Utterly heartbreaking thread by Rachel Moran

[NeurotrashWarrior]

I can't read it all. to all.

Women, in order to deliver a necessary wake up call, I’m asking you to respond to this tweet with simply your age the first time you were sexually objectified/leered at/spoken to inappropriately or sexually assaulted by a grown man. Just your age please. I’ll start: 9

https://twitter.com/rachelrmoran/status/1245842180507340801?s=21

Not sure exactly but several times before the age of 10.

Sometimes accosted on the way home from primary school by a man masturbating -- not sure if it was the same man each time. I never spoke about it because I was ashamed.

Molested by a man in a church while my mother was looking at something else about 5 metres away.

At about 11, pushed into a phone box and sexually assaulted by a man who then followed me as I ran away. I still get uneasy if I'm crowded into a corner or anywhere I can't easily escape from.

From then onwards, too many more incidents to list. I was small and looked young for my age. It eased off somewhere in my 20s. Still happened sometimes, but in my experience children and teenagers are the main attraction for predators.

Women's toilets were often a refuge, which is why I curse anyone who wants to give men free access to them.

I've been relatively lucky, but I ran into 6 lane traffic as a 9 year old because an adult male asked me the time and I knew I was in danger.

Dudsville, thank god you weren't killed.

Love to all who have posted here, in solidarity.

I don't remember. My earliest memory of it is being told not to tell anyone he was doing it. I remember thinking there's no way I would. Possibly about 7 then, so no idea how long previously.

Assaulted by male stranger at 14.

This thread and the Twitter thread should be used as evidence with regards the GRA changes. The Scottish consultation left me with no option to evidence my abuse, which was extremely traumatic and distressing to write.. The narrative of, 'you don't know what genitals people have' is nonsense. Women know which sex people are. Abused women are going to be forced to stay at home.

How many times do we have to be abused before we are listened to?

Probably about 7 or 8. Two teenage boys, (then later another) 'befriended' me and my friend and would put their hands down our pants. They would come in our garden and make us sit on their laps. Looking back, I don't know why my parents didn't stop it - though I think my dad was a bit suspicious of them coming.
Mind you, my dad, when I was being subjected to (what we called then) ' a dirty phone caller' made me tell him, in front of his male friend, what the guy was saying to me, and then he laughed.

How can this thread have so little attention?

If it was about Transwomen it would be everywhere.

Why don't women matter?

My final year of primary school when dressed up for a school concert, so probably around 10. My male classroom teacher rubbed my breast before the show and told me I looked so pretty. It was revolting and I never forgot the feeling of powerlessness.

9, random guy outside co-op..I was in my school uniform. Grabbed my tit and commented that 'they get younger and younger dont they' with a leer to some other guy. Cue, the beginning of hating puberty..the unwanted attention from male people was unbearable..I could probably have dealt with the blood and stuff easily enough tbh, the developing was awful though.

1. touched up inside my pants by an old man who was a family friend. It happened a few times with me standing next to him and my parents were in and out of the room. I told my sister (age 7) and she said he did it to her too and just not to stand anywhere near him again. We've never spoken of it since. I never told my parents.

My daughter was abused by a slightly older boy in school age 7.

It happens to so many and often it happens in full view of others.

Reading these experiences and struggling for words, other than I so wish those men had not done what they did to you all.

I have teen memories of older boys groping me but most of my assault experiences were as a young adult.

A male teacher tried to pinch our bottoms as a game while on the climbing frame in the playground. I've always queried that.

The father of a school friend behaved inappropriately with me when I was about 8. He would sit me on his lap and touch my non-existent breasts under the guise of "tickling" me, and before I went home he'd ask me to kiss him goodbye on the lips. He was arrogant or stupid enough to do it in front of my mum once, and I was never allowed to go round there again. I felt guilty about it because I'd gone along with it and not realised I was doing anything wrong - he behaved the same way towards his two daughters as well. This man's wife divorced him a few years later and as far as I can tell, none of them sees him anymore, but I don't think the police were ever involved.

