sexgenderbody

I debated whether or not to share this story.

house-of-blue:

searchingforknowledge:

deliciouskaek:

TW: HARASSMENT, VERBAL ASSAULT, and general asshattery stemming from being a woman in the wrong fucking place, which is apparently anywhere but your own living room.

tallestsilver:

unwinona:

And then I debated whether or not to put it on Tumblr…but I decided it was important.  Because in my own way, I can (unfortunately) point out exactly what is wrong with men when they don’t realize how hard it is to be a woman.  How we do not have equal opportunities and freedoms in everyday life.  How most men, even good caring men, have no clue what we go through on a daily basis just trying to live our lives.

So here goes.

I often ride the Metro when I commute from North Hollywood to Long Beach in order to save money.  I bring a book, pointedly wear a ring on my ring finger to imply I’m married (I’m not) and keep to myself.  

Without fail, I am aggressively approached by men on at least half of these commutes.  The most common approach is to walk up to where I am sitting with body language that practically screams LEAVE ME ALONE and sit down next to me or as close to me as possible, when the train is not crowded and there are many empty rows.  Sometimes an overly friendly arm is draped over the railing behind me, or they attempt to lean in close to talk to me as if we are old friends.  Without fail, the man or boy in question will lean to close and ask me

What are you reading?

Is that a good book?

What’s that book about?

This serves the double purpose of getting my attention and trapping me in a conversation.  If I stop reading the book I enjoy to talk to you, random stranger, you hit on me or just stay way too close to me.  If I tell you to leave me alone, you get mad at me.  Because I somehow, as a woman, owe you conversation.

Tonight when I boarded the train in Long Beach at 10:30pm, it started up right away.  I was not on the train more than three minutes before three boys who looked eighteen sat in the row behind me and leaned over the seats into my personal space, close enough to breathe on me.  The one with his arm draped over onto the back of my seat asked me—surprise— “what are you reading?”  I went through my usual routine.  I told them loudly and firmly that I wanted to be left alone to read my book.  They got angry.  I was told “Why are you going to be like that?  I just wanted to talk!”  His friends start laughing at me and they don’t move, telling me come on! and why are you gonna be like that? until I tell them to leave me the fuck alone, stand up, and move to the front of the car near the three other people on the train, a couple and a business man in a suit.  They spend the next two stops shouting at me from the back of the car, alternating between trying to sound flirtatious and making fun of me, shouting “I bet she’s reading Stephanie Meyer!  I bet she’s reading Twilight or some shit!  You reading Twilight or some shit?”

They exit the train at the next stop, and I’m relieved.  The train is going out of service at the next station, so we all exit to board a new train to Los Angeles.  As we board, the business man steps aside to let me go through the door first and asks me if those guys were bothering me.  I say yes, that it happens all the time, and he tells he’ll beat them up for me if they come back.  He is a nice person who talks to me like I’m a human being instead of a walking pair of tits, and I make a mental note:  This is how a real man talks to a woman on a train.

The business man and the couple exit our new Blue Line train an exit or so later, and I think my night is ending on a good note.  A seemingly normal man enters the train with his bicycle.  At this point I am three rows from the front of the car, another man was sitting near the back of the car, and the rest of the car is empty.  Bicycle Man walks halfway down the row, and settles into the seat directly opposite me.  Perfect, I think.  Twice in one night.

It’s not the first time I’ve been bothered multiple times.  As such, I’m still amped from the teenagers on the first train.  So when this man leans across the aisle into my personal space and asks me, yes, what are you reading, I assertively but calmly tell him to please leave me alone, I am reading.  The man stands up, moving to the front and muttering angrily over his shoulder that it isn’t his fault I’m pretty.

Yes.  Exactly that.  I am the bad person in this situation because somehow this is all my fault.  I started this by being attractive.  I am making a mental note to bitch about this to my friends later.  I go so far as to write it down so I know I’m remembering it properly.  

