Journalist Anastasia Melnichenko launched a flash mob “I'm not afraid to say” in the Ukrainian segment of Facebook against violence against women. Under a special hashtag, users tell stories of rape and sexual harassment they have experienced, some men support them, others believe that the flash mob was sucked out of their fingers.
Journalist Anastasia Melnichenko wrote on July 5 facebook about sexual harassment by men that she experienced in her childhood and adolescence, emphasizing that in such situations the victim should not feel guilty.
I am 6-12 years old. We are visited by a relative who likes to put me on his lap. At some point, when I was already a teenager, he wants to kiss me on the lips, I get indignant and run away. They call me impolite.
I am 13 years old. I’m walking along Khreshchatyk, carrying home a package of groceries in each hand… Suddenly, the man walking towards me abruptly changes the trajectory of movement and grabs me between my legs with a running start, so hard that he lifts me up on his arm. I'm so shocked I don't know how to react. The man lets me go and calmly walks on.
I’m 21. I broke up with a psychopath, but I forgot my grandfather’s vyshyvanka… I go to his house, he twists me, forcibly undresses me and ties me to the bed, doesn’t rape me, “just” physically hurts me… He takes pictures of me naked and threatens to post pictures on the Internet . For a long time I am afraid to tell what he did to me, because I am afraid of the photo ... But I am afraid, because I am ashamed of my body.- Anastasia Melnichenko
Anastasia urged women under the hashtag #I'm not afraid to tell (I'm not afraid to say) to tell their stories so that men understand what is happening around.
Have men ever wondered what it's like to grow up in an atmosphere where you're treated like meat? You didn't do anything, but everyone thinks they have the right to fuck you and dispose of your body. I know it's unlikely they'll get it. I would not explain anything at all, but, unfortunately, they are half of humanity.
The hashtag got a huge response in the Ukrainian segment of Facebook, under the hashtag #I'm not afraid to tell women tell their stories about sexual violence.
I was 9 years old or so. I remember that day I wanted to dress so as to be beautiful. I wore a pink skirt and a long-sleeved blue blouse with a headband around my hair. I really liked myself...
He was about 50. Trousers, a brown turn-down collar, smoky sunglasses, an emerging bald head, a diplomat in the hands. Not some marginal or dumbass. representative and respectable man aged.
“Girl, where is the nearest school here? I am looking for young artists for filming in films.
"Don't you want to act in films?"
The film was called The Gardens of Babylon. So he said.
He needed to check something. And he took me to the nearest front door. Inside it was noisy, cool and empty. And then he started pawing me. And I stood and endured. Elders must be obeyed. Maybe he really needs to check something. He's making movies.- Svietlana Spector
I'm 18. I fight with my parents and run away from home, walk down the street and cry. Some man says to me: "Girl, what happened?" I tell him everything, and he says: "Come on, I'll make you coffee, you'll go away." I believe him and go, fool. At home, he rapes me and lets me go. I return to my room, I am silent and take a long shower. When a friend heard this story, all she said was what a great boyfriend you have, didn't leave you [after that].- Natalia Gaida
I'm 15. Winter evening, returning home from training. On the bus, two cops in uniform and with seeds press me against the railing, blocking me from others, and offer to “spend the evening culturally only with me. Why not? How do you not want it? And again, and again, all those half an hour that I had to go. I don’t remember how I ran away, but I remember that none of the passengers, of course, helped - everyone turned away, and everyone pretended that nothing was happening.- Anna Vovchenko
Men also began to react to the flash mob, many are outraged by how cruel society is towards women.
I read about a dozen stories under the hashtag #I'm not afraid to say. I want to get drin with nails and frantically fuck immoral freaks. Most striking stories with girls 6-10 years old. This is a fierce f **** c! And the common mantra in society “it’s your own fault, be silent”, which is mentioned in almost every post, is torn to pieces. A society of slaves and cowards… The right hashtag! Right idea!- Artem Sokolenko
Others speak out against the flash mob, consider it anti-male and bloated out of nothing, and emphasize that men also suffer from violence, including from women.
