Everyday Sexism

[Project Willow]

I'd been meaning to highlight this project, and other articles that address some of the issues raised in other recent threads, but didn't want to bury them.

Consider this a catch-all for articles reflecting the current state of feminist thought and activism, and/or what I'd call pop feminism, and push-back.

http://www.everydaysexism.com/

The Everyday Sexism Project exists to catalogue instances of sexism experienced by women on a day to day basis. They might be serious or minor, outrageously offensive or so niggling and normalised that you don’t even feel able to protest. Say as much or as little as you like, use your real name or a pseudonym – it’s up to you. By sharing your story you’re showing the world that sexism does exist, it is faced by women everyday and it is a valid problem to discuss.

Courtney 2013-04-04 16:01
Letter to the Editor in today's (April 4, 2013) Edmonton Sun.

"Re: "American star slams Canada hosting 2015 World Cup." Women soccer players shouldn't be worried about whether the game of soccer should be played on real grass or artificial turf. They should be concerned about how qualified they are to look after their kids and cook good meals for their husbands. Let's get back to reality for heaven's sake. -- Sam Wright"

I can't coordinate the numerous profanities running through my head right now to form a rebuttal to this extremely ignorant man. It's 2013, asshole. Take some cooking lessons and cook for yourself.


#23786 Carrie 2013-04-04 15:32
Went to a bar with the girls from my dance team to discuss fundraising ideas, and we walked around the bar looking for some seats. A group of guys saw that we couldn't find anywhere to sit and offered us their laps...


#23785 Beth 2013-04-04 15:27
Just spent some money on a new lingere set and just ignored the salesperson when she told me "that might get you a promotion in work!". Assumption that my boss is male and only interested in a well endowed female workforce?


#23784 Anna 2013-04-04 15:15
Being patronized for sex work, some one summoning from a moving car, driving back around after they failed to get my attention, at 7:30 in the morning a block away from my house. I don't go on walks before work anymore.


#23783 Morwynne 2013-04-04 14:46
Earlier this semester, my (female) computer science teacher announced to the entire class that she was surprised to see that the women (all 3 of us) knew just as much as the men. When I called her out on it in email, she apologized to me personally but never corrected herself to the rest of the class, providing 20+ men with another excuse of "well, a WOMAN said women don't know as much in this field..."

BTW? I have a solid A in that class.


#23782 Demi 2013-04-04 14:30
A man in an electrician van decided it was acceptable to pull over and shout lewd comments at me, including the implication of wanting to rape me. This was very, very intimidating. After pulling away, he got stuck in traffic so I quickly noted down the number on his van and phoned it to make a complaint.


#23781 Sydney 2013-04-04 14:23
Yesterday while babysitting I was informed by a 5 year old that she "cant be a superhero because she's a girl" and that I'm "too pretty to be smart".


#23780 Rosy via twitter 2013-04-04 13:52
picture of couple having sex in club on fb, hundreds of comments calling girl a "disgusting slag" but none about boy at all.


#23779 Eli via twitter 2013-04-04 13:50
Channel4 - only men are doctors? Embarrassing Bodies website has links titled "What the Men in White Coats Say". Insulting.


#23778 Christina 2013-04-04 13:47
I was at a swimming pool in Paris and I went to the bathroom. On the way a man held the door open for me and I smiled as thanks. As I went in to the Female Toilets I could feel someone following me and as I went to close the door afore mentioned man tried to push it open and asked in French if I would like some company I screamed 'No' and quickly pushed the door closed. When I came out he was still in the bathroom and I practically ran away as he tried to talk to me. I should have told the lifeguard so we could deal with it there and then but I was genuinely afraid and so upset. I went to the reception when I was changed but it was closed. I don't want to live in a world where men feel like its ok to harass you just because you smile at them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2013/apr/16/everyday-sexism-project-shouting-back

The Everyday Sexism Project: a year of shouting back

When I first set up a website to collate women's routine experiences of prejudice and harassment, I didn't expect to receive so many horror stories – nor so much hate mail

A 14-year-old schoolgirl wrote: ' am constantly told I can’t be good at things because I’m a girl.'

When I started the Everyday Sexism Project a year ago, I never imagined that by now it would have attracted some 25,000 entries and be about to spread to 15 countries. Nor even that I'd be writing about it in the Guardian – or that this would be the latest in a chain of articles that has encompassed the Times of India, Gulf News, Grazia South Africa, the Toronto Standard, French Glamour and the LA Times.

When the project was launched, with no funding or publicity, I thought it might provide a talking point for my friends and hoped that some of them might have stories to share. I hoped to gather 100 women's stories, if I was lucky. Instead, it spread like wildfire, as more and more women began to add their experiences – women of all ages and backgrounds, from all over the world. A seven-year-old disabled girl and a 74-year-old wheelchair user recorded almost identical experiences of shouted jibes about "female drivers". A video-shop cashier, a midwife and a marketing consultant suffered indistinguishable experiences of sexual assault by senior male colleagues.

