"I know it can be and is traumatic for some people to be groped or, of course, to have more serious stuff happen to them. The thing is, sometimes, maybe that's because they're told they should be traumatized more than their actually being traumatized."

I imagine that you're going to take some serious crap for the above from some. But, yeah, the best way of showing up Uncle Perv is to live an unaffected life and to laugh like hell, after consuming massive (hosted bar) booze at his wake.

You're right. It happened to me too when l was 10, and again at 17. I don't dwell on it. My own sexuality is bigger than those other people's mistakes. I'd say " screw ' em," but that's the wrong choice of words. Never give up your self-possession is the best advice I could offer.

Seemingly off topic, but actually dead on: I just ran across an article today pointing out that the classic fairy tales are, step-by-step, being rewritten by modern helicopter parents.

No longer is Red Riding Hood's grandmother eaten by a wolf (she hides in a closet); no longer does the brave hunter kill the wolf (he just chases it off).

It's all to violent and negative for our precious little snowflakes. Nothing bad is allowed to happen, not even in stories, for fear it might traumatize them. No wonder they are so unprepared for real life.

I think as a woman you should expect to be groped and take precautions to not put yourself in situations where it will happen. No I'm not saying it's ok or it's something men do and we should brush it off as boys will be boys.

But you have to remember men are physically stronger than you with different drives and not all of them are going to play nice. People like to steal things. And your body has bits they want to steal for brief moments of time. You wouldn't be angry if I suggested you guard your keys at a nightclub for example.

Approaching this as something with a high likelihood of happening at some point in your life is in your best interest. The current trend of demonizing and chastising all men is not--their presence and threat also protects you from these assholes. You can't "talk" these men into wanting to respect you--they'll just work around it.

I'm talking about groping here. Not rape. When I got groped as an adult I got super fucking boiling rage filled angry. The trauma wasn't there. The anger was--because I approached it like someone trying to swipe my keys.

Ppen, always appreciate your realism.

PS Martin Seligman, in "Learned Optimism," I think, talks about some guy who ran a newsstand who apparently molested him when he was a kid. There was no court case, no big He felt that his parents not treating it as if it were traumatic led to it not being traumatic. So I at least have rather famous company.

Over the weekend I read the book Blind to Betrayal by Jennifer Freyd and Pamela Birrell. The book is mostly about people who ignore the caution signals that you and Andrew Blake learned to listen to, and the cognitive reasons why they ignore those signals. In their theory, the trauma of early betrayal does tend to lead to people forgetting the minuscule details of traumatic events that happened to them, and this is often a healthy part of the healing process -- if the trauma is resolved and the person doesn't feel the need to dwell on it, that's actually a good thing, particularly if they get closure in the way that you did, by resolving to continue to assert your boundaries the way you did in the moment. Where it becomes a problem is when people allow this tendency to blind them to signs of new abuse headed their way, and the authors delve pretty deeply into some of the reasons why this happens. I think it's worth a read, and I'd be curious to get your take on it; I didn't agree with all their conclusions, but that's a much longer conversation than a comment can really contain.

A lot of it comes down to resiliance though. People who have had stable childhoods, no mental health issues, etc. can react to a groping episode with a "meh." Others may not be as sanguine. And then smart predators go for unstable people because they know their inability to read situations and react rationally.

When I got groped as an adult I got super fucking boiling rage filled angry.

Yep. The only time anything has happened to me was when I was in high school and a fellow student (a stranger) slapped my ass as I walked by. I flipped him off. I wasn't traumatized, but dammed angry that some guy thought he had the right to lay hands on me just because he liked what he saw.

PEOPLE!

Do you realize how insensitive you are being to the precious CHILDREN we are raising?

OMG!

Being adult about a situation has a NEW definition now and we MUST move in that direction!

(Not talking about child rape and being sarcastic.)

Sex is more important than murder in the United States. You can be pardoned for killing someone...

And there is notable public schizophrenia about photographs. If Sinead O'Connor tears the Pope's picture in two, it isn't a felony. Neither is possession of a picture of Charles Manson indication that felony murder is your profession.

But you can't have a picture of a girl that isn't yours, and there are some pictures you've taken at birthday parties of your own family that others think should put you in jail.

Here's a giggle test. Think "pole dancer". Think "eight years old". Did you just go, "Ugh."?

Exploited sex worker or gymnast?

