However, I am a guy and I can honestly say that I have never (intentionally) been rude to a woman because she was a woman. I have a lot of friends that are woman and enjoy women’s company more than men’s most of the time. I try to treat people with respect if they deserve it. So there are some women I have been rude to as well as men but it is because I dont like them rather than them justbeing a woman

Though to go with a lot of the stories here I had one kind of friend of mine more like a fellow student I just knew. She was getting harrassed by a guy who tried to grab her ass after she said screw off. When she yelled he covered her mouth and said to shut up he was just joking. I got into a fight with him over that after I said to fuck off and he ignored me. so I know how much of an asshole a guy can be.

However, in guys defense, we are not all bad. There are a lot of them that are bad but we are not all bad.

I’ve put up with a lot from bitchy girls, but nothing like what I’ve had to put up with from men.

I’ve never had a girl push me down on her bed and forcibly grope me, and then try it again not even 2 minutes later in an elevator.

It has always been men who when I disagreed with them, called me a “fat ugly bitch.”

It was a boy who told me he didn’t care if my parents drove up or if the police came if I was giving him a blow job I better make sure I finished it.

It was not another girl who grabbed my boob to check and see if I was wearing a bra in the middle of my high school.

It was a male teacher who stood behind me and rubbed my neck and made me feel sick, not a female one.

Though it was a female teacher who held me after class to punish me for calling another student and idiot and an asshole after he had screamed at me and called me a stupid fat slut (news flash I’m still a virgin as I write this). He never was reprimanded for his actions.

We can be enemies to each other for sure, but men are usually the ones who are our WORST enemies.

I just thank god there are men out there who are wonderful and great. I have a huge crush on one of my professors, and I realized while reading this that ironically one of the things I’m attracted to him for is that fact that he would never make a move on me or any other young female student he has power over.

I hope when I become a teacher I can make sure there are at least a few women who won’t have stories like this because I refuse to look the other way, EVER!

in addition to the usual obnoxious comments, there’s the praise that’s just as bad:

in grad school, how i was rewarded for producing work that “moved beyond” issues of race, feminism, ableism, oppression, etc, to arrive at “more original,” “more brilliant” conclusions. The way that academics will call you “unimaginative” or accuse you of “rehashing” for owning your political commitments and insisting upon their importance and continued relevance. The way that they actually get in your head and make you ashamed of what you KNOW is right!

oh, my hands are UP UP UP.

Not too long ago, I was in bed with a man (who I knew well, not some random hook-up) and he grabbed by boob and said, “this is perfect” and then my ass and said “this is awesome” and then a big handful of fat belly and said, “Now if you could just do something about this.” I told him to get the fuck out of my bed.

Two years ago, my (then) boyfriend told me his sexual issues were because of my body (which was the same – no, thinner! – body that I had when we met!). I broke up with him.

Today, my husband, who is HOTT, kind, and um, 20 years younger than the last my erectile dysfuntion is your fault idiot boyfriend, thank-you-very-much, tells me I am beautiful every day.

TODAY, my step-daughter (age 12, who is not thin, but far from fat) told me boys make comments about her weight at school. I told her to tell them to shut the hell up.

I don’t love my body yet, but I’ll be damned if some man is ever going to lord his shit over my body again.

I’m a lesbian, and butch with it. I was a tomboy from as early as I can remember, and I still look like one, at age 40. I was extremely bookish, partly as a result of home life, and partly as a result of 9 different schools. In intermediate (middle) school, I was constantly bullied by a bunch of middle class bitches who almost succeeded in tying me up to a climbing frame and beating me, but I escaped. I was called “ugly” and “tomboy” (I was proud of that) and “lessie” at primary school. I was invited to a fight by a tough girl at a new school I went to. (I turned up, knees shaking, and she shook my hand and said “Good onya, mate” – no more troubles at that school). I wasn’t invited to parties or outings “with the girls”. I experienced a determined campaign to “feminise” me by my mother and aunt throughout most of my teens, where I was called unfeminine (I *was*) and “too smart” and that I’d better start conforming. They gave up after I was about 17 (my mother’s effort was half-hearted at best). I have had frosty looks and sneering behaviour from overgroomed cows in the office who didn’t want me to be fixing their computer. I’ve had Christian women offering to “save” me. I have had young Catholic women “praying” for me and verbally abusing me as a sinner when I visited an abortion clinic. I had a violent relationship – it was mutually violent – with a female lover. While she started the violence, based on unfounded jealousy, I continued it (“no-one’s going to hit me and get away with it”). Never again. I had one ex-girlfriend stalk me for a couple of months, and she would turn up and cause embarrassing scenes in front of my flatmates.

So, yes, I’ve experienced the self-hating and hating-of-difference crap from other females, as well as the outright fucked-up behaviour from a couple of women.

However, none of those women brutalised me for years on end, called me “thick as pigshit”, kicked me in the stomach in the mornings to wake me up, raped me, and treated me rather less well than you’d treat a stray dog. My stepfather did. No woman has ever driven past me and screamed “dyke” at me on the street. No women has ever given my and my femme partner looks of utter hatred while walking past us on the street with her family. No woman has ever spat on me and called me a dyke. No teenage woman has ever gotten on the bus behind me and muttered “fucking lessie”. No woman has made me nervous to walk the streets at night. No carload of women has ever driven up beside me and my then-partner in broad daylight and screamed “We’re gonna get you” and followed us in their souped-up vehicle until we were lucky enough to hide in a side street. No woman – customer or colleague – has *ever* questioned my professional competence, either indirectly or to my face. No woman has made me feel utterly and completely helpless, and in fear of my life.

