I certainly hope you have children or at the very least have access to some to teach this very very well written truth.
Thank you.
My best friends have always been female, and I, as a heterosexual man, have always been disgusted by the attitudes of some of my cohort towards my female friends. I have daughters and was married for many years. All of them have been harassed.
Hrrrrrr…
Yeah I didn’t think of that…
You think so. No, you just get further objectified. Two hot chicks!
See we straight women recognize that men are individuals. That there are some real shit heads out there, but there are also some really decent human beings. And while they look funny naked, we still find men preferable to women,
My sexual harassment resume:
Raped
Sexually harassed to the point I lost my job
Stalked
Followed home from my job
Ran out on several dates when the choice seemed to be run or rape
Felt up in bars
Felt up in elevators
Treated like an object
Thank god I’m nearing fifty and no longer the target I was.
And like other women in this thread, I have never had a conversation with another woman who has never had some sort of sexual assault experience
Thank you. I’ve always been a man’s woman; my best friends have always been male, and I love them and relate to them as equals and could write tomes praising the admirable traits they have that I lack, and I’m always astounded at how incredibly earnest they are in pursuit of love. And I feel for the posturing and kowtowing they have to go through in order to secure sex and love. The problems aren’t the same, but they weigh the same and I’m so glad we’ve always had each other for support and advice.
You know, that’s the best advice I have. Make as many platonic friends of the opposite sex you possibly can, and listen and learn from them. Takes the mystery and confusion right out of romance, it does.
It’s insane to think that virtually every woman has been assaulted in some way. I am going to ask my sister and female friends about their experiences. I’ve never heard them talk about it. I have three young nieces and the thought of some asshole pressuring them or assaulting them is making me think violent thoughts.
You reminded me of my stalker from college. I was a very shy quiet girl, and this guy - called himself Fred but his name was really Fahdi - stalked me pretty heavily. Used to come up behind me and rub my shoulders and shit like that. I didn’t know enough to tell him to back off and it was almost exclusively because of him I took a self-defense course. It never went anywhere, thankfully.
Oh! And there was an older man at work. Now my old job, my chair directly faced the hallway, so I would see him every day. At first it was friendly waves. Then one day he came in and asked me out. He was at least 60 and I was 30. I told him politely, no, I wasn’t interested, because I had a boyfriend.
End of it, right? NOPE. So every day now he’d pop by and wave, and make me increasingly uncomfortable. Sometimes he’d come inside and say, “Have you reconsidered? Would you like to go out with me? We could just go as friends!”
I might have considered it…if he wasn’t so damn pushy. Over and over and over again. Now when I sit at that desk I am the face of my company and I am aware of that. And it wasn’t really harassment. So I didn’t want to be rude. But I was older then, and the third time he asked me I said, “I really am not interested in going out with you, ever.” And his face fell, and he said, “Why don’t you like me?” in the most plainitive tone.
As I said before, I still like men. I love my SO, who is a decent and good man and who will get a big hug and some love tonight just for being who he is. If I broke up with him I’d end with another man, eventually. We know you guys are different, and some of you are decent while others are jerks.
We’ve had several threads rejecting the idea that we live in a rape culture. Now, understanding the world the majority of women live in, do you think that “rape culture” might have some validity?
I’m not necessarily fond of the term, but I think women usually get why such a term exists, and men think “what the hell?”
And it’s interesting. To tell women “you need to protect yourself” is acknowledging the existence of that rape culture,however, it puts the onus on women to protect themselves, it doesn’t address the need for a culture change. What we want is to get into a crowded subway car and not wonder “is today a getting groped day, or not?”
The fun thing about this is: it’s never the day you think it’s going to be.
When you walk out the door that morning, thinking you look like hot shit, strutting along, prepared for whatever cat calls and nonsense comes your way because, shit!, you look good. . . nothing.
When you wake up with a sinus headache from your allergies, big bags under your eyes from a shitty night’s sleep from sneezing, and roll out of bed and out the door in yoga pants, a baggy t, and a sloppy pony tail. . . that’s the day everybody decides to try to finger you on the subway.
And that is why we believe this is about power, not sex. Predators cull the weakest. I’d bet that tens get harassed less than sixes.
By the way, my daughter is thirteen and in middle school. She has brought her binder down on the head of one kid and yelled “get your hands off me” at another. I’m hoping it holds. She has no interest in being popular or even liked, so … We will see.
No, it’s not insane. Ask your questions gently and in a non-blaming fashion and you may well be shocked at what some of your friends have gone through.
Women often don’t tell men about the trouble we go through. Perhaps we should.
I think we should and loudly, but it’s understandable why so few women do. Look at the MOL thread that spawned this one: we have a woman telling her story, she admits right in the OP that she judged him wrongly and shouldn’t have let him up or put up with his pawing as long as she did. . . but you still have a shit ton of posters who swarm in to blame her for what happened. Why would we tell the stories of what happens to us if we know there’s going to be at least a handful of douche canoes who blame us?
So, it’s tough. But I think society is moving to the point where the treatment of women-- the real treatment of women-- is no longer a dirty little secret.
No. This weekend just gone. She’s 70 and arthritic, he’s 50 and drunk. It took her a long and painful time to fight him off.
“Just havin’ a laff.”
I’ve been following all these threads but right now I’m just too tired and angry to fight the same fight for the umpteenth time. I’m sorry. I feel I should be supporting the wonderful and articulate men and women on this board who are still trying to get the message across:
No means no.
Living Well Is Best Revenge, you’re a class act.
Sorry that things got so snarky before, but hopefully now you understand a little better why people get so angry about this issue.
I am impressed that you’ve taken the time and made the effort to listen despite the snark, and even more so that you’re willing to change your attitude on the issue.
Yeah, be careful how you ask those questions, but I’m confident that you’ll hear similar answers. So many women don’t even count the occasional grope or pinch or grab because “that’s just how it is”.
Honestly, I had no idea. I have never heard of these stories by any woman in real life. I get it now, though. The onus is on the men to understand boundaries and not assault or rape.
It’s exhausting, isn’t it?
They might not be comfortable telling you about these things.
I was married to my husband for over 30 years before I told him about the rape attempts that I’ve survived. Partly this was because it never really occurred to me to tell him, but also partly because I was trying to get over the attempts. He’d make rape jokes, and I’d tell him that I didn’t find them funny. Then we had a daughter, and suddenly HE didn’t find rape jokes to be all that funny, either.
As for your young nieces…I started getting catcalled when I was about 10. My daughter started getting them at about that age, too. That’s when we developed enough that a casual observer could tell that we were female, not male.
I just had to say, I can relate so much to this post, and it’s rare to find someone who understands. He was my adopted father and he was supposed to be a Dad. I don’t have a relationship with him at all now that he’s divorced my Mom, but I think about all the ways in which he was a Dad and it just makes me so sad. I actively miss him sometimes., but then I think, maybe he never was that person I worshipped so much when I was a kid. Maybe he didn’t really love me and he was just being manipulative. I don’t know. For me it wasn’t what actually happened that hurt so much, it was the betrayal of someone who is supposed to protect you.
Yes.
Over and over and over again, only to hear the same bullshit lines.
Yes.
But no doubt I’ll make the effort again, just not here today.
I lived a sheltered life and I was groped at age 12 on a family vacation overseas, cornered and kissed at 13 while babysitting by a classmate who came by and wouldn’t leave, cornered and fondled at 14 on a youth group trip by an 18 year old peer leader, pressured heavily to have sex (didn’t, but made to feel awful about it and then dumped) at 18 a few weeks into college.
And that’s nothing compared to real assault and trauma and its been with me all my life.