I go to uni in a very small town, and one day last year I was just minding my business walking down the street and a man sitting outside a pub by himself just shouted “smile!” really aggressively at me and other girls walking past. I mostly just couldn’t believe that in such a small town he could get away with intimidating me like that in broad daylight on the street right near my flat too.
I’m sixteen now, and used to walk home from school every evening in the city that never sleeps. As I walked, I noticed a man behind me. I picked up my pace, hoping he would fall behind, but he didn’t. I was almost home but I walked straight past my apartment building. I didn’t want him to know where I lived. I circled the block, looking behind me periodically. He was still tailing me. I made left turn after left turn, circling the block five times in total before he finally realized that we were at the same spot we once started, just fifteen minutes later. He stopped, looking confused before embarrassment spread across his face. Needless to say, he took off in the opposite direction. Ladies, if you ever think you’re being followed, circle the block a couple times and wait to see wow long it takes for him to notice 🙂
I was sexually harassment whan i was 9 by my music teacher at the moment. Now i am 16 and this is a memory that i will never forget. I was in the lesson i was playing drums and he came in the room he touched my shoulders with his hands and then he touched my breast. After that i quite the lessons with him and i told only to my relatives. I was afraid that if i told someone else they would think that i lie or that i am crazy so i didnt tell to any of my friends. Also my mother was sexually harassment my a relative when she was 13 and my aunt by her teacher when she was 15. We have to share our stories and encourage other women to speak because it is a very serious problem. I share my story because i was not crazy and i am not alone. We have to educate and spread our worlds to everyone so that the next time that something like this happen other people will help and support the person, that’s the most important.
I was at a house party back in A Levels and my bum got smacked by a boy. What got me and still does to this day was that I didn’t slap him round the face or throw a drink over him! This was because I actually got some attention from a boy who wouldn’t normally look twice at me. The fact that girls crave attention and reassurance from boys even when it’s negative and degrading such as this, is worrying. We shouldn’t be made to feel like any attention is better than no attention!! Why do we look for gratification from males when we are dam right amazing people anyways no matter what we look like!
I was getting changed in PE a few years ago when this boy brushed passed me. I wasn’t wearing a bra because this was when I had just started growing. This boy walked past me and whispered to his friend: “she’s got boobs.” I really don’t why I didn’t say something
A friend of mine has a 12 year old son who has been sexually abused by a 20 year old woman. I was helping my friend though it, the child is badly shaken up however as part of all this I have discovered the law in the UK does not recognise a woman as a rapist. The police officer told my friend that although his son is only 12 and incapable of given consent a woman can never be charged with rape. It turns out Section 5 of the Sexual Offices Act 2003 say, “A person commits an offence if, a) he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person with his penis, and b) the other person is under 13.” This means only a man can rape, even a child of any age! A woman is immune from prosecution as a rapist, the most she can be charged with is sexual assault which hold a lower stigma and lower punishment on conviction. Sexist laws!
This shits me. I’m an Office Manager in a construction company. Today is Wednesday so I process payroll for our 25 employees today. Before I can do that I have a heap of ‘everyday’ things that need to happen to clear my desk to focus on payroll. It shouldn’t bother me but my boss has just walked into my office and said ‘There’s no milk.’ When I looked at him and said ‘You have a car.’ he waved a negligent hand and said ‘Oh, there’s no rush!’ and walked out. Now I’m fuming and I feel like I can’t push back. That’s the everyday sexism of it. I’m 51 and I’m still getting this shit. And I’ll still end up buying milk.
I don’t know if this is a wholly valid story as I’m a man who has never been discriminated against, objectified or abused. I do not pretend to fully understand – or to have a chance of ever fully understanding – what many women go through on a daily basis because of their gender. It’s an absolute disgrace and I just want to say that from now until the day I die, I will always be on your team in the battle against sexism in all its forms. I think I have been in the past to some extent, but I can also think of occasions when I either didn’t fully identify the example of sexism in question or was too passive to tackle it. Reading about the issue and watching the play “Asking For It” though, has massively opened my eyes to the problems and how they have become unforgivably normalized. Would like to thank Laura Bates for her incredible book which has been really educational for me. Always here for you.
I have a wonderful partner. He does, however, come from a very sexist past, which he is proud to be trying to do the opposite of. In the beginning of our relationship, he used to occasionally mention things he did that he assumed my previous boyfriends didn’t, and expect to be lauded as some sort of hero for it. Some examples: cooking, doing the dishes after a meal, focusing also on my pleasure when getting intimate. It’s true that he is a much better boyfriend overall, than the previous ones, but they weren’t sexist to the point of expecting me to be a 1950s housewife or raping me. They were just not as good a match for me. But I would never have dated a man who expected me to cook all his meals and do all the housework, or one who only cared about his own pleasure in bed. There are no bonus points for not being that way. Not all women are conditioned to being horribly oppressed, and then suddenly awfully grateful when someone does not do that to them. That’s not where the bar starts, at least for me. My boyfriend is so used to seeing the example where the man “gives permission” to the woman to do things, that he assumes I need his permission and thinks he is generous for not making me do stuff his father made his mother do.
I’m a man, but I just read this in The Guardian: Trump praised his own niece’s breasts Mary Trump writes about Donald Trump’s treatment of women, including how – when she was briefly working as his ghostwriter – he provided “an aggrieved compendium of women he had expected to date but who, having refused him, were suddenly the worst, ugliest and fattest slobs he’d ever met”. She includes Madonna and the ice skater Katarina Witt as two of the women he named. Now how much of this shit can be acceptable, ever? Speaking as a former teacher, btw.