Ghost
When I was in 5th grade me and some friends would get called b****s by some 5th grade boys. It was horrible and it continued until mid high school when they all moved away.
Boys
Jazz
I was 10 or 11, and he was 14 I think. It was in the end of the day, I had just come home from school maybe and hour ago. I was at home (brother,sister,father,and my dad’s friend were home too) I was walking down the hoiallway and I had just walked past my brother slightly opened door. When he called out to me, and I had nothing to do so I called back saying I was coming. I pushed open his door, and looked up at him. (He was lying on his bed, but it was a top bunk so I couldn’t quite see him.) he said he wanted to show me something, so I went up closer so I could see what he wanted to show me. When I went up closer I saw what I now know was an erect penis. (I went to a catholic primary school, and I didn’t know anything about male anatomy at the time) I’m not sure what I did, but I think I made a weird face, and I was totally confused. He put it away in his pants and showed me a stuffed toy that he cut a whole into, (I’m sure you can guess for what reasons) Most of the details and the rest of what happened i can’t really remember. Is all very foggy, and I remember feeling icky for the rest of the day, and days after that as well. I didn’t know it was wrong so I didn’t tell anybody. I truthfully thought it was normal. I remember looking at him and seeing him days after, and feeling weird and awkward. Now that I think about it there were other times where my brother acted very sexually around me. One time he smacked me in the bum. There was another times when he asked me to sit on his lap I can’t remember for what reason. I did. And when I sat down he pushed himself against my bottom. There were times he would say very degrading things, and just all around be inappropriate. There are other times Where I walked home from school and I would notice cars going a bit slower when they passed me in my wind-blown skirt. Or feel unsafe when a group of older guys would pass me on the street. It absolutely sucks to feel that way. I feel like i might have selective amnesia maybe about some things that have happened to me in my past because they were to traumatic to have at the front of my brain. And it took me a while to remember what happened. I only remember because I watched the Netflix show Sex Education. And there is a part in the series where Aimee (one of the characters in Sex Ed) gets jizzed on by a man in the bus. (I actually found this site through a video on Netflix’s YouTube channel about Aimee’s story) and it made me think of times I felt uncomfortable and unsafe, or weird. And then I remembered what happened and it made me feel sick. I don’t know what to do to about it. I’m not sure if I should tell someone. The most frustrating part is that my brain keeps trying to discredit what happened to me. Like did that really happen? You did this for attention? Blah! blah! blah! But I didn’t my brother did. He did it because he wanted a reaction. No I’m not sure what you would even class this as. I looked up (I looked this up after remembering what happened to me) similar things, and the closest thing I could find was indecent exposure. But the definition says it’s when someone displays sexual organs in a public area where it is not wanted. And I’m thinking in my head, well that didn’t happen to you jazz, it wasn’t in a public place, and maybe you did want it. I didn’t even know what a fucking penis was for crying out loud. what happened to me was wrong, and it is wrong. And also the thing is is that my brother was 14 when he did that to me, would he even have punishment or consequences at that age. And as a women I am conditioned to go. Oh well he was just young and dumb. And that it was a boy being a fucking boy. I am done. This needs to stop. I am horrified at what I have come to realise about the world at this time of writing this I am 14. At one of the things that makes me so mad is that no one knew. No one asked me while I was weird around him. No one knew what head done. That’s what sucked the most I felt fully alone. And now I know that I am not. That that feels so good. 😉 Ps, sorry this was so long. I just needed to get it off my chest.
Anonymous
One time this boy stalked me at a scout camp,he would try holding my hand and sitting next to me,and straight up told me that he loved me. He continued to call me his ‘girlfriend’ and was always trying to follow me around. Then,one night we saw a flashlight outside the girl’s cabins,we figured it was him saying goodnight to his younger sister,but the the next thing I hear is my friend screaming “OH MY GOD IT’S (name)!” turns out he was looking in the windows trying to find me. It scared me half to death and I couldn’t even sleep.
Dom
I need to get this out. I’ve gone out with my brother and boyfriend for a couple of drinks the past two Saturdays. On the first occasion, my brother who calls himself an ‘anti-feminist’ not necessarily knowing what the word even means, was talking about the kind of girl he wants to marry. How she needs to cook for him and be smart, you know the awful, overrated story. I rolled my eyes and simply said you’ll never find one, women are getting too strong to appease that kind of crap. What got to me more however, was how he spoke to me. He seemed more comfortable speaking about women to my boyfriend, than he did to me, as everything I said was responded to by a ‘F*ck off’. Fine, I dismissed it as a boys topic mixed with drunkenness as well as the probable knowledge he holds of no woman ever being his cook and cleaner in his life. Let the boy dream, I thought. The Saturday after, my boyfriend brought up a topic we argued about. Then said actually he doesn’t want to talk about it, but I insisted that if he started we may as well explain it to my brother fully and see what he thinks. What I wasn’t expecting though, is having every sentence I started being interrupted by him. I didn’t get to explain the tinniest bit of my opinion or argument. Every single sentence starter that came out of my mouth was finished by him. It got to the point where my brother looked at me with the words ‘I’m so sorry’ screaming from his eyes and said ‘Let’s maybe change the subject.’ Just for contextual information, both these guys speak about there not being such a thing as feminist or unequal rights that need fighting for. Yet this happens? Yet I am silenced twice, for trying to T A L K in the presence of two boys? How are they this blind and deaf and goddamn ignorant to the problem they are so casually the cause of? Girls, who’s up for a drink with me, because I’m not planning to go with the opposite sex anytime soon?