In response to the anti-man flash mob #I'm Not Afraid to Say, they offer to respond with a mirror image #babaDinamo. You know, everyone has different cases in life, but this does not mean that everyone around is idiots).- Vyacheslav Ponomarev
Dear women, I run the risk of breaking your “thrust”. The role of the victim, the weaker sex, gender inequality and all that ... I'm a man, I'm 37, and when I was 11, an elderly debauchee tried to seduce me. Lie down with me to sleep. I ran away when he started to feel me. Sex didn't happen. Child molestation is disgusting, forced sex is unworthy. And what is the floor for? Unless only women can suffer? A woman can be both a victim and a rapist. Or an accomplice.- Evgeny Mitsenko
After posts from men, Anastasia Melnichenko added a call to her first post to share similar stories with them. Facebook has already launched similar hashtags #I'm not afraid to Say and #IamNotAfraid so that stories about violence are published by Russian-speaking and English-speaking users.
Earlier, Medialeaks talked about a resonant story in the United States, when a judge sentenced a 20-year-old Stanford University student to only six months in prison for rape. His victim wrote, which was published by the largest media, the Americans demanded the resignation of the judge.
We also wrote about the winners of the Miss Russia contest, who are in interviews, including about appearance.
A few years ago they put a dude who, 30 years before, was with me, I don’t even know what exactly he did (I safely forgot the details, as often happens in such cases). A lot of people have guessed all these years, but no one did anything, just accidentally caught with a little boy. At 9, I ran into an exhibitionist in the next entrance, I was ashamed to tell my parents. When I was 11, a teenager ran up to me, put his hand under the skirt (beige, narrow bell to the knee, belt loops) and squeezed the crotch with his palm. At school, it was called “squeezed”, all the girls were afraid, they went to the toilet in groups, to the wardrobe too, but sometimes a girl could be “squeezed” at a break in front of everyone, and everyone just laughed - over her, of course. Somehow, my briefcase was taken away and thrown into the men's room, I did not dare to go in until the lesson started and everyone had dispersed. Got it from the teacher, of course. But I still remember exactly that case with a beige skirt - I loved her very much and seemed to myself a goddess in her. When the boy approached me, I felt a surge of happiness, a sudden sense of my own attractiveness and that I was worthy of attention and love. In a few steps, he accelerated, rushed towards me, and I seemed to die. I never wore this skirt again.
At 13, my height was 168, I sewed myself a narrow vest without a back from a staple in a flower and walked in it in the summer, until I realized that I would have to walk everywhere, because someone constantly touches my bare back in the bus, and you freeze and you don't know what to do because yelling is indecent, and in general, you are too well brought up to blame your elders. At 15, I came to get a job as a sales assistant in a store for the summer, the owner sat in front of me, hugged my knees and said that he really lacked female affection. I froze at 17 (it was in winter at -20), caught a bomb, he took me to the forest and offered to choose to stay alone in the forest at 9 pm or suck him off.
At 19, I was raped on a date in his car, I was a virgin. I resisted, and he raised his fist, I stopped. Then she stopped answering the phone, for a long time he did not understand why.
Six months later, the owner of the disco, who recently had a child, put his finger in me, when we talked, I yelled, they didn’t let me go to the disco anymore. Then a friend drove home, said that I had to go to a friend to pick up something, offered to go with him so that I would not get bored in the car. There was no one in the apartment, he offered to suck, since I don’t want to fuck. At 20 I drank New Year and terribly drunk (before that my experience was limited to a couple of servings of alcohol in my whole life, I couldn’t count), I don’t know how I ended up in an apartment with seven young guys. They poured vodka straight from the bottle into me, and when the next one left the room, I threw up under the rug and giggled, imagining what the owner's parents would say when they returned home. They threw me naked on the stairwell and threw things at me from above. None of the neighbors came out to the noise, and I don’t even remember the faces of these dudes. I left the city in the summer of that year, after a group of guys approached me and asked in an affirmative tone if it was true that I gave to everyone.
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In Moscow, a taxi driver drove into the yard and pulled out a member, offering to suck instead of paying, after that I always rode in the back seat. The other one delivered it behind the garages in the evening and climbed into the back seat with me, and I didn’t even talk to him. I leaned back and hit him in the forehead with my heel. Once I spent a weekend with friends in Zelenograd and went on a Sunday evening by bus to Moscow. The bus was empty, the driver stopped at the curb and went to me - we bargained for a long time, he reduced the requirements to “just hug”, I managed to calm down, think and said that I would find him by bus number and flight time. He left, cursing.
