So there’s a giant, growing, and extremely creepy megathread up on Reddit at the moment, and for once, the creepiness isn’t coming from inside the Reddit. Well, less of the creepiness is coming from Reddit than you might expect.
Yesterday, you see, a Redditor known as BA_Baracus posted a couple of simple questions to AskReddit: Women of Reddit, when did you first notice that men were looking at you in a sexual way? How old were you and how did it make you feel?
This wasn’t the first time he’d posted a question to his fellow Redditors; he’s posted a bunch, including “People of reddit with eyes that point in different directions, which one of them is usually looking at me?” and, er, “Recent rape victims of Reddit, how did it happen, and what the hell were you doing in India?” None of these questions got much of a response.
But this time, well, thousands of “women of Reddit” stepped forward to tell the horrifying yet in most cases completely unsurprising stories of the first time men started perving on them, in many cases before they were even teenagers.
Here’s a sampling of some of their stories. TRIGGER WARNING for extreme fucking creepiness.
Age 8, followed to a department store changing room
Age 8, molested by a landlord
Age 12, at a bus stop
11 or 12, walking to and from school
Age 12, waiting for carryout
Age 11, creepy step-grandfather
Age 12, creepy step-uncle
Age 10, wearing a Lion King backpack and light-up shoes
Age 12, creepy cell phone salesman
Age 11, walking home from the beach
Age 12, in Blockbuster (with bonus Reddit creepiness)
14, eating a lollipop
Age 12, eating a banana
Naturally, some Redditors decided to add to the creepiness:
And all this makes pretty clear just why we need age of consent laws:
Of course, many of these creepy guys are well aware that the targets of their creepiness are a long way away from being “legal.”
Check out the thread for countless more stories like this.
H/T — u/Iwillpixiecutyou on Reddit
@weirwoodtreehugger
Yeah, that sounds like what probably went down. I don’t know if he will have any awakening himself to the stark reality that we seen to occupy. One can only hope.
I’ve mentioned this
enormous asshole composed of smaller, haemorrhoidal assholesguy before. I was 15, he was a 25-year-old Internet groomer, long story short, he raped me almost every day for three straight months. Highlights include the entirety of my sexual knowledge beforehand being “Boys have penises, girls have vaginas, sex makes babies and diseases, boys like sex but girls don’t” (hooray for abstinence-only sex ed), him holding a gun to his head every time I told him to stop and exactly three of my dozens of friends believing me (and it turned out one of those three had also been raped by him). I and his other victims were lucky in the end, though; he still has a decade left on his 25-year sentence with zero chance of parole.I thought he just wanted to talk about Pokemon… =/
That’s horrible. I’m glad he’s in jail where he belongs.
@StaciCakes:
“There are a TON of creepy, predatory men out there. People don’t even understand what we go through, way younger than we should ever have to put up with it.”
And that boggles my mind. Given how frequent and ‘natural’ it is, how come it isn’t common knowledge?
I am very much convinced that there is a conspiracy of silence around this issue, of the kind described by Alice Miller (whose books I strongly recommend to all survivors of childhood abuse, and not only sexual; another person worth reading is Andrew Vachss http://www.vachss.com/av_dispatches.html — may gods bless him and keep him strong and healthy for years).
@autosoma:
I understand your modesty, but you are a decent man in my (and not only) book. Any man who does not abuse girls (and boys) and women is. It may only seem like too low of a bar to decent people who do not quite realize how common abuse is.
And a man who stands up to abusers, in any way, is positively a hero. I am very serious.
My first experiences with this sort of thing were when I was between 9 and 12. It was a guy my mom worked with, and he was always making comments toward me about how I was his girlfriend and how pretty I was. My mom always told him that he was just teasing me and that he didn’t really mean it. I didn’t know how to tell her that even if he was just joking, it made me feel gross and it was WILDLY inappropriate. I kept telling him to stop too, but he never did.
I actually got molested by my babysitter’s brother when she went out for a few minutes to the store. He told me to close my eyes and then shoved my hand down his pants. I knew what was happening, but I didn’t say anything for YEARS, because I thought I had done something that made him want to do that to me. I couldn’t say what it was, but I was convinced for a long time that it was my fault it happened.
Funny thing is, I was always a gangly thing – My boobs were never big, I didn’t develop an ass until I was 19, and if you cut my hair I could probably have passed for a little boy instead of a girl. I got a lot less of the attention I’ve read about in the comments here and on Reddit, but I still got it. I was uncomfortable with it then.