As we've seen through the coverage of numerous Hollywood stories, celebrities rise or fall seemingly independent of the advantages and opportunities they encounter. The Urge To Do Something for us non-Hollywood folk ignores that with a will.

My dad was reputed to be the best shot in Yellowstone County, with an impressive gun collection. Most males didn't even look at me, much less grope me.

It's an interesting problem that's approaching...

Like the storm announced with a breeze.

"No wonder they are so unprepared for real life." a_random_guy

We say that with the thought that it's sad, because we feel that WE are prepared, and also that it only makes sense to BE prepared.

But that's not what's coming.

In ways both implicit and explicit, our society is manufacturing dependents.

At the higher society level, it's implicit, in that we have to "HELP" people who feel broken... like the Judge above who says: "These victims are never, ever, ever going to recover."
While the help is a good thing, the implicit idea is that EVERYONE WILL FEEL BROKEN. And they will most certainly tell you that if you DON'T feel broken, it is definitely a sign that you are, but are in denial.

At the individual level, people will actually take steps to make you feel inferior [feel broken]... so that they can control you. On an interpersonal level it's the pernicious helicopter parent, it's the partner who claims you can't cook for yourself, it's the person who refuses to learn how to change a tire.

My ex manipulates my kids in this way. She has to control everything, even though one is an adult, and the other is a late teen...

The adult one now lives with me, and this is a hard thing to undo. He does have some issues incl. aspergers, but his laziness has always been fed.
"He wrote an incredible story, I am so glad that you transcribed for him." 6th grade teacher.

Um, yeah, no, he wrote that himself.

"what? you made him write it himself?" both teacher and mom.

I didn't make him... I simply started talking about it with him, and when he was discussing, I told him he should write it down while we were talking. I suggested a few edits... that he made, read it through and was very pleased.

"don't talk to [our teen daughter] about wars and politics, it makes her upset." ex.

This person is growing into a responsible adult, who will vote in a couple years... how will she learn all that?

Well obviously from me.

This goes on and on, sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, depending on the person.

But always to make sure that people don't feel secure within themselves.

"everyone knows you can't cook, and your house is a sty."

Yeah, cuz before I met you, I was starving to death, and living in a mudhole.

Ultimately this is what those alpha game guys supposedly use... negging.

"you can't pick up that TV, you're not strong enough."

Really? How do you think it got here?

The sad thing is, there is only so much you can do to teach anyone, even your kids. but at the least you can have an expectation that they will try FIRST, and then ask for help if needed.

But. From early in school now, everything is group work, even if they're the only person in the group working [peeves both my kids, me too when I was in H.S.] and the upshot of that kind of thinking is: not only should you NOT do it by yourself, but you can't.
And then comes the Harrison Bergeron enforcement to make sure you DON'T try.
Because it would hurt someone's feelings, and importantly, make the teacher/person in power look bad.

I know a lot of people who are independent now, look in askance at me for suggesting we are heading this way by design... it seems kinda conspiracy theorist with a tinfoil hat.

or "Pathological Altruism" in motion or something.

I can't call it by design Swiss. But that is mostly semantics or definitional. Since what you describe is definitely the direction things are going. I just don't believe the people pushing that way are organized enough to actually have a plan or a design.

Similarly I'm not paranoid. Almost no one is out to get me (there are a few but everyone has someone who hates them). My fear is those people not out to get me by intent will do so anyways. Either by accident or incompetence. And incompetent friends or altruists are the worst. They mean the best but the end results are a pile of shit.

When I was about six years old an elderly candy store owner lured me behind the candy counter and put his hand down the fron of my pants. I ran to my mother to tell her and she laughed at me. Any resultant sexual problems? No. Have I gotten over what the pervert did? Yes. Am I angry at my mother? Not really. I just think that she was a very ignorant woman and maybe a little nuts.

Reminds me of the Rind study.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rind_et_al._controversy

"And then comes the Harrison Bergeron enforcement to make sure you DON'T try."

Friend's sister teaches in Georgia. The elementary school spelling tests are multiple choice.
When asked by teacher to get her son to tie his shoes, the reply was, "That yo job." As is feeding him breakfast and lunch - dinner is being debated. Can't let the kid learn anything at home...

