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mj

my dad literally can’t go a day without yelling at my mum bc i don’t know how to cook traditional Bengali dishes/curries at fifteen and apparently its HER fault I can’t cook. he’s constantly talking about how no one would want to marry me because I wouldn’t be able to provide them with decent food after a day at work and then when I asked him how he got married without knowing how to cook, his answer was ‘well im not the daughter in the family, why would I need to know shit like that’. I told one of my teachers at school about how sexist my family is and they called me ‘white-washed’ and ‘western’ and said that that’s just what life is like with immigrant parents. … my teacher’s a middle aged white guy from Manchester-

Mo

The constant accusation by the red top press and elsewhere that a women is ‘flaunting’ something (dress, abs, legs, backside, etc) is aggressive and abusive. Women wear clothes they enjoy – it is not flaunting anything. This word should become a total no-no when used to describe any female, as the word feisty is; let’s start challening its use please

AD

When I was a young woman I was repeatedly sexually harassed and treated like I was defined by how I looked. As an older woman I am routinely ignored, spoken to like I am stupid and I often feel invisible. I have really struggled to find who I am in public space. What I notice most is the cruelty towards women inherent in both- either as an object to be leered at or a non-person. One way I notice how I am not heard or seen by men is that they so often get my name wrong- it’s not an unusual name. It amazes me how often even men who have known me a long time still get my name wrong. I said to one of them once “You would not get my name wrong if I was 30 years younger” but I wouldn’t want to go back and be treated like that either.

Kira

I was in a relationship with a boy for about a year. We broke up two months ago. Looking back on it now, I realise everything that was wrong with that relationship, and his subtle, underlining misogynistic behaviours, which constantly made me question my self-worth. I remember the times when I got heated in an argument and he would ask me to “relax.” I recall all the times when he would tell me to stop “man-hating” when I expressed my anger towards the patriarchy and my experiences as a woman within a patriarchal society. He would never listen. He called me “bossy.” He would tell me that I always took things too far. He jokingly blamed me for our first failed attempt to have sex. (he got nervous and couldn’t get hard) He made me feel that my affection towards him was too much. He would often call me a “bitch.” He would call my friend bitches. He hated all my female friends, especially the more assertive ones. He mansplained me when I got into trouble at school, as if he knew better than me. He made me feel like shit when I wasn’t able to give him the sexual pleasure he wanted. All these things were small, but they affected me in so many different ways. I hope to never make the same mistake again.

Anon

My husband always assumes that I am being 1.annoying or 2. petty when I am standing up for something, the kids for example. Always, after I say my concern, he characterizes it as annoying and then as petty. I have to fight my way through both of those assessments each time until I can prove that my concern is reasonable to him. Every. Fucking. Time. What must my daughter think?

Katka

When I was about 8 or 9 years old my 2 years younger sister, my stepdad and I were playing a card game in my and my sister’s room. I lost and my punishment from my stepdad was that I had to get completely naked in front of him and my sister, he held my wrist and twisted my skin until I obeyed. I was then told to go and show myself to my mum, who was reading in the kitchen. We didn’t speak about this after. I was ashamed and embarrassed to ever talk about it for years. I only recently realised that I was assaulted. And it still makes me feel ashamed even though I know I was a child and didn’t do anything wrong.

L

My flatmate has started putting all mental aspects of his household tasks onto me. He has lived in the flat longer than me, but he will make me come into the kitchen while i’m on the process of leaving the house, to have me show him where we keep the bin liners. We have a new flatmate joining us soon. I was busy tidying the flat for a party, which he knew about. He m ssaged me 20 min before people were arriving to tell me that he was gonna go for a run, and in the meantime I should compile a list of household items that we need and then send that to him, so he can send it to the new flatmate after he got back from his run. I have previously only heard this stuff from women in relationships with men; it’s like I’m in a relationship where a disproportionate amount of household tasks is put on me, without any of the perks of a relationship.

t

My boyfriend of recently made comments to me during an argument that went “You’re being irrational” “We can talk when you’ve calmed down”. This is very out of character for him, but I do concede that he has a very difficult time managing his temper when upset and often says things he does not mean and later regrets This is on top of past arguments and it occurred to me that in past arguments, he has made comments of the same variety where because I am crying and expressing emotion, that I am irrational and not level-headed, that I must not know what I’m saying or that I don’t mean what I say. Meanwhile, during our most recent argument, I was rather upset but I knew what I was saying and what I was doing but he was stonewalling and not being responsive and therefore making me more upset. It is language like this though, that no matter how good a person may be, that I realize the society and the environment a person grows up in, and chooses to stay in, just leads to incidents like this, where it’s not a physical attack, and it’s not constant, but it’s so normalized, and made to be seem so innocuous when it’s not.

Mi

I often wonder how my life would’ve been if I were born a male. Would my parents stop asking me to help out in the kitchen while pretending that my brother and I are equal? Would they ‘allow’ me to have friends who are boys? Would they stop trying to manipulate me into being a submissive girl? Would I be a person who I’ll treats women as I have to face everyday? Would the casual sexist remarks in school stop, or would I just be the person speaking them? Would I have the dear friends of mine who made me see the truth when I was blinded by my parents’shielding?

Anonymous

On multiple occasions in my last relationship, my ex would threaten to rape me to shut me up if I was ‘talking too much’. I don’t think that will ever leave me