University

Stella

I was at a lake with my friends talking to one another last week, after we had gone swimming and were standing in our swimsuits in a wooded/bushy area about 30 feet from the main trail. I should note that we are 15 and 16 year olds. As we were talking, I realized that there was a grown man crouching in the bushes off the main trail, staring at us, partially obscured by bushes. I shouted, “The main trail is over there” to him, and then stared at him. Then, my friends turned around and stared at this voyeur for a solid minute, and he finally slithered out and away from the bushes and left us alone. When I was thirteen, I was running and this middle-aged man took pictures of my body as I ran by. When I was 13 and passing through a university, I had a college aged man comment “that girl’s cute” to his friend. My dad is going with me to buy pepper spray this weekend to protect myself, but when I first told someone about an incident, the first thing they asked was, “what were you wearing?” I felt hurt, angry, and violated, as these types of incidences have increased as I have gotten older. I am absolutely done. Shut your mouth and don’t violate strangers, it’s that easy.

Maria

When I was in high school there was this guy that was obsessed with me. I had to sit beside him every German and English class, which means 6 hours per week. He would constantly touch my leg with his leg during classes. He also asked me ouț at least a dozen of times. I told the teacher that was responsabile for our class, but he did absolutely nothing (the same teacher that groped me at the prom).When the guy finally understood that I won’t go ouț with him he told me that he will become a gynecologist and I will be his pacient someday. I also told this to another teacher(female this time) and all she did was laugh. Now me and that guy are colleagues in med school. He left me alone, but he does the same things with other girls. I am terrified that one day this man will be a doctor. The system is so broken for not requiring a psychological test before entering med school.

Techie Third Wheel

When at an open party at our university, my partner and I were talking to a guy we didn’t know. We both studied computer science and that made the guy think we would be really into computer hardware (a common misunderstanding). My partner knows next to nothing about computer hardware – he has only ever been interested in the software side. I used to work full time in a computer hardware store and, unlike my partner, have changed hardware on laptops and built a desktop computer from scratch using components I hand-picked myself. Yet, this stranger kept solely addressing my partner and looking at him while talking about hardware, even though my partner kept deferring to me and I also tried to interject with stuff like: “Yeah, there were actually quite a lot of recalls on that motherboard back when I worked for [company]”. The guy left the conversation after giving up on having a conversation about hardware with my partner, having pretty much only uttered a “hello” to me.

Lowri

People being surprised that I play instruments because it’s not a “girly” thing to do. Boys not letting me play video games with them just because I’m a girl. Feeling like I have to cover up my own body because if I show it, I’ll be labelled a “slut”, but then being labelled as “frigid.” Constantly being spoken over and not taken seriously in academic settings. Being catcalled for the first time at the age of 13, wearing a long sleeve shirt and trousers. (I very much looked 13 years old.) Being genuinely surprised when I find a man who respects me and is also not attracted to me. Indirectly turning a man into an incel by rejecting him when we were 12. Not wanting to take certain classes because they’re male-dominated. Not wanting to take certain classes because they’re female-dominated, and won’t be taken seriously. Being expected by my peers to have a Kardashian body at 14. My stepfather acting like he’s smarter than my mother despite him having no GCSEs and her having a degree. Sports I love like netball and gymnastics being dismissed as “easy” or “not sport”, even though fucking golf is considered a sport. Being told to smile more. Being told to not swear, it’s unladylike, by my own mother. Feeling extremely unwelcome and even threatened when I go into a pub past 8pm. Willing to be late because I don’t want to take a crowded bus or train alone, due to the risk of sexual assault. Boys in school not wanting to talk to me if they didn’t see the possibility of sexual relations with me. Being constantly told by my stepfather “Women are bad drivers”. “Women are stupid”. He has two daughters. Teenage girls not being allowed to be interested in anything without being ridiculed and made fun of. These are just things I came up with in 10 minutes; I’m sure as soon as I submit this I’ll come up with hundreds more everyday sexisms.

Sam

I was told by a boy from my hometown that I don’t seem like the type to study computer science because it’s hard. I go to an ivy league.

