misogyny

Kendall

|

I deal with sexism every day at my work. I am the ONLY female at a facility with over 50 men. I deal with constant derogatory remarks from the men, one of the guys (he is over 50 years old) constantly comments on my body and how “if he was younger, he’d make me his” and he is always telling me how sexy I am and that my body looks great and things like that. It makes my skin crawl and makes me sick to my stomach. About a month ago, one of the younger guys was sending the nudes of the girl he was sleeping with, with all the guys at work. When I got upset, they told me that if a girl sends a guy nudes, he has every right to share them with however he likes. It made me so sick and angry. I tried to find out who the girl was so I could warn her but they absolutely refuse to give me her name. I could honestly fill a book with all the different sexist and misogynistic stuff I deal with just at work, not even including the stuff outside of work. This job pays really well, has good benefits, and a super flexible schedule that I need so I can finish college, and quitting this job would severally hurt me financially.

Alyssa

|

I was on my way to my best friends house one night and I had JUST left my apartment. As I was walking down the street, a car pulled up beside me, slammed on the breaks and one of the men inside yelled at me “hey bitch, down for a threesome?” I was so scared that I dropped my phone and it broke.

JoJo

|

I’m part of a “secret” local Facebook group which also meets up irl. When I was first added this group was doing lots to support refugees and other really positive stuff. It was basically left leaning and a substantial number of the male regulars self identified as feminists. I felt safe there talking about things that had happened to me including gang rape and domestic violence. Recently there has been a massive change. Since Weinstein these men who seemed so supportive have attacked women in the group, we’re apparently “jumping on the bandwagon”, our experiences are “saccharine victimhood” and much worse. Only a few weeks before, a young woman in the group felt very scared of two older men who verbally harassed her on the bus, these men were really supportive to her yet a few weeks later they were ridiculing women for reporting similar things. Compared to my first marriage and gang rape this verbal abuse and feeling of not being believed may not seem much, but the effects on my emotional well-being are devastating and have brought back all my self-doubt and lack of confidence in my ability to make good decisions. Over the past two and a half years I grew to trust and admire the same men that are now referring to me and other women in the group as hysterical man haters. I feel so humiliated and let down as I’ve gradually opened up and my trust has once again been violated.

Lucy Molloy

|

I was on a bus home alone late at night in South London and was on the phone to my boyfriend. I often call him when I’m in these circumstances as it makes me feel a bit safer. Whilst on the phone this random man said excuse me very loudly. I turned to him wondering what was wrong. He said ‘When you get off the phone you need to talk to me.’ I said ‘Do I? Why would that be?.’ He said ‘Because I have a nice face, and you have a nice face and we can talk about marriage and babies.’ This man was about 50. I’m 24. I would have loved to have told him to go fuck himself, but was worried in case he was getting off at the same stop as me and if he was going to follow me once I got off the bus. I turned back and started talking to my boyfriend on the phone again and very loudly joked about the ludicrous man old enough to be my father who wanted to marry me. I think the man felt a bit embarrassed after that and luckily he got off way before my stop. I’ve had a lot of similar experiences with men thinking their harassment is light hearted and ‘just a joke’ I find it so frustrating because for me nothing about these experiences are amusing. Being made to feel unsafe everywhere I go is not funny, it’s disgusting and it in infuriates me that there don’t seem to be any public awareness campaigns on public transport and no formal channels to report these instances of harassment and prosecute these individuals.

IexpectnothingandyetImdisappointed

|

I had to liaise with an external company to hire some audio equipment for an event at work. Now…I’m not going to claim to be an expert in audio equipment, but I can find my way around it if required and, after nearly 30yrs of existance as a woman, I am more than capable of realising when somebody is bullshitting me. The guy tried to bamboozle me with big long explainations, every so often throwing in a comment like “I just don’t think you’re understanding, hen…” and when he gets here I find out that he is literally just plugging in a cable and sticking some wires to the floor and charging us through the nose for it cos he knows that at this late stage I have no choice but to go with his company. He also tried to mansplain gaffa tape to me…….of course I’ve heard of freakin gaffa tape, who hasn’t heard of gaffa tape? Jesus man…