A schoolgirl and a widow reported being pressured and pestered for sex. A reverend in the Church of England was repeatedly asked if there was a man available to perform the wedding or funeral service: "nothing personal". A man was congratulated for "babysitting" his own children. A 14-year-old schoolgirl wrote: "I am constantly told I can't be good at things because I'm a girl. That I need to get back in the kitchen. That all I'm good for is cleaning, cooking, and blowjobs." A DJ explained how constant harassment and groping had made her dread the job she once loved.

A girl in Pakistan described hiding sexual abuse for the sake of "family honour". A woman in Brazil was harassed by three men who tried to drag her into their car when she ignored them. In Germany, a woman had her crotch and bottom groped so frequently she described it as "the norm". In Mexico, a university student was told by her professor: "Calladita te ves mas bonita" (you look prettier when you shut up). In Israel, a teacher with a master's degree who speaks six languages was told she "wasn't a good enough homemaker for my future husband". In France, a man exposed himself to 12- and 16-year-old sisters as they tried to picnic in a public park. On a bus in India, a woman was too afraid to report the man pressing his erect penis into her back.

Every time the project was featured in the foreign press, I would receive emails from women in those countries asking if they could start a version of the project there because it was desperately needed. Women in the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Russia, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Argentina, Germany, Austria and France have all volunteered to moderate the local content. We hope to make a great collective resource where we'll be able to compare trends from different countries. In some ways we already can.

One woman was sexually assaulted on a transatlantic flight, another by the postman on her doorstep, another in a bookshop, aged 16. In a Twitter discussion, when the subject of sexual assault on public transport arose, somebody wondered whether it had ever happened on a tram. I searched the database. There were 25 entries.

Some days, it was very hard to keep reading. Without any funding, it became increasingly difficult to juggle the website administration and social media accounts with increasing requests to share project data with MPs and trade unions, and speak at universities and schools.

And the huge success of the project wasn't the only thing I didn't anticipate. One of the earliest entries read: "You experience sexism because women are inferior in every single way to men. The only reason you have been put on this planet is so we can fuck you." The message ended: "Please die." The sheer level of vitriol took me by surprise, as hate-filled missives poured in, ranging from graphic descriptions of domestic violence to threats of torture, death and rape.

But as the threats worsened, I discovered the most incredible support network. Anyone who describes feminism as an in-fighting, back-biting movement has clearly never been as lucky as I was, at those lowest moments, to discover in it the strength and kindness, advice and support of so many other women and men. A team of around eight volunteers helps collate the entries – about 1,000 a week – collecting together the ones that come in via Twitter and through the website. They are coordinated by Emer O'Toole, who rounded up a group of feminist volunteers and has been organising them on a rota system ever since.

Success stories began to pour in. In their own ways, women started to fight back. One runner, sick of catcalls and wolf whistles, started making her own "honk if you love feminism" T-shirts. A woman tired of cold-callers asking to speak to "the man of the house" started putting them on to her six-year-old son, who'd sing: "I'm sexy and I know it." A football fan wrote to the chairman of his club to ask why the fans were singing such misogynistic chants. And email after email started arriving from women who had found the strength to report harassment, stalking and sexual assault to the police.

This time last year, I had an idea. Today, 25,000 women's voices have turned it into so much more.

[Project Willow]

http://jezebel.com/462625729

If I Admit That 'Hating Men' Is a Thing, Will You Stop Turning It Into a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?
Lindy West
3/28/13 4:08pm

Okay, so maybe you are a man. Maybe you haven't had the easiest ride in life—maybe you grew up in poverty; you've experienced death, neglect, and despair; you hate your job, your car, your body. Maybe somebody (or multiple somebodies) pulverized your heart, or maybe you've never even been loved enough to know what a broken heart feels like. Maybe shit started out unfair and became irreparable and you never deserved any of this. Maybe everything looks fine on paper, but you're just unhappy and you don't know why. These are human problems and other human beings feel for you very deeply. It is hard to be a human. I am so sorry.

However.

Though it is a seductive scapegoat (I understand why it attracts you), none of these terrible, painful problems in your life were caused by the spectre of "misandry." You can rest easy about that, I promise! In fact, the most powerful proponent of misandry in modern internet discourse is you — specifically, your dogged insistence that misandry is a genuine, systemic, oppressive force on par with misogyny. This is specious, it hurts women, and it is hurting you. Most feminists don't hate men, as a group (we hate the system that disproportionately favors men at the expense of women), but — congratulations! — we are starting to hate you. You, the person. Your obsession with misandry has turned misandry into a self-fulfilling prophecy. (I mean, sort of. Hating individual men is not the same as hating all men. But more on that in a minute.) Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted? Feminism is, in essence, a social justice movement—it wants to take the side of the alienated and the marginalized, and that includes alienated and marginalized men. Please stop turning us against you.

