Love and Marriage

Have you ever asked a woman if she's experienced sexism? Try it sometime, if you have a few hours to spare. Her answer is likely to shock you.

This week, less than two years after its launch, the Everyday Sexism Project has received its 50,000th entry. Fifty thousand stories of harassment, discrimination, abuse and assault have been submitted by girls and women, men and boys around the world. That the number is so high doesn't reflect the popularity of the project itself so much as the sheer mass of stories out there. Since I started it, nearly every woman I have met has told me hers.
I've heard from women who have lost their jobs for becoming pregnant, teenagers who have been raped and told it was their own fault, men who have been derided for seeking paternity leave, girls who have suffered assault in their school uniform, employees who have been regularly harassed at work, and women of all ages who have simply become accustomed to the litany of sexist comments, jokes, touching, grabbing, groping, pinching, licking, slapping, stroking, kissing and biting that is the wallpaper to their daily existence.
Here are some recent entries:

"Got a really good deal for the company I worked for and my immediate boss said: 'Who did you give a blowjob for that?' I was so totally shocked and outraged but everyone laughed like it was a good old joke."

"I'm only 14 yet almost every conversation I have with a guy involves them asking for nudes, my bra size and trying to sext me, and when I say 'Please stop' or 'No, you're rude', I'm called a bitch, whore and slut and they eventually stop talking to me. I'm 14 and this is considered normal for girls my age."

"Told by member of management that I had been voted the most fuckable employee in a board meeting."

"After finishing my presentation in front of my fellow university students, the professor asked them for remarks on my presentation. One of my male colleagues shouted from the back of the class that I 'should wear a shorter skirt'."

"I'm still in school (I'm 14), and I was talking to my friends in my music lesson, when one of my classmates that I've known since we were both three came up to me and asked me what I would do if he raped me. I told him I'd fight him off, and I was going to report what he said to me. He then carried on to ask me what I would do if he tied me up so I couldn't move, and he raped me until I was unconscious. I have to see him every day, and even though he's probably forgotten about it, I'm still scared of him."

"At 14 I was grabbed at a dance party. At 15 I was groped on a crowded bus. At 16 I was yelled at for being 'frigid' when I wouldn't sleep with a boy. At 17 I was called a 'slut' for sleeping with a boy. At 18 I was stalked walking home from a club. I am now constantly grabbed, groped and yelled at when I go out, and it makes me feel so uncomfortable."

On the day I write this blogpost, eight stories about rape have come in, and it's only lunchtime.
One of those eight entries ends like this:

"And the worst part about it was after, when I had to have both of my parents tell me I shouldn't have been drinking that much, shouldn't have hung around those people, should have been more careful, shouldn't have stayed over. Like it was my fault someone raped me when I was unconscious."

That these women, and so many more, are suffering these instances of sexism, prejudice, harassment and assault on a daily basis should be an outrage. But it isn't. It's a lifestyle.
The society we live in has normalised the treatment of women as second-class citizens, as disposable objects, as punchlines for jokes. Young girls are growing up learning that it is simply normal to be harassed and touched in their uniform on the journey to school. Rape victims are blamed for what happens to them. Women are used, in advertising, TV shows and magazines, as living, breathing decorations. We live in a world in which a barrister can describe a child victim of sexual abuse as predatory, as if she were somehow complicit in her own abuse. Female politicians are judged on their looks and criticised for their clothes and face sexual harassment within the walls of Westminster. Female university students are dealing with posters and T-shirts joking about rape, and chants about miscarriage and abuse. The Daily Mail reports on the "womanly curves" of a 14-year-old girl. Two women are killed every week by a current or former partner. Over 400,000 women are sexually assaulted every year. Over 85,000 are raped. The naked breasts of a young woman are plastered inside our biggest selling "family" newspaper while teenage girls fight to be treated with respect by their peers. Extreme images of women bloodied, battered and beaten with captions like "Next time, don't get pregnant", still abound across the internet, and graphic messages telling me how I should be raped and which tools should be used to disembowel me ping into my inbox on a weekly basis. Just for giving a platform for women's voices. Just for raising the issue of gender equality.
So if you have time, ask a woman about her experiences. But don't ask unless you have the time to listen. Don't ask if you're going to brush her off, or question whether it really happened, or ask her what she was wearing at the time. Because we've heard it all before. It's time to stop questioning women's stories, and start listening to them instead.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2013/dec/13/everyday-sexism-project-women-sexual-harassment-50000-entries