It is at this exact moment I realize Bicycle Man is not taking it well.  The seemingly annoying but normal man a moment before is now talking to himself, becoming agitated.  In my years of being bothered by total strangers, I have learned how to hold a book and seem to be reading while taking in everything around me.  He is glaring at me, and says out loud in an angry baby talk voice “PLEASELEAVEMEALONEI’MREADING.  PLEASE LEAVE ME ALOOOONE.”

Then he’s up out of his seat and things go from bad to worse.  He begins pacing back and forth in front of his bike, alternating between screaming something about his mother being dead and calling me a slut, a hoe, a bitch.  I am frozen in place.  There is one other person in the car, and I’m not sure if trying to change seats will draw more attention to me or less. I trust my instincts and show no fear, doing my best to appear to be calmly reading my book, never once looking up to acknowledge the abuse he’s hurling at me.  There are four stops left until we reach the main downtown station where there are lights and security officers.  Those four stops are virtually abandoned, and I have no guarantee that leaving to wait for another train won’t motivate him to leave the train as well, leaving us potentially alone at a metro station platform just outside of Compton.  I’m frozen in place, trying to plan what I’m going to do if he decides to take all this rage directly to me.  I’m ready to kick him, scream, make enough noise that he panics and flees.  

At this point he’s punching the walls and doors of the train, screaming at me.  He stares me full in the face and screams

SUCK MY DICK, BITCH

YOU BITCH

YOU STUPID BITCH

YOU GODDAMN HO

IF I HAD A GUN I’D SHOOT YOU

I WOULD FUCKING KILL YOU BITCH

This went on for two stops.  No one came to see what was happening.  The man in the last row was as frozen as I was.  I’m not angry he didn’t come to my defense.  He was smaller, older, and frailer-looking than I was.  Again, I was worried if I got up, I would be turning my back on him to walk down the aisle.  In the state he was in, I had no guarantee it wouldn’t get physical, and I had more physical strength with my back to the window and feet in kicking position where I was.  If he had chosen to assault me, I would only be making it easier for him by standing up and putting myself directly in his path.  On and on, over and over, he screamed at me, screamed at his dead mother, screamed at me again.

The moment we reached the downtown station, I was out the door and down the stairs.  I still had to catch a connecting train to North Hollywood, and made sure there was no sign of Bicycle Man before I entered the car.  That’s when I finally starting shaking, and almost threw up.  By the time I exited the Red Line and reached my car I could barely breathe and my heart was pounding out of my chest.  Even now, in my own home, my hands are still shaking and for some reason the stress has made my back muscles feel cold and numb.  From all the tension, I can only assume.  I can’t eat anything, I still feel like I’m going to vomit, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t cried so much, so hard I still have the headache.

So when people (men) want to talk about “legitimate” forms of assault, tell girls they should be nice to strangers and give men the benefit of a doubt, tell them to consider it a compliment, tell them to ignore the bad behavior of men, I want them to be forced to feel, for even one minute, what it feels like to have so much verbal hatred and physical intimidation thrown at them for nothing more than being female and not wanting to share.  

I just wanted to read my book.

It’s not my fault I’m pretty.

*hugs and clings* These incidents are real. I have literally been stalked by a guy in a truck, blocking off my route to work, trying to get me to ride with him. 

It’s not our fault we have vaginas. 

You are so Brave, woman.

“pretty” or not, it’s not your fault. 

Lovely.I want to just separate myself from men entirely at this point. Fuck em all. 

fucking read this shit

the girl who’s still waiting:

gyzym:

