A couple of years ago I was raped. The man who did it told me that he had to do it because his wife was on her period. So if he couldn’t ‘get sex’ at home he was basically entitled to take it from the next woman he saw. The police didn’t take me seriously, implied that I was asking for it because I was walking around late… The sun had just gone down, and I was on my way home from work for goodness’ sake. When a woman is raped she is the one that is blamed… the questions people ask are things like ‘what where you wearing’, ‘why were you out’, etc. I don’t even tell people that I was raped any more because I don’t want to hear their judgements… I have enough internalised guilt.
Almost every day I am harassed on my way to work with comments on my looks, marriageability etc. Some of these men see it as giving me a compliment, and do it almost unconsciously, but it feels invasive and triggers flashbacks of the rape. The other day a man in a convertible started making masturbation motions as I walked past him at the robots and shouted out how stiff I made him. I couldn’t even say anything in response, my whole body just froze up. And what is the first thing people say when I tell them about these incidents? “What were you wearing”… Men and women alike.
These are just blatant example of sexual harassment. I have encountered insidious sexism throughout my life, from men and women. So many people don’t even notice it! It has just become part of the fabric of our society.