Olivia Harris

I was sexually assaulted by a friend. He is a nurse, he volunteers and he has been with his girlfriend for over 3 years. He dresses like a grandad, has hair like a a character from the Big Bang Theory. He was always the least threatening man I knew. Not once did I think I would have to be alert around him. I had been sexually assaulted throughout uni by’typical lads’. The guys who wear sliders, open shirts and spend more time on their hair then I ever do. So I only had these guys on my rador to avoid. To have my rape alarm ready if I noticed them behind me when walking somewhere. So to be sexually assaulted by a friend, who is a nurse, who has a teacher girlfriend, at a houseparty was… Wrong. More wrong then uni because it wasn’t supposed to happen in that setting. I was ‘safe’. There was about 15 of us, I was friends with them all and it was in someone’s home. He followed me and sexually assaulted me. He grabbed my thighs so hard they bruised, squeezed my boobs and forcefully kissed me. I said no, I moved away and he did not care. He bruised my neck and left scratches on my body. Yet when I managed to escape and returned to the group it was like nothing has happened. Eventually when I told my friends they didn’t really care/believe me because this guy was a ‘good guy’. Like me they couldn’t really believe it because he didn’t fit our perceived narrative of a threat. One even said ‘but he’s a nurse!’. As if that therefore meant what I had shared was impossible. All my male friends either didn’t believe me, forgave him or ignored the entire sexual assault. It hugely impacted my day to day life. I’m a primary school teacher and suddenly I hated being around male teachers, especially alone. After all, if a nurse can harm me, why not them? Everyone, absolutely everyone, was a threat. At a supermarket I would leave a queue if a man was behind me. I requested female doctors. I stopped going to the dentist. I stopped going for drinks with my friends. I stopped going swimming. I was alert all the time. It’s now been a year since the sexual assault, I still have a small scar on my breast. I have been in therapy for the last 6 months and I’ve slowly claimed back the swimming pool. Most importantly I don’t blame myself because a lot of people, including his girlfriend, did.

B

on campus, browsing through my campus store, one of the male workers made a comment that he wished he could watch me try on the clothes I was holding and then later proceeded to touch my shoulder and arm as he “helped” me find someone i was looking for

Toni Haynes

I am 50 years old, in my lifetime I have been sexually assaulted as a 6 year old by older boys who didn’t believe I was a girl, had my exam subject choices limited because I am a girl (wanted to do all 3 sciences, computer science and technical drawing at school) and had less able men promoted over me. In my late teens and 20s I was raped by my mother’s second husband, by my first boyfriend, regularly, and by my first husband shortly after the birth of my eldest son. As I have grown older I have refused to be limited in my career, and have developed polite shaming tactics to deal with men who only speak to my ample breasts; “may I stop you there, my breasts have nothing to add to this conversation and get rather offended when you only speak the them, kindly talk to my face”. Works remarkably every single time! As a middle aged widow now I get some judgement because I seek no new partner, I tell others I have no interest in watering down my goals, the time spent with family and friends, or to compromise in my business just to make a man happy, this is my life to live my way and celibacy is my plan so I can devote whatever time and energy I choose to devote to the things that give me joy.

Lucie

Im a uni student studying ai, i’ve joined some ai student research team over the summer for some experience and money and for no reason i can see me and the other girl in the group have been moved away from programming and onto summary work. During the team meeting today i was asked what i’d been working on that week by the supervisor/lecturer, i described the ai model i’d started since the last meeting, i got asked if i was facing any errors, and i explained that passing the data to the model was giving an error at the moment, and all of a sudden i’m being told thats really simple, its only one line of code, and the guy in my group knows how to do it. I start speaking again but the guy in my group interupts (he loves interupting like dogs love licking their balls, its a short job and only have to meet the guy 4 times but i’ve never gotten through more than 2 sentances in a row without his oh so relevant input) he says my code has that line, i think this lads never seen my code he’s thinking of his own code, so i clarify to the lecturer that no my code doesn’t have that line but if thats the solution to this error then i’ll use it. Then i’m told if im finding the programming hard, i can do a summary of some research articles for him and that itd be a big help to the group. Summarising research articles is a bit of a lackey job but i get that it’s completely necessary and sometimes doing grunt work for the team can be really important, so it’s really not that i mind. It’s that these reports have already been summarised – he asked all us 6 students to summarise them for him 2 weeks ago and show him a presentation about them. AND for some reason, the only other girl in the student team was roped right in there with me on report work, he said you can summarise those 2 reports and emily can do the other 2. I acknowledge i’m not the strongest programmer in the team. I’m most definitely not the weakest though, that much should be clear from how every week i deliver a model, including how this week in the meeting what the guy in my group had done was run the model i made, which isnt much, but he’s still considered by this lecturer to be a better programmer than me and while he is a stronger programmer, he’s consistently performed poorly in this job because of his lack of team working skills making him hard to deal with. I feel shot down even though i’m a solid coder so i think i’ll make my report and do the code too just to be fantastic and maybe prove a lil something to the supervisor