Upon further reflection: I don’t want to have an argument. Elysian, please don’t feel you need to respond to my question. This thread was intended to just be a poll, no judgment made. I got a little riled up and forgot my purpose. Sorry.
It’s too bad you didn’t include the option “I was almost raped.”
I kid, I kid!
How do you interact differently with men than you would if you didn’t have that fear of being sexually assaulted or raped? The mention of specific actions or omissions would be preferable.
When a man is talking with you, is the thought that he’ll sexually assault you on your mind? Does it depend on how he talks, grooms, dresses?
I almost put “none of the above” but then remembered that when I was a kid, maybe 6 years old or so, my babysitter’s sons (3 boys, aged between maybe 8 and 12) stole some loose change from me and then made a trail out of it leading down the hallway to their room. I collected the pennies all the way into the room, where one of them had made the trail go all the way up to his underwear-covered penis. I hesitated, but really wanted my penny back, so I grabbed it (the penny, not his penis, although I’m sure there was brief contact), and then felt totally ick about it afterward.
Man, I haven’t thought about that for a long time. Nothing similar ever happened with those kids. It was just a one-time thing. But super icky.
It’s not always that simple. I mean, it’s not always about looking at every person as a potential rapist. For me, I get wigged out around men of a certain age – not because I believe for a second they would do anything, but because it’s an uncomfortable reminder of things that have happened in similar situations.
My FIL, for example, is a decent man who I went to work for one summer, and I ended up quitting because I was not comfortable being alone with him. I didn’t fear him at all, and don’t think for a second he would ever do anything to harm me, it just brought up bad feelings and bad memories. Why put myself through that?
He’s coming to visit next weekend and my husband will be gone so it will be just the two of us for the day. I’m dealing with it by keeping us busy, in museums and other public places and such. I trust my father in law completely. It has nothing to do with trust. PTSD is not a rational thing. It doesn’t think, it feels, it re-experiences, it remembers. It doesn’t care who you’re with. I get freaked around my own husband sometimes for god’s sake.
I feel like guys in that other thread are taking this shit way too personally.
I was assaulted when I was about 6 by a friend’s male cousin who was babysitting us. He was about 18 or so. It would have gone further then him just pulling up my nightie and running his hands up my legs if my friends parents hadn’t arrived home at the exact perfect moment.
I was raped when I was 19 by a guy that I thought was my friend. I was drinking and passed out in his bed. He came in, took off my pants, and had sex with me. I woke up mid-sex and asked him what the fuck he was doing. He said I wanted it, I tried to push him off and struggled a bit, and apparently that got him off even more because he finished right then and got off of me.
I chose “made to feel uncomfortable in a sexual situation by a man I thought I could trust” but there was no sexual contact. Like Antigen and her work situation, the experience I had dealt with a co-worker. He was not my supervisor but a level above me and we were temporarily in a close work setting. He asked me to lunch, I accepted, and we had a regular co-worker lunch. After that, it got very uncomfortable. He wrote me emails telling me I “gave great conversation” and said things about us running away together. He saw me in workout clothes after lunch one day and remarked to a male co-worker, “THERE’s one reason I don’t want to retire.” There were other innuendo-laden remarks.
I was incensed and betrayed that what I thought was a friendly co-worker situation had become this tense thing that I perceived as him trying me out to see if I wanted to take it further. It was really infuriating to think that, in a male-male coworker situation this would never have happened. But no, I was a woman and he had to go there.
This is a good question and I’m trying to think of a way to explain this. I don’t think it depends upon how he looks or dresses. Some guys seem to put out a threatening vibe, although that’s not always reliable. In some cases the one to watch out for is the very smooth talker - a flim-flam guy, like the fellow who scams cashiers into giving him too much change.
As far as it being on my mind, it’s not in the front of my mind. It’s an acknowledged risk in the back of my mind. Kind of like, if you cross a bridge in your car. The risk that the bridge will fall in with you on it is very tiny, but it’s still there. We accept that risk if we drive across. Sometimes we can tell that it’s risky - if the thing is in disrepair, for example - but sometimes flaws are unseen.
I don’t constantly worry about driving across bridges, and I don’t constantly worry about being around men.
Does that help?
I’m almost never alone with a man I don’t truly trust or am not willing to have sex with. When I dated, I would usually meet the guy at the restaurant for several dates. By my mid-20s I never dated strangers, only people I’d known for a long time or had been introduced to by trusted friends. (I married a guy I’d been friends with for eleven years before we started dating). I carried mace in my hand for years if I was walking alone, and would have maced a guy randomly approaching me just to ask a question if he got within a distance where he could grab me.