And a fucked-up finish to my tale: when I got older, and I noticed that some girls got more of this unwanted attention, instead of feeling lucky, I felt INADEQUATE. Like I was less attractive than them because I hadn’t gotten as many cat calls or molestation attempts. I knew that was a really fucked-up feeling to have, and I knew that this weird jealousy was just rape culture speaking, from hearing my whole life that these assaults were just compliments to pretty women, but it took me so long to get rid of that irrational envy I had for women that had story after story after story about men being inappropriate and gross with them.
@Bina: Thank you! I was beginning to feel like I was the only person on the planet who thought that it was fucked up and not normal for a grown man who raises a child to woo her when she gets older. I have a real love of father/daughter relationships in media, especially if the man acting as father is not actually a blood relation to the girl, so things like Les Miserables are really near and dear to my heart. If anyone recognizes the character in my gravatar, she and her male guardian are my current fictive kinship fix. So, naturally, I feel really grossed out when people start twisting those relationships into something sexual, especially when they try to pass off the “he raises her and then takes advantage of her later” thing as ROMANTIC. It’s actually gotten to be a trigger for me at this point. Needless to say, I’m finding it hard to be in fandoms with my favorite father/daughter characters in them now, because there are so many people who want to wax poetic on how cute they are as a romantic couple. Granted, these are just fictional characters, but I can’t help thinking about the real instances of this that happen all the time when it’s mentioned, and apparently, neither can the people who think it’s sweet. They often talk about real life to justify it in fiction too.
Sorry for the wall of text. Just had to get those things off my chest.
8 years old. Three teenage boys (maybe 17-19 years old, possibly older) followed me into the elevator in my apartment building. They told me to take off my pants. I sobbed while fiddling with my zipper and lied “It’s stuck”. One of them said, “That’s enough, we scared her good” and got out of the elevator. I came home shaken up but didn’t tell my parents because I thought something “dirty” happened and they would punish me.
When I was 13, a middle aged man on the subway licked his lips and patted his lap to indicate he wanted me to sit in it.
One of the only good things about being trans with a very hostile/abusive family is that I never received sexual harassment until I was older and came out full-time. Since my family forced me to perpetuate the lie that I was a boy, I wasn’t subjected to leering horny creeper guys.
After I came out though? Wooooow. The level of harassment varies, but recently I had to threaten a former customer with a restraining order because he would not stop calling and texting me pressuring me to make myself more sexy for his dick. Not even a week later, I get followed home by a creepy creeper who stopped at my apartment door and started jerking himself off through his pocket while staring at me. After I slammed the door in his face, he kept trying to climb over my patio fence to try and get inside. I was about to call the police, but a neighbor started yelling at him.
So much of the sexual harassment I get is much more blunt and direct, skipping over the less creepy flirting and goes directly to pressuring for or demanding sex. Sometimes even right on the spot. Cis women may get harassment, but when it happens to trans women, the creepers throw caution to the wind and go directly for the kill.
Ugh. If there was one thing that I never wanted, early in my teens or late, it was to be “sexually awakened” by an older man. Father figures aren’t erotic for most girls, or most grown women either. And for them to step out of their parent-like role and into that of a “lover” when a girl crosses some supposed maturational turning point (or even worse, just proceeding with grooming and rape regardless of how young and small she is) is abhorrent. It appears that men like to read Lolita as an ideal romance, while women and girls understand it as a cautionary tale. We don’t need “initiators”. We want partners. Why is that so goddamn hard to understand?
Oh yeah: Abstinence-only feeds right into that, doesn’t it? A girl is kept “pure” so that some geezer (assigned by the church or chosen by her parents?) can wipe his dick on her and imagine he’s been given back his youth. Comprehensive sex-ed is therefore the devil, because it gives girls the language and the power to say BACK OFF, MISTER, I DON’T WANT YOU. The scariest thing in the world to an abuser is that his victim might actually stand up and use her voice, because what comes out is bound to dash his entire fantasy of himself as “seducer”. So he rigs the system to ensure as much silence from her as possible. Ghaaah.
