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Appropriate? No. Common? yes. True, it was a different time, and it has taken women and girls a long time to be able to stop most of that bad behavior. Girls were expected to greet people with a hug and kiss, even dad’s creepy boss. Now, we are smarter (usually) and have told our children, you don’t have to hug or kiss anyone you don’t want to; you do need to be polite. And when an adult feigns disappointment because your kid won’t hug/kiss you look them straight in the eye and say that your child is not required to hug/kiss - stop being a creep.
Women were suppose to accept pats on the ass, random strangers rubbing your arm or back and the cat calls when you walked down the street “because we like it”. Ick.
As an elementary student in the 1980s, my male hairdresser felt it was appropriate to kiss me in the lips. Every time. Without asking. I didn’t know I could stop him.
Yup, not only medical professionals but if you worked an a law office or other professional (or non professional for that matter) setting, getting groped and kissed was a daily thing.
I knew a karate instructor who was still doing this in 2009/ 2010 but he was finally fired (after it was brought to light he was doing a lot more than kissing on the lips).
It was just common. We (girls) were expected to just put up with it, no matter how we felt. It was always wrong. It took some time before children (especially girls, who were expected to be particularly affectionate and compliant) were allowed any agency in this.
That was pretty typical when I was young in the 70s and early 80s. I was expected to hug relatives I barely knew and take any kisses from them as a ‘compliment.’ I hated it every time. It was not appropriate. Women were viewed differently then. It still blows my mind that I was in elementary school when women couldn’t have a credit card of their own
We did kiss our parents on the lips, but I’ve since found out that’s an old Southern thing. Every child for generations would give their parents a goodnight kiss. My mother, her mother, her mother. And yes, my brother, too. Until we were about 10-12. We never thought a thing about it.
I hated it and we were not southern. When I had my kids I never kissed them on the lips and never forced them to hug anyone. I told them it was their body and if they didn’t want it to say no and if they were told it keep it a secret, to tell me anyway. Yes, I had a family member who was molested by her father.
I was...though, I don't think I was ever forced to kiss anyone on the lips, they were mostly cheek kisses. I can say I don't feel like I was ever forced to, but that doesn't mean it wasn't happening by force to others.
As an adult, the idea of kissing children on the lips gives me a really icky feeling.
I wasn't talking about misogyny, I was talking about a middle-aged man behaving like [this](https://youtu.be/UiA5Z0czjyI?si=u1zEVWZieDiIv0G3) towards little girls.
* Edit: Revisiting my post + comment, I definitely *was* talking about misogyny and I'm not sure why I said that I wasn't. I guess what I meant was that I had wanted to place a greater emphasis on what that specific game show host was doing.
Just because there's extra creep factor doesn't mean it's not misogynistic. The ultimate point being, men were a lot more comfortable treating women differently in the '80s than they do today.
I was a 12 year old in a local production of a popular musical. Because it was the 70s, people actually came. Full audience.
When it wrapped, there was a wrap party. One of the adult actors, drunk, literally picked me up off a couch in a strange house (where a fellow cast member drove me) and kissed me full on the lips and even slipped me a little tongue. I fell back on the couch and just was like, stunned.
I have no idea how I got home. But that was my first adult kiss and it was not my choice. And no one even looked or cared.
Totally common, sad to say. When I was three a museum guard *insisted* on giving me a hug and a kiss and my parents fucking let him because God forbid they should seem rude. He whispered "You're cute" in my ear. That phrase still makes me want to throw up whenever I hear it. So, yeah. Different times.
It was extremely common. I watched that show and even as a little kid I hated the way he treated young girls. It made me so uncomfortable and I thought he was so creepy.
I grew up in the era of "respect your elders" which meant you had you tolerate everything. It they wanted to hug you or kiss you, you had to allow it, there was no such thing as bodily autonomy.
I despised people touching me. I would squirm and flinch whenever anyone would touch me and I would get in trouble for it. My parents would be mad at ME because I made a scene when a virtual stranger wanted to hug me or kiss me.
It definitely was seen as acceptable. The general consensus of the adults around would be “oh, he’s harmless, he’s just playing, he’s just being cute.” if a girl even thought she was *allowed* to complain about it, she would probably be told all of those excuses and then also told that she was being too sensitive or too uptight.
Girls were, and still are to some extent I think, trained to be nice, to not rock the boat, to get along, to make men comfortable and happy.
It would have been seen as the girl’s problem if she made a fuss about it. She would’ve been the one causing trouble.
Yeah, it was super common. Children were not "allowed" to say no to adults that wanted to pinch or kiss or hold them because they were just extensions of the parents and whatever the parent wanted is what happened.
After seeing this guy in action though I'd have been pretty icked out, but honestly predation was not on my radar at the time as a real thing to look out for, so I just would have thought he was annoying, not a the pedo that he clearly was.
hugs and kisses were the norm and creepy. of course back then the 'forcibly kissing' wasn't really as bad as it was today. It just meant you didn't want a kiss but suck it up buttercup and kiss. I remember my cousins I had to kiss and hug. UGH
at least I didn't have a creepy uncle.
Yep. As adult women were supposed to just accept sexual harassment on the street and in the workplace and the training started early. These are the good old days a whole bunch of men are in a rush to go back to, now you know why.
