A male colleague was making fun of the #metoo movement a few days ago, and many more (I’m one of 5 women in a department of 200 men) joined in. So I raised my voice and said I was glad women were speaking up about sexual harassment and assault and that I hoped that everyone who perpetuated this toxic behavior got taken down.
“Yeah but it’s a trend now, lots of them are just saying it for their 15 minutes of fame.” He then continued to say that he didn’t know anyone who had been harassed or any man who had done it.
I asked him if he had a daughter. He did. I asked him how old she was. She was was 17. I told him I’d bet my rent money that his daughter had experienced sexual harassment.
“That’s impossible.”
“Did you ask her?”
“No.”
“Well then, do it.”
The next day, he came in the office with five bouquets of flowers for all the women in our department, including me. He publicly apologized for making fun of sexual harassment and for making our lives harder by doing so. He said that he simply hadn’t known how widespread it was. Apparently, his daughter deals with it very regularly. She hadn’t told him because of the way he spoke about assault cases that were on the news. She thought he’d think less of her if she’d mention it. It was her idea that he should make a public announcement. He said he felt like a bad father.
I said: “You were. Same goes for everyone who laughed with you. Be better, now you know better. And educate other men that still think the same way you did yesterday. And next time someone tells you about an experience they have, don’t automatically assume that because you haven’t seen it, it’s not true. That kind of willful ignorance is why we still deal with this shit.”
He also offered to pay my rent as that was part of the bet, but I told him I’d rather have him put effort in being a person his daughter and wife could be proud of.
In conversation the other day my mom stopped and asked my dad about what percentage of women he thought had experienced sexual harassment. He said about 20-30% maybe. My mom told him that both of us had been harassed multiple times at work (same goes for both of her sisters) and that she had actually been assaulted by a groper on a public bus. I have never seen anyone’s face go slack so quickly before as he realized that literally every woman in his family had experienced this. And while I’m glad he believed us and has changed his view on that subject I still can’t shake the frustration, the anger, that it required being sat down and spoonfed these incidents that we didn’t particularly wanted to relive. This is something that women have been saying for years, but men just never listen. Not even when they’re forced to sit in mandatory harassment in the workplace training seminars.
the switch from ‘a girl worth fighting for’ to coming upon the decimated village in mulan is THE MOST kick-in-the-teeth mood change IN ALL OF CINEMA
That scene shift did more for our generation’s understanding of the horror of war in ten seconds than Game of Thrones did in eight seasons, and it did it without showing us a single dead body.
Remember when they subtly but clearly told us a little girl had been murdered?
It’s almost like you actually don’t need to depict graphic murder, rape, and torture to elicit a serious and emotional response from your audience.
A few weeks ago my mom stapled pages of a story in one of her women’s magazines together and handed it to me. She gave it to me pretty much with the tag lines “for your feminist blog” and “something new to consider.” Indeed it was; she knows me well.
The story is titled “I was forced to be pregnant.” With a title like that, reading it was actually not on the top of my to read list. I thought it was about women not exercising their right to choice. I was very, very wrong on that one.
Have you ever heard of Reproductive coercion? It is a term that was quite recently coined by the advocates against domestic violence to describe a certain type of abuse some women face. It occurs when a man pressures their partner to have kids and/or impregnates them against their will. Reproductive coercion comes in three different types: 1. Emotional pressure that turns into verbal and physical abuse. 2. Sabotaging birth control 3. Marital rape Over 75% of women 19-49 who reported once experiencing domestic violence also endured some type of reproductive control by men. It’s all about control and domination over a woman’s body.
The first story in the magazine is about a woman who got married around 36 years of age. After a few months of dating her boyfriend talked excitedly about having children. After he proposed he began calling her “The Babymaker.” She then confided with him that one of her fallopian tubes was blocked. He in return insisted she see a fertility doctor. She recounts, “I had finally met a great guy who was eager to start a family with me. What woman wouldn’t fall for that?” Soon after her honeymoon he persisted on in an obsessive manner, but his efforts had to be temporarily halted as she had to get emergency back surgery. Alas, 6 months into recovery he was back to pressuring her again. She was in much pain at the time due to her back, but she agreed to In Vitro Fertilization. She then became pregnant, but soon miscarried. In response, her husband grabbed her by the neck, choking her. He apologized, blaming his outburst on his grief and had her sign up for another round of IVF. And then a third round. She tried to put him off with the excuse that she needed to weigh more before she could take treatments, her husband forced her to get on the scale often and filled the fridge with fattening foods. “It hurt that all I was good for was getting pregnant.” She recounts. At the end, he screamed at her, threatening to replace her with a maid if she couldn’t get pregnant and she told him she no longer wanted to have his child. He destroyed bedroom furniture, pushed her down the stairs and threatened her with a gun. She fled to a domestic violence shelter.