You’re definitely NOT the only one! I love Les Misérables, the book (haven’t seen the latest movie or the musical, so I don’t know how far they diverge from the original). I think the reason Jean Valjean is a hero is because he doesn’t abuse what little privilege he’s managed to scrape off the surface of the rotten society he lives in. He goes to prison in the first place for stealing bread to feed his starving sister and her hungry children. So it’s natural that it would be abhorrent for him to use his so-called “advantage” as Cosette’s guardian to push his luck with her. She’s not his plaything, but his younger, more vulnerable comrade in the struggle. And she’s the closest thing he has to a daughter. He also sees the painful way her mother dies (from the side effects of a life of prostitution and dire poverty), so that too plays into his refusal to harm her; he wouldn’t dream of plunging her into the same cesspool just for a little dick-fun. I think the reason he takes her under his wing is because he was deprived by 18 years’ imprisonment of the chance to care for his sister and her family. He has, in that sense, an undone duty to complete. To “seduce” or “marry” Cosette is to violate his own self, because his whole life has become a mission to protect the weak, and to prevent injustice from perpetuating itself.
We have two daughters aged 6 & 9, which is the age that a combination of sexual assault and sexualization occurred to my wife, this is quite triggering for her as she remembers back. Its made much worse by her having a father who is a child psychologist who (allegedly) specialises in child sexual abuse who rejects what she says. This is quite tough on her as I am aware that parents are often the last to know, but I support her in her choice of no-contact.
This and reddit have been an eye opener for me, I guessed it was pretty extensive (from knowing niceguys(tm) and general dickheads in the pub and the workplace) but the extent is quite horrific.
I wish I knew what I could do to support my wife and ensure that when shit like this happens (and I hope it doesn’t, but my hope for a better society gland has shrivelled over the years ) I can muster the necessaries to support through it.
@aunt edna I’ve met very very few men I would consider decent maybe three or four, so thank you
You know, I don’t usually comment on anything. Combination of usually being on my phone and just reading other folks saying it better. My story isn’t all that traumatizing, just frustrating and sad. But I added to the pile. I hope people feel less alone reading these. I did. I know it’s disheartening to see how many women’s initial sexual experiences are abusive. But I hope that people gain some perspective from it.
I think I was present once when this happened to one young girl I met.
It was almost summer vacation and school had just let out for the day. Me and my Mom been on an errand and had just come in the house. After about fifteen or thirty minutes there was a knock on our door and this little girl was standing there, in her school uniform. I think maybe she saw us coming into the house. She couldn’t have been more than eight or nine and she was terrified. In my entire life I’ve never seen a child look more frightened. She was crying and wringing her hands and asked my mother and me if she could come inside.
We’d never met her this little girl, but she felt she could trust us. We let her in and she told us that some man in a car had been following her home and she was too scared to walk home. So she pretended like our house was her house. She told us he said stuff to her but she didn’t tell us what he said. We calmed her down and found that she lived just a couple of streets over. We told her we’d wait until my brother got to our place and he would escort her home, which he did.
This happened about ten years ago and I have never forgotten the look of terror on that little girls face. I don’t know what my brother said to her Mom or how she was handled at home.
I have a niece the same age as her and I’m going to assume that this little girl was given the same advice we give my niece. The same advice given to me again and again and again, everytime I walked out of the house.
If you feel unsafe in public, for any reason, find an adult you trust, a woman if possible, explain to her what’s wrong or just stand close to her. If possible get her to call a family member and memorize family members phone numbers. Or go into the nearest public place, a library, a large store. When in a department store, find a shop clerk, any woman in uniform, that you feel she feels you can trust.
Yep, grown women can follow this advice too.
@autosoma:
Your last sentence is depressing (in that very low number of decent men you know), but I believe you, of course.
I remain hopeful against hope because I’m married to a decent man, we’ve raised decent sons, and I see men like you, Alan, and other commenters here, as well as in other corners of the web (and world), including those who dedicate their lives to fighting misogyny, like David, and child abuse, like Andrew Vachss.
As long as decent people, men especially, bravely speak out against the misogyny that allows other men treat women and girls like things to use and abuse for their own pleasure, there is some hope for us, still. The vocal minority of morally correct individuals has the power to influence the world, if only in incremental ways.
I am also a psychologist by training, and helping victims of abuse has been part of my work. I can tell you that for your wife’s father to disbelieve her is unconscionable (and also rather unprofessional; the fact that he specializes in child abuse is chilling).
As a survivor — or transcender, to use Vachss’ term — of child abuse, and a mother myself, I believe I can imagine what your wife is going through. The transcenders usually don’t tell their parents (or anyone else) because of their shame and entirely justified fear of being disbelieved. When they manage to summon the courage to speak out and are met with disbelief, particularly from their parents, it is devastating and deeply alienating, perhaps unforgivably so.