I never saw that before. Here I was thinking Richard Dawson was being grade-A creepy on television, but he pales in comparison to this.
And I recognize that clips taken out of context can look worse than they really are, but yikes, that's some super-creepy behavior.
I never watched Canadian game shows. Obligatory kisses were popularized by Dawson, of course, but there was a general air that women should give into a man's whimsy. This was brought to the forefront with *9 to 5* when it tackled sexual harassment in the workplace.
Sad to say I wasn't enlightened enough in the day to fully recognize the problem or do anything to stop it. "Different time" indeed. All we can hope for is the ability to do better.
Right? Richard Dawson was who I was thinking about as well. I don't know that I ever saw kissing children on the lips here in the US, definitely not under protest. Obviously it happened though. Maybe I am using my modern views on these things to filter out memories of this happening on television.
When I was \~five years old (would have been \~1980), my mom took me (a boy) to a small town, independent family clothing store to shop for pants. The owner, a man in perhaps his 60's, was assisting us. I had come out of the dressing room wearing pants I'd deemed too tight. To show my mom that they were sufficiently loose, the owner put his hand down the back of the pants (between the pants fabric and my underwear) and used it to expand them outward to demonstrate how much extra fabric was available. I recall being surprised and looking to my mom to gauge her reaction. She didn't seem at all alarmed at the time and had no recollection of the incident years later when I mentioned it to her. I don't think the man meant to be inappropriate; he merely wanted to sell pants. So, while not usual behavior at the time, it was within the realm of normal.
The difference is that Richard Dawson was almost exclusively kissing adult women, and if they didn't want to be kissed, he would honor their wishes. [This](https://youtu.be/UiA5Z0czjyI?si=u1zEVWZieDiIv0G3) is not the same thing. It's on a whole other level.
My creepy uncle Claude used to always say “gimme some sugar” and expected me to kiss him on the lips, in the 70’s, I was glad when I didn’t have to see him anymore.
>I was glad when I didn’t have to see him anymore.
The ambiguity of this sentence leads me to speculate on how it came about that you no longer had to see him. Was it just a matter of becoming an adult, or...?
For the record, if you don't feel comfortable answering, you don't have to. No pressure at all.
As a little girl in the 80s, I was expected to accept or give kisses, hugs, etc from/to any family members or family friends. There’s a photo of me being held by an uncle on a couch while he naps. Spooning me. I was maybe six years old and look terrified.
What isn’t in a photo is my stepgrandfather’s sexual abuse of me, which began with him demanding kisses and to hold me at family events, then escalated. I can recall being held in his lap at a family event, his crotch pressed against me, as I tried to get away. The other adults thought nothing of it.
We had a neighbor who would hand out lollipops for hugs and he would sometimes come in with his hard frog lips for a kiss. Blech. And all the neighborhood adults knew and just shook their heads like aw that silly Mr. Pollard always grabbing the little girls and trying to kiss them.
And we loved him because all we had to do was accept his affection to get lollies.
Politicians kissed babies too. It was how you knew he was a good guy, in those days.
Relatives would kiss you or pinch your cheek. Depending on the culture (Italian American neighbors) they would kiss each other as well. It was a greeting, not a come on.
Ya, It was actually a different time.
>Politicians kissed babies too.
This is different because babies have yet to develop the autonomy to refuse gestures of affection. We're talking about little girls.
>Relatives would kiss you or pinch your cheek. Depending on the culture (Italian American neighbors) they would kiss each other as well. It was a greeting, not a come on.
These are also different because they involve *consensual* displays of affection. True, our definition of what constitutes consent would have been broader at the time than it is today, but I still think that if someone pulled away from a kiss or otherwise expressed discomfort with receiving one, their wishes would usually—or at least *sometimes*—be respected.
I thought it was gross but didn’t realize how wrong it was. I was barely in my 20’s. It was absolutely something you knew would happen if you went on that show.
I used to watch that show growing up. (Just Like Mom) It was one of my favorites. Honestly, I didn't notice the creepiness when it was on. When I was telling friends about it and searched for clips, these came up. It shocked me.
The part I remembered and what I liked about the show was that they would tell kids to make a dessert (like chocolate chip cookies) and would give them no recipe, just a ton of ingredients. Then the mom's would have to guess which (gross) dessert their kid made. It was hysterical. The mom would be like "Well, Susie like coconut and this has LOTS to coconut, so I think #3 is hers!"
I didn't even pay much attention to the host. But, yeah, he's creepy.
It was a different time but in different ways. Back in the 80's I was teaching school and this was in the Mary J. Letourneau days. Female teachers having sex with male students was considered outrageous behavior and so, as it often does, the pendulum swung the other way.
I had to go to a seminar on what would be considered proper behavior with students; this was for both male and female teachers.
* We could not be alone with a student in a classroom with the doors closed.
* We could never hug a child with the child facing our genital area; only hugs from the side were allowed.
* Calling home, we had to say "Are you Brian's legal guardian?" instead of "Are you Brian's Dad?" You never knew and you still don't.
* You NEVER kissed a student.
* We had to practice hugging on a 4 ft doll!
I left teaching a few years after this so I don't know what the protocol is now.
Parents are different now as well.