The second story was about a woman who faced marital rape. This woman was 40, had a then boyfriend and two children from a previous marriage. After telling her boyfriend she did not want any more children, her boyfriend refused to wear a condom and began to rape her. She then became pregnant with her third child. Birth control was never an option for her because she couldn’t hide pills anywhere for he went through all of her belongings. Three months after giving birth, he raped her again, impregnating her with twins. She lost the twins in a physical fight with him, but soon became pregnant again. During her recovery she begged her obstetrician to remove her ovaries and devise a lie to tell him; that she had cancer. After a decade of sexual abuse and violence she was able to get a job that kept her out of the house and often times traveling.
One in four callers to the National Domestic Abuse hotline said that their partners had tried to force them to become pregnant. Why? As one woman stated, “Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.” Having a baby is the perfect tie that binds. These type of abusers want to create a circumstance in which their partner is dependent on him.
WHAT’S THAT HAVE TO DO WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD?
Many voters never consider how defunding these clinics could hurt victims of domestic violence who turn to them for counseling as well as pregnancy prevention. Abused women will turn to health care providers long before they will turn to domestic abuse hotlines and organizations. Many women in abusive relationships rely on life saving, affordable care programs such as Title X. It is critical that such places are open and operation when women and children need them so desperately.
holy fuck im crying.
I know I’ve told this story before, but my abusive ex refused to let me take birth control. I was on the pill until he found them in my purse.
I went to the Student Health Center—they were completely unhelpful, choosing to lecture me about the importance of safe sex (recommending condoms) instead of actually listening to my problem.
Then I went to Planned Parenthood. The Nurse Practitioner took one look at my fading bruises and stopped the exam. She called in the doctor. The doctor came in and simply asked me: “Are you ready to leave him?” When I denied that I was being abused, she didn’t argue with me. She just asked me what I needed. I said I need a birth control method that my boyfriend couldn’t detect. She recommended a few options and we decided on Depo.
When I told her that my boyfriend read my emails and listened to my phone messages and was known to follow me, she suggested to do the Depo injections at off hours when the clinic was normally closed. She made a note in my chart and instructed the front desk never to leave messages for me—instead, she programmed her personal cell phone number into my phone under the name “Nora”. She told me she would call me to schedule my appointments; she wouldn’t leave a message, but I should call her back when I was able to.
And that was it. No judgment. No lecture. She walked me to the door and told me to call her day or night if I needed anything. That she lived 5 blocks from campus and would come get me. That I wasn’t alone. That she just wanted me to be safe.
I never called her to come to my rescue. But I have no doubt that she would have come if I had called. She kept me on Depo for a year, giving me those monthly injections in secret, helping me prevent a desperately unwanted pregnancy.
I cannot thank Planned Parenthood enough for the work they do.
If you can read this, and still think there is no situation in which a woman should have access to safe abortions, basically you’re saying that you value women as little as the abusive assholes in these personal, true stories did. That you’d rather have a woman die at the hands of her abuser than terminate a pregnancy, and that you’d rather have numerous children born into a dangerous, damaging, terrifying home than allow a woman to have control over her own body and her own reproductive choices.
I legit served a man at my last job who was fully covered in nazi symbols and shit. He was a proud actual real life nazi getting icecream in a family theme park and when he left I voiced my disgust to my coworkers on how security even let him in the gate wearing all of that. And you know what that bitch said? “Well some people are offended by your rainbow flag and you are allowed to wear it so he can too”. It’s not the fucking same. Don’t fucking compare the two
Nazis’ entire mission is to exterminate anyone who’s not exactly like them. It’s in no way comparable to “some people are offended”.
me: “I’d like to visibly exist without fear”
them: “I want to literally kill these people so that they stop existing”
centrists: “I don’t see the difference”
Oh wow I guess my addition to this post got spread a lot. I just wanted to add in another piece of important information. I live in Orlando. The location of the Pulse night club shooting. I was wearing a rainbow pin on my uniform because 49 people in my community died in a hate crime. I will never forgive anyone who tells me that my rainbow pins are the same as a swastika