I accidentally met a fairly famous athlete, he had fun sex, he gave me money at parting and said that his friend would call me and give me money too, so I had to wait for the call.
When I had nowhere to live, a friend offered to talk to him, but the matter immediately got down to sex. He licked me, I didn’t feel anything and wanted everything to end as soon as possible, and he was interested in who spoiled me so much. I met one there in a nightclub, I went to him, then we fell asleep, hugging each other. When I woke up, he was not there, but there were two of his friends, to whom he left me. They threatened to beat me, I had to obey. Once I met one of them in the same club, he started screaming that the whore came again, she liked it. Another time, I fell asleep in the same way after random voluntary sex, and woke up from the fact that I was being fucked in the ass without lubrication and gum. Another time I woke up from being fucked (I spent the night with friends), and a man asked me why I don’t shave my pubis, it’s ugly and unfeminine.
I came to get a job as a secretary, the future boss drove me to the subway and unzipped my fly to seal the agreements. I preferred to work as a waitress, where no one cared about me. At one time I worked in a very famous company, my boss, also a famous person who offered me this job himself, took me to a dark corner during a tour of the office and began to iron. We had sex with him a few years before, but then I did not expect. I left, he did not insist, quit as soon as another job offer appeared. Prior to that, I worked in another office, where the man, with whom I was sitting in the same office, constantly weighed out compliments on my appearance. They were not greasy, but I constantly felt that I was being examined and evaluated. She tried to stop it, but he did not understand what it was. I had a hard time expressing myself.
Somehow, one very large citizen passionately wanted sex from me and gave me a black eye when I didn’t want to. It was early in the morning, I ran to the nearest round-the-clock "36 and 6" and hid behind a rack. The guards told the prowling suitor that I had left. I was terribly grateful to them, and now I understand that they did not even ask if I needed help, and also did not call the police. However, the police also molested me, one of them threatened me with terrible punishments for not having a registration, but everything could be arranged. I gave him all my money. A few years ago, I was raped by a new acquaintance on a date - he tied me with a belt and forced me to lick his anus. Good dude, screenwriter, marathon runner, brought me tulips. I fell into depression, I had panic attacks, my ex (I broke up with him shortly before this incident) refused to talk to me about this topic. I couldn't work, yelled at the psychiatrist and hit the psychotherapist.
When I told about the rape on Facebook, it turned out that I was mental, and the fact that I needed the help of specialists shows that I am crazy and cannot be trusted.
If only they knew I had two suicide attempts in my anamnesis!
In Tel Aviv, I hung out with Moscow friends and agreed to drink only on the condition that they would not let anyone take me away. Of course they scored, I left with a handsome young Afghan. We walked the streets with him until he put me in some gateway. He put his fingers in my mouth and began to stretch the corners of my mouth. We didn't even kiss. I got scared and ran away, he was chasing me, I did not have time to close the door to the entrance - I put my foot in the door. I yelled, I was able to lock the door only after he jerked his leg back in fright. In New York, on a date with a nice Boston financier, I went to a Nepalese restaurant, and then to a Balkan disco. When he brought me a glass of water from the bar instead of a closed bottle, my legs buckled and I barely managed to hail a taxi to leave. I lied that I felt bad, he wrote to me that I looked like I saw a ghost. Once, a snowball smeared with sperm was thrown into my window (I lived on the first floor). It was March, it was already warm, and I closed all the windows and suffocated until I moved - and immediately to the seventh floor. Dating sites keep sending me dick pictures and unsolicited sexual fantasies about me. Many, instead of greeting, report that they would lick me all over, and even better - that I would. Once on the street, someone who wanted to meet me kicked me in the ass when I politely refused. Another time a car stopped nearby and offered to go with him. To my request to argue, he said that the girl is not a prostitute, why not fuck. However, money for sex is sometimes offered and they are surprised that I am breaking down. There are a lot of such cases, and the above is not even half.
