Mary Harrington's Thread: how old at your first sexual approach by a man?

[EmbarrassingHadrosaurus]

The thread is a hard read. However, it's eye-opening to see how shocking it is to men. Is this one of the reasons why they don't understand why women are on default alert for an unwanted approach and why we need our single-sex spaces?

Quick Q to women who follow me: if you’re willing to share, how old were you the first time you remember being approached in a sexual way by adult men? (I was probably 13)

twitter.com/moveincircles/status/1465634247729987588

Eight. I've had to work through a lot of conflicting feelings - ones I felt then; ones I felt when I was an adult.

My older brother had a friend who spent quite a bit of time at our home and started encouraging me to hang out with them. One day he informed me and my parents that although I had once been an annoying little girl I had now become a lovely mature young lady and he wanted to take me out for the day as his girlfriend. He told us that he felt it only right to let my parents know what we were doing, out of respect, and that he would 'treat me like a lady'. He was 20 and I was 14. He clearly expected me to swoon and my parents to love him for being so polite. Thankfully my parents made it clear that this would not be happening (but did not stop him coming round and leering).

As a teenager I had a good friend who used to go to an under 18s night at the a local night club. This was publicised in schools and sold to parents as a safe place (no alcohol was served). In reality most of the girls who went were 13-16. Groups of men aged 17-24 (ish) used to go and chat up the younger girls, including my friend. Friend thought this was exciting and was taken in by them. By the age of 15 she had been 'girlfriend' to at least 4 of them and pregnant twice. This was all hidden from her parents. The night club management did not ever question why older men were at a children's night. When she went for 2 abortions she was given contraception advice but social services were never involved and no one suggested to her that she might be being abused.

I was 8, a man employed at my school assaulted me. I was 'lucky' he only kissed me and touched me before a dinnerlady rescued me. The headmaster took over a week to fire him because why did I go with him/maybe I misunderstood/the dinnerlady didn't see everything, what happened before she got there etc.

As much as they will denounce the creeps to our faces, the rest do still know they are onto a good thing. After all the existence of the creeps means that by merely not acting as a creep they get be seen as the good guys with zero effort at all.

This is as accurate as it is miserable and pragmatic.

I was 9 and wearing my primary school uniform (blue checked dress) so it was obvious I was a child even if I was going through puberty.

hard to remember! probably 12, but maybe younger.

An adult man in his 50s when I was 13, who grabbed me while I was dancing on holiday. My mum saw it and thought it was funny. I spent the rest of the evening hiding in the toilets.

I was 6. I was being raped and assaulted by a relative on a regular basis and the interest from men since then never really stopped until I was well over the age of 40. Its aggressive and exhausting.

I was 5, it’s my first memory of wearing a dress. It was very short, the fashion in 1974. I was with my pal, a boy in a local park. A man followed us & commented on my legs, we ran away but he found us again, he had his zip open with everything out & grabbed me. My pal hit him with a stick & got a lucky strike.

We didn’t tell anyone as we weren’t meant to be there. I only wore dresses under extreme duress after that, kept my hair short & I was delighted when I was mistaken for a boy.

The first clear incident was when I was 11/12. It properly started ( regular attention from older men) though when I was around 14/15.

I was NOT an early developer, no boobs at all until around 17. You would never have mistaken me for being older.

I find it sad that I consider myself lucky to never have been seriously assaulted or raped.

I definitely developed a smile and say nothing technique very early on as I knew I shouldn't outright reject but also not encourage the attention to go further.

@Dinosauratemydaffodils

Not on twitter but I was 9 and in my Brownie uniform. Started with "look at the legs on that" and went downhill fast. Although as a tall girl growing up on a series of military bases, I'd hope I was an outlier. My dad's squadron took to calling me jailbait and lolita around the same time. Was showing my kids old photos when we helped my mum move in the summer and dc1 (6) stopped at one of me sat on Santa's knee to ask why I looked so miserable. I was 10 or 11 and Santa (one of the pilots) had insisted. He wouldn't let go and kept asking if I been a "good girl". That's when I learnt squirming isn't a good move when someone much bigger/stronger than you is holding you on their lap. It's over 30 years ago but I still remember the smell of his aftershave.

There were loads more incidents and yet the blame always seemed to lie with me. Apparently I'd managed to weaponise my body, hair and smile. Or at least that's what the squadron leader's wife said after her husband was found wrestling with me on my bedroom floor. I was 11 at the time. It happened more than once and no one seemed to care.

I have a daughter now who looks just like me...and I'm terrified for her.

But she is better off than you were because she has you as her mother.

It's terrible that you were blamed for what adult men did.

@RocketPanda

I was 6. I was being raped and assaulted by a relative on a regular basis and the interest from men since then never really stopped until I was well over the age of 40. Its aggressive and exhausting.

I'm so sorry.

There can be no accounting for how much of your emotional and cognitive resources it has taken to live with this.

I should add, luckily my parents were both very aware and protective of me and my sister as children.

My dad was quite clear that he wouldn't have hesitated to react violently to anyone who tried to mess with us. This probably kept the potential groomers away.

My mum was targeted by a paedophile as a young child in the 50s. Her mum called the police, she made a statement and they never saw the man again.

