i am 15 years old in grade 10. I started to hear sexist comments in school by grade 5. On a daily basis I hear comments about women being unqualified to work, women belonging in the kitchen, women over using the term rape and sexual harassment and comments about feminists being cancerous, over weight and pretty much every other degrading word in the book. To top it off, every time i have spoke up to say something i get ‘its just a joke’ ‘take a joke’ ‘calm down its not like they really mean it’ … but my question stands, why is it that degrading women is so funny? It’s not a joke, it never was. I started getting cat called at 12 years old, when walking home from school on pajama day. In grade 7 i did a project on gender equality and was told by 4 boys in my class that it wasn’t real and it didn’t matter and to just sit down, shut up and look pretty. When i was 12 i was told by my friends grandfather that people need to stop making such a big deal about a few little jokes boys make time to time because boys will be boys. When I was 14 I went to a fair, and tripped on a rock. I fell to the ground and was immediately surrounded by boys I didnt know, all older than me. They turned to each other and said ‘what do we do with her? should we take her somewhere? what do you want to do to her? can i go first?’. so my bad for ‘not taking a joke’. im so sorry i don’t think my objectification is funny.