would have coldcocked the sob.

By inferring those who didn;t fight back/react did something wrong or something. Plus, you don;t know your wife would have done that. I am a trained martial artist and didn't, because I was so shocked I froze.

I also doubt she would have reacted that way as a child, or if the person had power over her in some way.

thing. Ugh, the ignorance.

Because I didn't want to make a scene. Now, 40 years later, I regret that I didn't make a scene. Most of us just freeze up and stay quiet. We've got to give girls permission to make noise. A lot of noise. This can't just be advised; this needs to be rehearsed.

I say, in girls' gym class, let the girls rehearse their screams. Their shouts of: STOP TOUCHING ME. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse so it becomes second nature to them. You can't fight back if your body isn't ready to react instantly.

so its not quite as simple as just punching someone.

are so often the result of their deliberate exploitation of that power.

That MORE violence is the answer. Most of us don't want that. I know you "mean well" but you're doing support all wrong.

I think people deserve to see this point of view and appreciate the responses in context. He honestly believes what he is saying, and that's okay. This is an education for a lot of people I would imagine. Let it stand so people can appreciate how common this view is and how wrong at the same time.

It reveals that men believe the women they love are so much more capable than, in reality, they really are. This is not to cast aspersions on the men we love. They just don't understand what it is to be a victim, or how easy it is to be a victim.

My mother was 2 feet from me. It happened so fast I barely had time to react, much less "cold cock" him. I also never told my mother what happened.

... that someone would be honest with you

And my dad taught me to defend myself. The groping occurred at my job when I was 19. I took a job as a waitress in a bowling alley while I was in college. The bowling alley was close to home and school. I lasted 3 days. I could handle the obscene comments and gestures. I could not handle a table full of men trying to feel up my skirt. I told my boss, who told me to "just go along with them. They don't mean anything by it. Besides, you'll get better tips."

It was 35 years ago and I still remember the feelings of shame and powerlessness.

Was during the 80s and had kids to support. It took awhile to find another job.

responsibilities. It's so visceral and it stays with you for a lifetime. Listening to those two assholes joking so casually about sexually assaulting women was infuriating and brought all those icky feelings rushing right back.

He'd have been wrong. Most of us are stunned, shocked, embarrassed, frozen. People see me as the poster lady for iron womanhood. No one fucks with me. No one. Yet my response to sexual assault was not to cold cock the son of a bitch. I'm glad you think that of your wife. Statistics say you're probably wrong.

Please don't demean other victims by implying we should have fought back.

But young girls don't have a sense of power yet. We have to give them that.

happened to when I was much younger happened now I would react more assertively. And perhaps I would, but I can't say for sure.

I was never exactly a shrinking violet, but I was taken by surprise and did not wish to make a scene. Once it was my best friend's father. Once it was one of my college professors who was also my employer. It's complicated. You just don't know.

I took a deep breath, sat back, and now I've waited a few days. I never seriously considered deleting my post, and I won't do it now. Much has gone through my mind in those two days. After the surprise at the angry responses settled down, I had to admit to myself that the post was written in haste. The real question was whether or not I believed what I'd written. I did, and I do. To all who are agrieved, I try to understand. You have made valid points. On the other hand, you assume you know my wife of thirty years better than I do, a sort of stereotyping that goes something like this: "I'm a woman; she's a woman; therefore, I know how she'll act." Everything you've said may be true of her, but I question your ability to judge her actions simply by virtue of being of the same gender. I met my wife when we were both middle aged. You may be right that as a child or as a young woman working for a powerful but unscrupulous man, she may not have reacted as she would now, or at any time during the past thirty years.

I'll tell you a story. I taught AP English students. One of them, a girl of seventeen, slapped her AP Science teacher when he prodded her in the buttock with an electrified rod. Her back was to him, he did what he did, and she whirled around and let him have it. AP teacher and teenage girl. It doesn't always turn out as you might suppose and it has clearly turned out for some of our members. My heart hurts for those women--and all women--who encounter anything like what has been described here. Highly emotional experiences like these make civil discourse hard. Being attacked as I have been makes civil discourse hard. But I try, because the failure of civil discourse is one of our biggest problems in this super-charged, divisive, political culture.

To little girls, teens, young women, older women...

trust.

a poll. He asked if my pubes were straight or curly, and like a naive idiot I told him.

some adult male called all the high school cheerleaders.

How he got my number I have no idea. We had an unlisted phone number. I was the one that answered the phone and he started telling me how pretty I was and asked what I wore under my cheer skirt and then I hung up. The voice was very obviously an adult male, and a voice I did not recognize.


When we told the school admin, they thought we were making it up and nothing was done.

...when my wife told me about such things. I guess I'd lived a charmed, upper middle class, southern life till then. Most importantly, she also explained that in many cases, for a myriad of reasons, a woman feels se can't fight back or thinks that's simply the way life is. Damn sad and pisses me off to the extreme. She did cold cock a guy once in a bar who grabbed her crotch. Broke his nose. The Cops considered it self defense. But that is a rare exception.

relationship violence. She is in therapy for what she experienced. She talked of feeling trapped and ashamed. Ashamed! As if she was the one initiating the violence. Luckily she is in a good relationship with someone who does not equate threats and violence as "just being a man".

