I remember a day when I was twelve years old. I went to the beach with my mother and older brother we’d gotten some fresh fish and clams. My pants had gotten wet but since I was wearing a long t-shirt I took them off. My mom told me to change in the back of our car and remember seeing this middle aged man who was in the car behind us and my brother was talking to him. My mom told me to change faster and I remember that old man trying to get a look at me. My mom said that I was doing a striptease and I felt that it was somehow my fault that the guy was looking at me as a sexual object. I kept trying to forget that incident afterwards, I wish we’d just driven away I felt so vulnerable trying to change my shirt as that all went on. Since I had starting developing at a young age all this and other incidents compounded making me feel the need even to this day to cover up. To wear baggy clothes in my mind it was better to try to hid that I was feminine, so I did things like cut my hair short and do everything I could to look like I was male. Since in my mind then people would respect me for my personality more than how my body looked. Beautiful and smart were two notions that I always had a great deal of difficulty connecting, even though I knew people like that did exist. For me it was if I was going to to be smart I could not look like a girl or people would never respect me. Which I know is a very skewed sense of reality but that was life for me…

I was walking in my city to some cafe and this guy was tailing me. I didn’t want to be paranoid, but I quickened my pace. He ran up behind me, pinched my butt, and ran away. He laughed as I yelled at him.

When I was eleven years old, I went out for a walk with a long-time friend. She had fallen in with a new crowd, and wanted to meet up with them. There were a couple of other girls from our class, and a guy. I didn’t know how old he was, but he had a car so he must have been at least seventeen to be driving it on his own. He kept looking me up and down despite my obvious discomfort, and tried to get me to hook up with him in the back of his car. I thought he must be mistaken, so I asked him if he knew how old I was. He did. The other girls I was with tried to encourage me to get in the car with him, and said that they’d already hooked up with him. I refused, but they all kept trying to persuade me, and he kept finding reasons to touch my arm or my shoulders. It made my skin crawl. I made my excuses and walked home alone.

It was the first week of school and I wore a cute dress that had just bought. It was a denim dress with embroidered roses on it and it was off the shoulders. The length was about down to my knees and if covered my cleavage completely. I was stopped by a teacher before heading to homeroom because it was just way too inappropriate to have my shoulders out like that. I was then asked to cover up with a sweater, one in which i did not have because it was the beginning of September and 90 degrees, or change and if I didn’t there would be repercussions. The teacher then allowed me to grab clothes from my gym locker and then followed me to the bathroom where she waited outside until I came out changed. DRESS CODES ARE A VIOLATION OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND ARE PUBLICLY SHAMING WOMEN!!!! My shoulders are a normal part of my body. You should not teach girls their bodies are sexual or a diversion. Confidence should be rewarded not shunned. I am a 16 year old girl, if you are sexualizing me that’s YOUR problem not mine.

I was in third grade, and on the last day of school, my best friend, who was male, decided we should play Star Wars. This was already a little bit of a sacrifice, because I would have much rather played Harry Potter, but what really made me upset was that by saying, “Do you want to play Star Wars,” he really meant, “Do you want to watch my brother and me while we play Star Wars? You can’t play because you’re a girl and girls can’t fight.” Apparently

When I was eleven, in gym class we had to complete several “tests” to make up most of our grade for the quarter. One of them was a push-up test, and the teachers announced the requirements to get an A, B, and so forth. The girls had to do 15, and the boys had to do 30. This seemed so unfair, because even though many of the girls did just as many push-ups as the boys, the teachers only congradulated the boys who did the most.

I am not that old myself but I have been noticing sexism at an early age. When I go to school boys will push my head down and say “deep throat” or push my head down to their lap. It’s a very uncomfortable situation for me when they do that. I usually slap them or say stop it but it doesn’t work- they keep doing it. After I walk away they yell out mean names to me and start laughing.

im young….. like very young and already i see the world as it is more then any adult ik. i see the fact that sexism is looked as not there when reallly we have just gotten used to it. For example the dress code at my high school is mainly just for girls and the only reason why is because we might distract the boys…. that crap….. are we really sexualized that much to the point that if i show my shoulder i could distract a fellow class mate like what

A freind and I were sitting in Social Science class working on a Social Science Project together. The project was about the Constitution. This guy named Jack walks up and says “Con means bad so The Constitution is bad, Pro means good so Prostitution is good.” I looked at him and then kept talking to my freind. Another guy who was walking past sits down and jokes that “He heard Prostitution so he was interested.” Jack, upon hearing this turns to him and says “Give me 20 bucks and she’ll do it” pointing at my freind. My freind didn’t here him and she kept on working but I hit Jack over the head with a book. He didn’t see what he had done to deserve that.

My father sometimes thinks that it’s more important for me to do chores than my homework while my brothers play video games, mind me that they’re both older than me and I’m an honor roll student. He expects me to take out the trash in the middle of the night while my incompetent brothers play video games and they’re always a priority for him;