She needs to do what she considers right for her to heal not only from the abuse, but from the secondary trauma of being disbelieved by her father. If that involves no contact, so be it.
What you can do is be there for her, which you are already doing, and support her decisions. What all transcenders need is a compassionate witness, someone who will hear their story and pain, and, first and foremost, accept its truth.
I would suggest that she (and you) read Alice Miller’s books (if she has not read any yet). They are therapeutic in themselves: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Miller_%28psychologist%29#Writings
Misogynists try to create social situations where women are beaten down and demoralized and blamed for their bad behavior, no matter what they do. It’s the reason that women are constantly being given conflicting rules for how to be around men they don’t know, castigated for not taking responsibility for their own behavior, blamed for all of mens behavior, etc.
When you do behave responsibly, in an effort to protect yourself, it’s misandry and you should stop being mean to men and smile more and yada, yada, yada. When you tell men to accept responsibility for their behavior towards women it’s misandry. Dressing nice is misandry, not dressing nice enough to please men is misandry, getting fat, being too thin, not performing femininity to some random guys exact specifications such that he feels perfectly comfortable screaming at you about this in the streets.
And then men like this have the nerve to disingenuously ask why we act the way we do, or don’t trust them or even hate them. They blame us for all that. I say they need to blame the handful of men making life Hell for the women in their lives, the women they would like to have in their lives (but can’t get close to them because-misandry!), the women they’d like to compliment, but can’t the women they’d like to smile at or get their phone numbers.
The reason why decent men can’t act decent towards women in public is because of the half dozen indecent men we just spent dodging the company of that morning, that day, that week and by the time we reach them, our patience for yet more more man, wanting our attention for some damn reason or another, (no matter how decent a person he thinks he is), is at an end.
Men need to understand that the people messing it all up for you, are other men, not us.
Thanks for all the hugs and well-wishes for me and my story, and nthing it right back to everyone else in the thread.
I feel I should mention this happened to me over a decade ago, and my abuser is firmly behind bars (even after an appeal).
The first trial was my freshman year in high school, then two and some-odd years of peace and trying to work out my feelings, and then BAM. Senior year, and I had to go back to court to relive my trauma in front of another jury. I remember sitting in the hallway with my mother crying into her arms, begging for her to not make me go back in there. And I know she didn’t want to let me go. But I had to. I did. And now he’s gone.
There’s been issues in my family since my brother and sister are his biological kids, and my brother never quite got over the fact that his father’s gone (he screamed at me once that I “took him away” from him, and I’ve never really gotten over that), but we’ve worked it out the best we can, and we try to stay in touch.
As for those who haven’t experienced harassment: Good. I thank the heavens above that you haven’t, and may it forever stay that way for you and yours.
QFT.
Corinn: I didn’t know that about trans women. I just assumed you’d get the harassment, but in the exact same form as cisgendered women.
So, apparently,creepazoids just throw any and all caution to the winds, when it comes to transgendered women, huh? They don’t even try to pretend to be decent.Wow!
As a socially awkward man, I really have just the one thing to say: Wow.
Being one of these men is a huge fear for me. It seems like it should be for any sane guy. Why isn’t it? Our culture really is disturbed. Curiosity I’d understand, but it really isn’t that at all past early teens. I just … don’t get it.
Bina: Well we’ve seen over and over again that the most frightening thing in the world, for such men, is to be told they can’t have something. abstinence teaching fits right in with that. Women and girls are kept too ignorant of themselves to say no.
What such men want, is a bunch of women and girls who don’t know or understand that their bodies belong to themselves and they are the only ones who get to choose what they can do with it. What you just said explains so many of the Warren Jeffs of the world and all their female purity BS.
I believe it’s the reason so many cults get started,anyway. Cults are often grooming colonies, so that the leader can have a captive harem of women and young girls they can use for themselves or give away as gifts to their creepy friends.
Thanks to everyone who shared their stories, and all the sympathy and hugs for people who suffered trauma and/or assault should they choose to accept.
I’ve led a fairly sheltered and fortunate life. I’m a cis hetero woman, but catcalls and street harassment is not a normal part of my life. I’ve actually only been hollered at from a car once in my life, and I was maybe 15, possibly 16. I was walking to the library or grocery store one summer’s day wearing some jean shorts. I don’t even remember what was said, but I did not feel afraid.
