***TW*** Sexual intimidation - To think that this is what almost every woman goes through.

[PurplePink45]

Just watching the documentary on the Kevin Spacey allegations.

Watching a man talking about how scared and intimidated he felt, how he felt so uncomfortable being around him and wondered what he did to deserve this unwanted attention.

I had empathy for the man but I wish all of the men watching would understand how often that happens to women and not just once in a lifetime, but multiple times from a very young age (preteen).

I want to say this is our norm and it bloody well shouldn't be!

For me it was:
Age 12, 2 boys in my class at school touching my breasts and putting their hands up my skirt.

Age 15 A boy being pushing about wanting to kiss me even though I said no.

Age 16 A man at work in his 60s trying to cop a feel/touching me inappropriately and making me feel intimidated.

Age 18 Being rescued by my male friend as a boy tried to persuade the very drunk me to go further than I wanted to and not taking no for an answer.or picking up the "no" signals like moving their hand off your breasts.

Feeling intimidated multiple times by men hooting me and wolf whistling/inappropriate comments from men when walking the streets.

And many, many other acts of male sexual intimidation since then.

YANBU

men just don’t get this how constant it is how you learn to navigate being in public to try and avoid this how being in a space with a man can make you feel nervous

even something as simple as walking in a busy area a station or a pub how women will shrink in to their bodies and weave about and how men do not

It’s happened to often to list thankfully it rare now but seem to have more aggression directed at me i guess if I was young these men would be letching over me

no it shouldn’t be the norm but this conversation will always tried to be silenced by some

The spacey thing was grim. It felt like he was more desperate to hide his homosexuality than ever make amends.
I've been abused and raped many times. The first couple were female. Men were worse. Horrible for anyone experiencing it.
I can only say I guess I'm glad some people don't understand the burden of it all.

Yes. It's the water we swim in. The air we breathe. It starts way too young and colours our whole lives.

I suspect most women experienced sexually threatening behaviour, if not fully abusive behaviour, from a very young age. I was 11 the first time I was flashed at.

Yep. From 11 years old. And it's only really stopping now in my 50s. I was 'lucky' I was 11 TBH compared to several friends who had CSA younger than that.

I have a male friend who spoke about being picked up in a gay bar and how intimidated he felt. I said, "yeah like being a woman". He didn't understand at all. One night he literally saved me from a groping scumbag. Like WTF dude, you literally saw it happen to me.

i guess it's a bit like behaviour in the wild, in natural history programmes, the difference between predator and prey.
one tries not to be noticed, or cowers hoping not to be attacked, as a survival strategy.
the other struts around dominating the space.
except we are meant to have evolved from being wild animals, else why have laws.

so many men, decent reliable men, are genuinely surprised to learn of the constant hassle women have to cope with, and from a v young age.
always calculating the least worst option, routes, parking, keys in hand, dodging and diving.
wary alertness is exhausting, and so limiting.
it's men that need to change.
starting by being aware of what 99% of women and girls have to live with.

I'm sorry that it's been like that for you, but it's not every woman's experience.

At the risk of getting shot down in flames here , this is whataboutary - if this was a thread about Harvey Weinstein and someone said this happens to men as well ,they'd be attacked on here and quite rightly .

Yes awful things are done to women by men . But in this case , this is an older male predator, deliberately targeting vulnerable younger men .

@Lilly11a I think you missed OP's point, that men don't get how prevalent this is for women until they experience something similar.

Yes, it absolutely is.

In Australia the gay panic defence was only abolished in 2020. Basically, men could murder or assault gay men they felt were coming on to them and use this defence to get off.

When I heard about this I said "Oh, so what women endure constantly from hetero men, but with the added fear of being far weaker than them?" He was surprised and hadn't thought of it like that.

https://equalityaustralia.org.au/gaypanic-defence-abolished/

Exactly this!

It is almost impossible to find a woman who has not experienced, at the very least, sexual intimidation by a male and/or males, from a very young age, if not physical assault or worse. And I truly believe that a lot of males absolutely do not know or understand this.

@WhereTheFuckIsMyFuckingCoat I have not. And I do t know a tone else that has either.

Absolutely. Completely common from childhood onwards.

You've been very lucky not to have experienced it then.

It started in primary school for me and until I had daughters I didn't even grasp that anything really bad had ever happened to me but I guess it was just such a part of my life and that of my friends too that it was just accepted, even joked about. I often laughed at the fact I'd been flashed at 3 times, but maybe I laughed because it was the easiest emotion. I've been cat called from no age and raped as a teenager though I didn't recognise it as rape until I was well into adulthood.

My friends and I have since talked about how sexual assault was just something that happened most weekends when we were drinking as teenagers. We also wore shorts under our school skirts so boys couldn't pull them up and see our underwear.

I was a teen in the 90s/early 00s so not that long ago. Although I do hope that things will be better for my daughters. At least they'll not accept this behaviour as normal.

@WhereTheFuckIsMyFuckingCoat

I have never been groped or flashed at & never really had blokes shouting out at me. I had glasses & braces & was very skinny as a teenager though. I imagine that might have helped me avoid that sort of crap from men. I've also not really had men trying to coerce me into doing things I didn't want to do. So I can sympathise but not empathise.

@Toddlerteaplease @converseandjeans

I am genuinely heartened to hear that neither of you have experienced any form of sexual intimidation, aggression, coercion, jeering, leering, creepiness, assault or worse throughout your lives. And I'm sure there will be others who can say the same.