It is nearly impossible to address problems facing women—especially problems in which men are even tangentially culpable—without comments sections devolving into cries of "misandry!" from men and replies of "misandry isn't real" from women. Feminists are tired of this endless, fruitless turd-pong: hollow "conversation" built on willful miscommunication, bouncing back and forth, back and forth, until both sides throw up their hands and bolt. Maybe you are tired of this too. We seem to be having some very deep misunderstandings on this point, so let's unpack it. I promise not to yell.

Part One: Why Feminism Has "Fem" in the Name, or, Why Can't We All Just Be Humanists?

I wish, more than anything, that I could just be a "humanist." Oh, man, that would be amazing! Because that would mean that we lived in a magical world where all humans were born on equal footing, and maybe I could live in a house shaped like a big mushroom and birds would help me get dressed or something. Humanism is a gorgeous dream, and something to strive for. In fact, it is the exact thing that feminism is striving for right now (and has been working on for decades)! Yay, feminism!

Unfortunately, the reason that "fem" is a part of the word "feminism" is that the world is not, currently, an equal, safe, and just place for women (and other groups as well—in its idealized form, intersectional feminism seeks to correct all those imbalances). To remove the gendered implications of the term is to deny that those imbalances exist, and you can't make problems disappear just by changing "feminism" to "humanism" and declaring the world healed. That won't work.

Think of it like this. Imagine you're reading a Dr. Seuss book about a bunch of beasts living on an island. There are two kinds of beasts: Fleetches and Flootches. (Stick with me here! I love you!) Though the two are functionally identical in terms of intellect and general competence, Fleetches are in charge of pretty much everything. They hold the majority of political positions, they make the most money (beast-bucks!), they dominate the beast media, they enact all kinds of laws infringing on the bodily autonomy of Flootches. Individually, most of them are perfectly nice beasts, but collectively they benefit comfortably from inequalities that are historically entrenched in the power structure of Beast Island. So, from birth, even the most unfortunate Fleetches encounter fewer institutional roadblocks and greater opportunity than almost all Flootches, regardless of individual merit. One day, a group of Flootches (the ones who have not internalized their inferiority) get together and decide to agitate to change that system. They call their movement "Flootchism," because it is specifically intended to address problems that disproportionately disadvantage Flootches while benefiting Fleetches. That makes sense, right?

Now imagine that, in response, a bunch of Fleetches begin complaining that Flootchism doesn't address their needs, and they have problems too, and therefore the movement should really be renamed Beastism. To be fair. The problem with that name change is that it that undermines the basic mission of the movement, because it obscures (deliberately, I'd warrant) that beast society is inherently weighted against Flootches. It implies that all problems are just beast problems, and that all beasts suffer comparably, which cripples the very necessary effort to prioritize and repair problems that are Flootch-specific. Those problems are a priority because they harm all Flootches, systematically, whereas Fleetch problems merely harm individual Fleetches. To argue that all problems are just "beast problems" is to discredit the idea of inequality altogether. It is, in fact, insulting.

Or, if you didn't like that one, here's another ridiculous metaphor: When women say things like "misandry isn't real," we mean it the same way you might say, "Freddy Krueger isn't real." The idea of Freddy Krueger is real, Freddy Krueger absolutely has the power to scare you, and if you suspend your disbelief it's almost plausible to blame all of the unsolved knife-crime in the world on Freddy Krueger. Additionally, it is totally possible for some rando to dress up like Freddy Krueger and start murdering teens all over the place. But that doesn't meant that Freddy-Krueger-the-dude is literally real. He is never going to creep into your dreams at night and murder you. He has the power to frighten, there are isolated forces in the world that resemble him, but he is ultimately a manufactured menace.

Part Two: Why Claiming that Sexism Isn't Real Is a Sexist Thing to Say

We live in a world of measurable, glaring inequalities. Look at politicians, CEOs, film directors, law enforcement officers, comedians, tech professionals, executive chefs, mathematicians, and on and on and on—these fields are dominated by men. (And, in many cases, white men.) To claim that there is no systemic inequality keeping women and minorities out of those jobs is to claim that men (people like you) are just naturally better. If there is no social structure favoring men, then it stands to reason that men simply work harder and/or are more skilled in nearly every high-level specialized field.

It's fine (though discouraging) if you legitimately believe that, but you need to own up to the fact that that is a self-serving and bigoted point of view. If you do not consider yourself a bigot, then kindly get on board with those of us who are trying to proactively correct inequalities. It is not enough to be neutral and tacitly benefit from inequality while others are left behind through no fault of their own. Anti-sexism, anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia—that's where we're at now. Catch up or own your prejudice.

