1.
I am six. My babysitter’s son, who is five but a whole head taller than me, likes to show me his penis. He does it when his mother isn’t looking. One time when I tell him not to, he holds me down and puts penis on my arm. I bite his shoulder, hard. He starts crying, pulls up his pants and runs upstairs to tell his mother that I bit him. I’m too embarrassed to tell anyone about the penis part, so they all just think I bit him for no reason.
I get in trouble first at the babysitter’s house, then later at home.
The next time the babysitter’s son tries to show me his penis, I don’t fight back because I don’t want to get in trouble.
One day I tell the babysitter what her son does, she tells me that he’s just a little boy, he doesn’t know any better. I can tell that she’s angry at me, and I don’t know why. Later that day, when my mother comes to pick me up, the babysitter hugs me too hard and says how jealous she is because she only has sons and she wishes she had a daughter as sweet as me.
One day when we’re playing in the backyard he tells me very seriously that he might kill me one day and I believe him.
2.
I am in the second grade and our classroom has a weird open-concept thing going on, and the fourth wall is actually the hallway to the gym. All day long, we surreptitiously watch the other grades file past on the way to and from the gym. We are supposed to ignore most of them. The only class we are not supposed to ignore is Monsieur Pierre’s grade six class.
Every time Monsieur Pierre walks by, we are supposed to chorus “Bonjour, Monsieur Sexiste.” We are instructed to do this by our impossibly beautiful teacher, Madame Lemieux. She tells us that Monsieur Pierre, a dapper man with grey hair and a moustache, is sexist because he won’t let the girls in his class play hockey. She is the first person I have ever heard use the word sexist.
The word sounds very serious when she says it. She looks around the class to make sure everyone is paying attention and her voice gets intense and sort of tight.
“Girls can play hockey. Girls can do anything that boys do,” she tells us.
We don’t really believe her. For one thing, girls don’t play hockey. Everyone in the NHL – including our hero Mario Lemieux, who we sometimes whisper might be our teacher’s brother or cousin or even husband – is a boy. But we accept that maybe sixth grade girls can play hockey in gym class, so we do what she asks.
Mostly what I remember is the smile that spreads across Monsieur Pierre’s face whenever we call him a sexist. It is not the smile of someone who is ashamed; it is the smile of someone who finds us adorable in our outrage.
3.
Later that same year a man walks into Montreal’s École Polytechnique and kills fourteen women. He kills them because he hates feminists. He kills them because they are going to be engineers, because they go to school, because they take up space. He kills them because he thinks they have stolen something that is rightfully his. He kills them because they are women.
Everything about the day is grey: the sky, the rain, the street, the concrete side of the École Polytechnique, the pictures of the fourteen girls that they print in the newspaper. My mother’s face is grey. It’s winter, and the air tastes like water drunk from a tin cup.
Madame Lemieux doesn’t tell us to call Monsieur Pierre a sexist anymore. Maybe he lets the girls play hockey now. Or maybe she is afraid.
Girls can do anything that boys do but it turns out that sometimes they get killed for it.
4.
I am fourteen and my classmate’s mother is killed by her boyfriend. He stabs her to death. In the newspaper they call it a crime of passion. When she comes back to school, she doesn’t talk about it. When she does mention her mother it’s always in the present tense – “my mom says” or “my mom thinks” – as if she is still alive. She transfers schools the next year because her father lives across town in a different school district.
Passion. As if murder is the same thing as spreading rose petals on your bed or eating dinner by candlelight or kissing through the credits of a movie.
5.
Men start to say things to me on the street, sometimes loudly enough that everyone around us can hear, but not always. Sometimes they mutter quietly, so that I’m the only one who knows. So that if I react, I’ll seem like I’m blowing things out of proportion or flat-out making them up. These whispers make me feel complicit in something, although I don’t quite know what.
I feel like I deserve it. I feel like I am asking for it. I feel dirty and ashamed.
I want to stand up for myself and tell these men off, but I am afraid. I am angry that I’m such a baby about it. I feel like if I were braver, they wouldn’t be able to get away with it. Eventually I screw up enough courage and tell a man to leave me alone; I deliberately keep my voice steady and unemotional, trying to make it sound more like a command than a request. He grabs my wrist and calls me a fucking bitch.
After that I don’t talk back anymore. Instead I just smile weakly; sometimes I duck my head and whisper thank you. I quicken my steps and hurry away until one time a man yells don’t you fucking run away and starts to follow me.
After that I always try to keep my pace even, my breath slow. Like how they tell you that if you ever see a bear you shouldn’t run, you should just slowly back away until he can’t see you.
I think that these men, like dogs, can smell my fear.
6.
On my eighteenth birthday my cousin takes me out clubbing. While we’re dancing, a man comes up behind me and starts fiddling with the straps on my flouncy black dress. But he’s sort of dancing with me and this is my first time ever at a club and I want to play it cool, so I don’t say anything. Then he pulls the straps all the way down and everyone laughs as I scramble to cover my chest.
