by reallifegirl » Sun Oct 16, 2016 3:01 pm
Eh, I don't know if it's fear-mongering if it really is common. I'm not saying there aren't exceptions, but I know I've been groped, a lot of my close female friends have been, and even ones who weren't necessarily touched physically still dealt with harassment of some variety. I don't think it's inappropriate to talk to people about how to deal with these situations when they come up -- not everybody's gonna be in a building on fire, but we still teach people their fire exits.
Can it go overboard? Maybe. But is it rooted in a real problem that does frighten people? Yeah. And I do think, to some extent, the hype over it now is based around the idea that people would downplay this sort of thing in the past.
I've had dudes on the subway feel up my ass or squeeze my knee/leg. An old coworker, back in my door-to-door salesman days, used to run his hands over my back while we were in the company van. The incident that freaked me out the worst was when I was in Seattle and my gay male friend wanted to hit up Capitol Hill, the gay nightlife area. The night ended with us very drunk at a very popular gay club, where I blacked out. I woke up to a dude making out with my neck and his hand up my shirt. I made some sort of 'excuse me' gesture and bolted to find my friend, who didn't realize there was a problem. When we wandered back on to the dance floor later, this guy grabbed my arm and yanked me back and went right back to shoving his hands up my shirt and making out with my face. I think what saved me from dealing with him too long is that the club closed for the night not long afterward. My friend explained later that that's an ongoing problem at some clubs, that some non-gay dudes will prey on women at gay clubs because they'll let their guard down.
Had a couple instances of woman-on-woman groping though I think those were sort of...drunken not-realizing they'd overstepped a boundary? One of my oldest friends once, to quote a Republican presidential nominee, grabbed me by the pussy as a joke. I wasn't offended, mostly just uncomfortable, and if it had been a pattern I'd have said something.
"I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not."Encyclopedia Dramatica wrote:Reallifegirl: Is supposedly a girl in real life, but we all know that's false. Gets highest comment roughly 75% of the time, and has never had a single red-thumbed comment. Ever.