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We’ve got a fairly desperate concern troll in the mod queue today; he’s left comments on three different posts in the last hour AND sent an email to Kate about how we are ruining feminism, which is a crock of man-hating shit anyway. Needless to say, he’s banned (thanks for playing, Richard! Feel free to read the comments policy on your way out!), but something he said made my jaw drop so hard I think it bruised. Behold the cluelessness:
I still believe that women are their worst enemies. Seriously, how many times has a man said something cruel or sexist about your appearance compared to a woman?
Now, apart from the fact that the famed “cattiness” of women is of course a manifestation of internalized misogyny, and thus Douchehound Richard is a concern troll par excellence, this comment reminded me of the sad fact that many men simply do not believe women’s life experiences. They have no idea what many of us are subject to, because those things tend not to happen when there are men with us. Some men conclude that therefore shit must not really go down the way women says it does, because otherwise wouldn’t they see it with their big manly eyes?*
So in the spirit of a recent post at The F Word (UK) that turned into a mass documentation of street harassment, I’d like to open this thread up to the perhaps traumatic, perhaps triggering, hopefully cathartic task of proving Richard wrong. Not because he’s so important — he’s just your standard issue antifeminist concern troll — but because it can sometimes be useful to state out loud the things we all take as given.
I’ll start, and this is necessarily an incomplete list, obviously, because so many cruel things have been said to me about my appearance by so many men that I can’t possibly remember them all. But here are some.
Boys in school called me a cow, gay, retarded, four eyes, and of course fat. They made fun of my hair, my glasses, my clothes, and my figure. A male “friend” of mine in high school called my high forehead “male pattern baldness” and suggested I tape infomercials for Rogaine. Boys in my HS Spanish class nicknamed me “Bigote” (”Mustache”). A friend’s boyfriend told me I’d have a dozen boyfriends if they only saw me from the neck down. The guy whose locker was next to mine in school would fake invite me to “cool kid” events and then tell me I could only come if I would stop being so fat and ugly. My brother would grab my thighs and talk about how fat they were, and he told me I had a hick haircut (a long time ago! he’s nicer now). My father has expressed happiness that a painful chronic medical condition made me skinnier. My grandfather bought me new clothes as a birthday present one year and told me “Now you just have to not get fat.” My photos on Flickr have been linked from fetish sites whose posts are locked, so I get to imagine what gets said there.
That’s just off the top of my head and doesn’t count the endless street harassment I’ve been subject to since I hit puberty. You think men don’t say fantastically cruel and sexist things to women all goddamn day long? You think every woman doesn’t have a running list of words she wishes had never passed her ears? You think that women are the problem in a sexist society? That’s not how it fucking works, asshole.
So. Hands up if a man has “said something cruel or sexist about your appearance.” Hands up if you’ve witnessed a man saying something cruel or sexist about another woman’s appearance. Hands up if you know a man like Richard who thinks he’s so bloody different from all those other men. Hands up if you’re goddamn sick and tired of being told that if you notice sexism, you’re the sexist. And hands up, male readers, if you have ever been or known that man.
***Raises hand***
–
Filed under: Feminism, Sweet Machine, Trolls, You've Got to Be Kidding Me
I’m sick of it all.
Are you kidding me? Recounting the times that this has happened to me, a member of my family or even someone within earshot, as you mention SM, would not even be possible.
But here’s the one that came to mind first: “She’s got a big ass…for a white girl!”
***Raises hand***
Exactly, atiton — this shit is so endless that there’s no way of documenting all of it, no way to even think about it. But on the chance that there are some well-meaning dudes out there (unlike our troll) who just genuinely don’t know, I think threads like this can be powerful.
*raises hand*
As a child, many of my male classmates wrote notes to “Hindy” (short for Hindenburg) and “Goodyear” (as in blimp) in my 6th grade autograph book. I was teased because of my huge breasts, teased when I wore a bra, teased when I didn’t wear a bra. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been out walking and a car full of men passes by and they shout out FAT COW! (Ironic that I’m the one out getting some exercise…) In university the target was my friend Frannie, who they called “Fat Frannie” and repeatedly made jokes about her in the dining hall. My father told me it was okay for him to be fat - he was already married. My grandfather regularly harassed me about my size and how large I was. Once I started in my career male students (I work in university administration) would call me a fat bitch if they disagreed with me, a number of them telling me perhaps I needed to seek out the services of a gym so I wasn’t so damned fat. I’m well into my 40s now and still subject to comments and epithets from people I do not know.
I have been subject to some of this from other women but it’s rare. A few other girls in high school called me bullet boobs. A potential female employer asked me if I had the ability to climb stairs. Those are the only two examples that come to mind at the moment!
BTW the main thread linking our troll’s unpublished comments is a complete disregard for women’s experience. Men don’t comment on women’s appearances, there aren’t really that many anorexics, and (most hilariously) “For the most part most of humanity considers women’s bodies beautiful, not men’s.” Because straight women and queer men don’t count as part of “most of humanity.”
Heck, I didn’t even mention the male doctor who put me through hell when I was trying to get pregnant because I was, in his estimation, too fat…
My hand is UP!
In middle school, one boy made it his personal mission to make me miserable. He found something mean to say almost every day, but the one that really sticks with me is this one: “your glasses make you look ugly.” I wore boots to school one day (under a long skirt), and he convinced the rest of the boys to proposition me (because I looked like a hooker, apparently) for the rest of the day. The crowded around me in the math room, asking, “how much do you charge?” I was so embarrassed I couldn’t come up with a good comeback, so they mocked me for that, too.
Around the same time, my dad told me, “you wouldn’t be so fat if you didn’t eat so much candy.” Every time he offers to pick up snacks from the corner store, he buys food for everyone else without comment but warns me he won’t let me get any junk food.
In high school, a boyfriend ended an argument by telling me to “go shave your mustache.” Most of my college boyfriends haven’t had a problem remarking negatively on my appearance. One of them went so far as to tell me, as we were breaking up, “when you wear contacts and make-up, you’re actually kind of hot.”
There have been other moments, but these are the ones that really stick out.
100%.
it’s hard for male feminists/allies to learn how to start taking responsibility, but the easiest lesson should be Don’t Start Telling Women(/anyone?) How to Be Good Feminists.
*cringe*
*raises hand*
Hands way, way, way, waaaaHAAAAY up on this one.
And, though I have had women make snide comments about my appearance on the street (once), they at least had the courtesy to not threaten to rape me into the bargain.
I’m small and short, which means most guys look right over my head, so I avoid the worst of it. However, I have gotten the:
-Wolf-whistles/catcalls from random carloads of guys while minding my own business on campus (this was a few weeks ago)
-The first thing out of husband’s former roommate’s friend’s mouth upon meeting me was “Heh…boobies” (yes, asshole, I am well-endowed. STFU).