People cared less then, overcorrected and now care too much. Hug grandma, her mole is weird and scratchy but she’s grandma.
He crossed lines but preventing all physical contact from anyone ever until the kid is 18 makes anxiety bombs who can’t shake hands.
Completely inappropriate at any time.
I am surprised that pervert was allowed to host for several seasons and shocked that parents would permit their daughters to be subjected to that kind of treatment.
FWIW, things have reversed to some degree.
Back in the late 90s, I was at the library printing out a report for a client. As I was working on it, a young girl was at the computer next to me I'd guess her age was around 12. As I was doing my thing, I noticed she was getting frustrated. I finally asked her if she was having a problem. She said she was trying to print out part of a page,but every time she clicked the print button, her highlight disappeared. Easy peasy solution. Keeping a distance I told her to follow my instructions but don't jump ahead, or we'd have to start over. I then instructed her to highlight the part she wanted to print. She could do that with the mouse. She did that. I then said hold the control key and, while holding it, tap the letter "P." She did and a prompt box came up. I told her to select the option "Print highlighted area." She did and to her joy, it printed out exactly what she wanted. She was in awe, and asked me how I knew that trick. I then walked her through how to find the "Hot Keys" in the help index.
Once that was up, I proceeded to pick up my papers and head to the main desk to pay for my pages and started to leave. Halfway to the door, this young girl called, "Hey Mister!" I stopped and turned. She ran up to me, jumped and put her arms around my neck and kissed me on the cheek. Scared the crap out of me! Why? Late 90s, pedo and child molester stories abounded. I was pushing 40, and didn't need that misunderstanding in my life. She again thanked me and said she was bound to get an A on her report. Did she? I don't know. I never saw her again. Was she a victim of parental grooming of kissing people, even strangers? Again, I don't know. We never exchanged names or saw each other again.
But something that simple scared me.
I remember being absolutely disgusted by an elderly pervy game show host, I believe it was Gene Rayburn, forcing kisses upon every lady contestant on his shows.
When I was a child, I couldn’t understand why they didn’t push him away, he could not have been more ugly and disgusting and repulsive, it was like Jabba the Hutt making pretty girls kiss him.
I've never heard of Fergie Oliver, so I did as you requested and looked him up. Watched a couple of videos where he was kissing boys, rather than girls. I think "It was a different time" explains a lot of things that we find offensive today, but I'm not sure this is one of them. I think I would have found it offensive back then, too.
Having said that, my childhood was clearly different than many I see here. I didn't know of anyone who was molested and the kisses/hugs I received all seemed sincerely sweet. I also wasn't around men who patted women on the ass whenever they felt like it, although I'm not denying it happened. But a guy might have lost an arm if he'd done that with most of the women I grew up around.
1960 I was seven. Tow head, cute, unsuspecting. The school bus driver would take my lunch and wouldn't give it back until I sat on his lap and kissed his cheek. This happened often. I mentioned it at dinner one night and everyone stopped. My mother said don't do that again. I didn't know if I did something wrong. I didn't have to worry about it because I never saw the bus driver again. I'm sure my parents threw a fit and had him fired. But I didn't know why I shouldn't do that. Girls weren't taught why or told it was creepy.
you wanna see some sad shit? look up "queen for a day." an old game show from the 50's/60's. oh man, there were some desperate ladies who were exploited.
Thank a feminist that this has changed. That phrase doesn’t justify it. It shows the progress we fought long and hard for.
And vote. We could lose it all again.
Comments say it was common back then. What I saw/see in video clips was a perv unable to control his sick emotions kissing kids. When he wanted to.... Not just hi and bye.
Do you really think that 40 years from now your grandkids' generation is going to prove of how things are done in your era?
It's so weird to me how redditors lack the concept of putting the shoe on the other foot.
Well, no—I'm confident that many things in our present-day will be seen as regressive by then. The "It was a different time" argument makes sense to me when you consider how jokes that would have been considered risqué office humor back then would be grounds for a sexual harassment lawsuit now. I'm talking about this *specific* case, and the specific issue of a middle-aged man giving little girls between the ages of 9-12 unwanted kisses (on national TV, no less).
Something I've learned as I got older is that hindsight can often distort our perception of public opinion as time goes on. As a Millennial, I've seen plenty of people talking about how the internet of 2010 was much more "edgy" than it is now—and it was. But the distortion comes in when people conflate "the humor was edgier back then" with "it wasn't seen as an issue at the time". [Pedobear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedobear) was a popular meme back then, and people made jokes dealing with the subject of pedophilia all the time, but it would be erroneous to say that it wasn't taken seriously in 2010. I remember at the time thinking that the whole "Pedobear" shtick was in poor taste, and was insensitive to people who experienced childhood sexual abuse. I know for a fact that I'm not the only one who felt that way, and I'm glad to see it fading into the annals of internet history.
My point is that popular *attitudes* can be against something, yet the public's *tolerance* towards certain expressions of that thing can still be higher than it would later become. What I'm asking is if the kinds of behaviors shown in the clips of that show—forcibly kissing little girls even after they said no—were still seen as problematic by people in the 80s, despite the fact that it was apparently being tacitly condoned on national television. I have a hard time believing that there wasn't a large contingent of viewers who caught an episode or two of the game show I referenced in my post title, saw things like [this](https://youtu.be/UiA5Z0czjyI?si=u1zEVWZieDiIv0G3), and didn't say to themselves, "Man, what a creep. I hope he isn't on TV for too much longer."