Part Three: Why People Being Shitty to You Is Not the Same as You Being Systematically Disenfranchised

There might be a lot of women in your life who are mean to you, but that's just women not liking you personally. Women are allowed to not like you personally, just like you are allowed to not like us personally. It's not misandry, it's mis-Kevin-dry. Or, you know, whoever you are. It is not built into our culture or codified into law, and you can rest assured that most women you encounter are not harboring secret, latent, gendered prejudices against Kevins that could cost you a job or an apartment or your physical sanctity. That doesn't mean that there aren't isolated incidents wherein mean women hurt men on purpose. But it is not a systemic problem that results in the mass disenfranchisement of men.

There are some really shitty things about being a man. You are 100% right on that. You are held up to unreasonable expectations about your body and your career and your ability/desire to conform to traditional modes of masculinity (just like women are with traditional femininity), and that is absolutely oppressive. There are radical feminists and deeply wounded women and women who just don't have the patience for diplomacy anymore who absolutely hate you because of your gender. (However, for whatever it's worth, I do not personally know a single woman like that.) That is an unpleasant situation to be in—especially when you also feel like you're being blamed for the seemingly distant problems of people you've never met and towards whom you feel no particular animus.

The difference is, though, that the radfem community on Tumblr does not currently hold the reins of power in every country on earth (even in nations with female heads of state, the political and economic power structures are still dominated by men). You do, abstractly. No, you don't have the ability or the responsibility to fix those imbalances single-handedly, but refusing to acknowledge that power structure is a slap in the face to people actively disadvantaged by it every day of their lives. You might not benefit from patriarchy in any measurable way—on an individual level your life might actually be much, much worse than mine—but the fact is that certain disadvantages are absent from your experience (and, likely, invisible to you) because of your gender.

Maybe you're saying, "Hey, but my life wasn't fair either. I've had to struggle." I know it wasn't. I know you have. But that's not how fairness works. If you present fairness as the goal—that some day everything will be "fair" for everyone—you're slipping into an unrealistic fantasy land. Life already isn't fair, because of coincidence and circumstance and the DNA you were born with, and we all have to accept the hands we're dealt and live within that reality. But life doesn't have to be additionally unfair because of imposed systems of disenfranchisement that only affect certain groups. We can fight against that.

Feminism isn't about striving for individual fairness, on a life-by-life basis—it's about fighting against a systematic removal of opportunity that infringes on women's basic freedoms. If a woman and a man have equal potential in a field, they should have an equal opportunity to achieve success in that field. It's not that we want the least qualified women to be handed everything just because they're women. It's that we want all women to have the same opportunities as all men to fulfill (or fail to fulfill, on their own inherent merits) their potential. If a particular woman is underqualified for a particular job, fine. That isn't sexism. But she shouldn't have to be systematically set up, from birth, to be underqualified for all jobs (except for jobs that reinforce traditional femininity, obv).

Part Four: A List of "Men's Rights" Issues That Feminism Is Already Working On

Feminists do not want you to lose custody of your children. The assumption that women are naturally better caregivers is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not like commercials in which bumbling dads mess up the laundry and competent wives have to bustle in and fix it. The assumption that women are naturally better housekeepers is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to have to make alimony payments. Alimony is set up to combat the fact that women have been historically expected to prioritize domestic duties over professional goals, thus minimizing their earning potential if their "traditional" marriages end. The assumption that wives should make babies instead of money is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want anyone to get raped in prison. Permissiveness and jokes about prison rape are part of rape culture, which is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want anyone to be falsely accused of rape. False rape accusations discredit rape victims, which reinforces rape culture, which is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to be lonely and we do not hate "nice guys." The idea that certain people are inherently more valuable than other people because of superficial physical attributes is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to have to pay for dinner. We want the opportunity to achieve financial success on par with men in any field we choose (and are qualified for), and the fact that we currently don't is part of patriarchy. The idea that men should coddle and provide for women, and/or purchase their affections in romantic contexts, is condescending and damaging and part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to be maimed or killed in industrial accidents, or toil in coal mines while we do cushy secretarial work and various yarn-themed activities. The fact that women have long been shut out of dangerous industrial jobs (by men, by the way) is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to commit suicide. Any pressures and expectations that lower the quality of life of any gender are part of patriarchy. The fact that depression is characterized as an effeminate weakness, making men less likely to seek treatment, is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to be viewed with suspicion when you take your child to the park (men frequently insist that this is a serious issue, so I will take them at their word). The assumption that men are insatiable sexual animals, combined with the idea that it's unnatural for men to care for children, is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to be drafted and then die in a war while we stay home and iron stuff. The idea that women are too weak to fight or too delicate to function in a military setting is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want women to escape prosecution on legitimate domestic violence charges, nor do we want men to be ridiculed for being raped or abused. The idea that women are naturally gentle and compliant and that victimhood is inherently feminine is part of patriarchy.

Feminists hate patriarchy. We do not hate you.

If you really care about those issues as passionately as you say you do, you should be thanking feminists, because feminism is a social movement actively dedicated to dismantling every single one of them. The fact that you blame feminists—your allies—for problems against which they have been struggling for decades suggests that supporting men isn't nearly as important to you as resenting women. We care about your problems a lot. Could you try caring about ours?