As far as the OP from Reddit, the first time I noticed sexual attention from guys, it wasn’t even really me that noticed it. In my freshman year of high school (so 14 or 15 y.o.), one of my guy friends in swim class told me I shouldn’t swim backstroke. I forget if he implicitly or explicitly said the other guys were looking at my chest. It made me feel a bit self conscious then but didn’t really affect me much.
I actually recently (within the last 5 years, and I’m 28) learned about how common street harassment is for a majority of women. I’ve never had creepy attention from older men, or really any negative attention from men in general. I don’t know how I managed to be so lucky in this respect. (I am average looking and a quiet person who is not terribly fashionable, so maybe I manage to be invisible.) I did learn that one of my childhood friends was molested by an uncle. One of my other friends gets hollered at a lot, usually about her booty. My mom just this year told me about some 20 something year old man in her village jerking off to her when she was maybe 5. She said he lured her to the long grass with a cookie.
I can understand some people being surprised at the stories shared, but it seems out of line to discount people’s lived experience.
@aunt edna – yes your are right about decent men, I was thinking more of my immediate IRL circle. Regarding my wife dad, I once spoke to him about it and he was more interested in protecting his professional reputation than supporting his daughter, so when she decided on NC it was an easy support. Sometimes listening to what she says is a difficult listen and I have no idea what to do and feel worthless/anomic for not being able to do anything.
@lkeke35:
“I believe it’s the reason so many cults get started,anyway. Cults are often grooming colonies, so that the leader can have a captive harem of women and young girls they can use for themselves or give away as gifts to their creepy friends.”
This.
Scratch the surface of any religious or similar cult, especially one led by a male guru (and almost all of them are), and you’ll find sexual abuse and perversion right underneath. Gaining free and easy sexual access to many naive girls, women, and boys (and sometimes men) is typically the unspoken (and un/subconscious) reason for the cult’s rise and existence.
@gilshalos
There are definitely upstanding dudes out there too, which makes some of these assholes’ behavior even more inappropriate because, no, you shitstains, most dudes wouldn’t rape someone if given half a chance.
I was pretty lucky through my childhood, barring a few incidents of sexual harassment, and the first guy I dated was in university. We slept over at each other’s dorms all the time, but I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of having sex. (This was prior to my realization that I was ace, but I’d latched onto the ‘saving myself for marriage’ reason, because I REALLY didn’t want to have sex).
I was sleeping in the same bed as a guy who I was dating, who I kissed and made out with in bed some, and you know what sort of sexual things he did to me? Absolutely nothing. He never tried to go below the belt, because he knew I didn’t want to. He never tried touching me when I was asleep and vulnerable. It never even occured to me that someone else might have.
Rape isn’t something that should be expected to happen in these sorts of situations, or in ANY situations, and people who believe differently, that rape or ignoring consent is justified if ________, are absolutely despicable.
@autosoma:
Some dad, your FIL.
It is a very difficult listen. It does not get easier and one never gets used to it. It is a natural reaction to feel anomic for not being able to do anything about the abuse itself.
There is nothing you can do, other than show her your support in the many various ways you already do. And that’s plenty.
From the perspective of time and experience, I can tell you that the pain usually, though not always, lessens, even if it probably never entirely goes away for most.
I must share one story I heard from a male friend in Texas which disturbed me deeply. He admitted he knew a group of men who waited outside High Schools in order to choose their new girlfriend when they became tired of their current ‘underage’ girlfriend.
@aunt Edna
Thank you again; some solid words there my wife starts actual real therapy Tuesday, I’m elated and terrified at the same time, I’ll try my best, I’ll make some mistakes along the way supporting her – hopefully nothing that will be retrograde to the changes that she undergoes. My wife’s advice to me about what I should do is, let her rant and nod my head – seems fair enough.
I really liked what @ikeke35 had to say about blokes ruining it for blokes – I’ll use that next time I meet geezers who are PUA’s,MRA’s and MGTOW-ers (which will be on about 36 hours there is one decent fella at this meet up – the other guys think were either aliens or not real men) whining about – well you know what they whine about.
I was hoping that the OP had been inspired by a desire to give women an opportunity to speak their truths in a (relatively) safe way, and expose these behaviors for what they are – abusive, cruel and manipulative.
I wish I still could.
Full disclosure – I have two sons, one just turned eighteen, the other almost fourteen. I have not seen either of them exhibit any of these behaviors, and sincerely hope that it doesn’t happen at all. I don’t think it does.