It doesn’t depend on how he grooms, talks or dresses. One guy I “dated” and ran out on (when I was in college and living in the dorm - I just grabbed my shirt and ran when he started not listening to ‘no’) was charming, nice, well groomed, very handsome - I suspect part of his problem was few girls ever said “no.” There have been many times when I’m uncomfortable due to a “creepy vibe” but I was in enough situations were my “no” was not being respected until I walked out (once walking home three miles after 1 in the morning when my date thought a blow job was an appropriate way to end the evening and refused to drive me home without one - he drove off and left me three miles from home on a country road - another charmer until he whipped out his penis and demanded I suck it or I wasn’t getting home) from guys who gave off no creepy vibe that I don’t trust my own judgment.
Seems to me Ellen Cherry’s story above ought to clarify the problem perfectly.
I racked my brains, but I couldn’t think of any situations named in the poll that I’d been in. I can’t help thinking there must have been times when somebody said something inappropriate (other than my asshole uncle asking my prepubescent self when I was gonna grow some tits :rolleyes: ), but I’m just not coming up with anything.
There’s one that was borderline. I was working on a summer cleaning crew in college, along with some of the regular custodians and a few guys that were part of some work rehab program after they had been in trouble with the law. Most of them were OK, but one was kind of creepy in a vague, unnameable way. One day I walked into a room where several of these co-workers were seated, shooting the shit on their break. Mr. Creepy Guy made some remark (I don’t recall what), then hooked his finger into the waistband of my sweatpants and snapped it. That was it; my shirt was tucked in, so he didn’t touch my skin (eww). I think I was just too surprised to say anything, and I don’t recall if anyone else noticed.
Hmm, that sounds worse written out than when I first thought of it.
Anyway, knowing what lots of other women have experienced, I have to count myself lucky. I can think of situations I’ve allowed myself to be in where things could have gone pear-shaped.
You were… upset that he liked you and was interested in you sexually?
Sexually abused as a child, and at least three times in my life guys have driven up to me, asked me for directions, and then while I’m telling them where to go I notice they’re jerking off. One of these times I was a child–and obviously a child, not the early-puberty eleven-year-old version of me. I think I was five. My mom was with me and he was asking her, but I was there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so angry. She told the guy off and got his license plate number and called the cops, but I don’t think anything ever came of it.
It sounds like she was upset that he wouldn’t STFU about it and leave her alone.
How about “made to feel uncomfortable in a situation that should not have been sexual”, like the asshole who attempted to rape my in my own backyard (I didn’t know he was there until he grabbed me around the neck and pulled me into the bushes). You also don’t have a category for “Some asshole dragged me me into the bushes in an attempt to rape me but let go of me after I broke his [expletive deleted] leg and left him lying on the ground”. Because not every attempted assault is successful.
Yes, there have been other times some jerk groped me, or made lewd comments, or otherwise sexually harassed me (whether you define that broadly or narrowly, it’s happened to me).
Oh, and by the way - although I knew my would-be rapist, he was NEVER a man I could trust.
Well, I would categorize both of those under “assault”. Just my opinion.
This is why I left the categories so vague and broad, so that people could answer according to their own interpretations of what happened.
Maybe in a bar, that would be okay, but in a workplace? IMHO, that’s wildly inappropriate.
We were both married. There was nowhere to go if he was “interested.” The comments and attention were inappropriate and unwanted.
I’m supposed to be all excited he “wants” me? Is that what you think?
It’s not that I go around thinking “that man might rape me” all the time, it’s more a general level of caution.
If I don’t know a man I don’t like to get any closer than just out of arm’s reach. I don’t want to be touched - except for a context-appropriate handshake (business situation, finalizing buying a car, etc.) It’s not so much a worry about rape but a worry about anything that might be a problem - after all, I might just be plain old mugged without any sexual assault, that could be pretty bad, too. I don’t like intrusive questions - I will freely give my first name, not so much my surname, my phone number, address, or other such information unless there is a really good reason for a stranger to be asking me that.
When I feel I can trust a man I’ll stand closer to him, allow the occasional friendly hug or pat on the back (one of the people I work for gives me the occasional literal pat on the back - he never does it where it could be misinterpreted, it’s strictly friendly, and he understands and observes appropriate boundaries. We’re both comfortable with that,)
For me, it’s not so much grooming and clothing as body language. If I step back and he keeps stepping closer over and and again that’s creepy. If I step back and he stays put, that’s anti-creepy. I know guys look at tits and ass but there’s a polite way and a rude way to do that. Probing questions and failure to let me leave without being followed are warning bells. Accusations that I am being misleading because I don’t wear a wedding ring, or am lying about being married, definitely put you on my craplist.
I’m not sure I can make it any clearer than that.
It’s wildly inappropriate, but I fail to see how mere comments fit “in a sexual situation,” which is why I voted none of the above myself despite being made uncomfortable by similar comments. What did the OP mean by the first set of choices, anyway?