• okay so here’s the thing right about amy pond
• when amy pond was a child her parents were murdered by a creature living in her house that she didn’t know about
• that accessed her house by going through a hole in the fabric of the universe that she also didn’t know about
• which altered her thoughts (to the point that she was later able to reconstruct the universe), which she also didn’t know about
• her life was heavily influenced at a young age by a visit from an alien man in a blue box who told her he would be be right back
• her belief in this man caused people to believe she was crazy
• no really; that’s canon, the twelve years she spent being told she was crazy
• twelve years she also spent, again unknowingly, being childhood best friends with her part-time-lord daughter
• who was born after a pregnancy that amy also did not fucking know about
• after months and months during which amy’s brain was disconnected from her body, sent off on adventures, and again NOT TOLD that this was happening
• (not to mention how this child was immediately separated from amy after her birth, again, without amy’s knowledge)
• and now it turns out that while amy was being unknowingly held hostage during her unknown pregnancy, amy’s body was—in some unknown way—rendered incapable of bearing children
• so say what you want, have whatever opinions you want about whether or not the ~gave rory up since she could not provide what she wanted~ thing was sexist
• seriously; knock yourself out, i don’t care either way
• this is still a show in which the lead female character’s physical and mental wellbeing is CONSTANTLY and CANONICALLY either out of her control or called into question
• this is still a show on which the lead female character’s ability to make her own choices about her physical and mental wellbeing is CONSTANTLY and CANONICALLY denied to her
• and you can call that whatever you want
• you really can
• but when you cut it in half and peer inside?
• it looks a whole fucking lot like sexism. 

John Boehner in 2010: “this election is about jobs, jobs, jobs”

GOP Congress since then: 198 attempts to restrict / deny the healthcare of people with a uterus. 

Conclusion: GOP thinks the economy is hiding in vaginas.

How an MRA’s Mind Works

filmsandfrocks:

“I’m a white male in America and yet, I can’t get laid or stay in a relationship! It’s so fucking frustrating and unfair. Here I am, in all my youthful glory, and masses of girls are not bowing down to my dick. WTF is up with that? Why are girls not as submissive and loving and obedient as I expected them to be? How come they don’t hate themselves enough to get with a winner like me? Omg I know why! It’s because they probably respect themselves and won’t sex up any random douche that comes along proclaims to love them and is as charming as me. That’s it. They totally have standards and I don’t reach up to them. Hey, in the good ol’ days, we wouldn’t have any of this women self-respectin’ shit! We could just marry any 16-year-old broad and keep them under oppressive and gender-biased marriage laws, make ‘em cook us dinner and pop out babies and generally deprive them of any other roles that didn’t relate to appeasing men. Hell, what changed that? GASP. Feminism! An ugly, sordid ideology that proclaims that men and women are entitled to equal rights and autonomy and that men should stop looking at women as just purely sex and fantasy objects and actually think of them as similar to……themselves. What the hell! Feminism is cockblocking me! That’s right, it’s not me that’s failing at all these dysfunctional relationships, it must be the feminists. I’m not getting laid because of this equal rights shit! Hey, did you ever notice that men generally PAY ON DATES? I mean, some people tell me it’s because that unequal, gendered social norms that persist to this day were established under this thing like the patriarchy but I don’t know what that means and I don’t intend on finding out. White men in America are SUPER OPPRESSED! More oppressed than like, minorities and gays and stuff. That’s it, I’m joining the MRAs.”

partysoft:

Olympic Sexism: Men Fly First Class, Women In Coach

fuckyeahfeminists:

Take, for example, two clear cases of unequal treatment based on gender. The Japanese women’s soccer team and the Australian women’s soccer and basketball teams were relegated to economy while their male counterparts flew business class. This is despite the fact that the women’s teams are ranked higher and have played better in the past. The Japanese women’s soccer team won the World Cup last summer, and is favored to win a gold medal this year. Similarly, the Australian women’s basketball and soccer teams have much higher international rankings than the men’s teams. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the women’s basketball team “won silver medals at the last three Olympics, and won bronze in 1996. The Boomers [the men’s team] have never won an Olympics medal.”

This is…unfortunate. Unfortunately the sexism doesn’t stop when the athletes arrive in London.

Some instances of sexism in the Olympics are more subtle but equally egregious. For example, the media coverage of female athletes frequently focuses on their bodies as sex objects rather than as athletic tools, an angle rarely used to describe the men.

Scotland’s Daily Record covered the U.S. women soccer team’s arrival at Glasgow and completely failed to remark on their athleticism or the fact that they are professional and globally ranked athletes. Instead, SDR focused on their sex appeal.

Women consistently show that they are good enough to compete and are skilled, dedicated ATHLETES, but it is clear that there is still a lot to be done for gender equity in treatment of athletes.