Someone else in the thread made a good point that there were probably many things that happened when we were young that we didn't pick up on due to our innocence/naivety. The first time I remember clearly being sexually harassed I had just started secondary school. However, when I was much younger I was really scared of my GP. I couldn't understand it at the time but I just knew he gave me the creeps and I wasn't safe around him. Maybe I was wrong and had imagined it all but I look back on it now and wonder if he did something to me that I knew deep down was wrong but didn't understand.

'Lordfrontpaw I believe that was in Belgium.

You could be right there. It made my blood run cold it really did when they described about the little girls pjs.

6, bunch of boys at school surrounded me so they could pull down my knickers

Lots and lots of incidents involving other children, older teenagers and grown men while I was a child still.

Sometimes I think I must have a sign on my head or something

5 or 6. A boy up the street pulled my skirt up and pushed his hands in my knickers. I told my nana but she said not to make a fuss.

@QuentinWinters I have often thought that too. All well as the abuse, I've been flashed at 3 times, and touched inappropriately by two grown men when I was under 12. I've always thought I must give off some vibe that I won't tell anyone, and men like this are experts at picking up on it.

"I've always thought I must give off some vibe that I won't tell anyone, and men like this are experts at picking up on it."

They teach us the first rule of misogyny at a very early age: Women are responsible for what men do.
What most of us do not realize until we talk together is that abusive men and boys try it out on all of us. They even have a name for it, "boys will be boys", to make abuse seem normal.

I was about 6 or 7 and i was playing an arcade game and a boy stood beside me and put his hand on my crotch. He could only have been about 10 himself.
I instantly moved aside, cos i knew it was very wrong and i scuttled back to my parents.

I've just found myself editing that post several times, as i wanted to make sure it was clear that my parents were nearby and it didn't happen in a seedy arcade hall, etc.

I know nobody here would blame me for what happened...but the embarrassment still runs deep.

And I remember being about 15 and a boy pinned me against a wall for about 20 minutes in attempt to grope my breasts.
In retrospect, this was in broad daylight and in a busy street, so why didn't anyone step in?
I expect they thought it was just teenage high jinks?

I guess I was relatively lucky, I just remember cat-calling of adult men starting when I was 9 and in a balley group. I was already 20 when a guy shouted at me across the Street he bet I would be a good rape.
I was lucky in the sense that I never took it seriously, as it felt like ‚empty words‘.
I do think that I closely escaped an assault when older boys lured me and my friend into a cellar ( one boy was my friend‘s brother) and they started lifting my skirt. (So basically they kept a 1 m distance and started stepping forward lifting my skirt for a second, then stepping back) I was afraid but tried not to show it and told them my dad would make their lives hell if they did not let me go. So they let me go. (My friend was not a target because of brother, apparently, she then went with me).
I had long forgotten about it and only remembered it in my 30s, when I read how girls in the Banlieus are lured into cellars by groups of boys they know and then assaulted. I was so naive at the time, I thought the absolute worst they would do - which in my mind was the height of imaginable indignity - was for them to see my underwear.
If this had escalated to an outright assault, I would certainly have perceived the later verbal harassment as way more intimidating and threatening.
God, was I naive.

However, when I was much younger I was really scared of my GP. I couldn't understand it at the time but I just knew he gave me the creeps and I wasn't safe around him. Maybe I was wrong and had imagined it all but I look back on it now and wonder if he did something to me that I knew deep down was wrong but didn't understand

This sounds like me with my uncle. From being very young, I was scared of him but didn't really know why. He used to pick me up frm school sometimes and take me to his/my aunties til one of my parents finished work. One of my most vivid memories of him is him picking me up from school..and me half hanging out of the car window pretending to be dead, hoping the police would stop us! Absolutely no idea why, but I guess its possible something happened and I didn't know/blocked it out. I still get shivers thinking about him now. Might be nothing and just one of those things (like when you randomly dislike someone immediately for no reason..)