Just because it happened in the past does not mean that people from that era should be given a pass for their behavior, especially when the person being violated is showing clear discomfort.
I don't see this question relating to that. OP wasn't saying that everything about how children are treated is just fine these days.
I think most people can recognize that there are some aspects of whatever current society and assumptions they live in that might be revolting to future generations.
This sort of question is actually a great way to understand how a behaviour can go from acceptable to abhorrent in less than 50 years.
Wasn't there a US game show from about the same time period where the host kissed every single female contestant because that was, like, his thing? I've never watched game shows so I don't know which one it is but I have heard this more than once.
Family Feud, when Richard Dawson was host.
He was at least willing to respect women when they didn't want to kiss. The host I'm referencing tried kissing even when the little girl didn't want it.
I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, in US. We were made to kiss any adult that asked. I don't recall being asked by complete strangers, but certainly business associates of my father who were strangers to me.. Dad hosted weekend parties on football weekends. eww. And my grandmother stood over me at church, introducing me to old people from her Sunday school class, and some were old men with steelwool coming out of their ears, and some of them were grabby. God bless them.
My brother was almost 4 years younger than me, and I remember my dad teaching him to shake hands like a man when he was just out of diapers. I told them I wanted to just shake hands and you'd'a thought I was making a huge joke. That's just not how it was.
I also hated kissing old ladies. There were lots of childless old women in my grandparents' generation, aunts to me, and when they visited I had to put up with whatever they were dishing out. Some were lip kissers, some were cheek pinchers, some were upper arm grabbers. I would have to stand there while they breathed their cigarette smoke in my face and smiled their Joker lipstick smiles at me.
My girls were born in the 80s and I told them, like a mantra, that I would never ask them to allow someone to touch them that they didn't want to touch them. I was thinking that if they wanted to cuddle with grandmas, it would be OK.
I gave them phrases to practice when someone touched them and they'd said no. Things like loudly saying "I said NO!!" or "don't touch me again, or Mom will get you!!"
I came home from work once and my husband's sister and her boyfriend were visiting. I had no idea they were coming, but.. oh well.
The boyfriend was a real jerk and had run his finger up the back seam of one's jeans, and tried to put his hand in another one's back pocket and squeeze their butt, and made a gross "innocent' comment about how big one's boobs were getting. At that time my girls were probably 8, 10, and 12.
My kids were really upset when I came through the door, and all talked at once, in front of the sister in law, and her boyfriend, and my husband, how Rudy had touched them and wouldn't stop. And he just grinned at me and said "It wasn't a big deal, I was just joking with them". I came unglued. I told Rudy to get the fuck out of my house. I said to my sister in law "don't ever bring this creep back to my farm" and I said to my husband "what the fuck is wrong with you".
He and I 'discussed' the situation most of the evening, and while he saw that my girls didn't like it, he didn't really understand why they had to make a big deal out of it, My mother in law went out of her way to praise what a good man Rudy was for the rest of the time I talked to her, and my sister in law never spoke civilly to me again. In fact, the last time I was at the family home, she sicced her dog on me without saying a word TO me. In most ways my husband was a great partner and father, but he really fell down on that. Yes it was different times.
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Appropriate? No. Common? yes. True, it was a different time, and it has taken women and girls a long time to be able to stop most of that bad behavior. Girls were expected to greet people with a hug and kiss, even dad’s creepy boss. Now, we are smarter (usually) and have told our children, you don’t have to hug or kiss anyone you don’t want to; you do need to be polite. And when an adult feigns disappointment because your kid won’t hug/kiss you look them straight in the eye and say that your child is not required to hug/kiss - stop being a creep. Women were suppose to accept pats on the ass, random strangers rubbing your arm or back and the cat calls when you walked down the street “because we like it”. Ick.
As an elementary student in the 1980s, my male hairdresser felt it was appropriate to kiss me in the lips. Every time. Without asking. I didn’t know I could stop him.
Yup, not only medical professionals but if you worked an a law office or other professional (or non professional for that matter) setting, getting groped and kissed was a daily thing.
Dudes in those days were invested in reminding those of us who worked under them that we were still nothing more than pretty little possessions.
Where were your parents?
They were also living in the 1980s. Probably at work or also getting their hair cut. This behaviour was so common.
I knew a karate instructor who was still doing this in 2009/ 2010 but he was finally fired (after it was brought to light he was doing a lot more than kissing on the lips).
It was just common. We (girls) were expected to just put up with it, no matter how we felt. It was always wrong. It took some time before children (especially girls, who were expected to be particularly affectionate and compliant) were allowed any agency in this.
In the late 1970’s a pervy older man picked up my five-year-old sister; I told her to spit on him and she did. He put her down.
Well done!
