I’m in my thirties, I developed early so from the age of nine I was subject to some form of unwanted attention or other. From stares and under eye glances to comments and even touching (from everyone, not just boys, but teachers and girls too). I used to ask to get changed for P.E in the toilets so I didn’t have to deal with it. As I got older it obviously got worse, boys would drop things on the floor and ask me to pick them up, when I did they would laugh coz they could see down my shirt. Although I hated it (and as a by-product, hated my breasts) I got so used to it, I I just started laughing it off as ‘normal’ and even tried to get ‘behind the joke’. As I got older the attention became more overtly negative, my family were churchgoers, and our church elders once asked my dad to tell me to cover up (in the middle of summer) because the way I dressed was distracting for the male members of our congregation (I was 15).
One of the first jobs I held at age eighteen was in a shop. When I was behind the till, the manager would brush his penis across my bum and lower back when he walked past me, or push himself into the back of me, as if he were trying to get past but didn’t have enough room. We could have walked two by two down there! Sometimes customers would notice and smile at me as if it was flirting and something ‘cute’ or ‘funny’. I found out from a female colleague after I quit, that he’d told everyone that I’d quit because he’d gotten me pregnant! Even though I knew I hated all of this, I never told anyone, because I honestly hadn’t thought of it as worth telling anyone, I wouldn’t have labelled it as sexual harassment, because it was just so ‘normal’.
It’s only in recent years that I’ve started to look back and with hindsight see how much of it there was. (Above is the tip of the iceberg) and now, having read more and understand more, I’m noticing a few little things that worry me about my own husband. (never thought about it before, but now we have a daughter, it concerns me more).
– He mocks me when I get annoyed at the gendered way toys and clothes are marketed
– He dismisses me when I raise concerns about sexism from our male friends
– He once recounted a story he’d heard about a woman who had gone back to a guys house and who had consented to be fucked from behind up against a window. The guy had then left and his friend had started having sex with her, while he walked outside and waved at her through the window. When my husband (who had seemed to find this story funny) saw my reaction he looked suddenly serious and said “it’s basically rape”. I told him there was nothing “basically” about it.
– Most recently, while we were watching the movie ‘Crash’ after the awful scene when Thandie Newton’s character is assaulted by the racist cop, he told me that he doesn’t like her as an actress anymore because of the way she ‘over reacts’ in that film.
It’s little things, and I love him, he’s a good man and a great dad, but he has internalized misogyny and white male privilege which he refuses to acknowledge or tackle.