-The ex-boyfriend who told me that he didn’t really like girls with big breasts because we were all fat.
-The guys in my lab who don’t comment on my appearance (I think I’m regarded as one of them) but pick apart the appearance of other women in the department and in the media.
-The time in a Canadian bar when I was 19, when I had to sneak out the back exit because a 40-something creep wouldn’t leave me alone.
-The time when a friend and I attended a party at a frat house where many of the guys were either friends of mine, or friends of my friends. One of them spiked the drinks with something. I was up sick for half the night, as were other housemates, and we nearly had to call an ambulance for my friend.
-The leering stares at my exposed calves while dressed in a skirt suit en route to a grad school admissions interview.
From other women: mainly just the constant assumption that since I have two X-chromosomes, I must be a) on a diet/counting calories, and b) unhappy with my weight/clothing size/overall appearance. Yeah, I’m not a diet buddy. STFU.
Certainly not an exhaustive list, but:
On the bus my freshman year of high school I was called a fat cow, Mimi (as in the woman on Drew Carey), and was told “I like fat chicks but you’re just tooo fat!” by a group of guys. I was, as I am now, a size 12.
Later in high school I was walking down my street on the way home and was verbally accosted (he called me a whore) by my neighbor one year my senior who kicked me in the stomach when I retaliated.
I was approached by a man at a bar while in college. When I turned down his offer of a drink, he called me a “fat dyke.”
And yeah, you know, some women have said some pretty vicious shit, too, but none have ever kicked me or shamed me into riding my bike 8 miles to school instead of riding a bus.
- A grandfather who would say that I shouldn’t finish my dinner (the dinner being forced upon me by my grandmother) because I’d get “fat”, and then he said, only slightly more quietly, “-er”. He repeated this performance several times. I was probably eight years old.
- grade school boys who would both tell me that I am fat and ugly, but also that other boys in our class wanted to have sex with me. At the age of eleven. How is that not supposed to be cruel and scary?
- carloads of college age guys who, driving by while I was out walking for exercise, would bark like dogs, or yell unintelligible but clearly hostile things.
- the endocrinologist who insisted that the reason I have polycystic ovarian syndrome is that I eat too much. Even though weight gain is a SYMPTOM of PCOS. Even though I explained that I worked with a dietician friend and do not eat excessively.
- the countless, countless men with online dating profiles who have either not responded to my messages to them after viewing my profile (which includes a picture) or who promptly stopped writing to me after receiving my picture. This is not the same experience of online dating that my slim friends have had.
Richard, you have no freakin’ clue what you’re talking about. But what do we know? We’re all just a bunch of silly women.
Oh my god, ralfalfa, I KNOW. The number of times a guy has said things like “I would have thought that you, as a feminist, would believe blah-blah-blah (insert whatever his point of contention is)”! There’s one guy who’s been doing it recently, and honestly, it’s really changed my (previously very favorable) opinion of him.
There are too many to recount, but I’ll share the most memorable one. This happened over ten years ago.
My then husband and I would walk 2 miles a day for excersize. One day, when we were out walking, a group of ‘men’ (boys, really by the age of their actions) drove up behind us and started harrassing me. For whatever reason, even though the ex- was with me, it didn’t save me that day.
The ‘men’ (there were four in the car) started moo-ing at me, and saying things like “fat cow should stay at home!” and other things like that. The worst one though, was where they addressed the ex- and told him that he should put a ‘wide load’ sign on my fat ass.
Yeah, I still remember that as if it was yesterday.
- the endocrinologist who insisted that the reason I have polycystic ovarian syndrome is that I eat too much. Even though weight gain is a SYMPTOM of PCOS.
*epic headdesk*
A guy who thought of himself as feminist (because he was raising his little girl alone –don’t remember why anymore) and progressive because he had a tongue stud, speaking to me, as I sat there with hair on my chin (not to mention legs and pits): “I would never date any woman who didn’t care enough abut herself to keep her legs and pits shaved” That was not the only crack from this guy, just the one that stuck with me the most.
More things than I can remember from guys at school (my main nickname in middle school was “Fro” from my hair –I also had guys dare each other to ask me out as a joke) and from men on the street.
Last week, late-teenagers loitering (and smoking) outside the grocery store, in Denglish (this is an English translation): “Oh, my God, a bearded lady!”
I’ve gotten the high-forehead/male pattern baldness comparison before, too. Before I started actually losing my hair.
I’ve also heard men say they wouldn’t stay with a woman if she’d lost one or both breasts to breast cancer. The mind boggles.
This seems like a great time to link to Rebecca Solnit’s column about how men love to explain things to women, even when, especially when, they don’t know what they’re talking about:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-solnit13apr13,0,526991.story
I’ve gotten the high-forehead/male pattern baldness comparison before, too. Before I started actually losing my hair.
When I got that insult, it was long before I’d heard of PCOS and found out that women could get “male” pattern baldness. Which makes it even more odious as an insult, I think, because it denigrates both women with and without balding. Awesome.
O.C., I think we may have had the same endocrinologist (although, to be fair, I’ve had female doctors who said the same thing, too.)
I can add the whole list of doctors (mostly male) who have dismissed my reported symptoms because I’m female.
Bald Soprano, you know that all us silly wimmin are hysterics who don’t really have anything wrong with us, right?
Yeah, SM, that bugs me even more now than it did at the time. It was a guy justifying guessing that I was 40ish and therefore hitting on me (I was actually just turned 20), btw.
Oh, I forgot the legion of boys in high school who when I wore a jumper, asked if I was pregnant. Or told me that I was.
*puts both hands up in fists and jumps up and down at the guys*
O.C. Right, and we don’t ever know what we’re physically feeling because our minds are disconnected from our bodies (I’ve been told that I’m “too old” for earaches, “too young” for fatigue and that my sciatica was a pinched nerve. That last one was an older guy who was SO condescending to me! He may actually have patted me and called me “dear”)
I would type something up but I’m too busy raising all of my hands at once. In fact, I don’t have enough hands.
In all seriousness, this needs to wait until I get home becuase some of the things I need to type here really shouldn’t be done on a work computer.
There was the time I was walking along the street minding my own business, and some people threw eggs at me from a car and yelled incoherent insults. I’m pretty sure that car had no women in it.
I dated a guy for five years (I don’t know why) who constantly belittled my appearance. He called me frumpy (for having the audacity to—*gasp!*—not care about wearing makeup all the time), he criticized the way I dressed, he called me “ribby” (at the time, I was in the throes of a pretty serious eating disorder), he generally made me feel terrible about my appearance. That doesn’t even get into how he belittled my personality and professional skills (and lots of times, his explanation was that women are inherently less skilled than men), but that’s a whole other issue altogether.