At a concert a man comes up behind me and slides his hand around me and starts playing with my nipple while he kisses my neck. By the time I’ve got enough wiggle room to turn around, he’s gone.
At my friend’s birthday party a gay man grabs my breasts and tells everyone that he’s allowed to do it because he’s not into girls. I laugh because everyone else laughs because what else are you supposed to do?
Men press up against me on the subway, on the bus, once even in a crowd at a protest. Their hands dangle casually, sometimes brushing up against my crotch or my ass. One time it’s so bad that I complain to the bus driver and he makes the man get off the bus but then he tells me that if I don’t like the attention maybe I shouldn’t wear such short skirts.
7.
I get a job as a patient-sitter, someone who sits with hospital patients who are in danger of pulling out their IVs or hurting themselves or even running away. The shifts are twelve hours and there is no real training, but the pay is good.
Lots of male patients masturbate in front of me. Some of them are obvious, which is actually kind of better because then I can call a nurse. Some of them are less obvious, and then the nurses don’t really care. When that happens, I just bury my head in a book and pretend I don’t know what they’re doing.
One time an elderly man asks me to fix his pillow and when I bend over him to do that he grabs my hand and puts it on his dick.
When I call my supervisor to complain she says that I shouldn’t be upset because he didn’t know what he was doing.
8.
A man walks into an Amish school, tells all the little girls to line up against the chalkboard, and starts shooting.
A man walks into a sorority house and starts shooting.
A man walks into a theatre because the movie was written by a feminist and starts shooting.
A man walks into Planned Parenthood and starts shooting.
A man walks into.
9.
I start writing about feminism on the internet, and within a few months I start getting angry comments from men. Not death threats, exactly, but still scary. Scary because of how huge and real their rage is. Scary because they swear they don’t hate women, they just think women like me need to be put in their place.
I get to a point where the comments – and even the occasional violent threat – become routine. I joke about them. I think of them as a strange badge of honour, like I’m in some kind of club. The club for women who get threats from men.
It’s not really funny.
10.
Someone makes a death threat against my son.
I don’t tell anyone right away because I feel like it is my fault – my fault for being too loud, too outspoken, too obviously a parent.
When I do finally start telling people, most of them are sympathetic. But a few women say stuff like “this is why I don’t share anything about my children online,” or “this is why I don’t post any pictures of my child.”
Even when a man makes a choice to threaten a small child it is still, somehow, a woman’s fault.
11.
I try not to be afraid.
I am still afraid.
The author, age 7
The Belle Jar 
Reblogged this on Rose B Fischer.
I am a woman. Hello.
1. Kids do these sorts of things. The woman shouldn’t have been mad at you. She should have said, “I’m sorry this is happening” and encouraged her son’s better behavior. She probably should have also made sure the kid wasn’t being molested himself because that exhibits some “I’ve been abused” behavior, especially the threatening part. That doesn’t make it okay, or right, for him to have done those things. It also doesn’t make the way that she handled it alright or okay.
2. It sounds like the gym teacher didn’t want the girls to get hurt. There’s a difference between sexism and that, though that can breed sexism. What the teacher did was wrong. Encouraging little girls to taunt an authority figure is dead wrong and the only reason people think it’s a good thing is because it was a guy getting downed for being a (possible) jerk about girls. Two wrongs don’t make a right. It should have been easy enough to encourage the parents of the girls who wanted to play hockey to make a case about it to the upper authority figures of the schools, or contact news stations to cover it. That is how you change things. Not “Call the teacher a sexist teehee” passive aggressive stupidity, especially to girls who have no idea what a sexist is. Hell, if I was him I’d have smiled and shook my head too. That’s how you respond to kids using words they don’t understand.
3. I actually googled this up because, being american and a bit younger than you, I wasn’t aware of it. This is obviously a tragedy. And yes, sometimes people die for what they believe in, because mentally ill people commit atrocities like this. That doesn’t excuse his reasoning, and it doesn’t excuse him from doing it. While it is possible it was a hate crime, he also committed suicide. Most “mentally healthy” murderers don’t do that, especially ones that want to stand for something (obviously “mentally healthy” because no murderer is entirely mentally healthy- my point being that this man’s mental illness may have contributed to this tragedy rather than simply been along for the ride). What I take away from reading about this isn’t “sometimes WOMEN die for BEING LIKE BOYS” it’s “sometimes innocent people are murdered for absolutely no reason other than hatred, which may or may not be driven by mental illness.” I imagine your teacher stopped calling the other teacher a sexist because it was unprofessional and she was told to stop. Ideally he’d have been told to let girls on the hockey team at the same time. It’s unfortunate that he may or may not have been.
4. Crime of passion is, thankfully, a term that is beginning to die out. It’s a dreadful thing and I’m sorry for that poor woman. I’m also sorry for your friend. Mental illness may or may not be at play in things like this, again, but this one I can empathize with your feelings over. Crime of passion has never been a good term.
