Why did this rock star harass me?

I don’t believe Tart said you were never bullied. She said that this particular situation isn’t an example of bullying or assault. Performers (some) do make lewd gestures while on stage, it’s part of their performance. It’s very gross but is not an example of bullying or assault. You even wonder if police would get involved. They wouldn’t.

I just said that it seemed to me like people were trying to tell me to think about things like they do. If I was wring about that, I apologize.

OK, I misunderstood what you said. Sorry.

That’s to bad. I personally felt like I was harassed. What he did scared me & it definitely wasn’t funny to ME.

I felt attacked & that he took out some of his issues out on me. I didn’t want to be a part of the show.

Well it’s in the past. Learn the lesson and move on. I don’t think it’s helpful for you to keep reliving it

People offer you different perspectives because you ask. You are free to consider our views or ignore. No one can make you think anything but you could consider other opinions, especially if you ask for them

You start threads asking Why? We all gave you reasons we thought were why. I thought that’s what you wanted to understand. It seemed like you were seeing situations very differently than the rest of us do.

It’s all conjecture anyway, because we don’t know what was in his mind as to why he did whatever he did and what it meant. By the details you gave, we were able to connect the dots to draw a conclusion. I thought this may be helpful to you, as you seem to be struggling with communication, and asking for support for that.

I’d have felt embarrassed and humiliated, too. It’s just that “assaulted” means something more severe, so we got into discussion about our thoughts on you calling it that.

Yes, I saw this situation differently. I did not see it as being a normal part of the show or comical at all.

I understand that other people didn’t take what happened to me as seriously. They weren’t there though. It was scary. He was intimidating.

I got the feeling that he was trying to upset or provoke me for whatever reason. I naturally assumed that he was showing sexual interest in me as I assuned that his groin thrust was a crude way of ‘flirting’ with me. I’m probably wrong about that now.

To single out a woman by herself at a show just for laughs or whatever is sick & disgusting bullying behavior IMHO.

I doubt that anyone here would like having that done to them. I doubt that things would be comical if that actually happened to them.

I was expecting people to be more empathetic & sympathetic, but no, I just ended up getting unfairly criticized & judged by some people again which is upsetting.

I have anxiety issues & that whole incident scared me so much that I froze up. I didn’t react to what was hoing on quickly enough or rationally enough to get away in time. Given my history with numerous assaults, it was triggering.

I know if anything like that ever happens again, that I’ll move. As for the communication issues, I misunderstood a few people.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m on the spectrum or don’t know how to communicate or have common issues.

People on here are becoming increasingly judgemental & hostile & that’s sad.

I think you are misunderstanding what people are saying. The point isn’t that this is normal. It’s not a normal appropriate behavior at all but unfortunately it’s common for some performers to act this way.

What people are saying it’s not categorized as an assault. What people are saying that motives you assigned to his behavior have no basis in reality, there’s zero evidence of anything you assumed about this dude.

I don’t think anyone argues that this is scary. It’s beyond scary. It’s mortifying. Honestly I would be mortified to go to a club get drunk being called a prostitute go try to meet with a band then be right by the stage when dude acts like a jerk and then go look for him after all this. Yes it is scary. It’s dangerous. I am not timid or shy person but I’d be horrified in these circumstances.

So I don’t know why you think it wouldn’t be scary for others. Most women would be terrified to get into such circumstances. It’s dangerous

I think there is a huge contradiction in some things you are saying. You said we don’t understand that this is scary yet you are the one engaging in these dangerous behaviors getting into scary situations. So it seems that maybe YOU don’t understand that things you do are scary. We do understand that it’s scary.

You did not sound scared because even after that thing happened, you still went looking for him. You didn’t call taxi or someone to get you all terrified. You went to look for your assailant. if it was scary you’d stay far away, not going looking for him. You don’t seem to understand danger.

So I am not sure what’s this all about

I’m not laughing at you or thinking what he did was alright.