*raises hand*
Surprisingly, the cruelest things I’ve ever heard about myself have come from either men, or the nasty little self-critical voice that exists in my own head. Never really from women. So screw you, Douchehound Richard.
Screw you, Douchehound Richard.
*raises hand*
At a church sponsored event, an older gentleman walked up to me and gave me a big hug… and then told me his friend bet him that he couldn’t get his arms all the way around me.
OC, thanks for the column link! There are a number of men I would LOVE to send it to, but I’m probably too chicken.
OMG Bev. I’m sorry.
I’ve already recounted the “wooo-eee! Look at them titties!” comment I recieved while walking to the record store one day.
The guy who said I had a “knockout face, but was too broad of beam down below” for him to date.
My dad who used to call me Thunder Thighs and Bubble Butt.
I had bad skin in jr. high, so I got called pizza face a lot, lunar landscape, crater face. I also constantly had people of both genders telling me I needed to wash my face, and a guy actually rubbed a slice of pizza on my face once and responded, “What? It’s not like you could get greasier.”
I had the guy in Jr. High who knew I had a crush on him, and asked me out in front of his friends, then when I said yes, laughed hysterically at me. The guy to whom I’d written a note, who ripped it up and threw it at me, telling me I was way too gross to date.
The countless guys who would hit on me while I was bartending at a dance club, who when I turned them down, would call me a fat ugly bitch. Huh, I was good enough to want to fuck a minute ago.
The guys who called me a dyke for turning them down.
The creep who grabbed my tits while I had a bus tub full of glassware over my head.
The asshole in my high school chem class, who pretended to be looking at my notes over my shoulder while he ground his crotch against my ass, IN CLASS.
That’s just a few. Barely the tip of the iceberg.
My hand is raised. Some fun examples: the guy in my high school who yelled “ghetto booty” down the hall every time I walked by him AT SCHOOL (he was never reprimanded) or my supposed male “friend” who told me that if I just lost some weight in my thighs I would actually be good looking. I couldn’t have been more than a size 6 in those days (not that demeaning language should be used for anyone at any size, but it just kind of shows that there is absolutely nothing you can do to avoid it). Ugh.
*raises hands*
I often blog about this, so I’m not going to repeat my zillion examples and multiply that by the zillion more that made me angry before that blogged-about zillion crossed the line. But I will tell one clueless story, because skimming an above comment (Bald Soprano describing an older patronizing man) triggered it:
Apropos of nothing*, a male coworker sidled up to me at work, picked up my hand, and stroked it. “What a pretty hand,” he said. “Why is there no ring on this finger? Oh, because she hasn’t gone back to school for her MRS degree.”
*This encounter took place several days after I announced my intent to leave that job, since I’d received a fellowship to the PhD program I’m in now. But he really came out of the blue with that!
Consider my hand up.
I just had this talk with My Nigel. We were talking about sexism and harrassment at cons, and he said “I don’t really see stuff like that. It seems like a safe place. Besides there are a lot of people around.”
My response was: “You don’t see them because you’re a guy that doesn’t participate in harrassment behavior, and other guys aren’t going to harrass me when you’re around.”
**raises both hands high**
- The boy who waited for me along my way home for TWO YEARS late in grade school to beat the crap out of me. I kept changing routes, and he kept guessing correctly at least three times a week. He knocked the wind out of me, blacked my eye once, and made me terrified to go to school at all.
- The guy who told me he couldn’t understand how a woman could possibly be raped, since she would fight back, wouldn’t she?
- The two ex-boyfriends who I thought were still my friends who suddenly stopped the entire roomful of conversation at a party by turning to me and telling me how threatening they found me.
- The guy who told me a few weeks after my wedding that I would of course be cutting my hair really short and gaining fifty pounds, because ‘I didn’t need to worry about how I looked anymore.’
- The guy who followed me around an SCA event all day using the line ‘I can see that look in your eyes’ every five minutes and expecting a different result…even when I was very clearly flirting with another guy.
- The scary, unkempt man who started following me home from a restaurant one day when I twenty. Just as we got next to an empty field with waist-high grass, he said “How much would it cost to have sex with you? I bet it would be a couple hundred dollars, huh?” I kept my eyes straigh ahead, and said firmly “No, I wouldn’t” all the time trying to work out in my head how fast I could get to the place two blocks away where I knew there were not only a lot of people, but some who knew me and would protect me if I could get to them. He said “You’re a stupid cow, turning down a couple hundred dollars.” Luckily, he turned away and left. As soon as I felt sure he couldn’t see me anymore, I ran to my place of safety.
Oh, and when I told my boyfriend about it the next day, he just shrugged and said that it didn’t matter since the guy hadn’t actually harmed me.
It’s been twenty-five years, and I’m still shaking as I type this.
OH, tanglethis, you reminded me of something! When I was working shareholder services (phone customer service) for AT&T, I had one guy propose to me because of the way I sounded over the phone, one guy offer to set me up with his son, and one guy invite me to come visit him in Pennsylvania while his wife was away. Ok, it was about assumed appearance based on sound-of-voice, but still fucking sexist!
“I had the guy in Jr. High who knew I had a crush on him, and asked me out in front of his friends, then when I said yes, laughed hysterically at me. ”
Yep, had that happen, except after I said yes, he waited a few minutes, got my attention in front of everyone, and said “Consider yourself dumped.”
Oh, I’d forgotten about my stint working in a record store. I worked Friday nights during undergrad, so it was my task to change the window displays. The store had big plate glass windows on a main road, and for the entire time I was in there, every single time, there would be honking and catcalling as guys drove by. Didn’t happen when one of the guys got in the window, that’s for sure.
well, I’m fat now and can’t say I’ve ever been blatantly attacked about being fat (maybe because I became fat in adulthood)
but as a young woman I had a boss who once said to me, “you look so good I’d like to rape you.”
This was in the early 80’s before sexual harassment was even a known term.
I quit my job he scared me so bad. I still get a sick feeling when I think of the way he was looking at me when he said that…
no…I don’t think a woman would ever say such shit…
I was involved in a labor protest yesterday, holding a picket sign with a picture of a worker who had been fired for organizing. A guy came up to me and asked about what we were doing. I told him what had happened to the worker and he said “That’s terrible.” Then he took another look at the sign and said “She’s not much of a poster child for your movement, is she?”
If I had enough hands to raise for all the times I’ve been called names by men, I’d be Kali, the Hindu Goddess of Destruction.
I’ve ALSO had stuff thrown at me from passing cars for just walking down the street and not being a Barbie doll. And yes, I remember THAT like it was yesterday, too.
As for the guy-what an asshole.
Oh, and my first boyfriend was constantly nagging me to lose weight (when I weighed 9 stone), and my stepfather called me “that stupid bitch” from the age of about eight. And there was the old guy on the street who shouted “Slut” at me as I walked past in an ankle-length skirt.
