Girl

stop sexualising children

A 14 year old girl at my school was told by a teacher that they could “see her ass” when she was wearing a skort. This is school uniform, so there was nothing she could do about it anyway, and the male teacher had clearly been looking at her body in a sexual way. It’s extremely disturbing, especially in an all girls school, when someone is sexualised in this way by an adult. She should be able to wear what she wants without being stared at like that. The girl was crying after this. Their class defended her but another male teacher was on the side of the teacher. Then, the school uniform policy was changed so that all of the us have to wear leggings under our skorts. It’s nearly summer, so not only is this extremely sexist, but very hot too. I cannot imagine boys being treated in this way. The teacher in question later said to his class – “If you skorts are that short, what else am I supposed to look at?” [redacted by administrator]

Finnish Girl

I, my parents and my older sister were on a few days long trip to Pärnu, a city in Estonia. We live in Finland. It was the summer holiday at the time and I was thirteen years old and my sister was fourteen. There was this beautiful wooden structure (kind of like a tunnel but not underground) that was decorated with flowers and different plants and that had places to sit on it and we decided we should take pictures in front of. I’m really awkward when I get my pictures taken so it only took a few moments for my sister to take my pictures and then we switched places. I took pictures of my sister and while I was doing that I turned and saw there was a man sitting in one of the benches. I noticed he was masturbating and quickly looked away embarrassed and tried to tell my sister we should leave. She saw the man as well and took us to our parents that were sitting outside of the structure. She, the smarter one, told our dad and he went to where the man was and the man ran away before he could do or say anything. He even chased him for a moment.

Mark

So this one time right. I started dating this cute girl online and like, she expected me to like, care for her kids and like, actually be a role model. AND like, why+++ I Dont get it like why am I Supposed to be a father like what if I Dont want to be a role model and I Just want to like be free and my own man, what if I just dont wanna settle down and protect her or kids,,, like she never thought about my FEELINGS.

Cath

My teacher was once making a point about sexism in society. He asked: “Who’s ever been discriminated about because of their gender?” I didn’t raise my hand and he asked me: “Did your dad never ask your brother to wash the car instead of you? Did you never have a pink room?” I’d never experienced that at all. My dad’s non-gender. He was the ‘house-husband’ while my mother was the ‘breadwinner’. If anything, he’s more feminine than masculine. He even wears dresses. My family has therefore always been a ‘be who you are’ family, not a social stereotype conforming one. I was raised to be myself, not a ‘girl’. When I told my teacher I’d had a pink room, he said: “There you go then, you’re a girl.” I’m a girl? I’m Catherine. I’m whoever I want to be. I had a pink room because when my brother moved into his own room when I was five, I chose to paint over the green with pink because it was pretty. My room’s now white and aqua because I like that colour. Never assume a person’s something when they’re not. That teacher knew and knows nothing about who I am, nor does he deserve to. He was trying to prove a point about stereotyping in society being wrong, but the way he treated me showed his ignorance.

Anonymous

I am only in middle school and I did not even know it could happen. During a mock congress meeting at school, the bill authors were talking and this boy sat next to me. He put his hands on his genitals and began masturbating next to me. He kept looking at my breasts and nudging me. I scooted away and he only moved closer. The room was packed with other middle schoolers and we were not allowed to leave so I could not leave. He then ran his hand from and inch under my pencil skirt down my leg and stroked my foot. He began squeezing it and when I looked at him, he grabbed the keychain from my nearby backpack and asked me where I got it. He had asked that question earlier that day. Later, he continued to sit next to me and rub my knee and even caressed my ear. I have to go to school with him.

13 yo girl, feeling helpless

In art last year, a boy in my class started lifting my skirt up. I told him to stop. He ignored me and continued. I asked him again and he still carried on doing it. After me telling him “stop” twice more he briefly touched my bum. His friends were laughing. I (stupidly) left the room crying as I felt so powerless and was unable to stop it. Now he always makes jokes about it, calling it “sexual attractions” and saying he “tripped”. I’m now really stressed out and paranoid about it happening again, never mind him joking about it constantly. I feel like an idiot for crying.

herstory

This is minor but when even the bbc, who are a publicly funded TV channel in the UK constantly calls female athletes at the olympics girls, it shows how some men automatically belittle women. They don’t even realise how insulting calling full grown women ‘girl’ is. I’ve challenged men in various jobs in the past when they have used ‘girl’ to refer to me or ‘girls’ for teams I have worked in that are mainly female. In one job I had if you listened to the senior staff, who just happened to be all men, our team must have been called ‘the girls’ the amount it was used, also the male member in our team of 4 was clearly not part of the team, so we did well constantly operating with just 75% of the required staffing levels at all times. What really annoyed me was when a younger woman who was part of the team tried calling us all ‘girls’, she got reminded even the junior member of the team was technically an adult at 18 years old, after that she didn’t use ‘girls’ within my earshot. I am glad to say in my experience the use of ‘girl/girls’ in the workplace seems to mainly be by men 40 plus, or if a younger male does use it my quick rebuke stays with them. Sadly though many women even those older than me are afraid to pull men up on this or have given up trying to get men younger than themselves to treat them with a basic level of respect.

School

When I was 14/15 at school I used to be subjected to sexual harassment in the form of comments constantly from a couple of boys in my class,this made me feel very uncomfortable even when I tried to ask them to stop. I also think now that the teacher surely must have noticed but he never did anything, and I never complained because I was too embarrassed about it.One of these boys in another lesson (Woodwork) would also constantly grab my ass and grope me but again I never spoke out about it because I was too embarrassed and felt in some ways that people would think me over-reacting if I did tell someone in authority. Now several years later I wish that I had spoken out about it at the time, since it frustrates me that they’ve got away with it, and appear to be unaware just how wrong it is.

PJ

I was at work and returning a memory stick to a male colleague. The stick happened to be bright pink. His colleague turned to me and said “Have you swapped that for one of yours?”. I replied that it was not my stick. The first colleague then said it was his and he had been sent a random colour. The second colleague then said ‘It’s a bit girly isn’t it?” I then told him that I wasn’t keen on pink, because as a girl it had been foisted on me so often just because I was a girl when in fact, in the early 20th century, baby boys wore pink. He replied ‘What do you mean, when you were a girl? You’re still a girl aren’t you?”. I replied, no ‘I’m now a woman”. The whole view that if it’s pink it must be girly, or that you are not a proper woman if you don;t like pink is irksome enough without then infantilising me to a ‘girl’ instead of a woman.

Sophia

My experiences with sexism haven’t been very outright. I can’t point to a specific day and say that it changed me. However, I constantly experience feelings from somewhere deep that the way I’ve been taught to live, and the way that the people around me act is anything but equal in regards to gender. As a young girl, I spent the majority of my time trying to be as unfeminine as I could. I thought that my female classmates who played house and aspired to be princesses were inherently less smart. It amazes me that even from as young an age as six, I believed that the traditional expression of femininity denoted weakness and inferiority. In second grade, when I first met the girl that would later become my best friend, I despised her because she was wearing a pink coat. It seems that we are allowed to be viewed as complex individuals when we act like men, but feminine women are seen as unassuming pretty faces. Women are people, no matter what choices they make, and I wish someone had taught me that sooner.