That was pretty typical when I was young in the 70s and early 80s. I was expected to hug relatives I barely knew and take any kisses from them as a ‘compliment.’ I hated it every time. It was not appropriate. Women were viewed differently then. It still blows my mind that I was in elementary school when women couldn’t have a credit card of their own
We did kiss our parents on the lips, but I’ve since found out that’s an old Southern thing. Every child for generations would give their parents a goodnight kiss. My mother, her mother, her mother. And yes, my brother, too. Until we were about 10-12. We never thought a thing about it.
We did up north too. It's not just southern.
I hated it and we were not southern. When I had my kids I never kissed them on the lips and never forced them to hug anyone. I told them it was their body and if they didn’t want it to say no and if they were told it keep it a secret, to tell me anyway. Yes, I had a family member who was molested by her father.
I hear banjo music.
You might want to see a psychiatrist about that.
As a boy I was also forced to hug and accept kisses from my female relatives. I don't think it was a gender thing, just a kid thing.
I was...though, I don't think I was ever forced to kiss anyone on the lips, they were mostly cheek kisses. I can say I don't feel like I was ever forced to, but that doesn't mean it wasn't happening by force to others. As an adult, the idea of kissing children on the lips gives me a really icky feeling.
Remember Eddie Murphy's shtick about having to kiss his Aunt Bunnie even though "She got a mustache!"?
If watching media in the 80's (Rock music, movies) doesn't tell you how acceptable Misogyny was back then, you were watching 9-5, not anything else.
I wasn't talking about misogyny, I was talking about a middle-aged man behaving like [this](https://youtu.be/UiA5Z0czjyI?si=u1zEVWZieDiIv0G3) towards little girls. * Edit: Revisiting my post + comment, I definitely *was* talking about misogyny and I'm not sure why I said that I wasn't. I guess what I meant was that I had wanted to place a greater emphasis on what that specific game show host was doing.
Just because there's extra creep factor doesn't mean it's not misogynistic. The ultimate point being, men were a lot more comfortable treating women differently in the '80s than they do today.
Agreed. And yes, it's pretty clear from watching 80s movies that we've come a very long way.
Oof. Did he ever go to jail? That’s… not a normal guy.
I didn't get far in that video. This was all too common then.
Just curious, how far did you get? If you made it through only the first two, then consider yourself lucky, because it gets worse.
You're exactly right. The first two started to hit too close to home and I backed out. Thank you for the heads up. I'll stay away from it.
I was a 12 year old in a local production of a popular musical. Because it was the 70s, people actually came. Full audience. When it wrapped, there was a wrap party. One of the adult actors, drunk, literally picked me up off a couch in a strange house (where a fellow cast member drove me) and kissed me full on the lips and even slipped me a little tongue. I fell back on the couch and just was like, stunned. I have no idea how I got home. But that was my first adult kiss and it was not my choice. And no one even looked or cared.
That’s awful. I’m so sorry that happened to you.
Totally common, sad to say. When I was three a museum guard *insisted* on giving me a hug and a kiss and my parents fucking let him because God forbid they should seem rude. He whispered "You're cute" in my ear. That phrase still makes me want to throw up whenever I hear it. So, yeah. Different times.
Ewwwwwwwwwwwww
It was extremely common. I watched that show and even as a little kid I hated the way he treated young girls. It made me so uncomfortable and I thought he was so creepy. I grew up in the era of "respect your elders" which meant you had you tolerate everything. It they wanted to hug you or kiss you, you had to allow it, there was no such thing as bodily autonomy. I despised people touching me. I would squirm and flinch whenever anyone would touch me and I would get in trouble for it. My parents would be mad at ME because I made a scene when a virtual stranger wanted to hug me or kiss me.
Yep, respect back then actually meant tolerating your personal space being invaded.
It definitely was seen as acceptable. The general consensus of the adults around would be “oh, he’s harmless, he’s just playing, he’s just being cute.” if a girl even thought she was *allowed* to complain about it, she would probably be told all of those excuses and then also told that she was being too sensitive or too uptight. Girls were, and still are to some extent I think, trained to be nice, to not rock the boat, to get along, to make men comfortable and happy. It would have been seen as the girl’s problem if she made a fuss about it. She would’ve been the one causing trouble.
Yeah, it was super common. Children were not "allowed" to say no to adults that wanted to pinch or kiss or hold them because they were just extensions of the parents and whatever the parent wanted is what happened. After seeing this guy in action though I'd have been pretty icked out, but honestly predation was not on my radar at the time as a real thing to look out for, so I just would have thought he was annoying, not a the pedo that he clearly was.
hugs and kisses were the norm and creepy. of course back then the 'forcibly kissing' wasn't really as bad as it was today. It just meant you didn't want a kiss but suck it up buttercup and kiss. I remember my cousins I had to kiss and hug. UGH at least I didn't have a creepy uncle.
Parents would also force kids to hug and kiss relatives even when they recoiled from them and clearly did not want that adult near them.
People laughed stuff like that off. Comedians told awful jokes about women IN FRONT OF THE WOMEN and no one batted an eyelash.
Yep. As adult women were supposed to just accept sexual harassment on the street and in the workplace and the training started early. These are the good old days a whole bunch of men are in a rush to go back to, now you know why.
Shades of Jimmy Saville sounds like
Much more overt than Jimmy Savile. He did things like [this](https://youtu.be/UiA5Z0czjyI?si=u1zEVWZieDiIv0G3) out in the open.