And yes, it was usually the boys who took the piss out of my looks / clothes / glasses / whatever at high school.
Oh, and the guy my freshman year in college who dated me for one week, and then broke up with me because I wouldn’t sleep with him, and told me that was the only reason he went out with me. (I later met two other women he pulled that with that year…)
Twistie: the high forehead/balding comment I got was at Pennsic. One year after I was nearly date-raped there –someone who didn’t get that no meant no, and not try again in five minutes.
*raises all the hands, ever*
Ohmygod, Pick me!
Let’s see… we’ll just go with what has been said to me in my adult life.
-My boss told me once my breasts were too far apart
-Same boss told me he would never have sex with me, totally unbidden. Like, I was standing around, and he said, “You know, I would never have sex with you. Ever.”
-Co-worker told me, also unprovoked, that seeing me in a wet t-shirt contest would be “disgusting”.
-I’ve been told to my face that if I were drunk, I would deserve to be raped. And the speaker insinuated that he might do the raping.
-I’ve been told,”I’m going to shoot you in the head and skull-fuck you.”
And that’s just a few things that I can remember. Not counting street harassment, or being grabbed and groped against my will.
The boy I liked in 6th grade told me I was flat-chested so that made me ugly. I remember thinking, “I’m a skinny twelve year old, what do you expect?!” But of course later I also saw him and his friends making fun of a girl for having too large of breasts. There really is no pleasing the douchehounds.
- Male coworkers purposely brushed against my breasts (working side-by-side at a fast food restaurant) when I was a teenager.
- A male coworker hugged me from behind and pushed his erect penis into my back.
- Being propositioned for sex by a guy at the library. He gave me a note telling me that even though he had a girlfriend, I looked too good not to try.
- In college, the countless number of anonymous phone calls to my dorm room from a man who wanted to let us (my roommate and I) know exactly how he was touching himself and where he wanted our pussies.
- A classmate in college who always sat in the section where most of the women were. His behavior and mannerisms had a general sense of creepiness. He would lean in close, too close, to talk to us. He then took to sitting by me mostly, and once touched me when he wanted to say something. I told him point blank, “Do not to touch me.” He moved on to bothering some other woman, but none of the others would put up with his invasivness, so eventually he sat mostly to himself.
- After my mom bought me my first bra, my sister’s then-friend (male) referred to my “over-the-shoulder boulder-holder.” While embarrassing, I was more creeped out that an adult man (late 20s) felt it was okay to make a comment about my breasts, just developed at age 12, in front of my whole family.
- Being whistled at and called to by men while walking down the street. No, it’s never flattering, which is how I’ve been told to interpret that behavior.
- And while the sentiment has not often been expressed to me outright, men often think I’m a bitch because I have opinions of my own and am not afraid to express them when appropriate (i.e., countering sexist bullshit I hear in my presence). Or, they are angered by my having the audacity to think I can be independent.
Example, a neighbor once asked me if I needed help carrying a piece of furniture up to my apartment. I’m sure I did look overwhelmed by it, because I am petite and the thing was more than half my size (but lightweight as it was pine and mostly empty space). But I very politely declined his offer. I did appreciate him wanting to help. His reply, angrily stating, “Geez I was just trying to help.”
Part of me didn’t want his help because there is, and always will be, a fear in me that men will use any opportunity to take advantage of me - no matter how nice the man seems to be. Letting a stranger into my home to move a piece of furniture? I can’t do that. I used to be trusting of men and women equally. Then I hit puberty. That’s when I became an object to be consumed. Particular men in my life have proved to be untrustworthy, and there’s no usually way to know who is going to be the next predator.
I know are more examples I’ve forgotten. There’s stuff I didn’t even realize was sexist and inappropriate until I was older.
Ugh. My hand is up Up UP.
To start, maybe 3000 of the comments here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUTJQIBI1oA
Well, to end there too. The list is godawful long and I’ve gotten really skilled at washing my brain.
But the commentary on that video is typical, and I think it’s interesting “data” as to what people will say to fat people when they know they won’t be held accountable.
Don’t hate me guys, but can I just say? I’m almost a little relieved to hear that it’s not just me. :(
My ex once told me I looked like “a mongoloid” and when I reacted in horror (more, in fact, to his choice of word than anything) he said “Oh, but you’re cute! You’re my little mongoloid!” I was so stunned I had no idea how to react.
The most sexist things I have to endure in recent times are not directed at me, but come from male friends who see me as “one of the guys” since I date women now. So they think I want to join right in with the objectification talk. Most recently I had to endure a friend who came back from Japan talking about “bouncy Japanese girls” and saying he needed to go back there and find strip clubs because zomg Japanese wimmins! (I think he may be exaggerating this attitude to get a laugh out of other people, but the fact that it *works* says so many things I can’t even begin to think about it without my head hurting.)
SingOut, that’s normal. There’s an element of that for me, too.
*both hands up*
I’ve had my share of random street harassment. And groping, for which I was blamed because I ‘must have been sending out signals’.
Also, my brother’s friend is still in line for an ass-kicking for saying to my brother, “Your sister’s gotten kinda fat” when I was recovering from a freaking eating disorder. (To my brother’s credit, he did tell said friend to stfu.)
Then there was the guy in a bar telling me that I should wear more makeup and get contacts…a male ‘friend’ telling me recently that I’m too fat now to get the guys I want…when the worst I’ve gotten from women is looks and the assumption that I’m trying to lose weight. Gah, douchehounds suck.
SingOut, I don’t think anyone is going to hate you. As horrible as all these things are, there’s nothing worse than thinking you’re the only one who’s faced it. After all, if it’s just you, it’s easy to think maybe it’s something you’ve brought on yourself or that you deserve. You didn’t and you don’t.
Knowing that others go through the same thing can be a relief, because then you know it’s not your fault.
TheBaldSoprano (which is actually one of my favorite Tom Stoppard plays, incidentally), one of the reasons I left the SCA was the fact that I was constantly having to deal with guys who thought their attentions must be welcome simply because I was a woman, so I should just shut up and be grateful. I was there to play in costumes, not because I couldn’t find any way to get laid by mundanes.
*puts hand in air*
I’ve been called fat in so many different ways that it’s pointless to catalog them.
I’ve been harassed and followed around by men — not specifically related to my weight, but creepy nevertheless.
I’ve been told by a doctor that the digestive problems I was having were related to being fat — this is after I explained that I had a horrible home and school life, and gee, wouldn’t stress have something to do with that, maybe? Which, you know, it turned to out to be stress. Not fat.
