bats

It's a Facebook thing. Now it's on here.

"If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote "Me too." as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem."

Me too.

dbd33

Surely it's nearly all women and nearly all men so "not me" would be a more interesting status.

bats

Interesting maybe, but probably not as effective

Jingsamichty

I'm not comfortable when things which belong on a subjective spectrum are reduced to simple Black or White answers. It just causes anger and nobody wins.

Shard

Me too.

bats

Similar stuff to this has come up on here before and in various messages with other women. We've talked of a poll asking who has been sexually, harrased, assaulted, raped.
Maybe it is time for that poll.

"Me too" does identity victims but it isn't wrong to be a victim. That thinking is part of the problem.

Degrees of assault? Sure my experiences don't get many horror points compared to others but that doesn't negate them
A grabbed breast is still grabbed, a stranger's hand on your fanny when you're swimming is still horrid. Date rape by someone you trusted is, well . You know what it is.

Dbd33 made the point that men are sexually assaulted too, fair enough. We know this. So talk about it and not talk of degrees of assault.

Pretty Flowers

Pretty much every woman you know has been the victim of sexual harassment or sexual assault. That's the point.

The question is, what are you going to do about it - a lot of my male friends are actively saying that they will speak out against locker room talk, catcalling and other forms of harrassment.

I'd like to give an example of the sexual harrassment I've been subjected to by members of this forum at a drink night. I was mocked for the size of my breasts. I haven't been to a Scotland Yard drink night since that happened. Everyone thought it was funny. I did not.

Both of those two things are related.

When I thought about coming this Friday, my first thought was I hope that that 'banter' does not happen again.... I wonder if it will...

dbd33

I think that makes Jingsamichty's point concerning the subjective spectrum.

SchnookoLoly

OMG... that is horrifying that you had that happen at a Yard social! How long ago?? I've been going regularly for a few years now (usually am the organizer, lol) and I haven't seen it happen... (though I will be shoving my foot in my mouth if it did happen to you while I was there but not in recent memory...)

I do hope you try to come out. It's a good time and as I said, haven't experienced any of that myself at any of the meetups in the past few years.

I did add a "me too" on Facebook... I appreciate the other comments that have been made my others on this thread about whether or not it does anything, I think it's just simply to increase awareness of it. And the fact that, yeah, pretty well everyone has had it happen. I could think of two immediate circumstances. The first was when I was 17 in a part-time high school job, and one of the managers was just a complete sleaze. He always wanted the female staff to give him hugs, and when he shook your hand he wiggled a finger in the middle of your palm. Totally disgusting. I once told him to stop hugging me and he got all freaked out I was going to report him to corporate for sexual harassment. I was 17, I should have, but at that age, I didn't know better. I quit when I went to university. I found out a few years he was fired for ... can you guess ... sexual harassment.

The second was in university. I worked at the IT helpdesk and got called up to a professor's office to help install a new monitor. Easy enough, standard request. I went up, and he found 500 reasons to keep me in his office, crawling around under his desk sorting out wires and all kinds of stupid shit. It was so awkward. After that he started emailing me and sending me messages, asking for me to come back up to his office to help him with this that and the other thing. I got really creeped out and told my boss who immediately told the whole team that only the male employees were to go serve him. One went up to help with one of his stupid requests... magically, the prof no longer had that request when the guy showed up to help. He kept messaging me asking for help, but we always sent up one of the guys who was always back 30 seconds later. Creepy.

Perhaps not as blatant/violent/traumatizing as others have no doubt experienced, but it happens on many scales, and the fact that people think this behaviour is acceptable is simply not ok.

Danny B

Exactly.
I believe that this sort of social media is very reminiscent of your typical "thoughts and prayers" sort of comment to tragedies. You're not really helping in any way, neither are you proposing how to fix the issue.

Shard

There was a young woman on Instagram that made an account called 'cat calls' or something and she posted selfies with men who cat called her. I was surprised that so many old men had the front to cat call a young woman. Quite interesting social commentary.

bats

I don't understand Jing's and dbd33's comments about "black and white "and "thought's and prayers".

The "me too" posts are being helpful as we are talking about abuse on here.

Pretty Flowers has told us one awful story about how members of this forum behave and I understand how she feels being subjected to that kind of talk.

Danny B

Was it this

dbd33

I assume Pretty Flowers is talking about Souvy and I, perhaps others, speaking in a public place. The background to that can be found here by searching under Pretty Flower's previous user name.

I perceive there to be something of a gulf between our manner of speaking in such circumstances and the oppression of an individual by someone having power over his or her future in a hotel room. The spectrum of possibly offending behavior is too wide for "me too" to be informative; it's almost everyone.

Shard

No it was this one...

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