In the office and the men are hilariously discussing that they “can’t afford another wife”.
The Everyday Sexism Project exists to catalogue instances of sexism experienced on a day to day basis. They might be serious or minor, outrageously offensive or so niggling and normalised that you don’t even feel able to protest. Say as much or as little as you like, use your real name or a pseudonym – it’s up to you. By sharing your story you’re showing the world that sexism does exist, it is faced by women everyday and it is a valid problem to discuss.
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Joanne
On my way bak from work on a crowded tram this older man stod next to me. At first I figured his unnatural closeness to me stemmed from the tram being as full as it was. But as he kept pushing hos body against mine I realised that the bulge that pressed into my belly was not hos shopping bag but rather his half erect penis. Because the tram was packed with people I was unable to move away and I felt trapped. Fortunately he left the tram shortly after mye realisation and I was left feeling angre and violated.
Stella
I was sitting at the railway station with my mum. On the opposite platform a train pulled up and a man stood at the doorway and started looking at me. Initially I didn’t notice him because he was far away, but then he moved closer as started making sounds to attract my attention. When I looked in his direction, he started making lewd signs with his hands and near his crotch. I got really angry and shouted at him from my platform. He retreated for a while, but came back and continued doing it. I could’ve walked away, but I was really grossed out and very angry, so I shouted at him again and threatened to call the police. Again he retreated but came back. This happened three or four times before he finally went away. He knew that my threat to go to the police was empty because even if they came, they wouldn’t make much of an effort to apprehend the man. This sort of stuff has happened many times, but the fact that I couldn’t get close enough to do any physical damage and that even after shouting at him several times he wouldn’t go away made me feel extremely powerless.
Victoria
I was at work and was talking to my manager about applying for a full time role…he said I would be sure to get it if I turned up to the interview in a ‘short little dress’….THANKS BUT NO THANKS
ARF
I was at a literature festival (huge, popular, in a small city) watching the moderator (white, male) of a panel make sure he took an equal number of questions from the front of the hall and the back, when I realised he was also making sure to alternate between questions from men and women. I murmured my pleased surprise to an acquaintance (male) who I happened to be sitting with. He’d brought along a woman he was on a vague date with. Immediately, he turned to her and said “Oh, okay. I have a question. So you can ask it.” When I looked at him in disbelief, asking if he’d really taken my pointing out the moderator’s attempt to make women’s voices heard as an invitation to somehow 1. see that as a “quota” and 2. use that quota for his own ends, he looked confused.
Sinead
The eldest man of the table in a restaurant being offered to taste the wine and no one else.
Izzi
Bunch of girls taking about having a scientific project together, not actually excluding anyone, just happened that all were women. A male colleague comes and asks: what are you planning now? We answered: A project! (not very specific, I know, but it was in a workplace). The following question was: Shopping project???…..
Anon
The work that I do involves looking at naked women. Before you gasp with shock at my apparent depravity, please let me explain. I didn’t choose to look at naked women like a life drawing artist would, I sort of inadvertently stumble across women without many clothes on as I go about my work. I never signed up to look at naked women, it just sort of happened really.
My work involves caring for animals. The creatures need newspaper to do their business on. This means that I have to open up various tabloids and rest assured, these volumes of journalism make brilliant toilet paper for the little creatures!
Where I work is a family friendly environment, there are often children milling about and we have many school trips. For this reason, I have to hide the pages featuring naked women by either placing them faced down or covering them up with hay. I don’t think my boss would take too kindly to photos of naked women being on display to the public and their small children.
I know these animals can’t read, but I do sometimes wonder what they’re thinking when they urinate on top of a photo of naked woman or when they defecate on top of a photo Donald Trump. That always makes me giggle and gets me through the day. Do animals interpret photographs like humans do?
Anyway, there seems to be a lot of naked women in these newspapers and zero naked men. This doesn’t seem fair somehow.
I used to know several young women who wanted to see certain male pop stars naked, so there does seem to be a potential untapped market here.
I know that the women who strip off choose to do this: good luck to them if that’s what they enjoy and that’s how they want to make money. However, I’d much rather they did these sort of things either in private or in periodicals covered by a brown envelope. There is stuff that cannot be shown in family orientated environments.
Maybe I live in a prudish society that says women should dress modestly to avoid ridicule. It’s far too cold in this country usually for people not to wear many clothes. I understand that people in the tropics wear so few clothes because it is hot.