I’ve been explicitly propositioned — and I mean explicitly — BECAUSE I was fat. I mean, he said it right up front. He liked fat girls. And then he offered to take me somewhere, fuck me, and that he’d totally do me the favor of calling his friends over and CHARGING THEM for fucking me. Boy, THAT was a self-esteem booster! That asshole, by the way, followed me HOME — and at the time, I had no phone.
I’ve had women say the occasional rude thing, but it sort of pales in comparison to Mr. Pimp, there. So, Richard, kindly shut the FUCK up.
1 - my appearance was mocked straight through elementary school.
2 - in a school with a so-called zero tolerance teasing policy, my classmates took it upon themselves to learn to insult me, my appearance, my purported odor, body hair, and weight in new languages. often in song.
3 - in high school, boys would get back at male friends of theirs by dropping notes into my locker asking me out, supposedly from the primary target of their mockery. this was evidently a horrible thing for any guy to experience.
4 - on a single walk earlier this month, no fewer than three men leaned out their car windows to taunt me and laugh as they speeded by. the most insulting and sexually explicit of them had an icthus on his car.
5 - while visiting potential wedding reception locales with my mother this weekend, a carload of young men again yelled out their car windows to yell denigrating comments about our appearance and the sexually degrading things which ought to happen to us.
there is much, much more, but five items should be enough to prove my point. i have better things to do than to relive this shit all afternoon. ten minutes is plenty.
Ye gods and little purple fishes, Naamah Darling! He actually thought that offering to make money off of his friends fucking you was some sort of compliment to you???? That’s SICK!
Oh, and speaking of sick…
- The doctor who refused to examine my sick friend because she was ‘a twelve year old girl with an hysterical mother.’ Yeah, that hysterical appendicitis is easy to recover from. By the time they got a doctor to look at her, my friend’s appendix had burst and she lost an ovary in the ensuing surgery. it was the only time I ever saw my parents counsel someone to sue and throw the fucking book at anyone for anything.
My most memorable comment wasn’t about my appearance, I hope that’s okay. In the seventies my junior high history teacher told me I was “very logical for a woman”. I just sort of blinked and was amazed even back then, at that age, that someone would think logic was a man’s talent. Then there was my high school chemistry teacher who told our class at length that women were happier as wives and mothers. Both male, BTW.
I’ve also been date raped by men a couple of times (no, I wasn’t drunk or drugged either time). Both times they were guys I’d known and liked for a long time. Never had a woman do anything remotely as bad. So, yeah, it’s men I’m warier of; and feminism isn’t a factor at all in why, simple experience.
*raises hand*
This boy in my middle school greeted me with a new “you’re so flat chested that…” joke every day from the beginning of 6th grade through the end of 8th. If we had gone to the same high school, I know it would have continued through 12th.
I’m so sorry that everyone has to put up with this!
Another post just triggered the memory of my first post-undergrad “career” job. I had to threaten one of the principal investigators, a PhD with a wife and young daughter, with a sexual harassment claim to get him to stop lurking outside my lab, stop leering at me on the elevator, stop sitting at my lunch table uninvited and staring at me while I ate (I even tried to make conversation once, but he refused to talk, just kept staring), stop following me around the building.
My best friend recently got her next-door neighbor kicked out of university housing. He was married and his wife lived there with him, but he would show up at my friend’s door or call her late at night, propositioning her for sex and threatening her with all manner of harm. She lives alone in a ground-floor unit, so the threats weren’t empty.
**raises hand**
they called me “fat rock.” weird, but devastating.
Oy, here we go…
All the comments I got as a teenager about being fat AND having small breasts. I’m sure you can imagine.
My brother calling me ‘chunky’ and saying that I was going to be wayyy fat when we were kids (he’s better now, thanks).
More recently, my dad playing the concern troll and insinuating that I eat too much and that I shouldn’t enjoy food because I’m fat. Oh, and saying that I should be careful about feeding my 10.5 month old because otherwise you-know-what will happen (FAT!!!1!).
The “You know you’d be really pretty if you lost weight” comments. Oh, and the “You’d be really pretty if you wore make-up/shaved your legs/wore a dress/wore girl clothes/shaved your pits/didn’t curse/weren’t so loud/weren’t so opinionated/acted like a chick/etc” comments.
Yeah. All those too.
Delurking to raise my hand here …
I was told at the age of 12 by an adult who should have known better (my father) that I had inherited “the Von Mengershausen thighs”, ie “very large, thunder-thighs”.
Cue a lifetime of yo-yo dieting, body-hatred and addictive eating that I am only beginning to resolve now, the year I turn 40.
Thanks, Dad.
How about every time a man disagrees with us on an internet forum, they’re constantly breaking out either “fat bitch” or “slut” or “whore”? So when men disagree with us we’re instantly either not sexually desirable…or sexually promiscuous. Nice.
Oh no, I’ve never been harrassed! All of you must be crazy…these things just do not happen!
Like when I was in junior high, and walking down the hall, and some guy punched me in the back to see if I could feel it through my fat? He was just conducting a scientific experiment!
Or that time I was standing at the bus stop, and some guy stopped in a car across the road and refused to drive on, even when the light changed, until I smiled? He was just encouraging me to be more optimistic!
Or that time at a concert when some guy lamented that I was frigid because I wasn’t flattered by him rubbing his crotch against me and calling it dancing? Well, he was just giving me a lesson in ettiquette!
Or when I told the guy I was sorta seeing about the whole traumatizing incident (which included my best friend continuing to force me into the situation and then calling me a rude mental patient when I was angry), and he told me that he remember the days when he tried to rub up on girls at parties? Why, he was just trying to reinforce that lesson by showing me how normal it was!
Or how about the time the only boy in the chorus, a guy I had known my whole life, remarked upon watching a tape of our 7th grade performance, that I looked so thin back then in comparison to the way I looked at the moment? He was just kind enough to let me know I wasn’t taking care of my appearance!
Oh and the fact that he said it in front of the entire group? He was just making sure all us girls were warned about the dangerous of not being pretty!
And when a former coworker took it upon himself to corner me and touch me every chance he got? Why, he was just being friendly!
Not to mention all the compliments I have received on the street from men who just wanted to let me know that I was beautiful! They truly are angels for trying to boost the self-esteem of the women of America!
Oh my god, reading these I am just trying not to cry at my work desk and I’m remembering all the shitty things guys did to me when I was younger and how they can continue to do that.
When I was in high school I would IM after school with the popular boy and listen as he talked about how his parents fought etc. He told me “I was the best friend he ever had and I’d be the perfect girlfriend ….. if only I looked the part.” He then told me he mom had a treadmill in the basement and I was welcome to come over and use it whenever.
A “friend” of mine would mock me by pulling his head back on his neck and asking ‘if his double chin was close to looking like mine.’
elephant, fat ass, cow, — one guy even told me I was a disgrace to teenage girls everywhere because this was the time we should look most fuckable and no one would want to touch me unless very intoxicated.