When I was 14 I had an unwanted sexual experience and, like others here have said, did not become traumatized. I got angry about it and then went over in my head ways to be more proactive at avoiding such situations so it wouldn't happen again. It never crossed my mind that I should feel victimized and hold onto it forever so that it interferes with my life. I've been told by others now as an adult that I should have had counseling to deal with it. There is the assumption that one cannot process and heal on their own and it must be denial that makes one think they can or have. I do believe it's more a matter of resilience and self preservation and those people that were raised to take responsibility for themselves instead of being sheltered and coddled constantly are better able to do so.

Working in groups was a big thing when I was in school (at least public school) in the early-mid '90's. The crappy part was that I was always put in a group with remedial students which meant I either had to do all the work and they got a free ride or let them do the work too and fuck over my grades because they were not capable of it. My mom spent so much time down at the school meeting with the teachers and principal over it every time. Or the teacher telling me to help the other kids in class with their homework and tutor them because I knew all the material already. I got suspended for 3 weeks in 8th grade because I told the teacher I was not on the payroll and it was her job, not mine, to teach her own students. Apparently my refusal demonstrated poor social skills and lack of concern for the greater good and they recommended I see the school psychologist. It's obviously a horrible thing for a 13-year-old to want to be responsible for themselves and their own work and expect the same of others.

We had a perv teacher in high school — married to a woman, with kids, well-respected in his field, but there wasn't a boy in the whole school that didn't know not to be left alone with Mr. Perv.

If he had somehow felt me up and I was still hung up on it decades later, I'd have a problem.

I may have missed it somewhere, but let's not forget that just because WE weren't traumatized by a single event doesn't mean that the same person might do a lot worse to a future victim and we have a real obligation to prevent that by reporting what happened. In the same vein, when your housecleaner or health care worker steals valuables from your house that you don't miss until after their employment is finished, don't be "charitable" and let it go; what if that person steals someone's identity next or even worse?

Amy Alkon: "He felt that his parents not treating it as if it were traumatic led to it not being traumatic."

"I know it can be and is traumatic for some people to be groped or, of course, to have more serious stuff happen to them. The thing is, sometimes, maybe that's because they're told they should be traumatized more than their actually being traumatized."

Yeah, I often think children are traumatized more by the reaction of the adults in charge of them than by the supposedly traumatic event itself.

BunnyGirl: "There is the assumption that one cannot process and heal on their own and it must be denial that makes one think they can or have."

An assumption promoted aggressively by counselors, therapists, psychologists, case managers and others trying to generate an income in a market where the demand for their services is way, way smaller than the supply.

"I do believe it's more a matter of resilience and self preservation and those people that were raised to take responsibility for themselves instead of being sheltered and coddled constantly are better able to do so. "

This is my #1 grip with feminism. Women were once taught that they could not survive without a husband guiding their daily lives and keeping them out of trouble. Feminism claims to have liberated women from that. It did no such thing. All it did was replace "husband" with "government". And Western women, by and large, fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Radwaste said:
Sex is more important than murder in the United States.
_______________________________

And some things are even more "important," according to some parents.

From Julie Bindel in 2004:

http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2004/feb/07/weekend7.weekend

"...Yesterday, I was on a bus in rush hour on my way to earn enough money to pay tax to keep other people's children in education and child benefit. Suddenly, an elderly woman sitting in a priority seat was knocked flying when a smug mum pushed her way on with one of those three-wheel monster pushchairs, made for walking over rough terrain but used in Crouch End for nipping out for a latte. No one complained except me, and then I was looked at as if I had picked up the baby and eaten it.

"What upsets me is the fact that people who choose to bring yet another child into the world get so much more validation, support and access to public resources than those who perform the thankless task of caring for ill, old or disabled dependants. It's a wonder parents don't insist on pushchair lanes so they don't have to be bothered with childless pests on the pavements. In my local Starbucks, I regularly get stuck in a queue waiting until little Ollie decides he wants a double woca choca latte frappe, and do the muffins contain gluten? Last Sunday, a customer lit up near the brood. He'd have got less of a reaction if he'd waved his willy around..."

Well, I went to Lenore's blog and found a few comments that gave pretty much the same advice I did (by Kat and Anne). Haven't read any farther just yet, but another thing to remember is that male molesters today, unlike ones from 40 or so years ago, know perfectly well that any little unseemly thing they do, especially to a non-relative, will likely get reported to the authorities. Therefore, if such a man is reckless and compulsive enough to do such things anyway, he's not likely to stop doing them in general just because a kid's dad tells him to, while the barber may well have been different - but we'll never know.