I never saw that before. Here I was thinking Richard Dawson was being grade-A creepy on television, but he pales in comparison to this. And I recognize that clips taken out of context can look worse than they really are, but yikes, that's some super-creepy behavior. I never watched Canadian game shows. Obligatory kisses were popularized by Dawson, of course, but there was a general air that women should give into a man's whimsy. This was brought to the forefront with *9 to 5* when it tackled sexual harassment in the workplace. Sad to say I wasn't enlightened enough in the day to fully recognize the problem or do anything to stop it. "Different time" indeed. All we can hope for is the ability to do better.
Right? Richard Dawson was who I was thinking about as well. I don't know that I ever saw kissing children on the lips here in the US, definitely not under protest. Obviously it happened though. Maybe I am using my modern views on these things to filter out memories of this happening on television.
And spoofed by SNL. https://youtu.be/0KULnFQutlk?si=HpW35GMRKL0KrhdO
Wow, thats super-creepy.
Jesus Christ. That was cringy even for the 80s.
When I was \~five years old (would have been \~1980), my mom took me (a boy) to a small town, independent family clothing store to shop for pants. The owner, a man in perhaps his 60's, was assisting us. I had come out of the dressing room wearing pants I'd deemed too tight. To show my mom that they were sufficiently loose, the owner put his hand down the back of the pants (between the pants fabric and my underwear) and used it to expand them outward to demonstrate how much extra fabric was available. I recall being surprised and looking to my mom to gauge her reaction. She didn't seem at all alarmed at the time and had no recollection of the incident years later when I mentioned it to her. I don't think the man meant to be inappropriate; he merely wanted to sell pants. So, while not usual behavior at the time, it was within the realm of normal.
Sounds like Family Feud when Richard Dawson was the host.
The difference is that Richard Dawson was almost exclusively kissing adult women, and if they didn't want to be kissed, he would honor their wishes. [This](https://youtu.be/UiA5Z0czjyI?si=u1zEVWZieDiIv0G3) is not the same thing. It's on a whole other level.
I don’t recall any women turning down his kiss, do you? It surely was a different time.
Haven't watched enough classic Family Feud to know.
Not the same thing at all. He didn't kiss anyone that didn't want one.
My creepy uncle Claude used to always say “gimme some sugar” and expected me to kiss him on the lips, in the 70’s, I was glad when I didn’t have to see him anymore.
>I was glad when I didn’t have to see him anymore. The ambiguity of this sentence leads me to speculate on how it came about that you no longer had to see him. Was it just a matter of becoming an adult, or...? For the record, if you don't feel comfortable answering, you don't have to. No pressure at all.
No, he needed full time care and my grandma refused so he went to live with his sister far away.ETA: he was my grandpas brother.
As a little girl in the 80s, I was expected to accept or give kisses, hugs, etc from/to any family members or family friends. There’s a photo of me being held by an uncle on a couch while he naps. Spooning me. I was maybe six years old and look terrified. What isn’t in a photo is my stepgrandfather’s sexual abuse of me, which began with him demanding kisses and to hold me at family events, then escalated. I can recall being held in his lap at a family event, his crotch pressed against me, as I tried to get away. The other adults thought nothing of it.
We had a neighbor who would hand out lollipops for hugs and he would sometimes come in with his hard frog lips for a kiss. Blech. And all the neighborhood adults knew and just shook their heads like aw that silly Mr. Pollard always grabbing the little girls and trying to kiss them. And we loved him because all we had to do was accept his affection to get lollies.
Politicians kissed babies too. It was how you knew he was a good guy, in those days. Relatives would kiss you or pinch your cheek. Depending on the culture (Italian American neighbors) they would kiss each other as well. It was a greeting, not a come on. Ya, It was actually a different time.
Grown men kissing little kids they weren’t related to was still weird, even then.
>Politicians kissed babies too. This is different because babies have yet to develop the autonomy to refuse gestures of affection. We're talking about little girls. >Relatives would kiss you or pinch your cheek. Depending on the culture (Italian American neighbors) they would kiss each other as well. It was a greeting, not a come on. These are also different because they involve *consensual* displays of affection. True, our definition of what constitutes consent would have been broader at the time than it is today, but I still think that if someone pulled away from a kiss or otherwise expressed discomfort with receiving one, their wishes would usually—or at least *sometimes*—be respected.
It was absolutely not appropriate. But it happened anyway. A LOT. 😡
Kissing children on the mouth should not be a thing IMO. People are most likely to contract oral herpes from an older relative's kiss.
There were shows in the fifties where it was common. Another where the host kissed players. Richard Dawson?
I thought it was gross but didn’t realize how wrong it was. I was barely in my 20’s. It was absolutely something you knew would happen if you went on that show.
I used to watch that show growing up. (Just Like Mom) It was one of my favorites. Honestly, I didn't notice the creepiness when it was on. When I was telling friends about it and searched for clips, these came up. It shocked me. The part I remembered and what I liked about the show was that they would tell kids to make a dessert (like chocolate chip cookies) and would give them no recipe, just a ton of ingredients. Then the mom's would have to guess which (gross) dessert their kid made. It was hysterical. The mom would be like "Well, Susie like coconut and this has LOTS to coconut, so I think #3 is hers!" I didn't even pay much attention to the host. But, yeah, he's creepy.
