Actual interactions I have had with men in real life:
Me: *standing outside waiting for my cab*
Strange man who is at least 1 foot and 100 pounds larger than me: *walks by*
Stranger: Mmmmm. I want to dip you in chocolate sauce and watch you shower it off.
Me: *continues reading my book while trying to pretend I didn’t hear him*
Stranger: Did you hear me, bitch?
My cab: *pulls up*
Me: *walks away really fast to get into cab*
Stranger: *following me* Oh yeah, run away, I like that way better.
Dude I’ve been dating for like five seconds: “I’m a good guy. We can wait as long as you want to have sex. We’ll wait until you’re ready.”
~2 seconds later~
“You are going to be ready eventually though right?
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About three days after I got my nipples pierced I went over to hangout with this guy I’d been talking to and I’d told him ahead of time about the new piercings and how my boobs - esp. my nips - were off limits for playing and then reiterated it when we started sexyfuntime and he spent half the night playing with my nipples (which got infected the next day, which I am convinced is because of him) despite my repeatedly telling him not to.
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Slept with this same guy for awhile before I left for uni in Wales.
He told me he wanted to keep in touch.
I didn’t really want to but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I said okay. He was pretty nice some of the time so whatever.
We talked for awhile and then we kinda just stopped talking because he was being kinda obsessive and scaring the crap out of me and wanted to know everyone I was sleeping with at school and it was all just making me really uncomfortable.
Then like eight months later he invented a fake tumblr and started sending me messages that were all about the sexual things he wanted to do to me (like these super elaborate sexual fantasies) - and, keep in mind, I thought this was a stranger, I didn’t know it was him - and then it finally came out that it was him and if that’s not fucking creepy as hell then you must be living in an actual real life horror movie.
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I go out drinking with my cousins (and my cousins’ friends) for St. Patty’s Day. We meet up with these guys who are pretty hot and it all gets flirty. I was very, very drunk.
We were all going to go to another bar together, but the one guy I’d been flirting with kinda pulled me away - and I was too drunk to realize it was happening - and my cousins and their friends all disappeared.
Dude gets me into a cab, starts unzipping my top and trying to sexyfuntime (read: assault) me despite me saying no and trying to push him off even though I was too drunk for it to make any difference.
Cab driver (also a man), instead of intervening, pulls over the cab and tells us we have to get out.
We do, then he says, “You gotta pay me!”
Dude who was assaulting me grabs my purse from me, takes my $100 in cash out of my wallet, and gives it to the cabbie. Who thanks him and drives away leaving me with this dude who was assaulting me.
So I literally paid to be sexually assaulted. That was cool.
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“What are you doing here? We broke up.”
“Yeah, I know, but I decided we were on a break instead. You didn’t really know what you were talking about. You didn’t actually want that.”
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I slept with one of my floormates my first year at uni (and he apparently neglected to tell ALL TWENTY OF US that he was in a relationship, but I digress). At the end of the school year his new girlfriend (not the one that I unwittingly helped him cheat on) came for a visit and we all went out drinking.
Another one of our floormates decided to tell her that dudebro1 and I had slept together at the beginning of the year and she FLIPPED.
*aftermath*
Dudebro1: If my relationship is ruined because of this I’m going to ruin your fucking life.
Me: I’m not even the one who told her!
Dudebro1: No, but you’re the one who slept with me so this is your fucking fault.
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The three guys I lived with the next year - who had been floormates first year - then got to bear witness to dudebro1 maintaining that it was all my fault despite one of them having returned back to the dorm with me and a couple others about an hour before she even found out and pointing this out repeatedly. And they also witnessed him threatening me with physical violence - at multiple points.
These three guys then proceeded to invite dudebro1 over to our house all year long and seemed surprised every. single. time. I said that I was uncomfortable with it.
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I was out with a bunch of my friends and me and a guy friend of mine went to the bar to get drinks for everyone. Some dude came up and was flirting with me and hitting on me and I flirted back and he asked for my number and I gave it to him because he as nice and funny and cute (and do I even need an excuse? No I fucking do not - I can give my number to whomever I so choose) and then he left the bar because he and his friends were going to another place and whatever.
Guy friend I went to the bar with, completely seriously: You’re such a slut. At least make him work for it.
Another guy then came up a few minutes later and was super rude and gross and icky and he kept trying to hit on me and I finally turned to him and just went: “Nuh uh. No. Nope. Nada. No way. No.” He left in a huff.
Guy friend I went to the bar with, completely seriously: Wow. You’re such a bitch.
(He and I are no longer friends, btw.)
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Went downtown to a concert with some friends. We separated afterward and I hopped on the Metra to take the train home.
Some drunk guy got on the train and sat on the seat facing mine (despite the entire car being about ¾ empty). He starts talking to me. Asking me all these personal questions. Prying. Getting all up in my space.
Not a single person who was in the car got involved.
Then he asked me what stop I was getting off at. I hemmed and hawed and said something about “it’s awhile from now”.
When we got to the stop before my stop I got up and moved a few cars down and stood in the vestibule so I could see if this dude was following me or whatever. He didn’t. And when we got to my stop I got off - and there he was. All “no way, how funny, we’re in the same place!”
We then went to the parking garage and I had the choice of climbing up stairs and getting in the elevator - knowing that it’s actually safer to be in an elevator than a stairway - I got on the elevator. He got on with me. I let him press the floor button first but, because the universe is a fucker, we were on the same floor.