5. Meanwhile, this one sounds silly to me. I got the same thing at that age and I’d laugh it off or ignore them. Never have I felt “scared”, and I’ve lived in several major cities. The fact that you use the word “scared” to describe how you felt makes me think that you felt you had reason to be. It’s also why any kids I have will be enrolled in martial arts. Not for self-protection, but because that sort of discipline helps settle fears like that. It empowers you. Between that and ballet, I never felt scared about perverts whistling at me. Should they do it? Of course not. It’s rude. But kids shouldn’t be at a point where they feel literally scared, either. Someone is going to read this and scream “I can’t believe ur victim blaming!!11” and that’s not what’s going on here. I’m saying: if they made you scared, yes they were obviously going overboard with it. But there are lots of things you can do, lots of classes you can take, to help you overcome fears like that, too. It’s the feeling that sounds silly, not the fact that they were jerks- which, obviously, they were. I can’t comprehend being scared of someone making noises about you.
6. Sexual assault is a thing and nobody should be nervous about filing those charges. No one should lay hands on anybody else in a sexual fashion without their go ahead.
7. Hospitals are odd places to work in. It’s entirely possible that that man DIDN’T realize what he was doing if he was on enough medication or he was senile. It’s also possible he did. The same goes for the masturbation thing. Drugs make people do really fucked up things. Hell, I got drops in my eye to numb it after I’d torn my cornea apart and apparently laid in bed sobbing how much I loved the doctor for making me not hurt anymore and telling him what we’d name our children. I was delirious with pain, not even under chemical effects. Some of the guys were probably idiots. Some of them were probably so far out of their minds they didn’t even think twice, or their inhibitions were gone.
8. Yep, shooters are usually men (woo, statistics). Men are also usually more prone to violence than women. Testosterone does that and you’ll see it in women with shitloads of testosterone, too. This doesn’t make men bad. It means that we need to teach them coping skills from an early age to work on things like this. We’re doing a lot better on this these days but feminists are trying their hardest to fuck that up by making boys and men feel like lesser beings.
9. I make fun of the dick and cunt pics I’m sent. I get random death threats from men and women too. I make fun of those too. If you put yourself out there at all, ever, somebody’s going to get bitchy enough to threaten you. It happens. Since you’re literally sneering about men in section 8 in the worst way, I’m not surprised men are offended by some of the stuff you post, especially ones with untreated disorders, to send you hate mail.
10. Please refer to 9. This shit happens when you gain a following and 1 in 999999999999999999 is an honest threat that they will ever have a flicker chance of carrying out. You’ll be fine.
11. No, really, you will.
Now let’s be honest. This comment isn’t going to stay on this. You’ll delete it after you get halfway through it because that’s what feminists do. You want an echo chamber of “sisterhood”. Not a woman who disagrees with you guys, who actually supports equality instead of feminism, saying anything. You’re as bad as you claim men are, except you’re doing it to the people you supposedly support. Some idiot on here was going “OH YES BUT INSTEAD OF JOINING US GIRLS WILL RALLY AGAINST US” you’re damn right I will. I will never be a feminist and I am incredibly proud of that fact. I actually have several feminist friends and I adore them, but they know I don’t agree and I know they don’t agree with me disagreeing. I love them and they’re great people. But I feel like 8’s final sentence is literally the whole point of this article, rather than “men can sometimes be intimidating and that is bad”, which I would agree with.
Anyway, I figure I’ll be banned from this or the comment will be deleted by the time I get back from grocery shopping. I just couldn’t read this and not go shoot my mouth off about it, because that’s what I do. Agree to disagree fistbump? *bump*
Let me tell you why you’re wrong without writing a whole book. Feminism, like you suggest, isn’t about making men feel like “lesser beings.” If you’ve sensed something like that from this post, you’ve misinterpreted its actual purpose to prove men need to be held responsible for their OWN actions.
You still don’t get this when you write off their actions because of “testosterone” and the very telling statement “It means that we need to teach them coping skills from an early age to work on things like this.” Right there. That word “WE”. Wrong.
WE don’t need to teach them anything, except maybe the human experience from women’s eyes which this post does. THEY need to self-discipline themselves. Men aren’t lesser beings. They can tell right from wrong. They have the ability to do right, even though society and people like you give them a pass to do wrong.
You seem to be on board with the idea of self-discipline because you declare women should teach themselves to not feel scared in scary situations which could lead to injury, rape, or death (despite the number of self-defense classes she might have taken).
Agree to agree?
You are confused. Feminists are for equality. You seem not to be.
You make apologies or excuses for unacceptable behavior. You blame the victim.
You are not for equality. You are for maintaining the status quo.
The author shares experiences and you blame her or imply that she’s overreacting.
At no point does she say all men are bad. She writes about bad behavior. Including the behavior of those, like you, that excuse it rather than stand against it.
She points out casual acceptance of violence against women and then you reinforce it. Shame on you.
You have internalized the cultural misogyny of millennia, and you seem proud. You sadden me.
Men treat each other like crap — bullying, harassment, violence, etc. Most violence in our society is male-on-male. The complaint here seems to be that (some) men treat women the same way they do men. Which seems like an odd thing for a feminist to complain about.
