Dealing with sexism - If you could go back......

My mother was evacuated from London to Radeltt. Every day she would walk home from school, 8yrs old, and at least weekly a man who used read to evacuees at her school would stop her when she passed his house and make her go into the garden to look at the rabbits in a hutch. She didn’t want to KEEP looking at the rabbits but she did as she was told. She said he would press against her back and if she tried to look round he would sternly say “Look at the Rabbits” so there she was, totally sexually innocent and unaware looking at these bloody rabbits whilst he pressed against her.
Suddenly he would stop and tell her to go, sometimes giving her a penny.
She would see him in school expecting a smile from the rabbit man but he would never look at her in school.
Roll on 20 years and she was working for social services discussing an abuse case and it all cane flooding back - the rabbit man! The penny dropped! Dirty old git...we actually went to look for his house but it had changed so much she couldn’t find it.

I would ask my first boss, I was 15 and had a weekend job in a shoe shop, why he thought it was ok to display his collection of porn magazines in the staff toilet.
Apart from him everyone who worked in the shop was female,with an average age of around 18. It was my first, but not my last, experience of sexual harassment.

Perhaps the women posting on this thread condemning and questioning the motives of young women who come forward to tell their story of abuse at the hands of older, powerful men are themselves victims and are conditioned to see themselves as subservient to men.

70s sexism in abundance at workplaces, and I we the years lots of fondling and groping, I wonder if there is a woman who has never had a y groping or more

When I was 17 I used to catch a train to our nearest city once a week. A railway employee, probably in his 50s, used to sit right next to me and put his arm behind me on the bench. Nothing much except he gave me the creeps. Some time later a girl reported him for sexual assault. I knew she was telling the truth. But he got off because of lack of evidence. I wished I had spoken out.

@Sara65 - I respectfully;y have to disagree, although I know what you mean. You didn't put yourself in any kind if "situation" - but someone took advantage of it. We should never have had to live our lives in anticipation of what awful men might do to us. When we say we didn't make the best choices, we're actually saying that we should have allowed more for the fact that men were going to do awful things. While that may have been a reality, the onus and blame is all on them.

@rosecarmel - "Going on solely no victim is to blame, and nothing else, is sending a dangerous message: You'll not be at fault for walking down a dark alley and you get raped"
Being cautious is one thing, but bringing the words "blame", "fault" etc into this is terrible. No victim is ever to blame. We know that already since other crime victims aren't raked over the coals as to what they were doing prior to the crime.
Rapists rape, No one encourages them to do it.

Sorry if this brought back any awful memories for commenters. It's just something I'm doing some work on at the moment and feeling very passionate about. I don't think many people believe that "back in the day" it was so commonplace, we usually didn't say anything.
I'm committed to hearing our young women when they say this has happened, and to encouraging them to stamp it out.

As a young boy of around seven or eight years of age, I was sexually assaulted by a man, but as a male on this forum, i will not go further into that except to say it can as traumatic for male children and young men as it can be for young girls and young women.

However, i have entered this.thread to perhaps offer advice on assaults that take place in the workplace. Protection over the years has been slowly strengthened since the mid-1980s through such parliamentary acts as the Equal Opportunities Act, the Fairness At Work Act and even the Health & Safety at Work Act.

In that mirade of legislation, a major breakthrough came about in 2010 with the introduction of the Equalities Act that encompassed the entirety of some of the above legislation and major parts of others. Through the use of the Equalities Act and knowledge of its provisions on employee grievance procedure legislation and the rights given within it, it is much easier in these times for employees to bring forward Harassment cases against any person in a workplace whether they be senior management, line manager or fellow worker.

The above legislation dictates that all employers must offer a grievance procedure to employees that consists of:-

A) A grievance investigation following a written complaint being received from any employee.

B) A formal grievance hearing at which the employee can be accompanied by a person of their choice or a trade union official. That Hearing must also be undertaken by a person who is not a direct line manager of the employee making the grievance or involved with the day to day conduct of the employee in any way.

C) should the above hearing be dismissed by the employer, then an appeal gearing must be made available to the aggrieved employee at which the employee again can be accompanied, and a senior member of management must undertake that appeal who was not in any way involved in the first hearing.

D) Should the above appeal hearing be dismissed, then provided that the employee has at least two years continuous employment with the employer involved, then the case can be taken to an Industrial Tribunal (industrial court) for an independent adjudication on the issue.