ZO
A male friend of my recently challenged a women at work who called him a ‘boy’ when addressing him & rightly so. At the time, I challenged the knee jerk reaction with ‘this seems so bad to you & yet it happens to women all the time when they’re called girls & no one bats an eyelid’. To which another guy replied ‘Oh we’ve started something now’. Now I’m noticing all the time someone refers to one of us as a ‘girl’ & it’s crazy how unnoticed this goes by my male counterparts. I just showed one of the posts on this site (superhero one) to the guy who was called ‘boy’ & he was like ‘true’. I then drew his attention to something someone at work said earlier, an older man who to be honest I’ve had bad vibes from before. He waved goodbye to some colleagues by saying ‘have a good evening girls’. I told my friend about it & said if that had been him, it wouldn’t have been the same, thus drawing attention to my point – we get this all the time. He remained silent. Doesn’t make it right, but it’s good to show someone their privilege.
Priyanka
Today my best friend and I had been revising for our second year university exams at home in our flat in Leamington Spa. We decided to take a coffee break and enjoy the sun for a while at around 4.30pm on a Sunday afternoon. We stopped for Ice Latte and Cappuccino at a new spot. I had been feeling pretty irritated at some of the comments a male friend of mine had made about me “all in banter” (of course), and was airing my grievances. My friend and I took a walk around the block before returning home, as we continued our discussion. “How do you deal with wanting to flirt with someone, even if you feel they undermining or sexualising you?” “Why is it that people assume I only got my internship because I fill some type of “quota”?” we asked one another. Ironically, as we neared the end of our walk, a young man got out of his car to ask us where the nearest Nando’s was. I politely responded and gave him the directions, whilst continuing on my way. Unbeknown to me, this man was not alone, for across the road in two others cars were a group of guys. These guys (about fifteen of them collectively) swiftly all got out of their cars, and having noticed their friend ask me for directions, took it upon themselves to begin cat-calling my friend and I. “Join us for dinner!” “Give me your Instagram!” “Let’s just follow her boys – come on lads follow her”. It felt like I had been surrounded by men in less than thirty seconds – it was like being cornered. I sensed my friend’s nerves – so joked “it’s like they’re the seagulls from Finding Nemo – Mine! Mine! Mine!” I whispered. Whilst it was true, it wasn’t funny. I think the ironic timing of this encounter made me angry enough to come here and write about what I experienced. This happens all the time and it is a small snippet of a larger problem. I’ve experienced this before, and I will experience it again. My mother has experienced it. My baby sister has experienced it. But the point it – It is not okay to shout abuse at a woman because you are part of a large group of guys. It is scary and it intimidates girls. It is as simple as that. I hope they burnt your Nando’s.
Katie Thomas
Today I was standing in line at COop and happened to be right next to the papers and magazines when one children’s magazine caught my eye. It said on the front “Stickers for boys”. My heart sank as I opened it up and found loads of GREAT stickers of dinosaurs, tools, traffic cones and cars. I can’t stand that children are prescribed their interests, abilities and careers in this way. I am a construction worker and would love a spanner sticker but it has taken me some years to know this.
lara
I remember when i was 14 my friend was staying the night at my house, and we were talking on the phone to 2 boys that were in our year. I cant quite remember how it was brought up but i remember one of the boys making a remark about how he reckoned my “pussy would be as smooth as a baby’s bottom”. I just laughed it off, but looking back now i cant believe that at the age of 14 boys are talking this way to girls. 3 years later, my breasts grew to be very very big (G/H cup), and i would have boys in my year yell comments about them during P.E or come up and touch them as i walked by them in the hall. This one time i stood up for myself when i was touched (coincidentally by the same boy who made those comments) and i was quite assertive in my response but all he did was laugh in my face. Having huge breasts became such a huge part of my life i found myself explaining to people that i hated them. If you also have large breasts you know the daily struggle with them, which is why i ended up getting a breast reduction. i feel sad when i think about the fact that 4 years of torment attributed to this decision (though there were so many other reasons) as this just shouldn’t be the case. At only 18 I’m already worrying about if i have a daughter and whether she with inherit these genes of mine and have to go through the same humiliation that i did. Its more impactful than men realise. Lets stand up for ourselves and for our bodies.
Sofia
Someone I know told me that a young male friend of hers claimed that, “if a lot of keys can unlock a lock, it means that that lock is a rubbish one but if a key is able to unlock many locks, it is a master key.” By this analogy, he meant a lock to be a woman’s vagina and a key being a man’s penis. As if a woman’s body and what she chooses to do with it is something to be condemned but a man’s body and what he chooses to do with it is a sign of ultimate power? Just, no.
ash
boy in our school said women were stupid and didnt deserve equality because ‘all the influential people in this world are men’ and therefore women couldnt do anything bc we had been discriminated against