Since you hate feminists so much, maybe you should give back all those rights feminists fought for, you know: the right to vote and to an education.
Actually, you had a couple of decent points until you got to the victim blaming (yes, that’s what it was) and the ‘evil feminists’ part. Too bad you are so off the rails.
Treant, Really? Why do you think you need to personally critic this story, this author? I find your post very disgusting, as if you are challenging her experiences, her words, even her agony of sharing something so personal. Narcissist much?
Your personal experiences and feelings about bein sexually harassed in public by strangers do not invalidate the real feelings of fear and oppression that other women feel. It is not your right to dictate how anyone emotionally reacts to these instances.
Also, your assumptions about “all feminists” and the OP deleting your comment displays your ignorance and small-mindedness. You’re allowed to have another perspective; your perspective is just pinhole thin and clearly influenced by a lifetime of passiveness and male oppression.
Try to listen to another person’s experiences with an open heart and mind. You sound like a Stepford Wife.
I’m doing this on my phone, which isn’t cooperating as to cutting and pasting quotes from you, but your last paragraph sounds like you’re looking for “feminazis r oppressing me OMG” points. Personally, I imagine the author will leave your response just as it is to serve as a shining example of how some people insist on minimizing and dismissing feminist concerns whenever they don’t match your personal experience.
FYI, whether you call yourself a feminist or not, you are one. The definition of a feminist is: [someone] advocating social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men. (Dictionary.com). So….welcome to the “sisterhood”
P.S. looks like you were wrong about your comment being deleted.
It’s perfectly normal for people to be awash in things for so long that they seem normal, and that for people or ideas that are outside of that normal to appear different, and to be shunned. Even people who would benefit from the change see the abnormal ideas as wrong, not normal. They will attempt to hammer that nail down just as vigorously as those who would stand to lose from the situation. People don’t like change. People don’t like different. People don’t like other. No one is angry that you’re normal. But, then at the end? You move into Uncle Tom territory. or maybe more appropriate Vichy territory. You’re SO afraid of change that you ready to violently defend against others standing up for themselves and oppresion. That’s where you cross over from being normal to being part of the problem.
The content of delusions and hallucinations – see the mental illness argument – is influenced by society at large. Psychosis takes what is there and magnifies it. For example, places where technology is common place don’t have a lot of people believing there are controlled by computers.
Really, you’re a woman?? I didn’t even finish reading your long, ignorant rambling comment because it was so ridiculous. Quit being a harassment-apologist, and thanks for helping set women’s rights back 100 years, you Goon~
Wow what a badass, everyone should be like you and society shouldn’t change or improve
“Incredibly proud of not being a feminist” wow you have opinions good for you. Wonder who is best served by those opinions.
You dealt with situations in a way! Why can’t everyone deal with them like you too?? Derrr.
I guess you’re a good example of women being sexist against women? A sad warning of some sort
It’s also kinda sad you express the very same expectation-based “fears” as the author, which isn’t inherently a problem except you criticize that very fear so ???
Man you wrote so much about it too and how every feminist is aaaaawful damn you are upset by the very existence of feminism.
Im a man and feminism doesn’t make me feel like a lesser being because w…why would it??
So what you’re saying is:
1. SHE, the sitter, was wrong, and should have handled it differently… better.
2. SHE, the teacher, was wrong, his reaction made sense and she should have handled it differently… better.
3. Maybe HE, the shooter, had reasons like mental illness or hatred toward women that caused him to act, so that wasn’t really HIS fault. It’s a tragedy, but wasn’t because they were women! It was for maybe hatred toward women or mental illness reasons. It’s unfortunate, but nobody could have done anything about it. It happens.
4. Crime of passion is a bad term. It’s dreadful, but maybe was caused by mental illness and has nothing to do with sexism or misogyny. It happens.
5. SHE, the author, shouldn’t feel scared and it was silly to feel that way. Her feelings of being threatened or vulnerable were invalid, and if only SHE, the author, had taken steps to learn empowering skillsl ike martial arts, she wouldn’t have to feel that way! There are things SHE can do to fix this, because making herself feel empowered and not have to feel scared (so silly!) is her responsibility, not the responsibility of the men to learn to be respectful and not cat-call. She should, in short, handle it differently… better.
6. Sexual assault is bad, and no one should feel nervous about reporting it. If she feels nervous about it, that’s an invalid feeling. She should handle it differently… better.
7. Maybe it wasn’t HIS fault that he was masturbating or engaging in sexual assault, because of extenuating circumstances. Maybe SHE shouldn’t feel victimized, because that’s the nature of the business in hospitals. She really should just learn to handle it differently… better.
8. Shooting is mostly men, but that isn’t their fault! We (ladies) need to teach THEM (boys) better so they can cope better. So it’s our fault, really. We are making strides, but feminists are fucking it up by making men feel bad about their testosterone-driven murder sprees. We should handle it differently… better.
