Hil, I don't have words for your history, but thank you for sharing it.

In much pettier news, argh, I started listening to The Good Place podcast last night and planned to continue listening all day at work but I switched purses over the weekend and now find myself without headphones. Alas.

Hil, may everyone who hurt you and hasn't repented fall down and break their kneecaps. You are a strong and brave woman, in spite of them.

Hil, that is absolutely terrible. What utterly shit human beings your classmates were, and how abjectly every single adult at your school failed all of you.

Sophia, I had a similar experience of high school. Boys my age were not interested in me except to make fun of me, but older men were all about letting me know how sexy I was. Lecherous stares, kissy noises (I still can't stand hearing smacky mouth noises), pats on the butt, lots of inappropriate comments. Starting about age 12. I was naive, sheltered, early to sprout "a womanly figure", and not at all interested in sex. Also I thought I was kinda funny-looking, I never thought of myself as pretty. The mens' behavior bewildered me and made me feel icky. Everyone including my mom regarded it all as compliments. I never felt complimented. My mom had my high school senior photo displayed on her desk, and one man told her that I was "the kind of girl that made him wish he wasn't married". She told me this thinking I'd like it. I always wished I had a skinny figure so men wouldn't pay attention to me.

I can think of 3 solid instances of sexual aggression. One was when I was 15 and a friends father. One of the things I know now is that I didn't even have words to describe what happened. Any sex ed I had was - mechanical at best. Recently , the school board in my town voted to take sex ed out of the 4-to 6th grade curriculum. I am so angry - children need words

You're right, beth. It's infuriating. They think they're protecting kids from "bad" things, but they're withholding the means to communicate it if something bad happens to a child.

I'm older than most of you and grew up in a town that was almost entirely Catholic. Our "sex education" consisted of, basically, "sex is bad - don't do it" (the info about menstruation was so euphemized that when it happened to me - first girl in my class! - I had no idea what was going on). I had one boy who had some kind of thing for me and would come up to me before class and start unbuttoning my blouse (I learned to always button everything up to the top, sometimes using a safety pin to make it harder to unbutton) and when I wore wrap around skirts, to try to untie them and pull them off. My mother never understood why I didn't want to wear the cute skirts.

Toddson, holy shit.

Some girls - the "tough" girls - would have fights after school, usually about a boy. The loser would usually have her outer clothes ripped off, leaving her to get through the boys waiting to see who lost so they could grope her ... or worse.