It's all too common

[i_ate_my_crusts]

[trigger warning for sexual assault/touching]

Back when I was in high school, David Polini stood behind me during a chemistry demonstration. Very close. For a moment, I was thinking "quit pushing me". But he kept pushing me. Pushing himself into my butt. And then the slow creeping realisation hit me. Oh my god. That's his penis. Why is he pressing

Comments

[purplecthulhu]

Ick. That's so unpleasant!

I can understand what you're feeling.

Something like this happened to me some time back. The man I was sitting next to on a long flight reached over and squeezed my balls, after saying something similar to your assailant. Beyond being very clear that it wasn't wanted, I didn't make a fuss. Maybe I should have.

[i_ate_my_crusts]

Oh how awful. =/

That not making a fuss is the thing that comes back to remind you later. I can only imagine how much worse that gets.

[purplecthulhu]

I tell myself that he was making an honest mistake - we had benn chatting a bit, as you do at the start of a long flight, and he must ave misunderstood completely. But if I found out he'd done something worse, later, then I'd feel bad about not calling him out.

And then I hear stories like yours and realise firstly there's so much more of this for women and secondly, the need to say, as you said, yes, me too, even me.

[murasaki_1966]

After the high school sexual bullying I went through, I decide I bloody well would make a fuss, and I have.

[seawasp]

I admit that I can't quite fathom the not making a fuss, but then I never learned NOT to make a fuss about things people did to me. If someone had done something like that to me in a class, they'd have thought a bomb went off. Possibly a bomb right between their legs, one shaped oddly like my knee as I turned around. And by the time my parents got through with them, they'd have WISHED a bomb went off.

If anyone does anything like that to one of my girls... They will have a very, very, very bad set of days.

[i_ate_my_crusts]

You know what... if you'd asked me before it happened to me, I would have said I'd holler. But I didn't. It's so far outside the bounds of normal expected social convention that I think it stuns you into silence, and then you get a L'esprit d'escalier about it. You think of what you should have done to late to actually do it.

And I will suggest that, depending on the age of your daughters, if something like that happens to them, you ask them how they would like you to respond, if at all, rather than taking their agency/action away from them? If they are minors, ignore the above!

[seawasp]

I think the freezing is an individual thing. I was insulted, beaten up, etc., enough times that I know my reactions. It may well be that the social programming for female VS male makes women less likely to react violently.

Yes, they are both minors, and will be for quite some years yet (they're 6 and 2, respectively), and your original story was "high school" in which you were presumably still a minor too.

Once they're adults, they get to choose their own paths and actions. Though they could of course choose, as one of those actions, asking their dad to get involved. ;)

[thorfinn]

This GeekFeminism.org: Re-post: “Why don’t you just hit him?” seems apropos. The TL;DR version is that the revenge fantasy is nice, but it isn't practical or useful advice

[murasaki_1966]

I had a flute case, which works remarkably well.

[mireille21]

These men are cunning, and they know how to 'work it'. It *is* over so quickly, or they in some other way make you not want to say anything at the time and it's how they keep getting away with it again and again.

Similar thing here. Worst was a guy who groped my on a crowded tran on a hot summer's day. At first I thought it was an acciedntally misplaced hand cos the tram was crowded. By the time I realised what he was doing I was just about to get off the tram anyway, but in any case, was too stunned to do anything about it. Within seconds of getting off teh tram I felt angry and wanted to run after it to yell and scream what he'd done. And thinking that if only I'd thought of the right thing to say a few seconds earlier, or if it happened to me again how I would make a fuss at the top of my voice; " This man is groping me! Stop the tram!! Someone please eject this man from the tram NOW!!!" Make the embarrassment theirs, not ours, so they don't continue to get away with it.