I've talked about this many times and #I'm Not Afraid to Say I just want to gather all these people in the main sept and blow the hell out of it. The problem is that there are no such large septa to gather almost the entire male population of the country there. Anyone who whistles after women is insulted; does not rebuke friends who speak derogatoryly about women; intrusive to such an extent that it is easier to give than to explain; walks by when women are molested; fucks sleeping wife or girlfriend; drunk a new acquaintance; invites a student friend to stay overnight on the couch if she has no money for a taxi, and then comes to her at night; he assures that this was not the case among his acquaintances of women, because they are cautious; asks, after learning about cases of violence, whether this happens to a woman too often; demands that the maniacs be caught from the doorways, and not his own friends and colleagues; gives a belt to a teenage daughter who got red lipstick, but does not talk about the case with a teenage son who squeezed a classmate in the locker room; everyone whose vocabulary includes “whores”, “nipples”, “giver”, “decent women”, “not all men are like that”, “reasonable caution”, “provocative actions” and “victim behavior”. Actually, that's why I write so much and chew - if at least some woman will be saved by the fact that some man will not behave like a scoundrel with her, then I'm doing everything right. Injuries cannot be undone, you can only learn to live with them. It is very long and extremely expensive, and a few years of life are simply erased by bastards who wanted to rub a penis against another person. But I sometimes wonder how empty they are inside if they do not see a person in front of them with his own desires and needs. We have injuries, yes, but at least we have something to hurt. And they just don't seem to have anything.
If you have become a victim of sexual violence and don’t know where to look for help, contact the Independent Charitable Center for Helping Sexual Assault Survivors “Sisters”. Save the link to the center's website on your page. Remember that most victims of sexual assault never tell anyone about it. This means that any of your girlfriends can be a victim who needs help.
For almost a week now, the flash mob “I'm not afraid to say” has been thundering in the Russian and Ukrainian segment of Facebook. Ukrainian public figure Anastasia Melnichenko published a post in which she described sexual harassment committed against her and urged other women to do the same.
Anastasia described the purpose of the event as follows:
« Have men ever wondered what it's like to grow up in an atmosphere where you're treated like meat? ... I know that this is unlikely to reach them. I would not explain anything at all, but, unfortunately, they are half of humanity.
It is important for us women to talk about our experiences. It's important to make it visible. Please speak.
»
And the ladies spoke. The Facebook feed turned out to be crammed with stories of all possible varieties, from trifles like proposals to meet, which are usually not paid attention at all and forgotten immediately after the end of the phrase, to absolutely terrible criminality. The vast majority of these stories were written on behalf of the victims and not anonymously.
The flash mob has become very popular. Many media wrote about him.
We can already draw some conclusions. And these results are disappointing. This strange event, like a drop of water, reflected the very sad intellectual state of our society.
Any normal person, starting some kind of event, first formulates the goal that he wants to achieve, and only after that, based on the desired goal, he thinks over the sequence of actions that must be taken to achieve this goal.
What is the purpose of the "I'm not afraid to say" event? But none. He has no purpose. “It is important for us to talk about our experience” is not the goal. This is emotion. The goal is "it is necessary to do so that".
So what did the initiator of the flash mob want to achieve? Nothing.
Although the activities associated with any kind of violence, there can be a number of very worthy goals. For example:
- in the future to reduce the number of cases of such violence to a minimum, ideally to zero,
- find the perpetrators of already committed crimes and punish them,
- try to minimize the harm from the already committed violence for the victims.
To achieve these goals, it would be reasonable to do the following:
- to introduce legislation that would facilitate the access of victims to justice and would make punishment as inevitable as possible (because for the prevention of crimes, the most important thing is not the cruelty of punishment, but its inevitability),
- create instructions for potential victims on what to do in order not to become victims,
- to carry out explanatory work among potential criminals that a certain set of actions is a crime, an offense, that it is cruel, that it is impossible to do this (influence their emotions, consciousness, fear, legal consciousness - anything, just to prevent them from committing crimes).
In the “I’m not afraid to say” flash mob stream, sometimes there are grains of common sense in the form of instructions for potential victims or their parents on how to avoid violence, in the form of calls for men to make sure that the girl definitely agrees, in the form of instructions on what to do if violence nevertheless happened. But these rare useful resources are drowning in a flood of mindless pornography.
Psychologists clutch at their heads: from the flow of descriptions of cases of violence in the tape, the victims are re-traumatized. Some especially impressionable and suggestible people suddenly remember or "remember" some small incident of a hundred years ago and begin to suffer from it - and to suffer quite realistically.
