【An Affair – Young Stepmother (2019)】

Me too. The An Affair – Young Stepmother (2019)sound of these two words is reverberating around the world today as women everywhere use them to share their experiences of harassment and assault.

SEE ALSO: It's not just Harvey Weinstein's Hollywood: Women in nearly every industry have experienced sexual abuse

In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, Hollywood actor Alyssa Milano posted a call to arms asking women who've been sexually assaulted or harassed to write "me too" as a status to "give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem."

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Women from all walks of life are bravely disclosing powerful accounts of abuse they've experienced at a variety of points in life. That's because while the story is about Harvey Weinstein's casting couch, Hollywood harassment, and workplace harassment, it's also about the sexual harassment that begins long before women have even entered the world of work. For some, it begins before they've graduated from high school or university and sometimes well before they've even reached puberty.

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I wish this wasn't the case, but, me too. For more than a decade before I entered the world of work, I had been dealing with various iterations of sexual harassment from both teenage boys and adult men. I was 11 years old the first time I was sexually harassed. A male teacher asked me to stay behind after a lesson so he could "talk to me". I stayed behind, assuming my teacher wanted to discuss schoolwork. He did not.

He told my mum that "it's easy for little girls to misunderstand grownup behaviour."

"Come here," my teacher said to me, before walking towards me and pressing his body up against my own. His arms were wrapped tightly around me. I immediately wanted to extricate myself from his grasp, but when I tried to break free he pulled me even closer. At the time, I didn't have the language to describe what had happened to me, but I knew that I had been touched inappropriately by someone in a position of power. I kept quiet to begin with. But it continued and I eventually told my mum. She reported it to a senior teacher at the school—a man. He told my mum that "it's easy for little girls to misunderstand grownup behaviour."

This experience was not an isolated incident, it was the first of countless instances of inappropriate touching, verbal harassment, and unsolicited sexual behaviour that marked my teenage years, which continued into adulthood. After the first attempt to report it was unsuccessful, I kept all future incidents to myself.

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Sadly, my story is not unique. I spoke to other women who experienced sexual harassment long before they entered the workforce. Andrea, who prefers to use only her first name, said her earliest experience of sexual harassment happened when she was about 12 or 13 years old. "I developed very early, and boys in school would always blatantly stare at my breasts and go: 'Why do you have such big boobs? Do you stuff your bra? One time, a boy flicked my boob to see if it was real."

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When she reported the harassment to a teacher, the boys were "mildly told" to stop. But, when Andrea continued to raise the issue, she was dismissed. "When I kept complaining she would basically give me the "those boys are just teasing you because they like you" excuse or "boys are going to be boys,"" says Andrea.

"When I kept complaining she would basically give me the "those boys are just teasing you because they like you" excuse."

This kind of sexual harassment is still going on in schools across the UK. Last year, a report by youth organisation Fixers found that incidents of sexual violence and harassment in schools were being "brushed off" by teachers. And, a spokesperson for the UK's leading children's charity the NSPCC told Mashablethat the number of young people reporting sexual harassment and "bullying of a sexual nature" increased by 19 percent in 2015/2016.

"Through Childline, young people are telling us they have been inappropriately touched by other children at their school or their fellow pupils have used sexually explicit language towards them," the NSPCC spokesperson said."It is vital that children and young people recognise what sexual harassment is and feel confident they will be fully supported when they speak up."

Jade (who prefers to use only her first name) said that she began experiencing harassment on her way home from school when she was 13 years old."It was pretty common to be followed home and asked out by an older man. Sometimes they'd walk beside me, sometimes drive alongside me in a car," she said. "We'd be in our school uniforms obviously, so the men knew we were under 16." Jade said she "hated it" but she never told anyone because she "thought it was normal" and many of her friends experienced the same thing.

School isn't the only environment in which sexual harassment takes place for young people. Cristina, who prefers to go by her first name, says that "almost every woman in our generation has been touched up in a club."

When she was at university, a man on the same course as her accosted her on a night out. "He was touching me really inappropriately, even when I asked not to be," says Cristina. "He kept messaging me and following me after lectures and seminars so I asked to move groups and explained why," she continued. But, when she reported the harassment to her university, they took no action and they did not remove the student from her group. "I don't know if they approached him," says Cristina.

The recent outpouring on social media is so striking and a reminder that sexual harassment does not just magically enter women's lives when they enter the world of work. For these women, more than a decade has passed by since sexual harassment entered their lives, without ever leaving.

The #MeToo tweets—and testimonies—only give a glimpse at the scale of the sexual harassment women and girls experience throughout their lives. As a society, we need to acknowledge the extent of sexual harassment in women's daily lives both inside and out of the workplace. And, most importantly, we need to believe and support women and girls who come forward with allegations.

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