While walking in the “take back the night” rally in college, a car-full of men yelled “who the fuck would rape any of you?”
At a party, I made out with a guy who pushed my head down and told me to suck it, when I said no, he snarled at me that i should be grateful.
A guy I knew from class exposes himself to me at work.
Another male coworker repeatedly begged to give me foot massages at work. We worked the late shift… alone… in the middle of no where. It was terrifying.
While arguing against sexual harassment in class a man muttered behind me, “just jealous that no one ever notices you, huh”
It could go on and on and on.
And what is really sad is that those comments come from strangers and “friends” and former boyfriends.
I’ve had an egg thrown at me, but I’m well-padded. It bounced off without breaking.
*raised hands*
I have been called a:
“Fat bitch.”
“Fucking bitch.”
“Fat fucking bitch”
And any combination of the above by complete strangers who wanted: a parking space, for me to get out of their way, and godzilla only knows what else.
In addition, I REFUSE to look at anyone driving in the cars next to me. I don’t care if in my peripheral vision there are hands waving wildly or honking going on, I have seen more disgusting gestures than I ever care to again. Frankly, I feel a little bad because I’m sure one or two of those people just needed directions to the freeway, but I’m not risking it.
My dad. Who is a nice guy and loves me a lot. And thought he was helping.
“You’d be pretty if your neck weren’t so thick.” And the endless street harassment.
And the endless comments that men and boys make about girls and women:
-she’s pretty, from the neck down. yeah, the neck up isn’t so great, but still *leers*
-she’s so ugly, she’s so fat, look at that figure, i wouldn’t fuck her
-omg, she’s so old [to be here at a bar], she must be desperate, how sad.
-she only won [a debate competition] because she wore a low cut top and a short skirt.
Does “Flat as the great plains” count? (fucker)
*Both hands raised*
Yeah, also it’s mostly men who seem to think that my tattoos either mark me “open for business” or ask me why I’d want to mark up my lovely flesh like that.
**raises hand with outstretched finger at Richard***
Richard, sweetie… Doubtless you’re probably one of those who thinks that random man grabbing and fondling my ass on a train platform while using his other hand to masturbate should have been interpreted by me as a *compliment* on my appearance. He obviously LIKED MY ASS!!
As should the comparatively-less-harmful quip from a senior male professor who said to me, as I was on the way to teach my morning intro class, “I heard you coming up behind me in your heels and thought, ‘I love the sound of a woman’s shoe. It sounds so feminine.’” I’m sure you can’t fathom why this put me off my game when I then had to face 40 freshmen at 9:30 in the morning. Why, he LIKED MY SHOEZ!!!
I hope you get a clue someday… and that, when that happens, you don’t *quite* die of embarrassment at what you wrote today.
Oh and that guy who shouted at me and a friend as we walked down the street to ask us if we liked anal sex? He was just trying to broaden our horizons!
One of my engineering professors told the class ‘ only half of you will pass this course, and it won’t be anyone in the front row’.
The entire front row was made up of the women in science and engineering program I was in.
*raises hand*
Just a small selection of the sexist/racist/hateful things that have been said to me by men:
“You’re ugly.”
“You look like a cocker spaniel.”
“What ARE you anyway?”
“Your hair looks like an ugly fro.”
“Cunt.”
“Bitch.”
“Fucking bitch.”
Etc etc…
I have to say, most of my verbal abuse in middle and high school did come from girls, but I didn’t really hang around boys at all if I could help it. The boys in my class would just walk behind me and hit the back of my head, or kick my ass through my seat, or put food in my hair at lunch time. There was one boy who would follow me around and ask me my pant size and whether or not I was wearing a bra yet, and eventually he started groping my back to feel, and snapped my bra strap. I developed breasts a little earlier than other girls in my class, so even though I was fat, and at the bottom of the pecking order, boys would still sometimes hiss dirty things in my ear and ask to see me with my shirt off, or if they could touch me (I actually was molested by peers, but I don’t want to get into that here.)
I once, in junior high, had another girl tell me I should shave my legs. And someone in graduate school suggested to me that I’d be prettier if I lost weight.
Let’s see: if I stack that up against the shit I’ve experienced from men: rape, groping, being followed on the street, obscene phone calls, catcalls, etc., etc….
Yeah, the bulk of the harassment (both the “you suck” and “I want you to suck me” kinds) came from men. And by “bulk” here I mean 99.99999% of it.
Well lets see, I don’t have too hard a time of it, don’t ask me why. (I guess since 2/3 of the people I know have told me that they found me “scary” when they first met me it is because I’m intimidating and lots of people assume I am a lesbian for no apparent reason. Not that I’d mind be)
But there was the guy I went on 1 date with who threatened to stalk me if I didn’t call him. I didn’t call him.
And recently there was the gentleman who assumed I was single because of my “seriously big ass”.
Oh and the fact that until I was about 18 every guy on earth HATED me because I was taller than them. When I did go to a co ed school the boys went out of their way to get me into trouble whenever possible.
I also never got invited to a single dance in highschool (even when all of my friends were going and some of them didn’t have dates. No one invited me.). It is a cardinal sin to be tall and a girl if you aren’t a model.
The parenthetical above should read “Not that I’d mind being a lesbian, but I am not one.”
Putting aside the insults heaped upon me by men I know (or knew) personally — what about the insults heaped upon me by the (male-dominated) culture at large? Because that’s where this argument always begins: some guy saying ‘I’VE never said anything bad about a woman, therefore you must be insane’ (Which — oh! so ironically! — IS JUST SUCH AN INSULT).
I have two main beefs with the whole ‘women are their own worst enemies’ argument:
1. The bare statement itself betrays the speaker’s bias, in that it defines ‘women’ as an undifferentiated mass sharing a single characteristic. The speaker has heard some number of individual women make unflattering remarks about some number of other women, and has erroneously deduced that, therefore, all women behave in this manner. This is the very definition of gender bias.
2. No offense to the douchehound, but I’ve heard this pablum trotted out so often that the fucking thing needs a pair of running shoes. It’s such a part of our cultural consciousness that I can no longer tell a friend ‘you know, I don’t really like that dress on you’ without fear of being labeled a Traitor to My Race. Yet, said douchehound can post inane shit to a feminist weblog without a second thought for how it will reflect on his brothers, BECAUSE THE FEMINISTS WON’T EXTRAPOLATE HIS IDIOCY ONTO EVERY OTHER MAN THEY KNOW.
In short, yeah, I’ve said derogatory shit about other women, and no, it didn’t bring feminism crashing to the ground. In the same way that Mr. Douchehound’s idiocy won’t bring modern civilization to a screeching halt. Even though it should.
