Do you remember in 2017 when a DJ doing a meet and greet with Taylor Swift put his hand on her ass under her skirt? She did tell people an hour or so later and really stood up for herself in pressing charges, but in the moment, she did nothing. She was too shocked, and too trained as a woman not to make a scene.
So yes, we should encourage women to calmly remind men to keep their hands to themselves but still for many of them, that may still lead to retaliation as it did with many of Les Moonves' victims.
"In the article, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ronan Farrow, four women described forcible touching or kissing during business meetings, and two women said Moonves, 68, physically intimidated them or threatened to derail their careers.
All believe their careers suffered as a result of rejecting his advances."
The fact that it never has for you is not always the case, by a long shot. And it's a bit ironic that you are accusing me of retrograpde ideas since you are the one who is upholding outdated notions of what trauma consists of. You might as well be saying rape is only perpetrated by strangers in dark alleys.
First of all, not everyone is going to find the same things traumatic, and for many, many people, including a lot of women, the natural response to someone who is bigger, stronger, and more socially powerful than you violating your body autonomy is to shut down. It doesn't have to be a violent assualt for that to happen. This is neuroscience.
"People can have this detection freeze response at different times—some when they first sense something’s wrong, before clear aggression, and others not until the fourth or fifth time their resistance is ignored or overpowered. It can happen when an arm is grabbed, a shirt forcibly unbuttoned, or a rapist flashes a look that says, “You can’t stop me.” Or when someone getting a massage is inappropriately touched the first or second (definitely-no-accident) time."
You are basing your theory on how you think it should be, and on your own personal experiences, rather than on how it actually is for many people, which is confirmed by what science says. And you are shaming them for not reacting to trauma in the ways that you think they should, which is pretty unkind.
Also, what I'm capable of by way of standing up for myself at 56 is vastly different than what it was even 5 years ago, much less when I was in my 20s or 30s. So yes, let's keep socializing women that they don't have to accept this behaviior, let's keep encouraging them to become self-confident enough to speak up, let's keep chipping away at the patriarchal dominance hierarchy, because that is a huge factor in all of this. People with more social power have been taught that they have the right to abuse those with less, and that those with less will just have to accept it stoicly. This applies to all areas of society and all genders, from racism, to harassment, to garden variety bullying and we've all been subtly indoctrinated in this. Whether we break free of it or not is in part due to understanding that something else is possible, which you are doing, but I think you could do it in a much more supportive and positive way.
I'd love to see you keep encouraging women without shaming them for not being where you or I are. I'd love to see you gving more support for how to cultivate the inner resources to do that, rather than doing what is essentially a play out of the patriarchy/social Darwinism book by painting them as inferior for not being strong enough (like you).
I have an acquaintance who was raped at gun point. Afterwards, many of her friends told her how that would never happen to them by way of defense mechanism. This is a really human impulse, but it's also really unkind. I'm glad that you've never suffered any major repurcussions for standing up for yourself, but millions of women have. That doesn't mean they shouldn't stand up for themselves more than they may have in the past, but I'm a pragmatist at heart. We have to deal with where we are now, not where we wish we were, or where we ought to be, or what have you.
By the way, I don't watch the news for the reasons you have named, but organizations like the World Health Organization as well as the CDC have named violence against women, including sexual violence, an epidemic that has profound impact on women's health and wellbeing. They aren't trying to sell ad space. They are talking about a real problem and trying to find ways to actually impact that beyond telling women, "Don't be such a victim."
