By daring to enter traditionally male spaces, like bars, by themselves, women project that it is open season. My friends and I were recently blindsided by the closing of our favorite bar. Over the years, the small Irish pub in our hometown had hosted our birthday celebrations, going away and welcome back parties, nights where […]
Most men have the luxury of knowing about the fact of rape, but not the reality of rape, and what it means in terms of day-to-day life for girls and women. A few months ago, TIME magazine editor Susanna Schrobsdorff wrote a terrific article about having to talk to a daughter about rape. In the wake […]
We can’t allow our silence—online or in person—to be used as a weapon for the weak minded. I work in one of the busiest bar districts in Chicago. Right around Wrigley Field, my bar is filled with sports fans during the week and the folks who don’t want to wait in line for the fancier […]
I look like a typical 51-year-old, and it is just bizarre realizing that my appearance is something many young women dread. I’m going to tell you a story that is so common and so troubling it is effectively split off from the emotional lives of young women, tucked away into whatever neural recesses exist for […]
We tell them they can be anything they want to be. But do we really believe that? Why don’t we just say, truthfully, the cards are stacked against you because you are a girl? We teach our children to study hard, apply themselves, make an effort, and have faith that they will mostly succeed on the merits […]
Sexual harassment isn’t always as obvious as being groped by your boss. Sometimes the signs are more subtle than you’d imagine. Butt grabbing, persistent requests for dates and inappropriate touching at work clearly constitute sexual harassment. But the signs of sexual harassment aren’t always so flat-out obvious and can include name-calling, inappropriate mass emails, and […]
Nope, cat-calling isn’t cute when handsome or successful men do it. One of the most frustrating and common experiences of being a woman is having men tell you they know better than you do what women think and feel. By increasing the number of conversations people get to have, the Internet has also increased the number […]
It’s impossible for you to be exempt from all the other men who harassed and threatened women simply because you decided that history shouldn’t apply to you. Hello, fellow men. By now, I’m sure you’ve seen the viral Hollaback! video of the woman who got cat-called an absurd amount of times within the course of […]
I don’t feel delight being noticed. I feel on display. I feel fear. When a strange man leers at me, or worse, goes so far as to speak to me, to “compliment” me, to comment on my body, my clothing, my hair, my shape, my “attractiveness,” I don’t get a little surge of delight, or […]
There were many things in place to protect the harasser, but very little in place to protect me. It’s telling that when I started writing this essay I caught myself trying to write “well, my experience of sexual harassment wasn’t that bad.” Because everything is relative, and because I think many women have a tendency […]
Fifty percent of people who report harassment experienced it first before they were 17 years old. Last week, when in the wake of the Elliot Rodger’s killings more than a million tweets were shared using the hashtag #YesAllWomen, the role that fear plays in women’s daily lives was evident. One of the most common daily interactions […]
A new study reports that adolescent girls think sexual aggression is “normal stuff.” Samantha Eyler asks: What are we telling our kids to make them believe rape culture is normal? On Sunday, Melissa Harris-Perry hosted a roundtable on new findings about how young people conceive of and respond to sexual harassment. The study, from the journal Gender […]
