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people get shocked when i eat alot of meat

Anon

I worked at an advertising agency where the male creative boss said the following (and the list goes on): To his PA who was wearing trousers: “Next time, wear a skirt” To an employee who announced she was pregnant: “Can I get you a coat hanger for that?” To me, when I commented on a great song he played: “If you use this song in an ad I will rape you, and I’ll rape your mother” To a group of people in a meeting: “I’m bored, let’s Google rape victims” To a female client who wanted to bring their daughter in for an internship: “How old is she and is she hot?” This man has been the Chief Creative Office of an ad agency that has one of Africa’s biggest brands as a client. And he’s lasted eleven years in the job, and is still going.

Unhappy Schoolgirl

I was told the other day, “You need to find a guy”. I was told this because most of my other friends have boyfriend and I don’t. What gives that person the right to tell me I need a guy without considering wether I wanted a boyfriend or not. People always throw these snarky comments at me about being single as I have been for a while and it is not fair, it is my choice at the moment to not have a boyfriend and I am happy with that. One of my other friends comes up to me quite often and continues to complain to me about how unhappy she is without a boyfriend and how she wishes that she could be the girl that gets all the guys. I constantly reply with, “If you’re not happy with yourself, you won’t be happy with someone” and “You don’t need to be the girl that gets every guy, you are perfect the way you are and if they don’t like it, they are missing out”. It really saddens me that society has pushed it into her brain that this is what she needs to be happy, have a boyfriend and be beautiful and popular. Ladies, if you are reading this I want you to know that you are beautiful and you do not need a man to make you happy. We are much tougher than we look and much smarter too, you can be as successful as you want and do what ever you want with your life, it’s all up to you.

Kath

Mech eng student, and the company I was doing vac work with had a job in the harbour. On going in the one day with the engineer who was mentoring me, I got stopped at security because the engineer wasn’t allowed to take his wife in. Eh? “But she’s an engineer with the company,” he protests. Seriously, no amount of protest could get me in that gate. Security guard kept pointing at some kids playing soccer at the gate post saying “See, everyone’s wives and children must stay outside.” Because we were on a deadline, the guy had to go in (I insisted), so I stood outside waiting for someone else to drive out from the office to pick me up. Eng #2 took us straight to Port Control so he could lay a complaint, so in hindsight, thumbs up for that guy. Gracias.

Sharon

My sister told me to my face she didn’t wanna get dinner with me because she was embarrased to be seen walking around with me in the state I was in. I was wearing shorts.

ethne

i nearly reversed into a pedestrian while parking and before i could apologise he banged my car with his fist and yelled at me to look where i was going. i understood his rage and did not respond. but then an onlooker wagged his finger at me and reprimanded with “silly girl”. silly girl? would he have called my partner a “silly boy” if he were driving the car instead of me? no. clearly owning a vagina validates being belittled by perfect strangers.

AngryAlice

Just looked up vulva on Wikipedia. What do I see? Not a lot of nangs. What are young women supposed to think when they go online to educate themselves about their anatomy? Will they ask themselves, ‘Is it normal to have as much hair as I do?’ Shame on this popular public knowledge sharing resource for perpetuating the myth of the bald pussy.

Nikki

I get the newsletter for my neighbourhood in Joburg. I was reading it for the this month and in amongst the bulletin points about litter in the streets and noise there was a bare sentence that stood out to me “the reports of the rape cannot be verified, therefore it probably didn’t happen”. The way it was dealt with within the rest of the administrative bumph made me so angry – and especially the flippancy of “it probably didn’t happen” giving no indication to what measures were taken to try and figure out what happened. The message sent to any woman reading that newsletter is: if you were raped no one will care, no one will believe you and no effort will be made to follow up.

Wendy

My 10 year old daughter asked me today….. Why the world hates women

Sies

I was in a taxi in Cape Town at the weekend when the driver decided to enlighten me with his views on women being incapable of running anything as we are inferior to men. He claimed that this is proved by the fact that there are so few countries with female leaders. He said that it is the word of God, and that we are flowers who need protecting. Apparently this is why God decreed that a man should only lightly beat his wife, using something like a handkerchief.