Pretty much my experience, too, nightowl. My naivety as a teenager and young woman could have got me in trouble, like so many of my peers. I trusted everyone to be like the men in my immediate circle, and knew nothing about predatory behaviour and misogyny until I was well into my twenties.
When I was 24, a girl at work told me she wasn't well, and needed to get home. I went with her on the bus, and by that time she was bleeding because she was in the middle of an abortion. She didn't dare go to hospital or her GP, and said she'd been told what would happen when her 'boyfriend' a student doctor, gave her tablets to end the pregnancy. This boyfriend was already seeing someone else by then. I couldn't believe that this sort of thing would happen, and on reflection, I could have been a lot more supportive to her.
Over the years, I have known many more 'nice' men than not, and the issue of how men see women has always intrigued me, because so many men have disclosed how they have pushed the boundaries in their naivety as younger men, and regretted it as they matured. Training professionals about work with sexual predators was particularly revealing, as on every course without exception we would listen to disclosures about regretted inappropriate sexual behaviour, despite starting with ground rules clarifying that some things cannot be kept confidential, but we would discuss how men can push boundares and they would offer personal anecdotes that they wanted to process. (A couple were sufficient to warrant formal action).
Men should not have to carry the blame for a few who don't respect women, but nor should they passively accept that their friends are 'Lotharios' who are always trying it on. I can imagine the likes of Stuart Hall charmingly inviting a woman to his room, and if she accepted, what did she expect? And if that had happened to me at the age of 18, I would have been daft enough and naive enough to accept!
Can't imagine why It hasn't had more publicity!