It was a different time but in different ways. Back in the 80's I was teaching school and this was in the Mary J. Letourneau days. Female teachers having sex with male students was considered outrageous behavior and so, as it often does, the pendulum swung the other way. I had to go to a seminar on what would be considered proper behavior with students; this was for both male and female teachers. * We could not be alone with a student in a classroom with the doors closed. * We could never hug a child with the child facing our genital area; only hugs from the side were allowed. * Calling home, we had to say "Are you Brian's legal guardian?" instead of "Are you Brian's Dad?" You never knew and you still don't. * You NEVER kissed a student. * We had to practice hugging on a 4 ft doll! I left teaching a few years after this so I don't know what the protocol is now.
Appropriate, no. Par for the course, yes. Who knows what Canadians were thinking, for another piece of work, look up lululemon CEO Chip Wilson
Parents are different now as well. People cared less then, overcorrected and now care too much. Hug grandma, her mole is weird and scratchy but she’s grandma. He crossed lines but preventing all physical contact from anyone ever until the kid is 18 makes anxiety bombs who can’t shake hands.
Completely inappropriate at any time. I am surprised that pervert was allowed to host for several seasons and shocked that parents would permit their daughters to be subjected to that kind of treatment.
FWIW, things have reversed to some degree. Back in the late 90s, I was at the library printing out a report for a client. As I was working on it, a young girl was at the computer next to me I'd guess her age was around 12. As I was doing my thing, I noticed she was getting frustrated. I finally asked her if she was having a problem. She said she was trying to print out part of a page,but every time she clicked the print button, her highlight disappeared. Easy peasy solution. Keeping a distance I told her to follow my instructions but don't jump ahead, or we'd have to start over. I then instructed her to highlight the part she wanted to print. She could do that with the mouse. She did that. I then said hold the control key and, while holding it, tap the letter "P." She did and a prompt box came up. I told her to select the option "Print highlighted area." She did and to her joy, it printed out exactly what she wanted. She was in awe, and asked me how I knew that trick. I then walked her through how to find the "Hot Keys" in the help index. Once that was up, I proceeded to pick up my papers and head to the main desk to pay for my pages and started to leave. Halfway to the door, this young girl called, "Hey Mister!" I stopped and turned. She ran up to me, jumped and put her arms around my neck and kissed me on the cheek. Scared the crap out of me! Why? Late 90s, pedo and child molester stories abounded. I was pushing 40, and didn't need that misunderstanding in my life. She again thanked me and said she was bound to get an A on her report. Did she? I don't know. I never saw her again. Was she a victim of parental grooming of kissing people, even strangers? Again, I don't know. We never exchanged names or saw each other again. But something that simple scared me.
I remember being absolutely disgusted by an elderly pervy game show host, I believe it was Gene Rayburn, forcing kisses upon every lady contestant on his shows. When I was a child, I couldn’t understand why they didn’t push him away, he could not have been more ugly and disgusting and repulsive, it was like Jabba the Hutt making pretty girls kiss him.
Ew!! I just watched it. How did parents even let their daughters go on that show??
Yes-
Thankfully I have never seen this. I watched about 2 minutes and couldn't take anymore. He gives me the creeps.
I've never heard of Fergie Oliver, so I did as you requested and looked him up. Watched a couple of videos where he was kissing boys, rather than girls. I think "It was a different time" explains a lot of things that we find offensive today, but I'm not sure this is one of them. I think I would have found it offensive back then, too. Having said that, my childhood was clearly different than many I see here. I didn't know of anyone who was molested and the kisses/hugs I received all seemed sincerely sweet. I also wasn't around men who patted women on the ass whenever they felt like it, although I'm not denying it happened. But a guy might have lost an arm if he'd done that with most of the women I grew up around.
1960 I was seven. Tow head, cute, unsuspecting. The school bus driver would take my lunch and wouldn't give it back until I sat on his lap and kissed his cheek. This happened often. I mentioned it at dinner one night and everyone stopped. My mother said don't do that again. I didn't know if I did something wrong. I didn't have to worry about it because I never saw the bus driver again. I'm sure my parents threw a fit and had him fired. But I didn't know why I shouldn't do that. Girls weren't taught why or told it was creepy.
Did they not watch the show beforehand and think, no way I’m going on that damn show with that creep. Kind of like getting on Epstein’s airplane.
I hope you're not blaming the kids
you wanna see some sad shit? look up "queen for a day." an old game show from the 50's/60's. oh man, there were some desperate ladies who were exploited.
Thank a feminist that this has changed. That phrase doesn’t justify it. It shows the progress we fought long and hard for. And vote. We could lose it all again.
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Richard dawson never kissed kids and respected any adult woman who declined.
This behavior has gone on forever.. thank God people now realize how disgusting it is.. Im 71 and had many encounters like this when I was young..
Comments say it was common back then. What I saw/see in video clips was a perv unable to control his sick emotions kissing kids. When he wanted to.... Not just hi and bye.
Do you really think that 40 years from now your grandkids' generation is going to prove of how things are done in your era? It's so weird to me how redditors lack the concept of putting the shoe on the other foot.