However, I always feel incredibly uncomfortable when I see a picture of a naked woman in a popular paper. Maybe I am insecure because I am a woman. I don’t know. Maybe I feel ashamed because women’s bodies are either sexualised or pathologised by society. Women’s bodies are judged on how they look. Men’s bodies by what they do.
All that I know is that small children in our culture aren’t meant to see people that are starkers, so I have to conceal the evidence so I don’t get into trouble.
Animals don’t need clothes, they have fur or whatever. They probably don’t even care about Donald Trump or naked female pop stars. I just wonder what’s going on inside their minds when they see those pictures.
Naked women crop up elsewhere too when you least expect them. A male family member decided to look up his favourite rock band “The Barenaked Ladies” on the Internet so he could buy their new album. This band seemed to consist entirely of men (please correct me if I am wrong).
However, much to my male relative’s disgust and dismay, his search results for the phrase “The Barenaked Ladies” yielded just that, ladies that were naked and well, bare.
He wasn’t very happy at the imagery he was confronted with. He wanted to buy a music album, not stare a female nudes. Unfortunately, computers are very literal thinkers and the Internet is already chock full of pictures of naked women, so it was an accident just waiting to happen.
Susan
There are so many but here are a few:
* Walking as a teen a man drives by and lifts his behind up until I can see he isn’t wearing any pants, while he was driving!
* Walking as a young adult a man is driving right behind me really slowly as I am walking, stops the care (still behind me), yells “Hey!” and when I turn around he is standing there pants-less. When I told my live-in boyfriend about this he had nothing to say, no support, did not encourage me to call the cops (and I didn’t call).
* When I started wearing a bra my grandfather snapped my bra strap. I was 12.
* At a bar, a man grabbed my but. When he did it again I looked up in the mirror behind the bar, saw him, and so when he came around again I turned to him and said something like, “Don’t you dare touch me!” That was awesome.
* On public train a man pressed his erect penis against my behind.
….
Kelly
My mother’s cancer came back after being in remission for over a year this summer. This bout is tougher than the last time around and one that makes you have the feeling fuck cancer. Last time, I only had to take off a couple of days when she was laid up after her double mastectomy. This time, I’ve used over a week’s worth of sick time to be with her and take her to doctors’ appointments and therapy sessions.
It’s become very tough to get the time off because my boss expects detailed justification on why I need it off. It’s very much a private matter and I don’t feel comfortable telling someone who isn’t family much more beyond the general she has an appointment. I honestly would have expected her to be more empathetic because when a former colleague’s husband was dying of cancer, she let the woman do whatever she wanted and gave her carte blanche for time off. She even went lax of her performance reviews because of the stress she was under.
She’s also almost too lax as well with a male colleague who is a divorced father of multiple kids and an aging father whose health problems are partially his own fault. It’s as if he has a magic 8 ball of excuses that gets trotted out on a regular basis (dad is sick, I didn’t make an effort to get child care, etc). He got a flex schedule even though our current staffing situation and his job performance don’t merit it. Right now, we’re down one FT position at least for another couple months until a replacement gets hired. His job performance was barely adequate before, but is struggling to do his job now. I didn’t think his reduced appointment should have been renewed period until his job performance improved.
Meanwhile, I’m being held to a higher standard because I’m a woman. It’s unacceptable for me to have some issues that I can try to fix when made aware of them. Instead, I’m subjected to one of my (female) boss’ bullying rants. I’ve mostly fixed the issue, but I’m not going to get any recognition beyond it’s your job. She had the nerve to tell me that I was being negligent and that it was the worse state that the area had been in ever. I had to hold back and not respond that it was a fucking mess when I took over because both my predecessor and the person doing it on a temporary basis had neglected it worse. I couldn’t get over how tactless and insensitive she was considering what I’ve been going through.
I’m looking for other jobs because I know that I’m never going to be given the recognition I deserve. It’s tough being stuck with a coworker who only stays in the job for the benefits, even though he hates it. It’s one think griping privately with me, but it’s another whining to some of the students he’s supposed to be mentoring. I don’t like my job somedays but I don’t share it at work. I’ve started expressing my frustration with the sexism that I’ve encountered and that it doesn’t matter how good of a job you do, you only get rewarded and appreciated if you’re a male.