It's easy enough to say "I wouldn't put up with it" but often these guys are masters at doing things in such a way that it's not black and white but gray. I mean obviously if someone hits you, that's pretty black and white. But if someone says something suggestive, that's gray. Maybe you misunderstood or misheard. Maybe in the context of what went before, it doesn't seem totally 100% bad. Or maybe it is bad but because of what went on before, you feel like you can't scream about it because you will look like a hypocrite.
Believe me, I'm no stranger to the subversive way some of these characters work when they are trying to target their next chosen prey. I already went through it once, because I didn't have the life experience to pay attention to the feeling in my gut that told me, the very first time I met the guy I was involved with, that something wasn't right. I was 29 and stupid and I let him get to me. 10 years later, OTOH, I am 40, and sick and tired of the whole concept of "being in a relationship" still being held up by society like it is the end to all of a person's troubles and whoas, and we should all pity the person who is single. Bullshit. Want no part of it. You can have a good life without an SO. I have my apartment, my car, my cat, my contra dancing social circle, and a job that pays for it all. What the hell do I "need" a man for?
Maybe she felt like if she was physically violent with Jian, she'd be fired, not him. (And, she would be. You can't beat up people in the workplace because they said something you didn't like.)
No, but you
can beat the shit out of someone for touching you in ways that are not invited, or if you don't have "that kind" of a relationship. She claims he fondled her. Once you put your hands on someone else without their permission, it's game over and you deserve the ass-kicking you (unfortunately)
won't usually get if you are a guy trying that stunt with a woman. If I had daughters they would all have to take self-defense, and martial arts from a school that emphasizes the spiritual concepts as well as the physical skills. My s'path used to have a Karate school and he said some of his best students were women, and this was 20-30 years ago, when women "learning how to fight" wasn't something most parents would see their daughters doing.
Me, I'm asexual now (thanks to my s'path experience) so I would be finding some guy trying to initiate sexual contact with me to be especially offensive. I want to be left
alone in that regard.
Maybe she thought, if she said something right there, the dude would make fun of her and everyone would laugh at her for not being sophisticated and for taking things too seriously. (Which is also a distinct possibility. We've all be victim of the "Aw, honey, can't you take a joke?" comeback. It puts you on the defensive and the aggressor in the driver's seat.)
So, what are you saying? That a woman doesn't have the right to decide where her personal comfort zone is regarding how other people speak to her, and that she doesn't have the right to lay down the law about it in as firm and decisive (and loud if necessary) as manner as she feels she need to?
This is a mentality we need to get away from. I personally have no problem telling someone to back the fcuk off if they are being disrespectful to me. Of course, being 5'10 and 200-something pounds and built like a Mack Truck makes it very easy for me to get the message across that when I tell you to get the hell out of my air space, you do it without another word. I don't care
how it looks to other people.
Incidentally, it was a scenario very like that, that led me to tell the s'path to go to hell. We had tried to be platonic buddies after he announced that our intimate relationship must cease because he was now "with somebody" (he didn't know at the time that I knew all about his domestic situation and was pretty sure who the "new" gf was ). He started flirting with me over text one night and I told him to back off, because the insinuations he was making were innappropriate. Which led to him telling me I was imagining that he was trying to push for a tryst to happen that night. Which led me to tell him to feck off. For good. We have to change the nature of our relationship because you are with somebody now, fine, but
do not come to me afterwards and start flirting with me. I ain't
having it! Plus, I found out later on (because she said so) that he never mentioned a word about me to his new gf. Knowing him like I do, I think that is proof that he had something in mind, probably to lie to me and tell the relationship went kaput so he was free again.
TBH, it think things would have ended up imploding at some subsequent point if it hadn't then. I say we had a 9-year relationship... we were in No Contact for about half of that time, usually because I said or did something to piss him off, and he felt he had to "teach me a lesson." The one time different was the NC period before this one, because I also walked away that time, too. He told me later on that the things I had said that time "hurt" - why?? because they were true? That time I called him a chicken-shit coward who runs away when someone (me) points out faults about him that we BOTH know are true, and a charleton who doesn't even live by the very spiritual (Martial Arts) concepts he extolled in our conversations, because a man who "strives for perfection" doesn't cheat or lie to people while claiming to care about their welfare.
I do think the answer is to push back right away and be more willing to call people out on things that make you uncomfortable and to be more public about these things. I'm not saying we should stay in the dark ages where women whisper to each other about who to avoid being alone with in the elevator at conferences. What am saying is that while this might be the most effective way to deal with these men, it's not easy to do that and we need to recognize that. Otherwise it's like saying "why doesn't she just leave him?" to the battered wife and thinking you've provided some sort of support.
Oh, ITA with you on this point.
When I spoke out last year and told off the s'path and made it very clear that he didn't have me the slightest bit fooled, that I knew exactly what was going on, and I was ending it, I shocked myself for the second time in 2 months - the first time was in July when I contacted his girlfriend and informed her that her man wasn't as much "hers" as she thought he was. If you had told me 9 years before that point this was how things were going to end, I'd have said you were crazy. I was a most doting and adoring member of his entourage at one time, and I would have done
anything for him. Truth to tell, I'd known about the gf since 2007, and he claimed she had "issues with intimacy" and my attitude at the time was "whelp, her loss is my gain!" What I never knew until last July was that he had a second OW since 2009. And when I found out that his new girlfriend was the other OW, who knew damn well what kind of a man he was (because his first gf's daughter confronted her on FB about it, and then they
both confronted him at a local Applebee's - afterwhich he texted me at 10:30 that night wanting to come stay over, not realizing that I knew why - because he had been kicked out and had no place to stay
), I did reach out to her and sent her a very very long FB message telling her my own history with him, throwing in enough information so she would know that I was legit. That was how I found out that she knew nothing about me, and she told me (I guess she had asked him about me during our FB conversation) he said we had only spoken back in July. I told her we did a lot more than just "speak." In July and before that, for that matter.
The difference between this time and 2011 is that I don't feel the slightest bit bad about what I did or said. I'm past the point where offending or hurting someone else who is hurting me first in order to hold my own ground and protect myself and my self-worth doesn't fecking matter to me anymore. If there is a point or a reason why I went through what I went through, IMO that is it.
I wanted to get Jian away from her, stat. 