Very indicative in this sense is the post of one girl who described what happened to her in a pioneer camp. Several boys from her group began to ask her and her girlfriend if they were Jewish. The girls refused to answer. The boys began to show aggression towards them, the girls ran to their room and locked themselves there. After a little quarreling under the door in the spirit of “girls, well, what are you, we want to be friends,” the boys left. For many years, the author of the post believed that this was a story about anti-Semitism. And after reading “not afraid to tell”, I suddenly “realized” that this is a story about harassment.
In general, from meaningless activity, as is usually the case, there is almost no benefit, except harm.
Flash mob participants expectedly demonstrate the same level of goal-setting as its initiator.
Why do people, mostly women, talk about how they were victims of harassment or sexual crimes? Especially if the violence did happen? For what purpose does a person notify the whole world that he has become a victim? That he is a loser. That he was unlucky.
This fact of the biography should be told to the future husband. Not telling is just dishonest. He must know whom he takes into his family and makes the mother of his children. But the city and the world? Why???? This is just as ridiculous as for no reason to inform others about their illnesses, or phobias, or other biography facts in which there is no subject for pride.
In some cases this might be justified. If a person decided to consciously sacrifice his reputation for the sake of other people and set out a text like: “I did such and such actions, as a result, such and such a story happened to me. So that you do not become a victim like me, do not repeat my mistakes and do not do such and such actions. Well, or, at worst, “such and such a misfortune happened to me, I overcame its consequences for a long time and finally overcame it, here is my advice on how to overcome the consequences of this misfortune.”
But the overwhelming majority of flashmob participants do not draw any conclusions from their stories, do not create any instructions. They simply inform others that they are victims.
AT recent times it has generally become fashionable in the West: to talk about your failures, about your status as a victim. Without any benefit, without any conclusions. Just tell. It becomes fashionable to be proud of your weakness, your losses, your failures.
This is a wild, strange and extremely dangerous trend for civilization. Throughout the development of mankind, people were proud of what they managed to do. We were proud of our victories. Proud of being strong. Now it becomes fashionable to be proud of weakness, losses, defeats.
If we continue in the same spirit, the survival of European civilization will be a very big question.
Conclusion one: there is no need to follow the stupid European fashion to be proud of weakness. Broadcasting failures into the public space is bad for business. This creates a completely wrong feeling among others that “it won’t work out anyway.” From the failures, you need to draw conclusions and, if you already broadcast, then an assessment of the failures and suggestions on what needs to be done to improve the situation.
Conclusion two: citizens, when you start something, act in the following order:
- first understand what your goal is,
- then think over the sequence of actions that can lead to this goal,
- then implement this sequence.
A large-scale flash mob has been launched on Facebook with the hashtag #I'm Afraid to Say.
The fair sex, and sometimes even men, talk about their experiences of sexual violence. The idea of creating such an action belongs to the Ukrainian journalist Anastasia Melchenko. She herself told her story, and this became an example.
Here are some of those stories that have changed people's lives.
“Once upon a time, when I was young and beautiful, but, unfortunately, very stupid, I needed to get from Berlin to Magdeburg. I was greedy to pay money for the train and hitchhiked ... Nothing complicated - you walk along the highway and catch a ride. It is desirable that there be one driver in the car, and not a drunken company ... I did not know that it was forbidden to stop on the autobahn and walk along it too. So I was the only one so smart in all of Germany, and, oddly enough, the truck stopped, the driver was alone, an ordinary young proletarian.
Literally half an hour later, the young proletarian stopped the car on a special long-range patch for rest, drew the curtains and ordered me to get back. I was surprised. We just had such a good chat, he was talking about his father, the same long-range truck driver and proletarian, and I told him about perestroika ... My surprise, however, had no success, they showed me a hairy fist, yelled some terrible words and quickly thrown back, where the proletarians have a bunk.
I was lying on my back in a pile of some kind of blankets and looked indifferently at the young muscular proletarian swarming at me. I didn't feel hurt or embarrassed. It was no different from what those with whom I had had occasion to sleep voluntarily did before. I didn’t feel any difference, the same longing and contempt, I didn’t even feel any hostility towards this person, he was so similar to everyone else.