9. It’s HER fault for sneering and offending men. It happens. Just handle it differently… better.
10. See #9. It’ll be fine. Just handle it differently… better.
11. No really! This isn’t THEM. This is YOU, WOMEN. Handle it differently… better.
None of this puts any onus on men to be better, and all the responsibility on the women/victims to try new things and to handle situations differently, to cope with them. That’s not the path to a better society. The author is sharing her experiences and experiences a lot of women can relate to. Experience born of a misogynistic culture, a rape culture, a patriarchal culture that women by themselves cannot change. The men need to do their part in handling it differently… Better.
I agree “SHE” could have handled it differently….better. But, some people don’t think that way. She is just venting…. Obviously that’s the only way she can deal with it>
I LOVE YOU. 🙂
That was so spot on.
It’s too bad that even if Treant read it, she is so afraid of change that she would deny that she sees the logic in your response. She will never admit she was wrong because then someone might think she’s a “man-hating feminazi” because that’s what she thinks feminists are, or at least that’s what she was told..
All these women who say “I’m not a feminist, I believe men & women should be equal.” don’t know that they just defined feminism.
I wish women would do their own research on what feminism is about.
Hello. I am a feminist.
I always thought feminists were angry women who hated men. But then a professor (male) in university told us all about feminism.
It is about equality, equality between human beings regardless of race, religion, gender and sexual orientation.
I believe this post is somewhat anti-feminist. It is giving the impression that most men are horrible, sexist, violent people who enjoy hurting women. Although many of the things she wrote are horrible and shouldn’t have happened, some of them as you, Treant, described are blown out of proportion.
This I know to be untrue. I have met a fair share of men and women who act in a way they shouldn’t. If I only described mild sexual harassment endured by men it would make those men sound like horrible human beings. But I have seen little girls, I have seen adult women, I have seen teenage girls throughout my life who have been violent and who have sexually harassed other men and women too. There were girls who’d grab my boobs and would say wow your breasts are so large. A girl who babysat me (she was 13, I was 5) suggested I take off my clothing and we could pretend I’m Britney Spears.
Feminism is about finding equality for men and women. Men are more prone to violence not because of testosterone (or not just because of) but because they are told to be a man they have to be aggressive and that violence is the way a man solves problems.
Most victims of violence are men. They get hurt the most. They die the most. So although I agree with many things in your comment I disagree with the last part. I have plenty of masculine, male friends who do not hate men who are feminists because they understand what it means. As for the angry, bitter women who give feminism a bad name – they are using a label they do not belong under to cover their hatred/issues towards/with men.
Rant over.
nikimcabrera, by “I am a feminist”, do you mean “I am a man pretending to be a feminist so that my dissenting opinion will have more weight?”
Try again. There is nothing anti-feminist about this post, which, is an account of one woman’s experiences. Go embarass yourself somewhere else.
Thanks for your comments.
If you believe in true equality between the genders, then you are a gender egalitarian. Feminism is about the advocacy of women’s rights and importance in society, etc etc.
Why do people think that they’re supposed to tell people about their experiences? Why is your understanding of her experience somehow better than hers? Why do you think this is up for discussion? This makes no sense. At all. Read it or don’t. It’s still her experience, not yours.
This is a singularly spectacular example of someone missing the entire point of what they’re commenting on … congratulations!
There is no evidence that Marc Lepine was mentally ill. There is also no reason to assume that mental illness plays a role in husbands/boyfriends murdering their wives/girlfriends. Which in the province of Ontario, occur at the rate of 1 every 10 days. Stop using mental illness as an excuse or explanation for white male violence.
Treant most likely isn’t a woman, just a brain dead MRA trying to make a point and failing. You may ne that dumb, but we’re not.
Geez this reply was hard to read in it’s entirety. Talk about victim blaming rubbish. Kinda reminds me of a lot of MRAs I’ve met. Weird.
Excellent post, and spot on I believe. I had trouble getting past one and two.
WOW, that family is screwed up. The baby sitter should not be allowed near children, ever! And whoever sexualized the author at the age of six, to react so violently at the sight of a penis should be imprisoned.
I suspect that it is the two women in 1. that are responsible for the penis obsession that afflicts the author and the five year old. Then the self-obsessed teacher in 2., that has failed to notice the obvious psychological damage to the author from that home environment. Instead she is teaching the girls, how to be a victim and call men names when they won’t do what you want.
Laughing at your haters, “feminist” “100 years ago” “give back your rights” LOL
Over 100 years ago they kicked off a feminist movement and with lots of hard work and effort they achieved many well deserved rights for women.
They believed that women could do, anything that a man could do, and they were right they could do anything they put their mind to. They did not need or want the men’s help.
Women could do it for themselves. They achieved their goals and laid down the legacy for future generations of women.
Fast forward to the twenty first century, you won’t find a feminist unless you go to somewhere like a women’s collective in India or some of the third world countries. There you will see women doing it for themselves, agriculture, manufacturing…… Women making things happen.
Have a look in any first world country; there is a bunch of imposters calling themselves feminists. Whining and bitching about everything and anything, each other, men, children, equality.
