Note: This post contains mention of sexual assault, rape, and drugs
Routine sexism from strangers is something that, unfortunately, many women have been taught to expect. But what if it came from someone who you considered a friend?
1. "He said, 'I honestly didn’t care about what he had done to you, I was just listening in the hope that you’d cheat on him with me.' Then I immediately rid him of my life."
2. "'If you girls knew how guys talk about you when you can’t hear them, you wouldn’t go near us again.'"
3. "My brother's friends totally dropped the façade in front of me at a party once. They were discussing how to get this one guy laid, and their main idea was to get her really drunk. I was shocked."
4. "I work in a male-dominated space and they consider me 'one of the boys,' aka they talk shit without a filter, even when I'm around. The countless number of ugly comments made about women and the amount of pride they have in cheating on their partners is astounding. I remember one of them saying, 'We go for women in their early 20s because they don't know who they are yet, and they can't argue back. They're easier to train and mold.' He was dead serious, and I was disgusted."
6. "A male friend of three years wanted to move into a room that I was vacating. When my housemates chose the other potential renter instead of him, he turned on me, shouting and blaming me for the decision not going his way. His words were something along the lines of 'I should've stopped being friends with you a long time ago when I realized that you wouldn't have sex with me.'"
7. After I had lost some weight, a male friend said to me, 'Now you're getting how to be a proper woman.'"
8. "After getting very drunk and ill, he arranged a room at the hotel where he worked. I spent all night puking in a bucket. The next morning we stopped by my work (also his previous work) and he made a silly joke that I didn't think too much of. A year later, I found out that he'd told my coworkers that he slept with me because 'He always gets what he wants.' All of a sudden, I understood why my coworkers thought something was going on between us. He had already made a bunch of other comments over the year that I got angry over (about my weight and my mother), but as soon as I heard this, I instantly cut him out of my life. He didn't understand and kept calling me 20 times a night, but I blocked him."
9. "About one of our other friends at a barbeque: 'I’ll make my move when she’s drunk enough.' I kept my friend and all other females away from him that night."
10. "It was a close friend of mine, close enough to feel comfortable enough sharing my deepest thoughts with. I had just been sexually assaulted a few weeks before this and hadn’t told anyone about it. I decided to confide in him one night when I was over at his house hanging out, and when I told him about what happened, I started crying. Instead of comforting me, he leaned in to kiss me, as if that’s what I needed at that moment. What’s even worse is that I didn’t pull back or reject him, I think that I was so upset and in shock at the same time, I just let it happen. I wish I would have stopped it but I felt frozen."
11. "I used to work in specialized group homes for disabled and aggressive youth. I was 20 at the time and am a woman. My coworker always brought up topics that were horrifying and made me very uncomfortable, but the very worst one was when he said, 'All females have a rape fantasy' We were alone at 11 p.m. while the kids in the house slept. I left THE MOMENT my shift was over and immediately requested to never be placed with him again."
12. "'Anyway, she was super hot, and I was hitting on her, but then she said she was married, and I was like, 'Okay, fuck you, bitch.'"
13. "I told a friend about my sexual assault experience and immediately he said, 'See, that’s why you have to watch who you get involved with.' Basically saying that it’s my fault for not noticing the red flags. Thanks, my guy! I was the one who was assaulted, no need to turn this into an 'I am the wise one' moment."
14. "A colleague of mine at a very large and famous company was talking about his wife after a few drinks and going on about how hot he was. Then he said he would murder her if she ever cheated on him. I was like, 'You wouldn't actually murder her, would you?' He was dead serious and said yes she would have to die, I would kill her. Our other colleagues (male) were shushing me, acting as if my questioning him put me in the wrong. It seemed like people felt his background and beliefs were more important than a woman's life."
15. "We had a friend's husband help my husband and I move. My husband went to make another trip to grab more of our things, so my friend's husband and I were alone. He said, 'Man, there’s no way that I would ever leave my wife alone with any of my friends' To this day, I still don’t know what to think about that."
16. "That he wanted to make a woman fall in love with him, marry her, and then kill himself while they were having sex on their wedding night. He said that he wanted to make it so that she could never have sex again without thinking of him."