And when he drove me another thirty kilometers ahead and dropped me off God knows where, literally in an open field, I felt nothing but annoyance that they hadn’t taken me to the place and I had to get settled somehow again. There was a fork, and in order to get to the right highway, it was necessary to break through the blackberry hedge, and then cross the field, and only when the field was behind, and cars were already flying past, ”said one of the girls in the microblog.
Often the victims of violence are children, adolescents who are afraid to tell adults about their misfortune, and growing up with similar “life lessons”.
“I was 12. And I never got into an elevator with strangers. He was standing near the mailboxes, and when we drew level, he sharply pushed me into the elevator opening, simultaneously pulling up the school dress with one hand, and covering my mouth with the other. I broke free and ran down the corridor, he caught up, grabbed me by the hair, all the time saying “don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid” ... I didn’t scream. He was so terrified that there was no voice. And then some people came into the entrance, and he ran away.
Never talked about it to anyone. The most terrible thought was - what if the parents find out what will happen? But I still remember this face, ”recalls the already matured heroine of the story.
AT in social networks actively discussing the flash mob #I'm Not Afraid to Say, which prompted many women to come forward for the first time about the sexual harassment they experienced at various ages. All of them share their stories filled with helplessness and shame in order to support other girls who cannot seek help, withdrawing into themselves after a nightmare.
When we read articles about rapists and their victims, we involuntarily twitch with horror and disgust, and the compassionate thought “what a horror” flashes through our heads. After all, everyone knows very well that it is extremely difficult to get rid of physical and sexual violence, and it is even more difficult to admit it to other people. But have we thought about the fact that every woman, alas, at least once was a victim of sexual harassment, which humiliated her and made her feel "dirty" and "wrong"? Unfortunately, this is not a controversial issue, but a statement of the fact that girls, starting from a very young age, experience unhealthy attention from the opposite sex.
And this is not about innocent flirting, dating or natural sexual attraction. And about the fact that without the permission of a person they make him a sexual object and allow themselves to be touched and grossly harassed. Moreover, this happens due to the fact that a woman of any age, often also a minor, for many is just a moving object that provokes the thought of sex.
The fact that this is wrong should not only be said, but also shouted to the whole world. Therefore, a Ukrainian flash mob appeared on social networks with the hashtag #I'm Not Afraid to Tell, in which women write frank posts with confessions about what kind of sexual harassment they have experienced in their lives. So bold and important anti-violence movement started by Anastasia Melnichenko by telling a few stories from his life. She was the first to admit that the girl experiences dirty and unpleasant actions in her direction already at the age of 6. And at a conscious age, she can become the object of blackmail, which rests on shame.
I'm not afraid to say. And I don't feel guilty.
I am 6-12 years old. A relative is visiting us. He loves to put me on my knees. At some point, when I was already a teenager, he wants to kiss me on the lips. I get angry and run. They call me "ignoramus".
I am 13 years old. I walk along Khreshchatyk, carrying home a bag of groceries in each hand. I pass the segment from the KSCA to the Central Department Store. Soon my home. Suddenly, my uncle, who is walking towards me, abruptly changes the trajectory of movement and grabs me between my legs with acceleration. He grabs so hard he lifts me up on his arm. I'm so shocked I just don't know how to react. Uncle releases me and walks quietly on.
I'm 21. I broke up with a psychopath (real, clinical), but I forgot my grandfather's embroidered shirt at his house, which I called out to him. I go to his house. He twists me, undresses me by force and ties me to the bed. No, it doesn't rape. "Just" hurts physically. I feel powerless from the fact that I can not influence the situation in any way. He takes pictures of me naked and threatens to post pictures on the Internet.
For a long time I am afraid to talk about what he did to me, because I am afraid of photos on the Internet. And I'm afraid because I'm very shy of my body (it's funny to remember now).
The editorial office of WANT.ua publishes a few more stories shared by girls online. All of them did not do this anonymously, but out of respect, we will not write names and post photos of them.
#I'm Not AfraidTo say, although I'm actually afraid, but that's enough. I don't know what's next, but in the end I never know.
I am 8. I am returning home from school, I call the elevator, at the last moment a boy, perhaps 25 years old, enters the elevator. Under the pretext of some imaginary check that was supposed to take place at school, he takes me in an elevator to the top floor of the house where we lived, then drags me to the attic and rapes me there.
