Man, we got that phone call this year. A boy wouldn’t stop touching my daughter’s hair. So after repeatedly telling him to stop and requesting to be moved, she snapped on him. Do you know what they told us? “Well, she has fun hair.” Oh and, “her reaction was hostile”. So I then had to let them have it. We left,…

Mine is 9. I taught her self defence last year because she is so gentle and pleasant that I cannot stand the thought of someone hurting her and her not knowing how to defend herself. Every now and then I shout “WHOSE BODY?” and she shouts “MY BODY”. There are really simple moves you can teach her: chin thrust, fingers…

I don’t know, I’m a petite woman and was a tiny girl. I can’t rely on physical strength. If I got into a fight with a guy, hitting him in the balls would be my first thought because it’s a great equalizer. I’m one big soft spot from head to toe but that’s the one weak point men have.

And make her read this and understand that it’s not her fault, but that this will show her who her true friends are and are not. That it is OK to get angry and to use that anger to build a life that works for her in this woman-hating world.

Honestly, though, there is no woman too beautiful to be called ugly by a man she’s just turned down. To the kind of men who insult women like that, sexual availability is a defining component of attractiveness. (It’s kind of the same way that “slut” is used as an insult against women who say no to sex.)

I just finished re-reading it myself. This whole essay is a perfect companion to it, but yes, that sentence especially.

No, she wasn’t one of the guys. Tom wasn’t grabbing the other guys’ asses, only hers. Letting him do it and them laugh about it was the price of admission for being the girl they tolerated in their group.

“Screw them and their entitlement to how I should look.”

This was powerful and eloquent and touched a nerve.

I have an 8 yo who’s all ready at the starting line for this bullshit. It’s like a damn freight train coming at her and there’s nothing I can do except hug her.

I just finished The Handmaid’s Tale last night and that book meshes with that sentence so fucking well.

Go you. I shaved my head last summer and everyone kept trying to philanthropize it: “Oh, did you do St. Baldrick’s? Or donate it to charity?” “No,I just wanted it gone so I could stop wasting time preening myself.” As if a woman’s appearance/shaved head has to be an act of generosity or sacrifice.

Whenever I read a frothy article that’s all ‘Here are the top ten things in women’s fashion that men hate’, I just want to do everything on the list as a reminder that I do not exist for anybody’s boner. It’s that level of pettiness that led to me cutting off all of my hair after a boyfriend told me he didn’t want me…

And woe betide any woman who refuses to go gently (or quietly, for that matter) into that good night.

I never wore makeup but I’ve been experimenting with it lately. Always garish — blue lipstick, glitter eyes, stuff that is not “pretty” but like a poisonous snake that warns you away with bright colors. Screw them and their entitlement to how I should look.

And Michael, too. My college boyfriend reprimanded me for putting pantyliner wrappers in the garbage in his bathroom because his roommate would tease him for it. I was so humiliated. I didn’t occur to me then to be pissed at him and his stupid roommate. I feel sad for my younger self, and I’ll never stop being pissed…

I love this. I FUCKING LOVE THIS.

You just don’t do that to a guy. Ever.

Madeleine Davies, always my favorite.

Fuck Tom and all the Toms of the world.