Public school was A LOT easier than Catholic grade-school (and I’m not Catholic). Mom sent me there thinking I would get a good education. The bulk of the students there were assholes. We are talking seven and eight year old boys who would accost me and pull my skirt up, and other kids who would just yell insults. Now, I was wearing regular girls’ sizes and was just stocky, but I was still considered a fat cow. There was another big girl at the school, but she was very tall, and she got called names too. When I got to seventh grade, it got bad enough that my mom decided to pull me out of school and I told the teacher enough was enough. One my tormenters even called me one night and apologized, but I told him that I was leaving and what he did was shitty.
When I got to public school, I was just another girl, although one guy who was fat (and was one of the most popular guys in school) liked to call me “bush” because I had thick curly hair. But he was my neighbor and we got along okay. He actually sat on my backyard fence and broke it and I never let him live it down. *evil grin*
As an adult, I haven’t been publicly harrassed like so many other women here. There was some jerk who murmured to a friend as I sat next to them at a bar that he wouldn’t do me even if he was drunk, but I think they realized I heard them because I shot them a dirty look and they left. That’s OK, they weren’t so great anyway. But having guys yell insults at me on the street or follow me, nope. I’m left alone.
*hand up*
The only time I can think of when other women (well, girls in this case) were nasty to me was in middle school when certain girls did so in order to get approval from the douchehound boys they liked - one of them actually apologized to me about it later.
Comments from men? Too many to name - not so much in recent years (I think I’ve reached the age of invisibility) but from about ages 12 to 30, it was a normal part of life. Sucky, but normal and totally in line with what everyone else here is saying, so much so that it seems redundant to give examples.
When I first started seeing my now-husband, we were out together and a homeless guy asked me for change. I said no, politely, and he said he hoped I got raped. It was ugly but not really any uglier than the normal kind of crap any woman hears walking down the street alone. I didn’t event think of taking it seriously as a threat (though I did make sure that no one was following me around the rest of the day.)
Anyway, the future Mr. Nettle didn’t hear any of this directly, but he asked, “what did that guy say to you?” I told him. He looked shocked. He suggested we call the police. He offered to go beat the guy up. I said, “No, why would you bother doing any of that? It’s not that big a deal, he’s not going to do anything.” He said, “The guy must be a psycho, who talks like that to a woman?” I said, “um, what planet are you from?”
He really had no idea that this kind of thing is normal. I had no idea that anyone would be surprised by it.
A few things that stand out for me:
- Canvassing on the street/door-to-door and having assumptions made about my orientation, sexual availability, and sexual practices, as well as threats stemming from those assumptions (details still make me flinch).
- Being told that I was obligated to have sex with someone because he was “a nice guy” and didn’t actively harass me (apart from, you know, pressuring me to have sex.)
- My dad, who, bless his heart, just couldn’t believe that there’s any discrimination these days against women in engineering and computer science, much less against the *only* woman in a computer science class. (It could have been worse, but it was Not Good in many ways.)
But apart from getting this shit from family, strangers, acquaintances, and the occasional friend, it’s nice to know I don’t experience “that much” of it.
Where to start…
-Being told by my grandfather that women are responsible for a majority of what is in landfills because we use so many beauty products.
-Being told by my father that he hates working with women my age who have PhD’s (I have one and work in the same field) because we all think that we are so smart when we don’t actually know anything.
-Being told by my father that he wants to move to South America and find a wife who doesn’t speak english so that he doesn’t have to talk to her.
-Having my male advisor “accidentally” brush his hand across my entire chest.
-Having a male co-worker who is much taller stare straight down my shirt during a meeting.
-Having men assume that I play a support role instead of running an organization.
-Being moo’ed at while crossing the street, being propositioned in a bar by a guy who positioned basically laid his dick on top of my knee as a sat on a stool, being leered at riding my bike at age 10 by a group of men in their 50’s…
Hands way UP… just the tip of the iceberg.
Oh, and I can’t believe I didn’t think to add this one earlier;
- The guy who on meeting me for the first time at a party greeted me with this deathless thought: “Giving women the vote is like handing a loaded gun to the three-year-old.”
To this day I’m betting he doesn’t understand why I didn’t want to speak to him after that.
*raises hand*
I have a high forehead and a cowlick right in front which means no bangs. I was told I was balding and had many jokes made from that. It was mostly in grade 6 that it happened and I thought it was all forgotten by the time we hit high school. Clearly not because I was overwhelmingly voted ‘most likely to go bald’ in senior year. And lots of the guys from my elementary school days took it as an opportunity to tell me that they voted for me. Like I would find it funny or something.
I’ve noticed that my dad makes horrible sexist remarks (not toward me but toward other women when I am around) and he gets attitude when I make a point of saying that I do not appreciate those kinds of comments. Seriously - you want me to have high self esteem and know my worth, and yet you think I won’t be offended at you belittling other women? Serious wtf.
This thread is going to make me cry. I want to give everyone here a big hug. Also, I want to make my husband read it, because he’s one of those dudez who thinks that women are meaner to other women than men are to women.
- Some guys I knew in law school referred to one of our classmates as “Manatee” because she was fat and, according to them, ugly. LAW SCHOOL, people. Ugh.
- I remember in junior high this one boy made up a freaking POEM about my friend’s flat chest.
- I got called “Thunderbutt” in junior high more times than I can recall, only ever by boys.
- After getting a perm as a pre-teen, one boy told me I looked like I had put my finger in a light socket. (It was a truly disastrous perm, to be fair, but he was the only person to comment on it.)
- A male “friend” of mine saw a photo from me from college and told me that my short haircut made me look “like a lesbian.”
By the way, is anyone reading to the F-word UK thread? Sadly, I am and one of the commenters mentioned having friends encourage the harrassers/ apologize to them for your rudeness, and I was just wondering…did that ever happen to any of you?
I mentioned it in my above comment, but my (former) best friend laughed and joked with a guy who was essentially molesting me and who she knew was making me seriously uncomfortable. When I confronted her later, she told me I was sick and needed psychiatric help.
Ooooh! Yeah…
I was raped at age 16 by a 24 year old who was dating a friend of mine (an older friend - she was 20). I kept quiet about it for a long time. When I finally told another “friend” word got around. Said 24 year old followed me to a diner in his car with three of his friends. They pulled in behind me, blocked my car so I couldn’t get out of my parking slot, and surrounded the car to scream at me. He said, “It would be a privilege for you if I raped you.”
I had three different stalkers by the time I was 18. One ex-boyfriend followed me EVERYWHERE - seriously, EVERYWHERE - for over a year. I moved to the other side of the country.
