The Mountain News – WA

By Gayle Tice

Update, October 23, 2016

The conversation around Trump’s comments keeps evolving.  It includes encouraging statements about male “locker room talk.”  From men reflecting on the locker room talk of their youth and how it never crossed into bragging about sexual assault, to the high school and professional male athletes in this story who have taken a visual stand for respecting women inside the locker room, I am seeing exactly what I hoped to see.  Men are standing up to men and fighting the ‘boys will be boys’ excuse.

http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2016/10/18/portland-high-school-wild-feminist-locker-room-shirts-pkg.katu

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Editor’s Note: A recent article in the New York Times described how one woman’s effort to gather brief stories of how women have been sexually assaulted has launched a tsunami of responses, totaling over 27 million. Hearing that, Gayle Tice, a frequent contributor to the Mountain News-WA, seized this opportunity to share her experiences and the stories she has heard from the women in her life.

I attended a Women’s Leadership Institute conference recently. On a walk back to our dorm rooms with a couple of the other women, I brought up the question of uncomfortable encounters with men. I wasn’t prepared for their responses. Sure, I’ve used my now-fiancé, then-boyfriend, to shield myself from a couple of men that got too close with their opinions or invitations. But I’ve never had a cab driver lock the doors and badger me for my number to the point where I feared for my life—and I’ve never been followed for blocks by some man badgering me for a date, refusing to take no for an answer. I’ve never had to run through my options for a safe exit; I’ve never had to think about how I might fight back. Continue reading →