Reply to How common is it to be 'groped' by a stranger?

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[quote=Anonymous]Countless times. Subway, buses, on city streets, definitely in bars and clubs, even at work on more than one occasion. Mostly men but I've even been grabbed by a few women. Lots of pervy, inappropriate people in the world.

I've always known it was illegal and always disliked it, but I've never reported it to the cops. Most of the time the most I'd do is go tell my friends so I could complain. I did once confront a coworker about it and let them know what they'd done was upsetting and harmful. They didn't respond well, so I escalated it to their boss (who was not my boss). They got a slap on the wrist and then people treated me like a hypersensitive complainer.

Groping is something people have a really easy time writing off after the fact because when you just hear about it later, and the person who was groped seems physically fine, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Oh, someone grabbed your butt, oh well. But that's not how it feels in the moment. Even when it's "friendly" it feels kind of violent. It makes me feel like I'm not in control of my own body, in which case, am I in control of anything at all.

So I've learned you need to be proactive in the moment. You have to speak up immediately -- hey, don't do that. Why are you touching me? That's not okay, I don't like it. That kind of thing. Shame the people as they are doing it. This is possible now because people are more sensitive to sexual assault. I do think it's hard to ask young women to do this though because young women are also taught to be accommodating and polite and it's really hard to even recognize when something bad is happening to you at that age, you are so conditioned to place the comfort of others before your own. That's a big reason I so rarely said something back when it was a more frequent occurrence. I'd freeze up and not realize how much it bothered me until later when I was safely away from the groper.[/quote]

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