Many cases of sexual harassment have been taken through the above procedure(s) in recent years and won by employees. Sadly, the numbers of employees taking up such grievances have not been sufficient to have alleviated such harassment in workplaces such as has been sighed in this thread which would have eliminated it from working life.

In that, until employees (of both genders) are prepared to take up their rights against harassment (sexual or otherwise) in far greater numbers then such harassment will continue. It has to be remembered that any victim concealing such harassment within themselves only sets up the next victim at the hands of the same perpetrator.

However, the above may appear complicated and in that it has to be if it is to offer equal justice to complainant and defendant in any case. The law is there to be used and until those who are subjected to sexual abuse in the workplace are prepared to make use of the current legislation, then sexual harassment (especially against women) will continue in far too many employees working lives.

The above takes resolve and determination to carry out on the part of an employee, but the legislation is in place these days that will support anyone with a genuine case. In the course of my work in recent years i have witnessed that all too often happen successfully.

ToniSH - excellent posts

toniSH

I agree with you.

grandad, I’m sorry you went through that.

Had many instances of inappropriate sexual behaviour/abuse, not least from my stepfather. However, the one I'm proud of was when I was working as Girl Friday (remember that job title?) in an engineering and heating company in Lambeth Walk, London. The owner of the firm asked me to make him a cup of tea. I brought it in in front of a young engineer that was in the room with us. I leaned over his desk to deliver the cuppa and he patted my arse. I was 16/17? I turned and kicked very hard in the shin! He got up and started hopping round the room whilst the young engineer was sniggering. He NEVER did it again. That's the thing with this "me too" stuff I don't get. If you're an adult, kick, punch, scream, whatever. "He grabbed my thigh 8 years ago and I'm still traumatised". Really?

ToniSH, I understand your passion to advance the awareness that no victim is to blame- But it's only a single issue in a series that forms a whole solution- Caution is no less important nor is learning from past mistakes especially in the area of trust- A single mantra simply isn't enough information to proceed-

It's liberating for victims to fully grasp that what happened to them it isn't their fauIt- It initiates healing- But more is needed to proceed, to be informed and wisely apply what been learned-

ToniSH

I agree with you mostly. But looking back at my young self I’m horrified at the risks I took, and the situations I found myself in.

I lived with a lot of other young girls, and we were were pretty much unsupervised , I suppose we could see no danger.

We had lots of fun, and generally I look back fondly on those years, but I think we had some very lucky escapes.

So many of us had bad and inappropriate experiences.

As a schoolgirl I travelled on the train to Birmingham each day. A man in his 30s and his sister would get on the train a few stations down the line. He would try and sit opposite me and then push and rub his legs against mine. I just tried to sit squashed up so he couldn’t start all this horrible business. Why didn’t I kick him ? I suppose I was just too embarrassed.

On another occasion the lights went out on the train and a male who I knew and disliked put his hand up my skirt. I did nothing except feel embarrassed. I would like to have slapped his smirking face.

What a lot of horrid experiences we have had. Why should some men think they have the right to do inappropriate things and worse just because they fancied doing so.

On the subject of women protecting themselves, then in pubs of recent i have seen women carrying their drinks into the toilets when they go in.

One of our grandchildren is now nearly nineteen and my wife spoke to her on that subject when we seen her a few weeks ago. She said that greatest danger for anyone in these times is to have your drink "spiked" by someone when you are not looking.

Therefore young persons today (especially women) carry their drinks with them wherever they go on a night out, even into toilets.

Such are the times we live in, but it does demonstrate how young people today are much more aware of dangers than we of a few generations back were.

But absolutely nothing has changed for those young women if anything it's even worse.

We didn't take drinks into toilets because drinks didn't get spiked. I m sure we would have, had that been a possibility.

I think it is different generations and different dangers, Each generation is wise in its own time.

Evie64, read my earlier post. I too would have said that if anything like that happened to me, I would shout, scream, make a scene, slap the person etc - yet when it actually happened, I completely froze and couldn't do a thing. You never know how you will react in a certain situation until it happens. It's easy to judge others who didn't react as you did - and responses like yours are partly why I still feel a sense of guilt and shame that I did freeze when it happened to me.

