General Chat

Very true .the manager & warehouse man were sacked .my Son got another job & believe you me didn't get bullied again .he does stand up for himself :-)

Bullies have no age limits. And silence encourages them to continue the nastiness.

when my Son started a driving job he enjoyed it & liked being out & about delivering car parts & warehouse work .this a few years ago .one of the manages didn't like him & was always picking on him about late deliveries petty warehouse things .but he was being set up by another warehouse man .& he left because of bullying .its not only women who are harassed at work my Son was 20 years old .. :-(

Barb.......

<3 <3 <3

We tolerated all sorts of unpleasant behaviour in the sixties, seventies and eighties because we had no option. There was nowhere to complain and if you did it was your word against the gropers.

Just like to say, I love what Aled's mother in law has said:
'He is as capable of sexual harassment as Mother Theresa' :-D :-D

Oh gosh - flashing!
That's only happened twice to me.
Once, walking through Southampton alone, during the day, a man appeared from behind a bush and exposed himself - I just looked him in the eye and said something like 'So what? If I were you, I'd cover that up quickly' - and walked off.

Another time, I was with a friend when it happened - we just both stood there laughing the most awful, loud, raucous laugh we could, thanked him for the laugh - and walked off.
I admit, I never reported either of them. Pathetic specimens that they were.

I think, as women, we got used to the odd 'cat call' from builders, and (in my case) either ignored them, or told them in no uncertain terms what they could do with their 'admiration'.
My late brother in law's brother (R) owns a scaffolding firm, he started it in the 1980's.
One of his rules is, and has always been, no cat-calling, or you're sacked.

Apparently, this came about because he and I, aged 15 and 16 (I'm the elder) used to go out (not romantically), but, ummm - drinking :-S
His brother (B) (not my future brother in law), a year older than me would sometimes come too.
Well, In my platforms, I was inevitably quite a way behind him/ them, when walking from pub to pub,(I never said they were gentlemen!) so it looked like I was on my own.
They were embarrassed at the cat calls, and other 'assumptions' I encountered - things I just brushed off - but they were astonished that a girl/woman, apparently on her own, could encounter.
Actually, if the situation got too bad, I would just shout - and they'd come back - and, as B was built like a proverbial brick wotsit - the creeps soon disappeared!

I was never too scared - my dad was an expert in unarmed combat and had taught me one or two little 'disarming' tricks! But I was lucky. :-D

Pondering this - all of us who experienced the 60s and 70s knew men with 'wandering hands'. Their names were passed on in offices and social centres. Does that happen nowadays?

Having suffered maybe 6 commutes on a crowded tube and having the proverbial groin pusher behind me I had no reservations re telling him he was a pervert in a very loud voice. Pretty much all the women and the majority of men within hearing distance would add their disapproval. The pervert usually got off at the next available stop.

Fellow passengers were always very supportive, is it the norm today? or has society become so uncaring?

Working and socialising in London and going home on late night buses and trains the inevitable flasher appeared at least weekly. We were advised to humiliate them by declaring we had seen bigger on a rabbit (or whatever) and laugh - no matter how difficult. The more times they received that reaction, rather than a fit of the vapours, would prove to be more of a deterrent and gave you time to mentally gather a description to report to police.

TBH I found flashers more disturbing than the wandering hand brigade.

No need to delete BarbinSGlos, I'm glad it helped saying it 'out loud' as it were, and you are very brave to have to done so. I'm very sorry that you experienced that, no child should ever have to.

I just wanted to make sure it was understood in my reply that there is a difference between the abuse of children as in your case which is NEVER acceptable, and the topic of the thread, which was directly relating to adults and where the line is drawn before an action can be thought of as ' sexual abuse'.

Barb, there is NO doubt that the trauma children suffer is probably the worst kind imaginable.

xx

Nyx, I have deleted my post after your comment. But it did help me to get it down on paper for the first time

Victim is the word. They would not pick on somebody they did not think was at some sort of disadvantage to them.

I agree with Supercrutch.

I will be shouted at also, but when it's an adult it is very different to child abuse, and this thread was not about child abuse which should always be treated with the full weight of the law. It is about an adult who made an 'inappropriate' advance or message ( one can't be sure until it's investigated surely?)

Adults have a voice, they can use it. If lunged at by someone you don't want to lunge at you, you can scream blue bloody murder, you can slap away the hand, or simply remove yourself from the situation... texts? get a new phone!

How many have kept silent to get or keep a job. I refer here to those actresses who 'put up' with sleazy behaviour and have not used their considerable clout to draw attention to it before and save other women from the same.

A clumsy advance from one adult to another is NOT the same as abuse. It should be dealt with yes, at the time by the adult involved...I've always found the threat "try it & I'll knee you in the ***** " works well. ( Except for the occasion when the person pursuing was also female, but a firm 'I'm not interested' worked fine).

I stress again, I am not talking about serious cases of abuse, and in no way am I suggesting child abuse is EVER inconsequential.

Exactly. He got away with it and you were traumatized.

Sometimes overfamiliarity can cause psychological trauma that never leaves.

What might have been an illicitly enjoyable but very forgettable tweak to the perpetrator may have cause thirty years of stress and maybe even fear.

I agree that a lot went on in the 60's and 70's that we just accepted and didn't think of as "abuse" - not that that excuses the behaviour.

However I think that if an adult hasn't reported sexual abuse within, say, 5 years then they should not be coming out 30 years later and complaining.

Children however is a different matter, although I still think that once they are adults and have time to think about things as an adult they should not leave it 30 or 40 years before accusing people.

Kath. x

well said Joy....

Again, I am with Supercrutch here.

Hand on knee would have been regarded as a chancer many years ago and a quick slap would have sorted it. This, from someone who hates to see a couple sitting with one controlling hand on the other's leg! Gawd, if my OH started to demonstrate that aspect of ownership, I'd have his guts for garters!

Hand on back????? Unless it's fiddling with my bra strap it wouldn't bother me at all. It takes a whole lot of imagination to think that every hand on back is a sexual attack on the person.

We should never have been put in a position to have to tell them to push off.

I'm with you on this Supercrutch. I bet most women could recount incidents from then. Some men would force you to squeeze past them in doorways, would invade your space that bit too long to try and see down your top. In the cinema a chap sat next to me and my friend and stuck his hand on my friend's knee and was sliding her skirt up. She soon sent him packing by standing up and hitting him in the face hard by swinging her handbag at him. We had a caretaker at work who would stand next to the stairs with glass panelled sides so he could see up your skirt. Some would be too touchy, but most would take the hint if you pushed them away or told them to get lost. It shouldn't have happened, but how many of these women are reporting the men they knew from then, work colleagues etc? I knew far more of them than famous people.