Part Five: I'm Sorry That You Are in Pain, But Please Stop Taking It Out on Women

It's not easy to swallow your own privilege—to admit that you're a Fleetch—but once you do, it's addictive. It feels good to open up to perspectives that are foreign to you, accept your complicity in this shitty system, and work on making the world better for everyone instead of just defending your territory. It's something I had to do as a privileged white woman, and something I still have to work on every day, because it's right. That doesn't make me (or you) a bad person—it makes me an extremely lucky person who was born into a white body in a great family in a vibrant, liberal city in a powerful, wealthy country that implicitly values white bodies over all other bodies. The least I can do is acknowledge the arbitrariness of that luck, and work to tear down the obstacles facing those who are disenfranchised by the insidious fetishization of whiteness. Blanket defensiveness isn't going to get any of us anywhere.

To all the men who have had shitty lives and mistake that pain for "misandry": I totally get it. Humans are not such complicated creatures. All we want is to feel like we're valued, like we deserve to exist. And I'm sorry if you haven't found that so far in your life. But it's not women's fault, it's not my fault, and it's certainly not feminism's fault. The thing is, you're not really that different from the women you rail against so passionately in these comment threads—the women who are trying to carve out some space and assert their value in a world of powerful men. Plenty of women know exactly what it feels like to be pushed to the fringe of society, to be rejected so many times that you eventually reject yourself. That alienation is a big part of what feminism is fighting against. A lot of those women would be on your side, if you would just let them instead of insisting that they're the villains. It's better over here, and we have room for you. So stop trying to convince us that we hate you and I promise we'll start liking you a whole lot more.

[Seamus OBlimey]

The Everyday Sexism Project exists to catalogue instances of sexism experienced by women on a day to day basis

Male. Not allowed to comment.

[Project Willow]

http://noodlemaz.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/confessions-of-a-former-misogynist/

Confessions Of A Former Misogynist
February 14, 2013

What about the men?

“If I can’t have you, no one can!”

Yelled the estranged boyfriend to his ex girlfriend, while she was trapped in a blazing house fire he’d started. As a teenager watching this reported on the regional news, I felt a rush of the expected emotions – anger, sorrow and empathy, but not in the places you might expect. My first emotion wasn’t empathy for the girl who’d burned to death in the fire, but anger at what she must have done to deserve it.

Of course, women are just as capable of unhealthy jealous emotions as men, but what’s important is the thought process that got me to this conclusion. By this time I’d painted a picture in my head of a vast conspiracy of powerful, hysterical feminists, who were trying to silence and control men to suit their agenda.

I had a list of examples of how feminism had gone too far. I wasn’t allowed to have long hair at school, while girls were allowed to have long or short hair. Women were allowed to mock men for being bad in bed, but men weren’t allowed to say the same back. I said that women often lied about rape to get men locked up, and pointed to fathers’ rights and the fact that, historically, it was always men who were conscripted into the army.
The real issues

If I’m honest, I only really trotted out the examples above to justify my position; some of them even have some substance, but they didn’t make me angry. What did was, firstly, feminists challenging my point of view and, secondly, the fact that I found it really hard to get a girlfriend and, when I did, it usually ended abruptly with drama.

Getting and keeping a girlfriend was my ultimate goal, not because I genuinely loved any of the girls in question, but because I saw having a girlfriend as a status symbol. I could tell my friends that I had a girlfriend, was getting sex and that I wasn’t a failure as a man. I now realise that most of my friends wouldn’t care about my man status anyway, despite the lad banter, but this was what was going on in my head at the time. The feelings of the girls in question were irrelevant; to me girls were property that I had to cling on to and control. And if they dumped me, they deserved to be shamed in every way possible.

I would use emotional blackmail and intense pressure to get what I wanted in these relationships, and make them last as long as possible. I went out with a girl who smoked pot occasionally, and I basically told her that I would commit suicide if she kept doing it. This happened repeatedly, because she (rightly) refused to give in to me. I even hospitalised myself once – the pressure on her must have been immense.

The thought process here is difficult to explain, but I’ll give it a go. If a girl I was going out with did something I didn’t like, I’d get a big shot of adrenaline and hit a wall of irrational anger, especially if they knew I didn’t like what they were doing – I then saw her behaviour as selfishness. Once my anger button had been pressed, I lost all my powers of self-reflection and rational thinking. At that point, I’d come up with all sorts of warped explanations for my behaviour to create even more pressure and exert more control.images

I should also point out that I did (and still do) genuinely suffer from clinical depression. The difference now is that I’m self-aware enough to know how my actions affect other people, and I’ve developed ways of coping with it. Back then, however, I knew it was something I could abuse as leverage to get what I wanted. If my girlfriend talked to another man, and I got jealous, I’d sit in the corner with my head in my hands saying I was depressed. I’d say that I felt like killing myself because of the way she made me feel.

