THE WEINSTEIN SCANDAL STIRS UP ‘ME TOO’ ANGST

Renowned Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein has produced a lot more than movies for the big screen. Revelations of his sexual harassment and misconduct directed towards A-list actresses has regular women — all around the planet — talking about the sexually charged garbage we’ve all had to deal with over the years just to walk down the street, ride the bus, keep a job or go to school.

Actress Alyssa Milano asked women to use the hashtag #MeToo on Twitter if they can relate to the disgusting stories of sexual assault and coercion Weinstein has now made as famous as his Oscar-winning films.

So I asked my girlfriends on Facebook to either comment on my feed or via private messenger about what they have experienced. Most of the two dozen women who responded chose to write to me privately.

One girlfriend wrote: “The ’70s through to the ’90s were rife with sexual harassment. It was common to walk by guys masturbating in cars at the park, be chased, be the subject of lewd comments or groping ... I even had a university professor emeritus stick his old tongue down my throat,” she wrote.

Then, as is her way, she cracked a joke. “Did I report it? No. But I didn’t get an A either. P.S. Didn’t get an A because I wouldn’t allow it to go any further. Wasn’t making a disparaging remark about my smooching ability!”

I appreciated her joke. It made me laugh and helped stem my tears of rage and sadness that flowed as I read stories shared with me from high school, university and work friends crossing this vast country that included stories of rape — all of them unreported. It had me recall countless experiences of almost constant harassment from the age of 14 to my late 30s. Growing older and less attractive has its benefits! Or, is it because predators learn that older women just won’t take the abuse?

A Calgary friend wrote that she has not shared any of her Me Too stories, but she has many.

“Starting when I was about 12 years old and an older boy (probably around 16) tried to stick his hand down my pants. It carried on from there, with older men preying on me, some successfully, all through my teens. Then into university, while working as a waitress, I endured the ass and tit grabbing of my boss, the restaurant owner. I was not special; the same behaviour befell a co-worker who quit and reported this behaviour to employment authorities,” she said.

“They investigated and when I was interviewed, I did not acknowledge this had happened to her or to me. I still carry that shame of not having the courage to back up her claims. It was, sadly, something normalized and so, when he begged me to support him, and he promised it wouldn’t happen any more, I did.”

Many others of us have similar stories. We now feel chagrin for our silence, but also recognize that more than likely we would have paid the price for speaking up, and not the perpetrator.

It was so commonplace “back then,” we all say. Now we learn with dismay that it still is. Most men, of course, are respectful of women, but it only takes a small percentage to ensure that the majority of women have suffered unwanted harassment over millennia.

The 40-year-old wife of one of my nephews in Ontario said she was “talking to the kids’ school librarian about this and we were both remembering being terrified walking home from night classes in university. We both said we couldn’t think of any female who didn’t have a harassment story from university or work.”

While riding public transit in my home town of Vancouver, sexual propositioning, groping and the like was constant. I developed sound survival strategies. One of the best was, if I saw turbaned Sikh men on the bus, I always made a point of sitting near them. They never tried to chat me up, were invariably respectful and I could read my book in peace. Plus, I knew if there was trouble, they were packing a kirpan.

I have been attacked on a night train by a conductor in France and groped by uniformed Parisienne police. I’ve had strange men in Vancouver creep up behind me or jump out into my path to masturbate in front of me. A taxi driver tried to drive me into a deserted area while he spoke another language into his car radio while glaring at me in his rear-view mirror.

The door was power-locked. I had to jump out of the window when the car was forced to slow down, owing to construction debris. I have had severe, hateful harassment at work to milder more playful sexual jousting — all of it uncomfortable when it came from people in positions of power.

At the Toronto Star, while working as a student reporter in the late 1980s — essentially competing for a job — I was told by two separate editors that they could guarantee me a job if I had sex with them. I decided to give the Toronto Sun a go instead — which was a far healthier work environ- ment for women — something many readers might find ironic as a result of the Sunshine girl feature in the paper.

One newsroom boss used to draw attention to the size of my breasts and said I could make a better living exposing them than I ever could exposing corruption in journalism. In my 30s by then, I would strike back with an aggressive joke, on how no one would ever pay to see his bony ass, and that would tend to shut him up for a while.

In retrospect, I realize I should have done more. I could handle myself, but what about the younger, more shy women whom I worked with?

Another friend who lived near a large park in Burnaby, B.C., said it was common to be followed by masturbating men in cars.

“I now tell all kids: If a man drives by you and smiles, just take note. If you see him a second time, go to ground, find help. As for sexual harassment in the ’70s-’90s, it was so rife, it didn’t really even register as an ‘issue,’” she wrote.

“As a waitress, I had one guy put his hand between my legs and grab, a.k.a. ‘The Donald,’” she said referring to President Donald Trump’s infamous 2005 recording admitting how he would grab women’s “p-ssies” because he could get away with anything since he was famous.

My friend had her own way of dealing with that crude customer: “I grabbed the long hair at the back of his neck and pulled as hard as I could. As he was whining, ‘No! No! No!’, I yanked and said, ‘Don’t’ ( yank). ‘Do’ ( yank). ‘That’ ( yank). ‘Again’ ( yank). I threw his drink on him. Then the bouncers tossed him out the (closed) door.”

Oh how I’d love to see that happen to Donald Trump — with his strange hair flapping — or to Weinstein, or to each and every one of those harassers from my past. I know quite of few of you reading this are saying, “yes, me, too.”

We couldn’t think of any female who didn’t have a harassment story from university or work.