I’ll add a thought that other women might have loved that attention from him on stage. They might have played along with it and done obscene things right back at him in front of the whole audience, then gone backstage to be a groupie. This is the nature of these kinds of places.

He may have thought that you would be like these kinds of women and would love it.

Anyway, whoever this guy is, he made quite an impression lol.

I understand what you’re telling me. I understand now that this was just part of the show. I made the wrong assumptions. I don’t have a lot of experience with men, so I don’t get some things as easily as some women do.

Sorry for the misunderstandings. You’re right, it was terrifying! At the time I was excited to be there, not scared. The liquid courage helped with that, lol. I think that I probably took extra valium on top of thst too.

Sadly, I would’ve never been able to go to a show alone sober as sober me is NOT that brave or tough! lol. I’d be shaking if I wasn’t intoxicated!

I did some crazy stuff that baffles me even. Clearly I didn’t think things through. I should’ve reported that rude roadie to a manager instead of flipping him off & being rude back.

And for trying to find him after the show, thank goodness I had the good sense to change my mind about that! He probably would’ve laughed in fave & called me crazy! I went home after that. I made sure thst no one was following me. I had my hand in my jacket with pepper spray in it.

I wanted to ask him why he did what he did & to offer me an apology, lol. Stupid, I know! I know better now finally! It may not seem like it, but it’s true. Aside from the Lyft incident which was recent, I haven’t had any major issues with anyone.

Never again! I froze during the show & afterwards too. Is there any way to get your body to not freeze up in extreme or scary situations? I had that happen to me before when I was in danger or felt like I was in danger before. It’s like I’m not able to be completely logical & rational when I’m very stressed out.

I think that some people can still respond to bad situations in a calm & rational way, but not me.

What Tish said after you is probably true. He assumed a lot about me. I probably did give him the wrong first impression, ugh.

My feelings regarding this is an assault or sexual harassment instead of something ‘normal’ still stands though.

Even if this incident wouldn’t be taken seriously by the police or the manager of the club, it was still
very triggering for me. Only women who have been assaulted can understand how I feel.

You do make a good point. The lady who met them heard my story & she said sorry to hear that. She also had water splashed on her before & she had her own embarrassing experiences with them too. She didn’t go into details though.

I wish that I would’ve asked her what happened. We lost touch with each other.

I met her online. He probably got the wrong impression of me. Trying to just talk to them before the show wasn’t a good idea. I naievely thought that it was OK to just say hi to them. What’s the difference between before or after the show I thought?

It’s a good thing that I changed my mind about trying to get an apology from him. He probably would’ve gotten angry, called me crazy or maybe would’ve laughed in my face.

Never again.

Jesyka it was not normal, it just doesn’t qualify as assault.

Like the club you were in that I joked was a lion’s den, so is going backstage to say hi to the rock star…

I understand how this was upsetting and weighed on you for a long time. I hope you feel better about it, having talked about it more.

I think meeting performers before or after the show is ok if you know them personally or if you work in the industry. If you just an audience I wouldn’t try to talk to performers. They are strangers and they might misinterpret your attention.

Similar to your chiropractor thread, you seem to believe that your after-the-fact regret of a certain action you did back then somehow should translate into a change of the situation. It won't. You are asking the question WHY such and such did so and so, and we are doing our best trying to answer you. That you were the ONLY woman approaching the rock star ahead of the show is very telling and helps to explain WHY he behaved the way he did, which is the question you are asking.

The rock star did not possess supernatural abilities. He could have have predicted that many years later, you would regret "even trying to approach you" and based on that prediction, abstained from the behavior that, he thought, would be to your liking. I agree with @TishaBuv in that many women, of the type who frequent such concerts, would have found the behavior to their liking and might have responded to it in kind, but I cannot say for sure since I do not have first hand experience of any kind, much less of sufficient volume from which to extrapolate and make conclusions.