We got off and he followed me to my car “on the way to his car’ still talking - despite having to continue all the way back around to near where the elevator was to get in his car.
The car he got in then proceeded to follow me around. At first I thought it was just coincidence (because that’s the kind of night it had been) but I took random turns and he kept following. I sped up and so did he.
And finally, scared fucking shitless, I pulled into the police station and he finally, finally drove off.
But holy fucking shit. I must have sat there for an hour terrified he was going to come back. Terrified to get out of my car and go inside because what if he was there waiting for me just out of sight? And oh my god. Holy fuck.
Then I left the parking lot to go home and drove the most random, most winding way home to see if anyone was following me.
Thankfully, no one was. But I had nightmares for a month.
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Me: Can you please mix some drinks while I finish getting dinner on the table?
Dude I’d been dating for several weeks: Hell yeah! Now I can put a bunch of alcohol in yours so that maybe you’ll finally give it up.
I did not drink the drink. I did not give it up. A week later he raped me.
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I was standing outside my friend’s office building waiting for her - like right up against the wall of the building, waiting for her. And some dude comes walking down the sidewalk, looking at his phone, not looking around, and he walked RIGHT INTO ME and drops his phone and he like slams his fist into the wall right beside my head and goes “WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU MOVE WHEN YOU SAW ME COMING?!”
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AND THERE ARE SO, SO, SO MANY MORE.
Stop telling me ‘not all men’. I hear you. I believe with you. I agree with you. But also? Fuck you.
Enough men. Efuckingnough men.
Because this is real life. This shit happens every single day.
You want it to be not all men? Stand the fuck up and teach the men around you to be better.
So do something about it. I don’t really care about your rap. I care about my safety. They’re more likely to listen to other men than they are to listen to me.
Do. Something. About. It.
If you are a man who witnesses stuff like this happening (even by your friends) and does nothing, you are not one of the good ones. Period.
“ … you are not one of the good ones. Period.“
Good men have to step forward. We have to stand in the gap and show the predators that there is nowhere for them to hide.
Louder for the ones in back
“ … you are not one of the good ones. Period.”
self-defense is a must. there is no hiding, no hoping they’ll change. remember the taser/pepper spray/your training. how would you get out of each of these situations? that’s your homework for tonight
It’s comments like ^this^ that allow men to keep getting away with behavior like this and think that they don’t need to change.
I can take every precaution possible and this stuff will still happen.
If we don’t call on them to change - if we, instead, put the burden of responsibility on women to stop it and don’t put the burden of responsibility on men to stop doing it - then we’re victim-blaming. You are victim-blaming.
Do you know how close an attacker needs to get in order for me to be able to utilize my pepper spray, my taser, my self-defense, the keys I carry between my knuckles like fucking Wolverine claws…?
No. Your comment is shitty. Please do better. Call on men to change. Demand that they must change. Stop blaming women for the things that have happened to them by insinuating that each of these things happened because I didn’t spend enough time preparing.
And please think before you speak next time.
Both of these are true: 1. Honorable men do not let other men get away with shit like this. Honorable men actively protect women (and children, and weaker men) from assholes. 2. In a world where honorable men are not around all the time, smart women are careful and ready to fuck up (or escape from) an asshole if necessary. No, it shouldn’t be necessary, but sometimes it is.
Totally agreed that being careful and being prepared are good and, yes, necessary. But I’m also of the mind that comments that go past that and into “there is no hiding, no hoping they’ll change” and so on and so forth takes away any pressure that might induce change.
Being prepared is good. Even necessary. But it should not shut down the need or incentive for change.
also. sometimes self defense doesn’t fucking work. like. you can’t fucking pepper spray someone in all situations. sometimes that would make you more unsafe. sometimes getting through being minimally assaulted is the fucking safest thing.
like one of the guys who assaulted me was twice my fucking size at the time and literally a trained and active marine. like. uh. I’ve taken self defense classes since then. it would have escalated the situation and it wouldn’t have gotten him out of my fucking house.
so. stop. telling. women. that. self. defense. is. the. answer. it helps. and we should know how to defend ourselves. but it doesn’t solve the fucking problem. at all. and defending yourself w physical force against someone is not even the solution in the majority of fucking situations. (something I learned in self defense class.) the problem is men who rape. the problem is men feeling entitled to women’s bodies. the end.
SO MUCH THIS^^^
‘Sometimes getting through being minimally assaulted is the fucking safest thing.’
In Australia we had a woman brutally raped, murdered and found in a park a few weeks back in Victoria. The police response? “Take responsibility of your safety”. (Que pubic outrage) Get fucked. It’s not my responsibility to ‘not’ be raped and murdered. It’s everyone’s responsibility that behaviours leading to, or that are like that, are fucking stopped.
Every time some emotionally victimised dudebro says “not all men are like that”, it is literally him taking any responsibility or genuine empathy for the ACTUAL victim, and throwing it. Out. The. Window.
OBVIOUSLY not all fucking men are like that, or all women would be dead by now and humanity would have died out.
You don’t have to defend yourselves. Defend us.
Fuck me I despise this world we’re living in, no one should have to go through what women go through on a constant. Daily. Basis. And you can not justify assault in any form of way, by just sayinh that oh, not aaall men… And whoever says women should just pick up self defense and live with it, you’re a piece of shit
