopefully) that young women are more aware that this kind of behaviour isn’t normal/accepted. A lot of what happened when I was that age was just something I took for granted. It was normal to have your bra strap twinged at school, normal for guys to squeeze your bum .. all of that just led to worse incrementally. Often the boys’ behaviour at school was dismissed as ‘high jinks’ and to be fair some of it I probably encouraged, implicitly if not explicitly. By the time I got to uni this kind of behaviour was entrenched in the laddish culture. A definite lack of respect for women. If that hasn’t changed I hope young women feel more able to call it out than I did.

My daughter was about 20 in the 90's era, and I don't remember her having these issues with men folk then. Maybe it's more of an issue in bigger towns and areas.. She could stand up for herself though, and would not listen to any crap stuff from men.

@1forAll74

My daughter was about 20 in the 90's era, and I don't remember her having these issues with men folk then. Maybe it's more of an issue in bigger towns and areas.. She could stand up for herself though, and would not listen to any crap stuff from men.

We didn’t usually tell our parents, maybe you just didn’t know.

Sounds very familiar to me. I couldn't walk out the door without some inappropriate comment. I was even followed by the lads in the fire brigade in a fire engine for months. Every evening at the bus stop after work they would stop ask me to sit on their knee, I would try to ignore them and the corny innuendos would flow. One time an elderly woman was at the bus stop with me and she put them in their place. I was so used to that kind of crap I just accepted it as normal. On a works night out at a chinese restaurant,I was about 21 at the time, one of the bosses said to the entire table, that we should be eating the banquet from my naked body. This was met by laughter from all the men and eye rolling from the women. I can't imagine that ever happening now. Work was gross, I could write a book just on experiences at work.

I had similar and lived in a ok area. I remember being on the window end of a bus seat as a shy school girl and some bloke in a Mack vibrating his leg against mine while playing with himself. I froze, no idea how to escape the situation. Similar happened when I was 16 at a packed event one night with a man pressing himself against my bum and playing with himself in his long coat. Another time in a geography lesson, all gathered round the teachers desk, me slightly bent over, one of the boys mistook me for his girlfriend and pressed his index finger into my vagina. Then lots of other much smaller things day to day, honking horns and inappropriate sexual comments

The world has developed and now there’s upskirting and online harassment, dick picks.

I didn’t tell my parents any of this, I felt ashamed it had happened to me