Our Problem
Today I had to deal with something I never had to before. I have been in misogynistic situations. I have been assaulted by men before. But never that bad, never in a way that really made me feel bad about myself, never in a way that made me feel like an object, never in a way that made me feel less worthy. Today I got a message from a girl on an app where I sell old clothes of mine from time to time. She asked me about a girl I recently sold a bikini to. I told her that this girl asked me if I could take a picture of me wearing the bikini, because she was self conscious about certain parts of her body and wanted to see the bikini on a person who she could compare herself to. I took the pictures, cut my head out and didn't think of anything. Then this girl asked me if I had more stuff to sell. Stuff like tight, see-through shirts, crop-tops, etc., because she was a dancer and was always looking for outfits for her dance events. I told her no. But she was really insisting. However, I turned her down and she agreed to buy the bikini. The girl who asked me about the other girl said that this girl wanted to have similar pictures from her. At the end the girl even asked if she could wear a see through blouse so she could see if it's see through enough, because she herself has nipple piercings and when she had dance events she wanted the audience to see them. At this point it clicked. It was like a fist hit my stomach. I felt sick and humiliated. Obviously both of us got tricked, by a person who uses this app, where girls from all over Germany sell their clothes in order to receive half naked pictures of random, innocent und honest girls. It made me feel sad, angry and speechless. This was the first time I got obviously objectified, the first time I realised what someone is doing with these pictures, the first time I felt really assaulted. I turned to a male friend of mine and told him the story. The first thing he said: what the fuck. You didn't do that?! You already did something stupid. In the process of me trying to get over this creep who got half naked pictures of me, by disguising himself as a girl who has problems with her body, who is unsure about her figure, who is trying to buy a nice bikini in order to make herself feel better, in the process of getting over a lie of which I never thought it would be one, my friend blamed me. He blamed me for being naive, for being stupid enough to sent those pictures. And let me tell you something. This friend isn't aware that what he did was sexist. He didn't realise he wasn't helping me with this "advise". He didn't realise that I needed something else to hear. And he didn't realise that exactly this is the problem in our society. Instead of blaming a person who takes advantage of girls selling their clothes on an innocent app, he questioned my judgement and my failing inner Alarm system when this girl asked me for the bikini pictures. It is this kind of acceptance of those people, which still makes sexism and misogyny a major problem in our today's society. It is a silent, passiv acceptance. Because obviously this guy did something wrong, but that's just a fact, guys are like this nothing we can do about. Only thing I can do to protect myself, to prevent these kind of situations is to be more aware, to be less naive, to be less stupid. But I want to be who I am, I want to trust in people and believe I can send bikini pictures to another girl on a clothing app in order to successfully sell my bikini. Wake up people, it's not us who are the problem- it's them.