Consequences

When I inevitably got dumped, I’d tell my friends horror stories about how she’d said my depression was just a form of emotional blackmail, and make up lies to try to turn her friends against her. Being dumped, especially if we hadn’t had sex, was the worst thing that could happen. I wanted sex, and only women had the power to give or take it away, and in my mind this made them more powerful than anything else. Being dumped would push the anger button, because I ultimately couldn’t face the truth of looking at who I was and what I was doing.

At this time, I was also dabbling in music recording and fancied myself as the new Roger Waters. When I was dumped by my then-girlfriend, I wrote a whole concept album about the break-up. Embarrassingly, it got a distribution deal and was produced on a decent-sized CD run, so there’s a permanent record of it that still comes back to haunt me.

The lyrics are fascinating to me now. They basically talked about my ex girlfriend as if she’d joined a cult; a cult where nobody listens to men any more, and everyone’s obsessed with “so-called rights”. In short, it says: this slut obviously couldn’t think for herself, so she got sucked into the feminazi agenda and dumped a lovely boyfriend, just because he suffered from depression. This was easier for me to handle than the truth, which was that I’d been dumped because I was an angry, obsessive, control-freak who emotionally abused his girlfriends.

Loud and proud

I remember when I first heard the word misogynist. I was talking to a friend about a girl who’d dumped me, and my feelings about feminists creating a society where nice men couldn’t get girlfriends, and he described me as “quite a misogynist”. I asked him what he meant, and he said “it’s simply hatred of women.” I instantly loved the term. I didn’t consider myself a sexist – I thought of Benny Hill as sexist – sexism was just silly but this was serious.

I very seriously thought women were irrational, mad, over-emotional and pseudo-intellectual creatures who would do anything, via new feminism, to crush weak men who suffered from depression, and I hated them. These days, I see a lot of people saying “I’m not a misogynist, but…”, because they don’t want to be called a misogynist, but not me. It was the term I’d been looking for, and I was proud to call myself a misogynist.

This was before the age of social media, but I know what I’d be doing if it was available at the time. I’d be following feminists and strong women on Twitter, combing their tweets for any kind of slip-up that I could use to ‘expose’ them. If I saw a blog or comment by a feminist that challenged my world view, my anger button would be pressed and, rather than responding rationally, I’d lash out with gendered insults, all while completely failing to empathise with them.

I’d be angrily commenting on blogs and YouTube videos about feminism, sticking up for the men who just want to get girlfriends and sex, but can’t because of this repellent radical feminism. And I would probably never change, because the large scale of social media has effectively provided a veritable support group of people who feel the same way, with the same irrational anger that prevents them from assessing their views.
Turning point

So what changed? I was in my 20s, and I’d had unprotected sex with a girl – this is another issue, actually – my need to have sex, and thus prove myself as a man, was always greater than the potential consequences – I had a complete inability to view sex and relationships from a rational and sensible perspective.

I told her that, if she got pregnant, she couldn’t have the baby, because it would put too much pressure on me to support it. When she told me that it was her choice what she did with her body, it pushed my anger button. How could she even consider doing that to me? I was irrationally angry, and my empathy was entirely skewed towards me, without ever considering how she might feel.

I told her I wanted nothing more to do with her, and she said to me:

“I’d like you to learn from this, but you won’t. You’ll just chalk me up as another “mad girl” and carry on repeating the same stupid mistakes.”

Again, that hit my anger button, and I was fuming about it for days. But a few months later, I thought about it more, and decided to start analysing why I was so angry.

The latter was key here. I’d never tried to rationalise my anger before; I’d just followed where it led. Of course, the problem with irrational anger is that you can’t analyse it while you’re irrationally angry. You need to give it a few days to cool off and then look at it. tumblr_kokum0jiBq1qzm6njo1_400

Revelations

What I found began to horrify me. I’d write down why I thought I was angry a few days ago – lists of statements such as ‘she overreacted,’ ‘she’s being arrogant, selfish and hypocritical.’ Then I looked at each one individually and asked myself what had actually happened. What was the truth? Without the shield of irrational anger, I began to realise that half of what was on the list wasn’t even true, and the stuff that was true couldn’t in anyway justify that level of anger and hatred.

Why was I so angry and hateful? Even now, I find this difficult to explain. It was probably a combination of an inability to accept criticism, insecurity and hormones, but I began to see that it was very seriously clouding my judgment. I continued to talk to people about my difficulty attracting women, sustaining relationships and my feelings about feminism, but when I got challenged, I decided to genuinely reflect on it rather than just getting angry and staying with the same views.

It didn’t work exactly like that, of course. Feminism still pushed my anger buttons, and I still argued a lot about it. But if something made me angry, I’d go home angry about it, silently rage about it while trying to sleep and then a few days later try to rationally analyse what had made me angry.