Aoife Grace

|

I need feminism because when I was 4, we learned the colours. After class, a group of boys came up to me and asked what my favourite colour was. I said “blue” and and one of them replied, “you can’t like blue, it’s a boy colour”. Upon telling him that my dad’s favourite colour was purple, I was told, “your dad must be a girl then”. I didn’t tell my dad because I thought that being compared to a girl would upset him too much. My dad is a feminist. I need feminism because when I was 13, my class worked on a project with NATS AIS. In the final stage of the competition, I was transferred into a group with 6 boys ‘for representation’. As project manager of my last team, I assumed that I’d have some creative input and delegation opportunities. I was put on research with a guy who played 2048 the whole time but still took full credit for the work I did. One lesson, the project manager was away so I took it upon myself to show some initiative and start the PowerPoint presentation. The next day, it had been deleted without a thought and a new one was being made; it was exactly the same but grammatically incorrect. When I tried to argue, I was called bossy and told to ‘get back in the kitchen or wherever [I was] supposed to be’. I need feminism because I saw the bewildered look on Harvey’s face when I did better than him on a physics test., despite the fact that I had beaten him on every science test beforehand. He used to call me dumb every lesson, still does. He just can’t believe that a somewhat attractive girl has the capacity to be good at science. Or maybe his ego’s just big. I need feminism because a girl I go to school with got raped by a boy in our year. For three weeks leading up to the event, she had reported him to the school 6 times for touching her inappropriately in class, she even had witnesses. He got a ‘serious talking to’ and nothing more. He wasn’t even moved away from her in class. She came into school crying and she stopped talking for a few days. One of our mutual friends got really mad at her for ‘being over-dramatic and complaining too much’. When I got angry at this, she said “well if it had been me, I would’ve just told him to stop and kicked him in the balls’. I had no words.

Stephanie Hayes

|

My housemate (he’s 24 years old, I’m 32) – “Women should never shave any part of their heads, it’s a big turn off for a man. So if you do it, just so you know – I’ll hate it!” I did it – I fucking love it! : ) MY HEAD, MY HAIR He also added, “Women should never have tattoos on their arms or any part of their body that are obvious.” I have a tattoo on my wrist, my shoulder and my pelvis. And just for you, Adam – I’ll soon get a whole sleeve of tattoos, on MY BODY

Cleo Jackson

|

In summer this year, I was locking up my bike on university campus. It was a hot day so I was wearing a shortish dress with bare legs -not that that matters in the least but I guess that was the catalyst for what happened next. A young guy, total stranger and likely a student was standing outside a newsagent a few feet away and he was staring at me as I fumbled with my bike keys. I looked up because I could feel his eyes on me, and he sneered at me, ‘you’re a dirty little slapper’. It caught me off guard and I said ‘what?’ and he began a tirade of demeaning insults, calling me a ‘slag’ and a ‘disgusting whore’. An unprovoked, unexpected misogynistic attack that I naively believed had ceased in our society, from a man I’d never seen before and never see again upset me more than I ever would have imagined.

Laura

|

I’m currently arguing with a man who said Madonna ought to have retired by now (in a thread about her recent speech about misogyny). Not only doesn’t he get the irony of his comment in light of the video, but he’s justifying it by reference to Paul McCartney having retired already. A fact which is not only untrue, but deeply irrelevant as Paul McCartney is almost two decades her senior and actually of retiral age. But it’s ok because apparently Madonna is inappropriate for making a joke about feeling more comfortable with something hard between her legs, while McCartney would never do anything like that… I’m not even sure I’m that big a fan of madonna’s more recent work but I can’t seem to back away from this twit. How does he not see his comments are exactly what her speech was about?

Waleska

|

I was standing alone at night waiting at a bus stop when a taxi driver stopped the car, I politely replied “Sorry, no thanks I don’t need a cab”, in which he responded “How much for you?”. I replied for him to leave me alone and that he was disgusting. He became furious – shouting at me names like: “slut, whore, you’re not that pretty anyway, etc”. Mind you this is the middle of January on the East Coast, I am fully clothed, wearing a winter jacket, scarf, etc. I have never felt so scared in my life, alone, helpless, how could I even defend myself? Someone who weighs less than 100 pounds and this man is double my size. Could I really stand there and argue with him? Call him names? Was he going to try and assault me? What would’ve happened if I called the cops? Would they have said I was being over-dramatic? I ran away and called my friend to pick me up. That is all I could do, and I’m sure many women can relate.