Similarly, the chiropractor did not have possess supernatural abilities and could not have predicted that you would later come to regret telling him about the drunken incident. Not having made that prediction, he could not abstain from joking about the incident which was in line with you sharing it with him as something comical.

We are trying to answer your questions as to WHY. You somehow did not accept the explanations even as working hypotheses and respond by saying what you now regret. I hope that you will be able to see that your later regret could not have been predicted by the rock star and the chiropractor who acted based on the observable data immediately before them and acted rationally. I assume that lewd gestures are typical in the environment you were in. You yourself described your dress as a low cut and tight top, but then, irrationally, you claim that since your cleavage was not showing, you should not have been noticed. Do you really at age 50+ believe that a woman would not get noticed unless her cleavage is showing? That is sort of besides the point in your case, though, because he might or might not have noticed your curves but likely noticed that you were the ONLY woman to approach the band before the show.

I have not read your other threads and I was clear in my earlier message that I had not. I was referring to two threads I did read, about the rock star and the chiropractor. In the rock star thread, you wrote that you were married and asexual. There was no way for the rock star to perceive these qualities about you. You weren't signaling them. You said you had a crush on the rock star (I have one asexual married friend and I do not know enough about asexuality and based on what little I know, it seems odd to me that an asexual person would have a crush on a male rock star, but that is just a mention in passing).

You responded to me on this thread in a way that was unappreciative of all my time spent reading your various threads about your husband and inability to work and trying to help you. I am not writing it in search for an apology (that is OK, really, I am not offended), but I am pointing out a lack of social skills that may be patched, as one closes gaps, by skills training. I saw that you a workbook on social skills was recommended to you and hope that you will find it helpful and actionable.

Unlike you, I have had plenty of experience with men, most of them positive except for a few notable outliers, and I can tell you a lot about how to interact with men in ways that would be satisfying to you. You acknowledge that you do not have a lot of experience with men, that what little experience you have had has been unsatisfying, and yet you block ways to help you because when one expresses a view that diverges from your preconceived view, such as that the rock star harassed and assaulted you, you do not even try to see that divergent point of you.

That is fine, but why, then, to use the crowdsourcing method of asking the WHY question? You can live with your own views. Nobody in any way interferes with that.

And regarding your thread that I did not read about being a lifelong target of harassment, bullying, etc., I suspect that part of where you see yourself as a victim is a fruit of your imagination and part of it is true.

I do not dispute that your husband, who denies you access to healthcare, accuses you of everything including using too much toilet paper, and threatens to take your name off your joint bank account while you do not work and have no independent source of income, has been mistreating you for years. But the incidents with the chiropractor and rock star, which are the two incidents I did read about, are not examples of bullying and in particular of targeting you.

There is a temporal element to bullying and harassment. They need to occur over time to be such. I do not see that you would have an appreciation of that dimension as you persist in accusing the rock star of bullying even though his familiarity with you was fleeting.

So I do not see a point in reading the long thread about being a lifelong victim as I suspect that some of such characterizations, as is the case with your husband, are true, and some of them, as is the case with the chiropractor and the rock star, are not true, but that in the latter case you would not want to even allow that your characterization lacks foundation in reality no matter how many people, and possibly even in unison, try to tell you that you have mischaracterized behaviors as targeting you as a victim.

I also do not dispute that you have anxiety, but what I see happening is that instead of attributing some of your reactions to anxiety, you proceed to characterizing the source of such reactions as being intentionally against you. You could have said that what the rock star did was nothing unusual given the milieu, but that you personally, individually, given the underlying anxiety disorder, reacted to that behavior with fright.

There is a difference between saying that you felt intimidated and that the rock star intimidated you. In the latter, there is an element of intent which was clearly missing from the actual interaction. So you attribute missing intent.

Similarly, there was no overt interest in you and yet you attribute such interest to him, claiming that you rejected his advances. According to you, the rock band was successful and the rock star was, well, a star. So he was probably used to admiration. According to you, the employee on the premises actually did NOT want prostitutes walking in. So it is not that the rock star was looking for anonymous or nearly anonymous sex. Yet, of all the hypotheses you have collected over time regarding the motives behind his behavior, the only hypothesis that you currently hold as viable is that he wanted a blowjob from you.