In turn, this led to a larger sense of self awareness. I knew about self awareness before, but I mainly just saw it as being self-deprecating in order to get compliments. Actually being aware of what you think, how you appear to other people, and why, made a massive difference, not only in terms of self-reflection, but also in terms of empathy.

I soon realised that my empathy had been severely skewed for years, but I’ve found that this can be unlearned once you’re self-aware enough. I’d only ever considered myself as the subject of empathy, or other men who were in my position, I’d never considered the emotions and feelings of the women I’d been emotionally abusing.

When I realised how my behaviour must have made my girlfriends feel, I felt sick. There wasn’t a feminist conspiracy to deprive nice men from getting sex and girlfriends. The girls I’d been out with hadn’t dumped me because I was ‘too nice’ or because I was depressed, but because I was an emotionally abusive arsehole. That’s not an easy thing to admit, but it’s a lot easier to fix once you’ve done it.

What followed over the next few years was an epiphany as I started to consider sexism and misogyny in the wider world. I spent several years married to a feminist (we’ve since separated, but I still thank her for patiently opening my eyes to so much of this), who would point out areas of sexist culture to me when it arose. At this time, despite no longer being an all-out misogynist, I still subscribed to the idea that sexism was largely a problem of the past, but I now see that it isn’t.
Everyday Sexism

There are obvious examples, such as the discrepancy in salaries between men and women in the same roles and the number of women in parliament, but it’s actually all over the place. I’m reminded of the episode of Life on Mars with the black policeman in a 1970s police station, saying that you can’t just get rid of racism because it’s everywhere; it’s embedded in the culture. Once you recognise sexism you see the same pattern emerge. It’s not just stuff like men pinching women’s bottoms in the office lift; sexism is still a part of our culture in so many places.

Just off the top of my head, I regularly hear jokes about women drivers among my friends. If I go to a stand-up comedy gig, the line-up is invariably all men, and there’s nearly always a rape joke and a joke about how slapping some women in some circumstances is okay. Disturbingly, this is usually greeted with a big cheer from the stag parties in attendance, as if this is something to be celebrated.

When I read books or watch TV or films now, I’m constantly aware of how many female characters are only shoehorned into the plot to provide a love interest for a male character, or to act as eye candy. I watched District 9, thinking it was an awesome film (which it is), but it was then pointed out to me that there are no female characters in it, apart from a bit-part from a wife. That’s just one example – there are loads of others. This sort of stuff isn’t intentionally misogynist; it’s a product of a culture where we think men do the important stuff, and women are there for love interests and to have babies.

I work in technology and games journalism which, despite the hugely increasing numbers of girl gamers, still panders to lazy stereotypes. Tech and game trade shows are almost solely aimed at heterosexual men, to the point where the companies employ “booth babes” in minimal clothing to make their products look sexy to heterosexual men, and hold product launches at strip clubs. It all sends out a big message that technology and games are only for heterosexual men, and you can’t join our club.

GoogleSexism

The world looks very different when you take away irrational anger and conspiracy theories and add empathy to the equation. I’m not going to get into the issues of privilege, patriarchy and nice guys, as there’s plenty about that on the Internet already, but there are so many areas where sexism is pervasive in our culture.

You see it in the parades at Formula 1 events, the portrayal of women in computer games and the Internet comment sections full of violent threats (I don’t care if they’re sincere or not – they still contribute to a culture that makes rape seem acceptable to some people). Again, I’ve only listed a very small set of examples – there are thousands of others. Once you recognise sexism, you spot it all over the place [this is the perfect illustration - M].

It’s not always hugely problematic stuff, course. It’s easy to say: “oh, boo hoo, you got inappropriate sexual attention, get a grip – in some countries they stone women to death for adultery!” In fact, for the most part, I know a lot of women just block it out and get on with their lives, and many are preoccupied enough to not even care about most of it, and “good” for them. But it’s there, and when it’s all added up you get a culture where sexism is still very much alive, and in some industries extremely problematic. We might not be forcing women to wear burkas, but we demonstrably still have plenty of sexism in our culture.

Reactions

Whenever this is brought up, the reaction from many quarters is the same kind of irrational anger and skewed empathy that made me into a monster. I’m not for a minute saying that everyone who ever disagrees with a feminist has the same mindset that I used to have, or that you can’t challenge anything a feminist ever says, but I definitely recognise a lot of the same behaviour.

I see intelligent people getting irrationally angry, painting feminists as hysterical, arrogant control-freaks, but not sitting back and asking why they’re angry, rationalising it and asking if they’re wrong. I often also see just a cursory disclaimer on forum posts, saying “I deplore sexism and misogyny, obviously, but…” and then launching into a diatribe about out-of-control, humourless feminazis and how men are the real victims.

Of course, feminists sometimes say stupid things too – they’re human beings, and we all do it. But when this happens, ask yourself what’s really made you angry – the stupid thing they said, or a conspiracy theory that you can’t debunk because it’s hidden behind a wall of irrational anger.