Unfortunately, conversely I do not have a single female friend or relative who has not experienced at least one of the above, and oftentimes from a young age and more than once. I am also in the (possibly unfortunate) position to witness and treat these experiences on a daily basis professionally across all walks of life, and it is not confined to any age bracket, professional, financial or socioeconomic background. It's sad and infuriating.

Agree. Literally just a daily occurrence. Men have no idea whatsoever. I often see it in my DH that he lives life completely‘freely’ whereas I definitely do things differently or to a lesser degree because of the feared reactions I might get. I wouldn’t walk alone now at night even now I’m in my 30s. I often get men make comments to me on a dog walk or doing mundane things. I’ve also experienced a lot of low level sexual harassment at work; colleagues and management saying inappropriate things or behaving in ways I would say are inappropriate. For example they would call me out of my office to participate in client visits where there was a known sleezy client. Went out for client dinner with team once and one of management asked me to remove my wedding ring and set the table up so I was sat next to the client. Absolute joke. It’s just rife in every area of life still now in 2024.

Yeah…whenever people talk about the allegedly universal experience of being sexually harassed/ threatened/assaulted as a woman, I feel like “womanhood” is some type of organization and I failed to meet the membership requirements. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish I’d gone through that. But some days I think that if I believed in “nonbinary,” I’d decide I was nonbinary, because I don’t relate to some of the big “universal experiences of womanhood.”

I think I just hit the right combination of circumstances. I live in a place where most people drive and don’t take public transportation. I’m introverted with sensory issues, so I don’t go to nightclubs or big parties. I never hang out around drunk people. I went to all-female schools from ages 12-22. My husband and I have been together since we were teenagers. I’m a SAHM. I don’t have male friends. I have social anxiety disorder.

So I missed all the “opportunities” to be sexually harassed/threatened/assaulted on public transportation, at parties, at nightclubs, by drunken men, by male classmates, by dangerous boyfriends, by co-workers, or by men I thought were my friends. That’s just how my life happened to turn out.

I agree. These experiences are horrible but it hasn’t been my experience and it’s not for every woman.

Unfortunately porn has probably made it worse,the choking,anal and all the other rough stuff that is not the way teens in the past would have had sex.

I wonder having read your reply @YankSplaining how many of those things/choices you mention in your post are because you are a woman though.. choices like all girls school. Or being with one partner from a young age. I get the impression what you are saying is that really you have just avoided all situations where this type of negative behaviour might arise- rather than saying it doesn’t exist. I don’t know if I’m articulating myself well here but when I read your comment I thought ‘but all of these choices have been made knowing male behaviour can pose a risk so you have experienced it actually, in fact it’s completely shaped your life which is what we are talking about here..’

I feel like this. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but it’s not something I recognise at all.

However, I’ve lived in a city and I’ve lived in the country. I went to a mixed comp and then to university. I am slim and above average attractiveness (not that this matters). I go to bars, pubs, parties, cafes… I’ve had several office jobs. I use public transport. I have male friends. I don’t get drunk, but I am certainly in places where people are.

Men look at me, but apart from one or two instances this sort of thing just doesn’t happen to me.

Same with LinkedIn. I am quite active on there for work and hear about men’s inappropriate behaviour on there all the time, but it’s literally never happened to me. I find it quite baffling when I hear how rife it is!

Am I just incredibly lucky? I certainly wouldn’t agree with the statement that it’s ’the air that we breathe’.

No, that’s not why I picked any of those things.

My parents sent me to the first all-female school; I didn’t get a choice. I picked the second one because the first one was homophobic and as a bisexual woman, I wanted to be at a school that had a large lesbian and bi population. (For the camaraderie, not the romantic possibilities.)

My husband and I live within 40 miles of the places we grew up. We wanted our kids to live near their grandparents. I’ve been in love with him for over half my life and it has nothing to do with any fear of men. Neither does being introverted or having sensory issues. That’s my ADHD.

Drunk people are boring. I have social anxiety disorder with people in all demographics (except kids). I don’t have male friends or female friends. I’m a licensed attorney and planned to work as such, but I always wanted to be a SAHM and I accidentally got pregnant earlier than I was planning to. To suggest that I made all my life choices because I’m afraid of men is both untrue and, frankly, kind of insulting to my husband. (“She’s only with you because she thinks you’re safe!”)

I was in same-sex relationship in my 20s which I think made things worse, I was pretty much never out with men, only by myself or with other women which seemed to give men free reign to harass us, even though we looked clearly lesbian-like (it was a while ago, and there was a bit of a lesbian uniform in those days!) I was in London where I think it's probably worse, and one of the main reasons I moved out of London in the end, particularly as I was a runner and couldn't go out without men constantly shouting and hissing at me. Many times I was frightened from men following me, all the usual things, trying to chat and then quickly switching to stuck up/frigid bitch when I wouldn't engage. I had a man put his hand up my skirt in the library when I was about 16 and a taxi driver do the same in my mid 20s, I still hate getting in taxis.

I sometimes get harassment now in my mid 50s but it's much rarer, it's DD that gets it now, from being groped in clubs to having a man at work (NHS) leave notes in her bag even though he knows she has a boyfriend.

I remember reading a travel piece in the newspaper about somewhere in Tunisia, where this bloke was saying that it was lovely to be able to sit under the trees and chat to people, a place where I went with a female friend and we got really bad harassment and groped and had to leave.

Most men live or have close relationships with women, so why would they not understand what women are going through, is it that women don't talk about it, is it that men are not interested, is it because it's just so far out of their experience they still don't quite get it? I don't really have much to do with men, but I guess looking at DD there's no way she'd talk to her dad about any of this (though they don't have much of a relationship anyway so it's difficult to judge by that!)