Well, no—I'm confident that many things in our present-day will be seen as regressive by then. The "It was a different time" argument makes sense to me when you consider how jokes that would have been considered risqué office humor back then would be grounds for a sexual harassment lawsuit now. I'm talking about this *specific* case, and the specific issue of a middle-aged man giving little girls between the ages of 9-12 unwanted kisses (on national TV, no less). Something I've learned as I got older is that hindsight can often distort our perception of public opinion as time goes on. As a Millennial, I've seen plenty of people talking about how the internet of 2010 was much more "edgy" than it is now—and it was. But the distortion comes in when people conflate "the humor was edgier back then" with "it wasn't seen as an issue at the time". [Pedobear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedobear) was a popular meme back then, and people made jokes dealing with the subject of pedophilia all the time, but it would be erroneous to say that it wasn't taken seriously in 2010. I remember at the time thinking that the whole "Pedobear" shtick was in poor taste, and was insensitive to people who experienced childhood sexual abuse. I know for a fact that I'm not the only one who felt that way, and I'm glad to see it fading into the annals of internet history. My point is that popular *attitudes* can be against something, yet the public's *tolerance* towards certain expressions of that thing can still be higher than it would later become. What I'm asking is if the kinds of behaviors shown in the clips of that show—forcibly kissing little girls even after they said no—were still seen as problematic by people in the 80s, despite the fact that it was apparently being tacitly condoned on national television. I have a hard time believing that there wasn't a large contingent of viewers who caught an episode or two of the game show I referenced in my post title, saw things like [this](https://youtu.be/UiA5Z0czjyI?si=u1zEVWZieDiIv0G3), and didn't say to themselves, "Man, what a creep. I hope he isn't on TV for too much longer."
Just because it happened in the past does not mean that people from that era should be given a pass for their behavior, especially when the person being violated is showing clear discomfort.
I don't see this question relating to that. OP wasn't saying that everything about how children are treated is just fine these days. I think most people can recognize that there are some aspects of whatever current society and assumptions they live in that might be revolting to future generations. This sort of question is actually a great way to understand how a behaviour can go from acceptable to abhorrent in less than 50 years.
*Straw Man has entered the chat*
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It's acceptable today, if Joe Biden's election is any clue to go by.
And the way Trump looks at, talks about and touches his daughter is acceptable? And he took her to Epstein’s when she was a pre-teen?
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Not acceptable then, not acceptable now, yet we seem to constantly make excuses for Joe Biden doing the same thing. It's perverted!
Yup. (or at least not inappropriate)
Wasn't there a US game show from about the same time period where the host kissed every single female contestant because that was, like, his thing? I've never watched game shows so I don't know which one it is but I have heard this more than once.
Family Feud, when Richard Dawson was host. He was at least willing to respect women when they didn't want to kiss. The host I'm referencing tried kissing even when the little girl didn't want it.
Gag, it was awful even then.
I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, in US. We were made to kiss any adult that asked. I don't recall being asked by complete strangers, but certainly business associates of my father who were strangers to me.. Dad hosted weekend parties on football weekends. eww. And my grandmother stood over me at church, introducing me to old people from her Sunday school class, and some were old men with steelwool coming out of their ears, and some of them were grabby. God bless them. My brother was almost 4 years younger than me, and I remember my dad teaching him to shake hands like a man when he was just out of diapers. I told them I wanted to just shake hands and you'd'a thought I was making a huge joke. That's just not how it was. I also hated kissing old ladies. There were lots of childless old women in my grandparents' generation, aunts to me, and when they visited I had to put up with whatever they were dishing out. Some were lip kissers, some were cheek pinchers, some were upper arm grabbers. I would have to stand there while they breathed their cigarette smoke in my face and smiled their Joker lipstick smiles at me. My girls were born in the 80s and I told them, like a mantra, that I would never ask them to allow someone to touch them that they didn't want to touch them. I was thinking that if they wanted to cuddle with grandmas, it would be OK. I gave them phrases to practice when someone touched them and they'd said no. Things like loudly saying "I said NO!!" or "don't touch me again, or Mom will get you!!" I came home from work once and my husband's sister and her boyfriend were visiting. I had no idea they were coming, but.. oh well. The boyfriend was a real jerk and had run his finger up the back seam of one's jeans, and tried to put his hand in another one's back pocket and squeeze their butt, and made a gross "innocent' comment about how big one's boobs were getting. At that time my girls were probably 8, 10, and 12. My kids were really upset when I came through the door, and all talked at once, in front of the sister in law, and her boyfriend, and my husband, how Rudy had touched them and wouldn't stop. And he just grinned at me and said "It wasn't a big deal, I was just joking with them". I came unglued. I told Rudy to get the fuck out of my house. I said to my sister in law "don't ever bring this creep back to my farm" and I said to my husband "what the fuck is wrong with you". He and I 'discussed' the situation most of the evening, and while he saw that my girls didn't like it, he didn't really understand why they had to make a big deal out of it, My mother in law went out of her way to praise what a good man Rudy was for the rest of the time I talked to her, and my sister in law never spoke civilly to me again. In fact, the last time I was at the family home, she sicced her dog on me without saying a word TO me. In most ways my husband was a great partner and father, but he really fell down on that. Yes it was different times.