All of them, resting on the laurels of those feminists that fought hard for those rights, all those years ago.
Go to any one of these alleged feminists and ask them “what is the solution” to this, or how will we fix that problem there, that is affecting all women and needs a solution.
And they will answer you with, women power, were doing it for ourselves, we got this! Get out of our way! We can solve this and we do not need the men.
LOL, No sorry I was just kidding. They would not say any of that, unless they were real feminists. What they would say, they would recite verbatim from their memory.
It would be a carefully compiled list of things that the men could do to solve the problem for them.
In truth, I am just a fat, old, white guy,but always considered myself a feminist(father of daughters etc.).Only in the last 10 years have I come to see just how wrong I was.And just how terrifyingly wonderful and powerfully hopeful feminism is.Equality is really little more than good manners (my dad used to say”If you can not be kind-be courteous”).Feminism may be able to provide us with a route out of the wasteland we have created with our embrace of neo-liberalism and the moral vacuum it engenders.Feminism is offering a new way to see and be that generously saves us all.
Well said.
Wonderfully honest post. No, it’s not funny. No, it’s not getting better. Interesting that I would come across this today. This morning something happened that made me very angry and want to write a post along the lines of “they just don’t get it” but I’m traveling and not quite ready to sit and write it but it’s coming.
Thank you for this one. It encourages me to go ahead and write that post.
You’re part of the problem. That’s all I will say. I believe in equality too, but your responses aren’t helping anything. This has almost nothing to do with feminism. It has everything to do with the violence women across the world suffer because we live in a world where it’s acceptable to be mailed by the opposite sex. Absolutely none of this was or is right. Weather it happens to a man or a woman doesn’t matter. The scariest and worst part about this post is, that it doesn’t matter if we report the abuse, we still aren’t believed. I hope none of these terrifying and obscure things never happens to you because from a victims stand point, as a human being someone should be able to lean on you and tell you their story. Clearly this will never be the case. Try talking to your friends and family members. I’m willing to bet at least one of them has experienced something that is traimatizing enough that they still remember it to this day. It’s a sad day when a woman puts aside another woman’s abuse as being normal.
Julie, I don’t understand why you say I am part of the problem. I didn’t say it was a feminist issue or anything like that. I just said I understood. I’m baffled at being called part of the problem.
Corina I think she was responding to one of the previous MRA-like posts and hit yours instead. It’s the only rational explanation!
I don’t think that was aimed at you Corina. I think that was a bit of confusion and replying to the wrong post xx
Corina, I can’t speak for Louisa, but her comment seems to have been intended as a reply for “Treant” or someone else, and even if it wasn’t, I hope it didn’t/doesn’t discourage you from writing your own post. Please write it. Your voice is important.
Reblogged this on the geek couple and commented:
Yes, yes, yes. I can’t add anything else.
This is very powerful. Thank you.
What an amazingly beautifully written sad commentary on our world.
I applaud you for your honesty and your courage. I was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and my father was the perpetrator. Nobody said a word until I got therapy in my thirties. Now I am a survivor and I thrive and write about it openly on my blogs so that everyone knows it is not okay. 🙂
I’m sorry you experienced that, especially from your dad, but I thank you for sharing your experience bravely.
So powerful. Thank you for saying these things.
And I’m sorry that they have to be said. That they’re the truth.
Not only for you, but for many of us.
Thank you for your post. I must assume some responsibility since for the longest time I was someone who had not considered a woman’s point of view.
Reading your post I understand, and I apologize. To you for all the women who I didn’t take the chance to empathize with.
Some men will learn and some will try to make your writing irrelevant. But you’ve at least made some of us think. And change. So thank you.
I love this. Beautifully written, you tried to capture the thoughts of a girl growing up at each age. At each age showcasing the difficulties of being female…
Reblogged this on Mariflies's Blog and commented:
A beautifully written demonstration of how women are taught, through time, to acquiesce to abuse, that men are taught they somehow have rights over women, and why it can be so hard do or say anything about. Please read.
Serious, thought-provoking stuff! Strange how at times even we women blame each other instead of being the support system we should be. Kudos to you for having the courage to write this. A long way to go before we would be truly free and fearless.
You’re one small voice in a loud den of noise, violence and mindlessness trying to drown you out and make you feel incomprehensible. A few others can hear you though, those closer to you. Every voice someone hears can inspire them to speak up themselves. Together eventually enough voices can tear through the ruckus with passion and you’ll get shock and vitriol directly back in response but hopefully a few more might listen and together you can inspire change.
I can only hope the small victories can bring you happiness and strength until your voices can roar through the hate.
This is one of the most thought-provoking, challenging, saddening and yet somehow empowering things I have ever read on the Internet. I couldn’t stop reading it.
I feel so angry for what you have experienced and then realised that we ALL experience these things as women. I grew up to ‘give as good as I got’ so I laugh it off – don’t let it get to me. But why should I? Why should any of us?
You have shown that sexism exists everywhere we turn and we need to keep on showing this as the only way to beat it.