Physics teacher, 10th grade. Basement (he also taught labor lessons there). He called to retake the laboratory ... When I was about to leave, he began to make jokes, like “it’s a pity that I was born much earlier, otherwise we could ...”, and suddenly this - and we can now ... I fell into a stupor, she couldn't move from fear. He started talking about “I would help you with physics,” and reached for the fastener on my clothes. And here, in horror, I came out of a stupor, rushed out of the basement. She ran away, he did not catch up. I told about it to everyone I could - classmates, class teacher. But in the villages they do not like to raise a scandal. Then they just sympathized with me and said that I was not the first.
Neighbor showing off his dick and I am 4 years old and I climbed onto the window and, out of fear, drew the curtains to hide.
A man who ran into the entrance after me as a sophomore and grabbed between my legs, endless exhibitionist demonstrators in the entrances, a surgeon who was supposed to examine the injured coccyx, but apparently decided to play gynecologist and examined it vaginally, with hands without gloves, without a nurse, for about 15 minutes ... an old fool , who tried to rape me all night in a train compartment, another compartment neighbor who climbed onto my shelf at night and tried to climb into all places, a friend whom I had known for many years and with whom I completely trustingly stayed overnight after the party and who decided that this was an occasion friendly fuck, numerous attempts to impose virtual sex, etc.
I am 10. Village, oven. Grandma's neighbor came in on some business. He sat next to him, stroking his knee and above. I have a stupor, I don't know what to do.
I am 13. The same village. I spent the evening on the dam with guys I've known for years. They didn't do anything special. They sat and chatted. I'm sorry, I'm going home. I understand that some of the guys are following me.
The next picture, I'm in the nearest bushes, they are trying to pull off my underpants. I actively fight back. This is where it ended. They didn’t succeed, and then everything was brought into the game. Yes, and all relatively children were 13-16. And I pretended it was nothing to worry about.
I am 12 or 13, my parents and brother and I are at a recreation center either near Odessa or near Berdyansk. Wooden houses and showers in the corners of the base. Even before lunch after the beach, I went to the shower to wash off the sand and water. For some reason, Mom didn’t go, but what could happen in the shower room 200 meters from the house, in the middle of the day in a crowded base.
But there was no one in the shower. I undressed and began to wash in the booth farthest from the door. And a naked man walked into the women's shower room. He squeezed me in a corner and began to touch my chest, calling me to suck (even then I didn’t understand what he was talking about - a naive book girl). Lucky - after a couple of minutes, a gang of aunts collapsed. The asshole ran out quickly. Then my dad searched for him for a long time at the base and neighboring ones. So I didn't find it.
I thought for a long time whether to write or not. There are events in my life that no more than 5 people know about. Not because I hide it, it's just that this topic is not raised. And at what point is it worth entrusting a person with a story about experienced violence? And is it worth it?
When I was eight years old I was first exposed sexual abuse by a close relative. Sometimes I feel like I've worked it out. But now my hands are shaking and it's hard to breathe.
I don't know what is more traumatic for me, this man's actions, his constant sexual harassment for 18 years? Or depreciation and non-responsiveness to my complaints from the mother? It's probably all together.
I am aware that my problems with trust, security, perception of my own body are a consequence of my experience. It pains me to think that at this moment some girl can experience the same thing that I once did. Child abuse is unacceptable.
On my “account” of groping in the subway, drunk demobilization on the train and a broken nose to the offender (I even felt psychologically bad because I hit someone, can you imagine? But I had to, because there are a lot of different people who believed that nothing terrible was happening.)
The number of stories under the hashtag #I'm Not Afraid to Say is just appalling. This suggests that women experience sexual harassment all the time, but often they are unable to admit it, keeping everything a secret because of a sense of shame.
Are curvy, short skirts and tight pants to blame? Not at all, often girls become the object of unhealthy desire only because they were born representatives of the so-called "weaker sex". And many men in modern society brought up in such a way that they consider it necessary to use the body of a woman who happened to be next to him.
It is worth noting that the essence of the flash mob "I'm Not Afraid to Tell" is not at all to make rapists and lustful animals out of all men. On the contrary, many of them, having read the stories of girls they know in their feed, are ready to rethink their actions and learn to respect women.