I developed a close friendship with a male supervisor at a previous job. He was, in fact, a vice-president at a university where I worked. I was 22. I was (and still am) also very close with his wife. They were like parents to me. Needless to say, no one else at work could possibly understand that a young, hot lady was simply “friends” with an older man in a position of power. Couldn’t be that I was just super-smart, competent, and trustworthy, eh? Allegations of a sexual relationship followed for several years.
I get propositioned for sex at professional conferences CONSTANTLY. Men get quite angry when I refuse. I’ve taken to wearing a fake wedding band (a security gift from the BF) as an easy-out: “I’m married” seems to be taken easier than “Nope, not going to sleep with you, douchehound.”
This is not even including the cat-calls, random groping, and years of “teasing” from men because I was a competitive equestrian. Something about a woman (or child, as I was when I started) in tight pants on a horse that elicits the nastiest and scariest of comments.
And the best part is that most men think I’m conceited when I talk about the things that have happened to me. “Oh, so you think men just follow you around like you’re so hot?” Well, yes, actually, they do. Is it because I’m hot? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m small and look like I can’t fight back. Doesn’t matter. It’s still true. It still happens.
High school: Freshman year, a male student repeatedly called me fat and ugly. Over and over. Senior year, another male student called me fat, ugly, and worthless.
College: while eating at a buffet, a male customer muttered to his friend as I walked by that he was surprised anything at the buffet was left after I’d passed through it.
Women have said things to me like “Have you tried this diet?” or the concern comments. The cruelest comments have come from men.
In elementary school (probably about third grade), a little boy used to get in close and punch me, repeatedly, in the upper arm while we were on the playground. I didn’t know what to do about it and it went on all year.
Another boy in about fifth grade used to say, “Where’d you get those clothes? K-Mart?” and tease me about wearing “floods” even when they weren’t.
In seventh or eighth grade, two boys mocked me in drama club because I wasn’t shaving my legs.
My grandfather offered to pay me to lose weight and said it wasn’t good to be “a fatty.”
In junior high, as I was out jogging (and during my eating 900 calories a day summer and trying not to pass out), a guy walking down the street going in the opposite direction passed me and pinched me on the butt, hard. Face flushing even pinker, I kept running and wanted to never stop.
Yesterday, at 8am while I was getting gas, the attendant stood outside of my window (you can’t pump your own in my city) and said, “Hello friend. You’re pretty. Where are you from?” My five month old was in the backseat and the gas pump was still pumping into the car, and I felt totally exposed and trapped with him standing just outside my door. I was not happy at all as he was looking at me and smiling and I felt anything but friendly.
I raise my hand.
Sorry Richard but I’ve repeatedly had men say horrible, sexist things to me. I’ve had girls say things too but, in my experience, men are worse (although I have to admit that, now that I’m back in academia instead of working, and now that I don’t go out that often to pubs and clubs, the amount of abuse in my life has been drastically reduced). As for types of abuse I’ve had a wide variety from my father’s near daily complaints about my weight, my attitude as a teen to his current “I’m just looking out for you but why aren’t you married yet? why aren’t you trying these medications? why aren’t you doing x, y and z?”, to boys at school throwing stones at me, trying to set my hair on fire, not to mention the daily verbal abuse. When I was older it was commonly men in clubs calling me a dyke for not being overwhelmingly grateful that they wanted to talk to me (regardless of what I wanted) that I’ve had to deal with. I’ve had years of medical and dental and other professional men calling me sweetheart and dear and there was even one who insisted on calling me pixie (WTF?), and very few of those men seemed capable or willing to listen to what I was saying.
As a grown up (and in the world I now circulate) things are better, but this isn’t because the men have gotten better, it’s because I’ve gotten better at recognising and avoiding those men. The only real problem I have now are my father, occasionally my brother and one of my brother in laws friends who repeatedly threatens to punch me when I disagree with him or express any opinion that is vaguely feminist.
One of my first tech support jobs, almost 10 years ago, was for a regional ILEC. I was the only woman on the support team, but my supervisor and her manager were both very intelligent women.
Now, this was when DSL was still relatively new and popular, and since it was one of those “just get it added on to your phone bill!” type things, we got some amazingly bizarre customers calling in.
Me: Thank you for calling tech support, how can i help you?
Male caller: Oh, i’m sorry, i wanted tech support, not customer service.
Me: Um, this is tech support, how can i help you?
MC: Oh. Can i speak with your supervisor?
Me: I think she’s available, may i ask the purpose of this call?
MC: Oh. Can i speak with her manager, is HE available?
Me: No, i’m afraid SHE is not available, but if you…
MC: *click*
I got those calls at least once a day - people refusing to believe i was tech support because i was female. But not as bad as the other kinds of calls i got….
Me: Thank you for calling tech support, how can i help you?
Male caller: Oh. Hey honey, how’re you doing today?
Me: *pause* I’m fine, thank you. How can i assist you today?
MC: Are you busy?
Me: … Pardon?
MC: What are your measurements?
Me: … *click*
I did not get into trouble for hanging up on him in that instance, but one of my male coworkers suggested that the next time someone asked me that over the phone, i should say “36-26-36-10″.
Aside from the harassment (verbal and physical) from people I actually know, I’ve regularly been shouted at/threatened while walking/running for exercise.
I’ve never thought I “could” complain about catcalls because they weren’t saying something “mean.” As Stupendousness so beautifully stated, as a female past puberty, I’m an object for [male] consumption.
I’ve received comments from little boys out schoolbus windows that chilled me to the bone. Where did those boys learn such violence? Not their mothers, Richard.
***RAISES HAND***
And I quote: “It’s not her body that’s the problem….it’s her face! If you put a bag over her head, she’d actually be fuckable!”
I don’t feel bad. I heard he got arrested for stealing things from Fry’s Electronics, and then trying to return them. :D
I haven’t had nearly as much of this stuff said to me as most women seem to, but indeed, the vast majority of it came from men, especially men whose advances I’d rejected. When I was a little younger, people used to mistake me for a guy a lot, because of how I dressed, my short hair, and my not particularly feminine figure, and once when I turned to someone who called me sir and spoke to him, he told me, “Stop trying to talk like a woman, because I know you’re a guy.”
I can’t even count the number of boys, all through childhood and high school, who gave me shit about my “mustache.” Later in high school, I naired it once, but didn’t like the feel of my skin after that. A month or two later some guy who was pissed off at me in class for proving him wrong asked me why I had to “let that shit grow back and force me to look at it every day.”
I was sort of a know-it-all kid, and I’m sure it was kind of obnoxious. But the girls in my class usually would just roll their eyes at me, while the boys would get combative, challenging me and yelling at me to shut up all the time for the same basic arrogance they displayed.
My dad was the kind of parent to get hard on his kids for underachieving, so any less-than-stellar grades were cause for criticism. Fortunately I never had those, which meant that it was my weight that was scrutinized, any gain brought up loudly, often at dinner. Funny