I haven’t written this to show off about how enlightened I am, to “save women” or to seek atonement for my former emotionally-abusive self, but to explain how my misogynist mindset worked and how I woke up to the real world. If you recognise any of the same behaviour in yourself, know that it’s possible to change, and that you’ll be a much better person for it. If you feel your irrational anger button being pushed, sit back a few days later and ask yourself why, and ask where your empathy lies. Write it down, think about it and be truthful.

You may not come to the same conclusions as me, and that’s fine – I always like to think that life is a learning experience, and I still get a lot wrong. But once you remove irrational anger from the equation and develop a sense of self-awareness and empathy, you can then start to really challenge yourself and open your eyes.

This process took decades with me, though. Debunking a feminist conspiracy in your head is a little bit like deprogramming yourself from a religion. It takes years of self-reflection and asking some really uncomfortable questions about yourself, but you do come out of it a better person.

[Seamus OBlimey]

Do you go looking for this stuff Willow? I try to avoid people who talk like that. Though I do seem to attract them.

[Project Willow]

Do you mean like the fellow in the last post, or Ms. West's writing style?

I try to keep an eye on gender issues at all times. I do like the OP project. The other articles I felt responded in different ways to attitudes I've seen reflected right here on RI, even though I might quibble over approach or specific points.

[Perelandra]

The OP project is brilliant and I will pass it on.

The Everyday Sexism Project exists to catalogue instances of sexism experienced by women on a day to day basis

Male. Not allowed to comment.

Sure you can.

A lad 2013-04-02 12:27
Friends and I went to a bar (Group is split about 5 female 3 male including me). There was a group of older men, around 40+, who kept leering at them and making them uncomfortable. Eventually one of them came over and began to proposition the shyest one of the group who had no idea how to deal with these advances. She told him no but he wouldn't move on, getting lewder. We left to another bar and they followed still tormenting the poor lass, completely ruined her night out.

[Luther Blissett]

Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but the Hollaback women are awesome:
http://www.thefrisky.com/2013-04-15/hol ... ment-psas/
http://www.philly.com/philly/living/sex ... lling.html

[Project Willow]

^ Thanks for that. Yes, I'd seen the Hollaback site, forgotten to list them.

http://www.ihollaback.org/

I take issue with this from one of the articles however:

It’s a phenomenon that every woman knows it exists and yet, we have no name for it, no measure, no data or way to measure and quantify it.

We called it street harassment 30 years ago, and I know it's consistently been a topic of study for feminists. This culture has a short and selective memory.

[Luther Blissett]

I don't fully trust McDevitt.

[undead]

OP project is great. I live in Greece and I daily count many instances of blatant sexism. I do not tolerate it and therefore spend most of my time with my 2 former housemates who are lesbians. I didn't read all of the article on "misandry" but the gist was right on - feminists don't hate all men categorically and it is really easy to avoid being hated by being pro-feminism. Here in Greece, which has a disproportionately geriatric population and subsequently traditional culture, patriarchy is often reinforced by women as well as men. Many women feel that their traditional place is all they have, or they're just old-fashioned.

My everyday sexism examples:

Walking down the street with my sister, we see a grown woman with a T shirt that says "Property of My Boyfriend" (in english).

My relatives are surprised and impressed that I cook my own food because I am a man.

My sexuality is likely to be questioned because I sew my own clothes. (Not by anyone I associate with, thankfully)

My friend has to dress like a cabaret dancer to work as a waitress.

[undead]

I have to admit to laughing at this one out of surprise, even though it is really not at all funny.

Sitting in a bar having a drink (I only drank one drink, and the fact that I feel I have to mention that is also a problem) when the man at the next table dove under mine and bit my thigh so hard I had teeth marks in it for two weeks.

Hopefully she broke the guy's face with her knee, or something.

[Project Willow]

Anita Sarkeesian, the woman who faced death threats from the gaming community after announcing her project, posts the first video in her series on misogyny in gaming.

[gnosticheresy_2]

I follow the @EverydaySexism on Twitter and if I had to sum up my reaction to the daily posts they RT of just vile horrible misogynistic behaviour it wouldn't be horror or anger (though that's there) it would be utter incredulity. I mean

"in a bar a guy came up and asked my friend "is she your girlfriend?" When he answered no he said "good, then I can fuck her""

or

"1/2 walking in the rain at night, man runs up from behind and holds an umbrella over me. ignores my 'no thanks', puts an arm....
....2/2 around my shoulder and follows me home. too afraid to run because i thought he'd chase me and i'd slip in the rain."

or

"Taxi driver puts hand on my leg, says I'm beautiful, asks who specifically I live with, then "are you scared?"

Like what the actual fuck? I must be terminally naive. Apparently most of the adult male population never got past the "drunken 13 year old" stage when it comes to their attitudes to women and I never noticed.

[lyrimal]

Thought experiment: reverse the gender roles in #EverdaySexism complaints.

See what happens with a great majority of them? It's like magic!