Thanks for posting these two posts.

coldcock someone who did that to us. Read the responses to get my drift...

It is very difficult for most people to hit with intent to hurt. And predators know this.

And those responses shift part of the blame to the victim of the violence. There is no sharing of blame with sexual violence. The initiator is at fault. Always.

Prior to the therapy, my daughter questioned whether she had somehow been partly to blame for what happened. Luckily for her she has a good therapist who has helped her to identify how the situation developed, and how predators "groom" their victims to control the relationship.

happy and grateful for the people out there who help and get it.

care. Too many health care plans lack adequate mental health care provisions.

One hopes that this revelation of Trump's unsuitability, as if more was needed, will encourage people to learn more about sexual violence and how it touches all of our lives.

I worked in a very male dominated workplace...nothing was done to him about it...I ended up quitting. It traumatized me for years..

Before we met, she was at the Universität Münster (Westfalen), and they were already pretty open back then to admitting large numbers of students from Africa and the Middle East. She met some African from a Muslim part of the continent and got into a conversation with him. It was near dinner time, and she offered to make him dinner in her dorm. In his culture, it meant she was asking for sex, and he acted appropriately. She was from a small town in the farm area of the north of Niedersachsen, and not really familiar with social norms outside of Europe. When he jumped her in her apartment, she was caught totally unawares and scared out of her wits. But she is also tall (5'10&quot and quite strong, and she beat him off and kicked him out of the apartment. He sent her notes and flowers for a while after that, but she just didn't answer. A few others tried, but after this, she was ready for it, and it never got to the point where she left herself open to another such situation.

That wasn't the only time she got jumped, either. One time, she was visiting me when I was living for a brief time near Boston. There was a peace demonstration being held in New York. She wanted to go (I had to work), and there were buses organized to take people down to the UN and back, so she got on one of them. Some French guy, working as a chef in a restaurant in Boston, got obsessed with her, and at 4 AM on the way back, jumped her in the bus, shouting "I want you, I want you!" She yelled, and it didn't take very long for other people on the bus to pull the French guy off of her. She laughs about it now.

One time, it must have been a few months later, she was with me and a friend from London at a place in Cambridge near Harvard Square. The British guy and I were seated across from one another, and she was seated next to him. Some guy I didn't recognize appeared out of nowhere, sat down next to her and asked, "are you alone?" She said, "no, I am with my boyfriend." We weren't yet married, ergo, boyfriend. I waved when she said boyfriend so he would know which one of us she was referring to. The French guy bolted out of his chair and ran off as if he had just been introduced to Dracula, and was told that the Count was very thirsty. At this point, I had no earthly clue who this guy was, and was totally baffled by his odd behavior. She explained that it was "Antoine." We all had a good laugh, and that was that.

Third thread I've posted this article in, but I want as many people to see it as possible.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-crotchgrabber

He knows why I get so angry with this entitlement attitude. It's not sexual, it's ASSAULT.

Trust me, you would not want to hear them.

I'm a 68 year old woman. Why would I be ashamed to talk openly about something like this?

Talk about infantilizing women ....

As a gay man I have experienced this.

my wife, before we met, was sexually assaulted by someone she met on-line. She doesn't like talking about it, though. For that I can not blame her and I will not try to pry it out.

. . . my wife was teaching at the high school from which she graduated only 6 years earlier.

One evening, the head football coach dropped by the house. When she realized what he had in mind, she picked up a butcher knife and ushered him out.

She immediately telephoned the principal . . . a genteel old Southern gentleman who have been principal since my wife was in the first grade . . . his wife had been her first grade teacher. The coach was fired before school started the next day. The principal called all other principals in surrounding counties and he was locked out. Don't know where he ended up.

We met while part of a sexual abuse survivors therapy group ☹️

Very enlightening

Law firm. I was 17. I was in the file room about 6:00 one evening bent over trying to find a file in the bottom drawer of a 4-drawer cabinet when one of the partners came in, closed the door, and came up and rubbed his already hard dick up against me. I jumped up and as I turned around, he grabbed my breasts with both hands. I screamed but no one else was there. He grinned because he knew we were alone. I was furious and hauled off and punched him in the face. While he was reacting to the unexpected, I opened the door and ran to my desk, which was right by the outer door. I swore at him and told him I'd tell everyone what he had done. As he came around one side of the desk at me, I grabbed my purse and ran out in the hall. There were 2 lawyers from another firm waiting for the elevator. When the fucking cretin saw them, he went back in the office. They never asked why I was upset. I told my Mom and Dad when I got home. My Mom was furious and felt bad too because she had heard about the part-time opening and told me to apply. Mom was a legal secretary for a firm in the building next to the one where I worked. She told her boss the next day, and said I was going to quit that day. When I called the senior partner to resign, before I could say anything, he said he had news for me. So and so left the firm for good earlier that day. And, BTW, they didn't need me that day, but I could work all day every Saturday if I could arrange it. And, as things turned out, they NEVER left me alone in the office again.
That was in 1963.