I have 3 sons and I hope that I can raise them to show them how they should treat women. If we can all do this it would make the world a better place – but I know that more than just a mother influences their children. They watch how their fathers treat their mothers (and worse how their mothers LET their own fathers and partners treat them), they see people in the streets, on the Internet, in films, etc.
Keep on with your blog – if we all keep on showing it to the world maybe one day things will change.
All shocking and all the more so because I have been fortunate not to have this around me. I don’t know where you grew up buy good for you for making your story public.
You didn’t have this around you? Where did you grow up?!!!
In this case, I know what liking means, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, even though I was extremely moved by this post. It made me want to cry to hear just one woman’s experience. This right here is exactly why we have not come far enough.
Good post. So true
Calvin asks Susie Derkins why girls even bother to stay alive. She replies, “Because in ten years you will be begging one of us for a date.”
This is heartbreaking. And yet it’s every day for us women. Life every day. Everyday life.
I was raped by my mothers live in boyfriend because I walked from the bathroom to my room wrapped in a towel after I showered and it was my fault I enticed him. I was eleven. It went on for 4 years. He said he’d kill me and my mom and I believed him.
When I was 12 a drunk adult man touched my breasts and said they were nice for a 12 year old. I was confused because he complimented me but he touched me and I was taught to say thank you when someone said something nice so I did. Even though I knew it wasn’t.
My husband of 10 years wanted anal sex and to tie me up. I said no and he told me if I loved him and trusted him I’d let him do whatever he wanted. He tried to while we were intimate and would call me a prude when I stopped him. He s bought mms a ball bag so I couldn’t “complain”. Then he cheated on me and said it was my fault because I wasn’t affectionate enough. I was 30.
As a fellow survivor, I felt empathy reading this. I also felt rage. My heart breaks for everyone subjected to this kind of violence.
I’m sorry
You were raped because he was evil. It was not your fault. It was not because of something you did. Some piece of you knows this, but some other piece of you doesn’t believe it and it shows in the way your first sentence is written. My sister, I remind you, because maybe if we say it often enough someday we’ll believe it completely:
It was not your fault.
It was not my fault.
It is not your fault. It is not.
This was so powerful and amazing. Thank you for sharing this with the world.
The fact that things are like this makes me sick to my stomach.
This post is extremely helpful and so full of courage! you’re doing many things right and i want you to never quit, go on ahead with ya bad self and God bless you ❤
I am overwhelmed by the style with which you write about your experiences and insight. Will be following you online (in the good way, not the creepy/unwanted/stalker way). Brava!
Q – why are men afraid of women? A – Because they might laugh at us.
Q – why are women afraid of men? A – Because they might kill us.
This is powerful always think about the Bible verse that describes women as the weaker vessel which essentially makes men weak and it’s so sad that between the two none of us are strong but even more scarier than the strongest of us all is still not strong.
I wish it didn’t take bravery to say stuff like this. I’m glad you said it.
A man walked into this post, and read the comments, and was saddened that these things happen; that these things keep happening.
Thank you for writing this.
Thank you for giving me the sadness. It reminds me why it is important to help fight.
I believe it was an Amish school, not a Mennonite school.
Oh you’re right! Thank you!! I’ve changed it now
Reblogged this on Kathleen S. Allen.
i am a man i walk a line confused never sure if im crossing the line making women unconfertable plz dont be silent.
when i was 6 i did some inapropriat things also had some stuff happen as well..
i got in trouble i learned but many dont plz dont be silent!
i do try.
plz dont be silent.
The problem with this is that there are men who will just straight up KILL us if we are not silent about their abuse.
I’m a man and I’m deeply sorry that women have to go through this. I was a pervert, disgusting as a child, and I’m ashamed of that. I have grown out of it and now I advocate for women’s rights, but it still breaks my heart to know this happens so much.
That’s horrifying. The writing pattern reminds me of a dystopian sci-fi novel about a patriarchal society taken to its logical conclusion with constant sexual assaults and child abuse. But this is real, and that was a book. I struggle to understand what it would be like to live through this. I have a vast and vivid imagination which allows me to visualize lots of things separate from my own experiences, but I can’t get a handle on this. Maybe that’s why so many otherwise decent guys think sexism is no big deal : their brains literally cannot handle the scope of the hurt.
This is horrifying. The style reminds me of a dystopian sci-fi novel that left deep scars on me as a kid, but you are writing about real life. I can’t grasp what you and other women have gone through and continue to go through. I have my wounds in the past too but it’s not a competition, and outside of the incidences that wounded me I enjoy great privilege. I hope to use that privilege to help combat inequities, so that your children, or your children’s children, don’t have to know this stuff from first hand experience.
What was the name of that book?
Probably “The Handmaid’s Tale”?
There is plenty of REAL sexual assault and child abuse going on in real patriarchal societies these days.
I am ashamed of all my fellow men for this.
No-one should ever have stories like this to tell.