So while woman-to-woman misogynist or xenophobic hatred certainly exists, it is by far less prevalent than the kind that comes from a certain kind of man and is generally – not always – much more minor and not often *dangerous*. Given a mob of 500 unknown men and the same number of unknown women, I know which group I’d rather be thrown into.

I got teased in grade school because I fought back against the boys and because I refused to let them chase me. After the teasing, I just decided I would ignore them altogether and completely avoid them. I also got teased later on in grade school (4th and 5th grade) for the early pimples I was getting. One particularly large and stubborn one on the end of my nose seemed to be the golden ticket to make fun of me mercilessly and one boy even said to me, “Hey, Ostara. Halloween’s over, you don’t need to have the witches wart anymore.” I also remember that same year when I was wearing a skirt a boy told me that he could see my underwear every time the wind blew. I’ve been scared of wearing short skirts ever since.

In high school there was a group of boys who one year seemed to take it as gospel that it was their mission to torment me. Most of the time it included things like spitballs in my hair, snide comments about everything I said in class, or remarks about my “bad” outfits or weight. But often too they made fun of a lot of my awkward tendencies by mimicking them. All of that sucked, but the worst was when they threw a brick sized rock at my back DURING class. We were outside for a biology thing and I don’t know that anyone else noticed, but if they did, they didn’t say anything (which bothers me even more).

There was also a boy in high school who followed me around the library and said all kinds of creepy things to me, and mostly just intimidated me. I was glad at least that I was in a pretty public place and he couldn’t really do much, but he still scared the shit out of me and sent me and other girls creepy notes. Oh, he also told me he thought he had more of a chance with me because I was less pretty and less popular and fatter and therefore would probably have lower standards than other girls. Yeah, that totally made me feel awesome about myself.

Someone might say, “Oh, but that was then. I mean, boys are boys when they do that. When they become men they’re better.” Sure, that explains why when I went to college the 40 year old asking if I was “legal” was totally not out of line, or the guy who said of a not so well-liked girl “she just needs to find a boyfriend who really likes blowjobs so he won’t have to hear her talk” or the guy who stopped being my “friend” once he found out I likely wouldn’t have sex with him, or the guy who had a girlfriend but still thought it was cool to put his head right up on my shoulder and feel me up and smell my hair at parties. Oh, there was also the guy who worked at the factory I worked at during my summer breaks, who thought it was cool to tell my father (who also worked there) how much he wanted to fuck me and kept asking him if it would bother him if he slept in my bedroom. Yeah, all this and I hadn’t ever even spoken to the guy. Fortunately my dad reported him and the guy at least got suspended and told off enough to stop, but I’m still bothered by the fact that they didn’t see fit to fire him for that kind of creepy ass shit,which according to others wasn’t the first time he’d done/said shit like that either.

That doesn’t recount all the men who thought it was ok to feel me up on buses, trains, in bars, etc. Hell, just last year a dude quite blatantly grabbed my hand in the middle of a club and put it on the bulge in his pants, TWICE. Someone intent on blaming the woman in a situation like this might say, “oh, well you must have been ok with it if you didn’t stop him the second time” but actually I was just as taken by surprise as I was the first time. It was so out of the blue and made me feel so scared and weird that I hadn’t even dared to think he’d follow me to do it again. And when I pulled my hand away when he went to grab for it a third time (seriously!) and told him to “knock it the fuck off” his friends all covered for him and said, “Oh he just gets like that when he’s drunk” and since I couldn’t take a joke I was clearly an “uncool, fat, bitch”. Gah.

Although I have had some vicious girls say things, in college nonetheless, and online, anonymously, so I couldn’t even confront them. Things like “stupid fat slut” and “lumberjack” and “bitch.” It doesn’t help that I am in the plastic surgery capitol of the world: Los Angeles. It kills me inside sometimes. But ever since I started reading this blog, I have just felt better about myself.

But I’m fairly confident I’ll be all right without that. Heh, no, really, I know I sound like a loon half the time here on SP, since I’ve freaked out here no less than three times, but seriously, this site (and related reading) just keeps making me have epiphanies that blindside me. I freak, but then I move forward. Promise. I just post blind brainvomit here or on LJ in the panic of realizing things that feel too big, which in itself feels better, because writing always helps me work things out, then maybe I have a weird dream or a nightmare, then my online friends reassure me I’m actually not losing my damn mind, it’s cool, proverbial growing pains of the mental sort can be rather intense, and then life continues.

Hmph. I ain’t afraid o’ no ghosts. No phantom memory menz, neither. Certainly not THAT guy. *thumbs nose*

I just felt really confused and grossed out last night. I finally realized there was actually things wrong with a few things that happened to me, especially that particular incident. I was right to feel squicked about it in the first place, the people who told me I was over-reacting, THEY were wrong.

Blech. That memory still kind of bothers me. I don’t know why I didn’t feel comfortable speaking up, why I felt powerless. Of course I could have just said no… but I didn’t. And he either didn’t notice I was pulling away or didn’t care.

Why are so many dudes such bullies? Do they even know they are?