Women's rights general conversations - Thread 3

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of Thread 2.

There is so much excellent information and so many active discussions on FWR that I wondered if it would be useful to have a thread to sort of "cross-fertilise" between them - airing little thoughts or vignettes that wouldn't themselves merit their own thread, to highlight other posts/threads of particular interest or to point to notable developments on fast-moving threads so that casual observers know where to look.

(For example, "the X thread has meandered onto a fascinating discussion of Y" or "Poster P's amazing analysis on thread Z might have relevance to the scenario in thread W" or "Has anybody noticed this recurring theme that keeps coming up??" or even "Random bloke asked me to smile while I was choosing onions, grr"- that sort of thing).

That's utterly awful! (And, sadly, I find myself feeling unsurprised in both the aggressive harassment and the fact that he got away scot-free).

In 1990, a fella broke into my shared second floor flat by shinning up a drainpipe and squeezing himself through a tiny open bathroom window in the early hours. Luckily my flatmate's boyfriend was still up, making some fashionable garment or other, vicious-looking pinking shears in hand, and frogmarched the intruder out before calling the police. The police were completely uninterested, didn’t even take fingerprints from the windowsill that was COVERED in them, and all this at a time there was a mad fella around who broke into womens’ flats through tiny open bathroom windows and raped them.

So their lack of interest in the lorry incident is not a new thing.

(Obviously we didn’t know about the window-entering rapist or we’d have closed the bathroom window, but honestly, it was so tiny I wouldn’t have thought that even I could squeeze through it.)

I like the logo colour change. Not pink!

In 1990, a fella broke into my shared second floor flat by shinning up a drainpipe and squeezing himself through a tiny open bathroom window in the early hours.

Oh bloody hell!

That weirdly brought up a long-buried memory of my {gap months?} between A-levels and going to uni.

I mentioned before that I did my A-levels abroad, and when they were over I had quite a long gap first waiting for results and then waiting for British university term to start.

So I stayed abroad, got a flatshare with 3 other girls and we got temp jobs to build up some savings. The flat was in a postwar block, 5th floor, with the typical (to the time and place) full-height juliette windows and external shutters. Perfect design for free cross-ventilation and cooling, if you think about it. Two of us in each little bedroom, meaning that one of the beds in each room was squeezed against the windows.

One night, my roommate and I were woken by a shriek from the other bedroom. We rushed over to find the girls in the other room in a state of distress. The girl whose bed was by the window cried that somebody had reached in and groped her. Yup, some perv had climbed all along the 5th floor narrow window ledge in order to sexual assault someone. Presumably he'd been watching the flat for long enough to observe that it was a bunch of young women, and I would imagine that he had probably done the creeping along the ledge to spy on that room at least several times before escalating.

We made a police report, which they took very seriously (examined the flat etc) but the perv was never caught.

So much for how men wouldn't go to huge amounts of effort to get their kicks, eh?

A few good IWD bargains on Kindle today - I've just bought Laura Bates' Men Who Hate Women and Fix the System, Not the Women, and Mary Ann Sieghart's The Authority Gap, all for 99p each.

Wow, Kuc, how terrifying!

Not long after the intruder intruded, I was flashed as I waited for my train home after a late shift, on an otherwise deserted platform, with the ticket office long closed. I pretended I hadn’t noticed him, carried on pretending to read my newspaper while eyeing up the gap between my platform and the opposite one, determining I could probably jump it with enough of a run-up and enough adrenaline, then luckily the train arrived and the flasher stayed behind as I gratefully got into a not-empty carriage. The flasher looked very young, no more than 16, so I often wonder what he went on to do, but I didn’t even report it to the police or to the station staff the next day.

I moved from that flat to a mile away from my hospital as a direct result of those two assaults on my safe spaces. Bought a car, got my horse, and set me on my route to Devon. Thanks, awful men!

I often think I was very fortunate in not having very many awful men-related stories, but of course whenever I consider it, lots of incidents crop up in my memory, incidents I just took as part of being a woman, a woman luckier than many others have been.

I often think I was very fortunate in not having very many awful men-related stories, but of course whenever I consider it, lots of incidents crop up in my memory, incidents I just took as part of being a woman, a woman luckier than many others have been.

Exactly this!

Kucinghitam · Today 10:54

Bloody blimey, what a shame he didn't lose his footing.

I also remember with shame some years before that when I was a student nurse, and got to work one morning to find a staff nurse being interviewed by a policeman. When I asked her what “all that” had been about, she said she’d been flashed on her way to work and I LAUGHED, because flashers were just dirty old men in flasher macs, a joke on the Benny Hill show. She rightly told me it was no laughing matter, but I didn’t truly understand until it happened to me. Flashing is no joke at all. Look at Wayne Couzens.

We were trained to laugh, to minimise it, to think that we were in the wrong if we found it disturbing or disgraceful that a man did this.

Yes, I think so. It also echoes TRSOHers who often use the 'argument' of "It's only a tiny number/a minority/a bit of nudity/a slight inconvenience" etc. Minimise and reverse blame.

And also, in a weird way, not to take it personally. There was a bloke when I lived in Istanbul who used to just sit on one of the main shopping streets wanking and making eye contact with as many women as he could. Never saw the police do anything about it.

We were trained to laugh, to minimise it, to think that we were in the wrong if we found it disturbing or disgraceful that a man did this

Yes we absolutely were. Know better now though.

My DS sent me this:

@MmePoppySeedDefage, what does that say to you?

Happy International Women's Day, here's a message I'm sure many of us can relate to:

twitter.com/jennifer_1ee/status/1633352906991869952?s=20

Well it's nice to see it written down now and again.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/63403027

It's good to hear that there are some wonderful people out there. Is there a country that treats women worse than Afghanistan? In a half-way decent world, the Taliban would be brought to their knees.

Rosie Duffield asking a question in PMQs today, violet dinosaur brooch on a green blazer with a white top 😁 Good question too. I had a link but I lost it.

Do you get the impression that Jennifer's a little bit cross?

Mildly miffed.

Ereshkigalangcleg · Today 14:54

Happy International Women's Day, here's a message I'm sure many of us can relate to:

I've forwarded the picture to loads of ladies on What's App

So far, my sister likes it.

Earlier someone posted a photo of Rosie Duffield in Parliament and she had a dinosaur brooch on, but I can't remember which thread it was on and can't find it. Can anyone help, please?

I like that one, Sinner.

Found it on twitter.