Blondie exactly. Unless you’ve been in that position you don’t know how you’ll react. There’s always a very real risk that kicking out will escalate the situation so many women (and I count myself in that) freeze for fear of losing a job and finding themselves unable to pay the bills, or causing a massive family feud with no support or backup, or finding themselves at the end of a more serious assault or any number of things. What strikes me from the posts where women did hit back is that they were all supported and believed by people in a position of power and authority - not of us had that experience when we reported it, and that tends to influence how you react to things.

SirChenjin is correct in his/her post @10:27 today in stating that "There’s always a very real risk that kicking out will escalate the situation". Indeed, that action in a workplace situation at the present time may well result in disciplinary action being taken against any person committing such an assault on a fellow employee whatever the provocation may have been.

It may well be that the person " kicking out" may be able to prove that another employee did touch her in a manner that could represent a sexual assault. However, unless the counter-assault can be demonstrated as very necessary self-defence because of the force of the assault against herself or himself, then it may well be judged by an employer that an inappropriate level of violence was used in response to the other employee's actions.

It should always be remembered that two wrongs do not make a right.

In such a situation as inappropriate sexual touching, grabbing or even words, the first action is to firmly tell the person to end such action and not carry out similar in the future. You may wish to inform a line manager on what has happened and also take note of anyone who may have witnessed what took place. Therefore should such an occurrence take place again you can readily proceed to take action against the person involved by engaging the employers grievance procedure under the protection of current employment legislation.

As people who carry out demeaning sexual acts in a workplace against fellow workers often effect such practise against a number of employees, then it is possible to bring forward a group grievance against such persons, and that can be very effective indeed.

Do women or men for that matter really have the right to wear whatever they please?

I know a lot of you will say yes, what we wear is no excuse for inappropriate comments, assault or rape and up to a point I agree. There is never any excuse for assault or rape.

But, how is a person (man) supposed to distinguish between a prostitute touting for hire and a woman who would not welcome his advances if we all dress provocatively?

And why should I and other women be expected to like seeing men walking around without a shirt on in the summer, or wearing trousers so tight that nothing is left to the imagination?

Everyone should be able to walk home alone, at any hour of the day or night, take a country walk without having to feel afraid, but unless the punishment for assault, mugging and rape are more severe than at present the relatively few people that commit these offences will continue to do so.

GrandtanteJE65

Unfortunately I don't believe rape and assault are uncommon in this country.

It is not harsher sentences that will deter men IMO
It is educating men that attacking women is really very wrong....

Except that will not deter the violent and sick in the head rapists who are beyond reason
Education will only work for the men who don't really get that it is not ok to force yourself on a woman.

There has been an argument that if the sentence is harsher then the rapist may then commit murder so that his victim cannot testify against him.
I don't know what can be done against the hardcore rapists.
I want longer prison for men who attack women and children.
But be careful not to tip the criminal into murder.

This is a very difficult topic.

What does a prostitute look like?

But, how is a person (man) supposed to distinguish between a prostitute touting for hire and a woman who would not welcome his advances if we all dress provocatively?

That post and the above paragraph indicates a level of ignorance so significant that I hardly know where to start.

Ok. Let’s assume you genuinely don’t understand the difference between a young woman walking home after a night out in her skimpy gladrags (like my 20 year old daughter), minding her own business, and a prostitute. What do you think a prostitue dresses? Do you think that men looking for prostitutes find them on main streets of a town or do you think that there are areas they might go to? How do you think prostitutes are procured in 2019?
Do you find it difficult to tell the difference between a male prostitute and a young man in his tight trousers that leave nothing to the imagination?

Again, sorry if this has dredged up unwanted memories for anyone. Hopefully we can all see that we weren't alone in what happened to us, and not the only ones who feel they might not have done enough at the time.
@Blondiescot - Please don't be ashamed that you froze when you were convinced you would have acted differently. There have actually been studies and experiments to show that no matter how prepared we think we are, we don't always do what we thought we'd do.
Magsymoo - I'm so sorry about your experience. I would urge you to have some counseling to help you decide what to do and how to "come out" about it.
@Sara65 - I read a very interesting thread recently on Twitter, in which experts and rape victims alike were urging others (like us mothers) NOT to insist or even try to persuade rape victims to go to the police. The victims have already lost their control and making them do something else that they don't want to do can actually make things worse. The thread was on Dr. Jessica Eaton's Twitter handle. She is very interesting.
@MOnica - agreed that we always advise people of both sexes not to take risks; the difference however, is that victims of other crimes are rarely held to be partly responsible for what happens to them AND shamed about it.