Parents have to absolutely protect their children.

this has really hit a nerve with me. the underlying theme for all of the following is "what on earth were my parents thinking".

age 5, dressed up as a Playboy bunny for the local carnival, going round every pub in the village collecting money for charity. hammered blokes leering and making horrific comments. this one's taken up quite a bit of therapy time...

age 7, the bloke over the road started ringing the house in the morning when i was getting dressed for school in front of the fire in the lounge (we had no central heating at that point) telling me he could see what colour knickers i was wearing and being generally pervy.

i was friends with his daughter and knew it was him, he didn't even try to put on a different voice. my mum didn't believe me and he hung up whenever someone else answered / took the phone. the solution, apparently, was just to close the curtains.

age 9, flashed multiple times in the park. consensus seemed to be "ignore him and he'll go away". i stopped playing in the park.

similar age, horrible friend of my parents who always wanted me and my brother to sit on his knee. except it was mainly me, and only me who he jiggled up and down.

i can remember deciding i didn't want to be a girl, or attractive, or visible. and lo, lifelong disordered eating which is only now just about sorted.

the thing that's always amazed me when recalling these incidents is how, even at that age when i knew nothing about men or sex, my gut feeling about the people involved was spot on.

the lack of protection from any adult is the hardest thing to reconcile. i live in hope this has changed a bit since the late 70s!

I remember having experiences as a small child, I'm not sure if this is the same as or different to 'being approached sexually', where's the line between paedophilia and more everyday perving? Men who are attracted to youthful qualities like inexperience, deference, lack of boundaries etc will or won't draw the line at a certain age or stage of development, it's up to them.

There was a member of the extended family who demanded hugs from me in a way that alarmed my mother when I was 8. Around the same age I was left with a young friend in the care of her childminder who insisted on holding her on his lap and even as a kid I knew there was something not right about it, he couldn't hide his eagerness. I answered a pervy phone call as a small child (maybe 6 or 7?), and I definitely sounded like a small child. When I was 11 or 12 I saw a man masturbating in the children's section of the library, which boggled my mind. I had no idea how to process any of this information.

I remember men in cars driving by and beeping the horn at me and my friends when we used to sit in a tree in the front garden. I think my tree climbing days were over by the age of 12ish so before that.

I was 13 when a man chatted me up at a family party and my aunt warned him off saying I was 'jailbait'.

When I was 21 my aunts and stepsister revealed that my father had sexually assaulted them as children over a period of many years. My aunt believed his friends in the police prevented her from getting anywhere when she reported it. I'm still not sure how to quantify the effect of having a close family member who was, for decades, secretly exploitative and abusive, and the psychic odour that permeates everything, it was like an endless series of slow-motion explosions in my personal life. Some of the women he abused went on to have abusive relationships with men as adults. I still wonder today about my friends who came to visit, one of whom became a summer au pair for his youngest daughter, and whether he tried it on with them. It confirmed my suspicion that the police were not able or willing to protect girls or adult women from predatory men, they protect their mates and at best maybe don't leave their daughters alone with them. My family life was blown apart while my father's life carried on largely as normal until he died a few years ago.

Men may express shock at our experiences but they don't grasp that their decency is entirely voluntary, we can't opt in or out of abuse and even the 'hands-off' variety can fuck you up in a kaleidoscope of ways.

1. Sexually assaulted by a gang of teenaged boys. First time I realised, being in possession of female biology in a public place where you're alone is not something you can safely do.

And incidentally I had short hair and was wearing trousers, so anyone wanting to tell me it was not my biology that a group of male people felt entitled to access regardless of my feelings on the matter but in fact my signalling of feminine gender really needn't bother.

Bottom held open with penis dangling flashed at at 12. Masturbated at on bus twice aged 13-14. Watched urinating by man at 15. Other stuff too when older obviously

I can remember clearly the first time I was conscious of myself as a sexual object (and yes, it felt like being an object).

It was the summer I'd started growing breasts but wasn't really aware of it as such - I didn't give it any head space. I'd just turned 14.

I was at the beach on holiday in France with my younger brother and we'd not had our swimming costumes with us so we'd gone in the water in our pants. I ran up the beach to put my tshirt on and a man passing leered at me.

It was horrible. I immediately became self-conscious of my body and that was the end of going anywhere, wearing anything without being aware of how I looked to men.

@FreeBritnee

I think I knew my power at about 14. I hate to say it but I quite enjoyed the attention 🤦🏻‍♀️

Me too feel guilty about it now, does this make me complicit?

I was sexually abused by a cousin.
Started when I was 8 and carried on til I was 11.
He was 13 when it started.
He penetrated me when I was 11.
I have written down everything that he did.
I had counselling in my teens.
Nobody believed me before.

I'm angry at myself for being angry and distressed by so many of these accounts and this useless expenditure of our personal emotional and cognitive resources that we need to live our lives from one day to the next.

I was flashed at aged ten. The following year I was groped. I have never been pretty or outgoing and prefer dressing like a boy.

Around 9 or 10. Full on flashing and masturbation.

NOTE OF CAUTION
If you have also posted on the Twitter thread, you might want to alter some details if you post on here about this. The TRAs can and do cross reference here to link Twitter and MN IDs. They have doxxed at least one woman this way.

I was about 7/8.

The boy was probably about 12-ish.

I've never told anyone else about it.

I was playing an arcade machine in a community club my family and i used to go to.
And the boy stood beside me and slid his hand between my legs.
I was horrified and ashamed.

I know it doesn't sound like much, but I knew it was wrong and I remember how it made me feel.

How many of the adults who didn't react to what was literally happening in front of them are the equivalent to the people who commissioned and then defended Rainbow Monkey's antics earlier this year? The people who commission storytime with toddlers and allow physical interaction with the teller in a way that they would probably never countenance with another adults?

What is it that turns off adults' commonsense and safeguarding even when they see something happen in front of them?

Why is the shame staying with the children who were assaulted/approached?