I must have been around 19 when I remember I had my back to a girl who would not stop groping me, 3 times I had asked her to leave me alone, and on the 4th I grabbed her wrist and made a scene and shouted quit touching me, only to be set on by the 3 boys she was dancing with and be thrown out the club, when I tried to explain the situation to the security, I was met with the response of, why on Earth would you be mad at that?

Myself and other male DJ/industry friends of mine have had numerous occasions of harassment by the same male DJ. He is a pretty significant figure in the Amsterdam queer scene. During events where we worked/played he’d come up to you, tell you how he thinks you’re “so beautiful” start touching you and groping at groins and nipples. From what I’ve seen he does this mostly to straight guys to kind of shock them or something.

He’s a very kind man, but his behaviour can be inappropriate. It is hard to get mad at him in the moment though because he says things like “you’re the type of guy I could have a very serious relationship with”. I never actually felt afraid or threatened around him (mostly because I knew I could literally pick him up and throw him out of the venue if I wanted to) but I have had to slap away his hands multiple times. Because of #forthemusic and all the stories you and others shared I have realised that his behaviour is not as innocent as it seems and that others may be less unaffected by it. Also, had he done this to women he would have been called out a long time ago I’m sure.

I also feel like this is very common at queer oriented spaces: men getting groped by other men without asking. It has happened to me numerous times. Usually you brush them of like “nah mate not interested” but again: if a man would do this to a women there would be serious consequences and very rightfully so.

As a male DJ I’d say on average, minor sexual assault (groping etc) happens to me 3/4 times a year. I play in smaller venues, bars etc with little security so I’m usually on my own in an easily accessible DJ booth. I’m not a small guy so I guess I don’t feel threatened in the way a girl might feel, and my tactic is to try to laugh it off when it happens. Only in 10+ years of playing out have I asked security to intervene when a girl was being sexually aggressive towards me. Security spoke to her and she stopped but they didn’t remove her.

When I was 17/18 I was in a club and unfortunately I had taken a dodgy pill and was starting to pass out and go in and out of consciousness while this was going on there was a guy that began to feel me up, dry humping me, going in to kiss my neck etc in any other situation it would have been fine I could have responded appropriately but he knew I wasn’t in a place where I could respond appropriately because of the state I was in and the fact I wasn’t really conscious. Out of all the sexual assault cases/harassment this is nothing but wanted to share to let you know that it does happen to males too.

For a bit more context I was just on the dance floor trying my best to stay standing I was absolutely not coming on to anyone, I had much more important things to focus on

I am a man and this is my story. This was about 4 years ago when I was still quite new in Berlin. I went to a well known venue with my friends on Sunday, and I guess I had Monday off so I decided to stay to experience a closing once while my friends left. Later I was sitting in the back of the room. At this time it’s always quite full so people were dancing in front of me, but the space next to me was free. A man came and sat down next to me, quite close and started rubbing his ass on me. I didn’t think much of it and moved over to make him space, but he just moved with me. I thought “ok this is weird” and got up and left, no big deal so far. I went to another area where you can sit on a bench. where somebody was already sitting and sat down next to them. A few minutes later I see the guy from before coming, ass first, trying to sit down on my lap. I was like “ok he didn’t get the hint” and pushed him away before he could sit down. That’s when he totally lost his shit.

So to set the scene I’m about 190cm so not too small either but this guy was easily over 210cm and about double my weight in muscles. And he started shouting in very broken English “I’M NOT GAY! I’M NOT GAY” and other stuff I couldn’t understand. Thankfully I saw somebody I knew and just went to them. But then I remembered that I was all alone in this dark club and this guy could overpower me easily in whatever corner if he wanted. And he was clearly not the most stable person when he reacted in this way when he felt that somebody was suggesting he was gay when rubbing his ass on other men. So I decided to leave.

Thankfully this didn’t affect me too much in the long run, I almost forgot about this incident in fact as incidents like this are incredibly uncommon for me, it just opened my eyes to what it feels to be powerless in such a situation, something probably every female looking person does experience all the time.

I have called out behaviour like this to that specific clubs security before when I saw it happen. I don’t know why I didn’t when it affected me personally.

I hope we can change this together so when clubs reopen we hopefully find ourselves in a better and more inclusive future.