I just need to interject: assuming other people replying do not have experience with being sexually assaulted is naive at best.

I was forcibly sexually assaulted twice in my youth. Both times, I successfully fought the assault and prevailed, being surprised at the sudden use of force on my end (I am in general not a violent person nor had I even tried martial arts training). Well, I also threatened both men with the police, which under the circumstances, given where I was, was an empty threat, but it might have still advanced my goals. So maybe I am not the usual case since I did not let unwanted sex happen. But at least technically speaking, I was sexually assaulted and I do NOT understand how Jesyka feels. This is again an example of extrapolation and gross overgeneralization, to believe that all women who have been through assault feel the same.

And regarding @ArtleyWilkins' point, a good number of women on these boards have been assaulted or, more generally, victimized.

My point above was that women who have been through ACTUAL assault, one they could not fight, one that resulted in a teared rectum, physical pain, venereal disease, etc., would feel disrespected and misunderstood if told that the incident described here is somehow on a par with the horror they went through, the horror that might still be haunting them.

So very true.

I was attacked or pursued with attempts to assault on a couple of occasions but managed to escape and avoided actual assault by combination of sheer luck/strangers interfering/me running fast, assailant being intoxicated and me being in a good physical shape etc Not going to go into details but scary stuff. And it didn’t happen because I was seeking thrills. I lived in a lawless and rough place and these things happened on a way to work/bus stop/walking home from work etc

I don’t think it’s fair to compare a performer making body moves on stage to actual assaults.

Me too, actual assault. The one minor incident I mentioned in another thread of yours involved groping our bodies (so qualified as assault legally). There was more and worse I don’t need to go into. It didn’t leave physical scars, but did leave emotional ones.

It’s complicated and everyone copes with things differently. I blocked it right out of my mind and thought less of it than you felt about this incident that happened to you. I don’t go around talking about it. When it happened, I didn’t tell anybody.

If you insist you were assaulted, and you tell people the details, like you told us, they will all disagree just like we did. I don’t know how that serves you. But you can say whatever you want.

You were also doing risky behavior going to sketchy places alone, drunk, and high on Xanax. You were putting yourself in vulnerable spots, then were offended when treated disrespectfully, and are still ruminating about it. This is not healthy. I hope you will discuss with your therapist and really delve into this because you are doing yourself harm.

There is something to be said about deliberately putting oneself into a dangerous situation. Seeking thrill and danger consciously or subconsciously. It’s definitely something to explore with a therapist.

I had a friend like that. Went to high school together and then kept in touch after. Gorgeous, talented and smart young lady. I don’t want to highjack or type a novel here but oh the crazy things she did! And it always ended up badly. Like very badly. We aren’t talking about singer dancing inappropriately. Real bad stuff. But she wouldn’t stop risky behavior.

It continued all into adulthood. Last time I saw her was probably in our early 30s. I don’t keep in touch now but my other classmates do. She moved far and supposedly settled and don’t engage in all that.

She had a neglectful uncaring mother and a known womanizer dad. I think some of her behaviors could be contributed to that. Something makes people seek danger. Interesting enough she was never surprised “oh why it happened”. She was very matter of fact like not surprised at all, almost like she knew it would happen but kept at it

autocomplete

should have been

- he could NOT have predicted future regret

- even trying to approach him

THAT explains why the "not" is so often missing all across the internet! That darn autocomplete!

I mean, most of the time, it is MISSING, and i wonder if people are just insane.

Thanks, Tart - i can die happy now!

Hahahah yes NOT is often missing and I got into a habit of just adding it in my mind. I’ve read that post with adding “not” as I went.

I think since autocorrect and autocomplete took over our lives we always have to guess: what’s the person really saying?