17. "My old male roommates of six years said, 'Of course, we were all thinking about whether we could have sex with you, and were kind of hoping we could join if you brought home a chick one day.' It was very diminishing of the years of friendship I thought that we had."
18. "I didn’t really know him that well and we were hanging out at a bar. I was about to go to the bathroom and he made a comment about spiking my drink while I was gone. He said it was 'just a joke' but that’s shit’s not funny. I took my drink to the bartender instead and never saw him again."
19. "Not a male 'friend' per se, but a male acquaintance said he enjoyed hurting women emotionally and, knowing they liked him, he could then take advantage of their feelings and do what he wanted. This is something most women are probably aware of, but it was shocking how unashamed he was in just saying it out loud."
20. "My male friend once told me that a lady cut him off on the highway, which pissed him off as anyone would be. But instead of just moving on from that, he followed her all the to her house and parked right outside her home so he could 'scare her.' He then laughed and said that she didn’t get out of the car until he drove away. I was fucking horrified when he told me all of this, and I went off on him. I told him how fucked up it was and how she probably felt scared for her life. He did end up feeling bad about it and told me he was embarrassed and upset that he scared her, but it still doesn’t excuse what he did."
21. "One said something in a group chat saying he’d basically go pull some 'whale,' clearly meaning fat woman if he wanted to get laid. I, being a fat woman, called him on that, then told my friend who he’d clearly had a crush on and had been trying to get together with for a while. It's safe to say she never went out with him."
22. "Multiple grown men had told me my entire childhood that I had 'amazing birthing hips.'
23. "He called me a cock tease. He was mad that I had never looked at him as a person to date or a sexual partner. He was so mad that I 'friend-zoned' him, but I had no idea that he wanted to be more than friends. I didn't see him like that. But he saw me in short skirts, he'd come to hang out at my dorm, and he'd get mad when I'd strike up a relationship with someone else. It felt like I was being manipulated or betrayed in some way. This man was only nice to me because he wanted something. He was only my friend in hopes to trick me into a relationship or just sex."
24. "He made a 'joke' about drugging and raping me. I was 15 and he was in his 20s. He said it in a way that made it seem like he was testing the waters and trying to figure out what I’d let him get away with. It’s safe to say that he was no longer considered a friend after that."
25. "A coworker once told me that if it wasn't for his love of Jesus, he'd be out raping and murdering people."
26. "I used to have a cocaine problem. My 'best friend,' the person who usually went to the dealers to get the drugs we used together on a daily basis, once tried to pimp me out to a dealer. Looking back, he had definitely groomed me and gradually pushed boundaries to lead up to this, but one day he said, 'Hey, you know [dealer] thinks that you’re really hot right? I bet if you just suck his dick or something, he would throw us a good amount of free shit' I was a vulnerable 20-year-old girl who was in so much deeper than I ever thought possible, so I made the perfect victim. But I still told him that he could go suck the guy’s dick if he wants free drugs that badly because it sure wasn’t gonna be me. Also, just for the record, if I’M sucking the dick then why are WE getting the drugs?"
27. "I was 15, I think that he was 17, and a mutual friend came to me freaked on my behalf, saying he’d said he was going to 'wear me down' until I agreed to go out with him. That was the last straw for me after dealing with him for months, so I told our mutual friends that I wouldn’t be hanging out with him anymore, which they agreed with, and blocked him. Thankfully, he got the message, but he did try to get back in contact about two years later. I got the text while at a bar with a friend, and I snapped. I told him how creepy he was, how I hadn’t missed him the last two years at all, I’d basically forgotten about him and a bunch of other stuff. I never heard from him again. This is pretty tame really, but it freaked me out as I knew it wasn’t okay. 'Wear me down.' Go fuck yourself."
28. "We were both 15, and I considered him a close friend and trusted him. We were going on a walk in the woods near my house when he pushed me to the ground from behind. I remember I was so scared and he just laughed at me and said he could do anything he wanted to do to me out here, and that no one would hear me scream. Thank God he didn’t actually do anything. I didn’t know what to do afterward and wound up acting as if nothing had happened. We stayed in the same friend group for a few more months and I never told anyone what he did until years later."
