You'll notice that the dude who followed me in Atlanta started talking to me and kept talking to me after I ignored him and sped up. He showed proof, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was willing to defy clearly communicated boundaries. He was a threat.

Well, having been grabbed/slapped/cornered/threatened/other things by men within my age range (as well as much much older men), I have been left feeling unclean and awful and down on myself and scared. (As to the attractiveness of these men? Honestly, most of their faces are blurred out in my memory, and I just see…

As a fellow ugly woman, I have had similar experiences. Mostly before I was legally an adult. I only know that my experiences were unusual when I compare them to my close female friends - when we were teens, and now.

Thing is, we were all harassed by men in all kinds of situations. When things were at their worst,…

they happened because you are female.

Oppression olympics, cissplaining... you're just trying to hit all the obnoxiousness marks, aren't you?

As I have gotten older, I have learned to never complain about the trials of being a man (who is also white...). My wife is a bartender, and customers stalking employees, cat-calling publicly, and physically touching, grabbing even, women (including her) is absurdly common. Keeping in mind these are just things that…

A very dear friend of mine (my first 'real', serious girlfriend, actually) visited me a few years back. We hadn't seen each other in many years, and it was lovely. However, she had been through an ordeal with uterine tumors, and her hormones were out of control and she had been producing testosterone in massive…

I acknowledge this, and I acknowledged it. I have never, not ever refused to acknowledge the male privilege I was granted. As I said before, privilege is privilege, even if it is unwanted, and even if it comes at the intersection of lacking a different privilege (cisgender privilege). My lack of cisgender privilege is…

That's absolutely true. I was just picking a random age. I chose 14 because I was thinking of that terrible LA school district bullshit.

Thank you for sharing your experiences with us, Kat. Seeing the reactions to the cat-calling video on the forums I use was disillusioning. Of utmost concern to me is that the men responding so adamantly don't feel the need to even listen to women explaining these persistent experiences. Their privilege allows them…

I am beyond glad that I never had to be 14 and deal with a 40 year old making suggestive comments.

I always love the things you write. I definitely still have a great deal to learn about trans experiences, but these posts are always great. And I also always find it so, so interesting to hear from both trans men and trans women how much, and in what ways, their experiences change depending upon how they are read.

There is a difference between reclaiming an historically pejorative term for oneself and using it to put down someone else.

Uh, it is dehumanizing.

I didn't read it as body-shaming, but it still came off as a sour note at the end of a great comment. "Heifer" reads to me as a very gendered insult, so there's probably a better way to express your disappointment with a woman in a feminist context.

Cue the "those feminists are censoring us!!!" haters who will ignore the fact that it was Time who wanted to ban the word in 3...2...1...

I tweeted about it being desperate bullshit for Time to include this on their poll, and you wanna know what happened? A bunch of sad men that I don't know called me a bunch of really vulgar names. These are not my followers, these are losers looking for women to insult. Nope, we sure don't need any feminists around…

While we meant to invite debate about some ways the word was used this year, that nuance was lost, and we regret that its inclusion has become a distraction from the important debate over equality and justice.

'Bout time, Time.

thank you, this is so charming. I think I hear a bell ringing, you must've just got your wings. 😊