Thank you for this. ❤ #yesallwomen
As a man, I understand your frustration but think you may have skewed the brief and selective story somewhat to prove your point of vilifying all men. Was your father a good man? Did he respect you and guide you well in your formative years? Not all of us are monsters preying on women you know. It’s all too easy to strategically choose parts of any story to promulgate an agenda and obvious conclusion… if nothing else, will you hold your son in the same contempt as you seemingly hold towards all men or guide him to create a better world?
Try to realize that travesties happen everywhere, to anyone, for any reason (logical or not), and that we must work as a society to end them all regardless of who is targeted. While you were growing up, bullying was considered somewhat a rite of passage for instance (backed by psychologists at the time – the so-called “actively ignore” principle) whereas now it is generally accepted to be unacceptable behavior from a human rights perspective… a definite step forward.
And if you need some balance in your viewpoint, consider the lives destroyed everyday (mostly by women) through skewed divorce settlements in Canada, such as this… http://www.thestar.com/life/2009/01/27/devastated_by_divorce_court.html
There is no question that women “lead the roost” in that domain of life by a significant margin, decimating the lives of others by the mere stroke of a pen.
“Not all of us are monsters preying on women you know.”
Well, he had to, right? what would the world be like if a man actually read about one woman’s personal experiences and his first thought WASN’T about himself “but i’m not like that!”
…. instead of just acknowledging “well, some men ARE like that.” without the weird guilt complex?
weird, guess we will never know.
#notallmen
The author does not vilify all men. She is calling out the very real, very common bad behaviors of men and boys. (If these don’t apply to you, awesome. Thank you. But that doesn’t mean women don’t experience them.)
She also calls out the extremely casual acceptance of these poor behaviors. This acceptance is even more insidious as it allows them to perpetuate.
There does not need to be balance in this article. It is not about you. It is her story.
You are free to write yours. There you may make it all about you and fill it with all the excuses and misogyny you please.
You just proved her point, Sam.
I think you just proved her point. I need a shower after this.
As a man, I understand that when a woman says “These terrible things happened”, the appropriate response is “You’re right. That’s terrible. How do we fix it?”, not #notallmen or MRA distraction. There is a place for that. This is not it.
High five and a million gold stars, Paul. Thank you for understanding that! Now how do we get everyone else to understand that too? And to work towards a future where this conversation never has to happen?
Mansplaining a woman’s experience to her is really foul. She’s not writing about the “good men”. She may in the future. not today.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/05/27/not_all_men_how_discussing_women_s_issues_gets_derailed.html
man·splain
manˈsplān/
verbinformal
gerund or present participle: mansplaining
(of a man) explain (something) to someone, typically a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing.
“I’m listening to a guy mansplain economics to his wife”
This is a very specific list of actual events that occurred, and describes the behavior of specific men. Literally nowhere does it make any assumptions or assertions about “all men,” except in your own mind. I’m sorry if you personally got screwed in a divorce settlement, but responding with “#notallmen” when no one is pointing the finger at all men is the opposite of helpful.
We don’t actually know that these are “actual events that occurred” (apart from things that are matters of public record like the Lepine murders). We only know that the author asserts that they occurred, and that her description of them is accurate.
Don’t assume everything you read online (or anywhere else) is true.
Dear lord.
I don’t have the time or patience to address why this is not a vilification of all men. I don’t think you’d get it.
But would you please, pretty please with sugar on top think about the fact that you are apparently comparing violence against women to what men go through in a nasty DIVORCE.
You CANT want to be that guy, can you???
Thank you for writing this. I was writing today about my depression and finding links to my own feelings, as a lesbian and a woman, wondering if I am really “allowed to be alive”. Your article spoke to those messages and confirms for me that it is not just “me” being insecure. This is me internalizing the male dominance that really does exist.
I NEVER saw a second grader go on and on like this.
Every word rings true.
My senior year of high school, I started to be sexually harassed by a very openly gay classmate. For several weeks he would sneak up behind me at my locker and put his hands on me. Once, during a fire drill, he cornered me in the entry way (with hundreds of students filing past) and put his hands on me and was making sexual noises. These incidents always happened in plain view of other kids, as though he had nothing to hide.
I finally confronted him about it in class and he said “I don’t like you. Stop acting like I like you.” I told him “If you don’t like me, then stop messing with me.”
Nobody in the class (not even the teacher) stuck up for me. He was openly gay and had lots of female friends.
I have only told one person about this (although many of my classmates knew but didn’t understand or recognize it for what it was) because I feel like I’m lying when I tell the story. Thank you for sharing your experience. I fall into the trap sometimes of believing that I am overreacting or imagining things.
I think everyone has a right to feel a certain way and if you feel uncomfortable in anyway no matter how it looks to others it is valid! And I think is awful
For others to say otherwise and or for u to think that somehow you imagined it- u can’t fake or pretend to be uncomfortable to your self … I hope that makes sense
Very powerful and poignant post. I’m really sorry you went through all that. Thank you for sharing. The world needs to be aware of this
One of the more inferior pieces of fiction I’ve read in some time. Man bashing for the sake of bashing men.
Yup.
Wanted to thank you so much for your post. Now I know, I am not alone.