Hey! I swam my entire career in northern Alberta. Quit a year before university since I kinda wanted a ‘normal’ high school/university experience and realized that while I might make it to trials, I was never making it to the Olympics.

Truth. One of my coworkers seemed totally nice and friendly at work, then I saw him while out at a bar and he scared the living shit out of me.

Uh. I assume you’ve never been emotionally abused. It’s on the same level as physical abuse and violence.

Still abuse.

He was a very, very good swimmer. But not Olympic caliber. I’m not American, but I was a high level competitive swimmer in Canada, and I asked a few friends who did varsity swimming in the states and apparently this douchecanoe had a reputation for being creepy and entitled, which is why I was so enraged at the…

You definitely are, just through the way you treat her, other women, and everyone else in the world. Keep on doing what you’re doing :)

You’re doing a whole lot of things right. I give my mother a lot of credit for how she raised me to believe I could do anything I wanted (and was intellectually/physically capable of, sadly, not everyone can realistically be an astronaut), and always really worked to keep me looking towards positive female role models…

Mostly people got dismissive and/or treated me like I was exhausting them with my darn feminism, sometimes (but fairly rarely) got “sensitive” comments. I will admit I definitely had a bit of a persona going on at school which acted as a shield towards the sexism. I was a very out-spoken student politician type, so I…

I completed my engineering degree in 2014 (and I’m a woman). The amount of times I had people try to have me convince them (?) that we were good now, right? There’s enough women, right? There aren’t any barriers, right?

I think my head just exploded.

WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK. The Montreal Massacre is still a massive deal (recent female engineering grad over here). That asshat blatantly shot those women because they had ‘taken his spot’ and ‘ruined his life’. How in the hell is that not a hate crime against women?

Word. I did engineering, which isn’t as bad as 3/75 but is still definitely male dominated, and the amount of time people thought I was that other ‘white girl’ was insane. It got steadily better as my dominating ‘intense’ personality started to shine through and people couldn’t just brush me aside anymore, but my god…

gah. Agreed. I happen to also work in consulting (at an engineering firm) so I’m surrounded by men. I tend to go with a little cleavage being the lesser evil, it’s virtually impossible for me to avoid cleavage without a crew-neck top (which I find uncomfortable/unflattering).

Gah. That sounds a lot like me. Glad to know I’m not the only one who feels like that!

Word. Camis and tank tops under literally all shirts I ever wear (because bra lines are still sometimes a thing). I’m not that big (solid D cup) but cleavage happens in basically every shirt I find comfortable/is professional even when I add in a tank top. So far, I don’t THINK my appearance is having much of an…

That sounds like me! I’ve gone from dating assholes I can’t get close to to just blindly going after men who are perfectly nice (but boring and totally wrong for me) and that I’m adequately attracted to. Baby steps in the right direction.

I’m with you there. I’m celebrating the fact I’ve avoided completely toxic relationships (like what my parents had before my mother thankfully left him and took me with her). They’ve been rocky and/or short, but at least they weren’t sociopathic abusers.

This. I’m just coming to terms with the fact that I STILL have issues with men even after thinking that cutting the absent, neglectful, emotionally abusive ass-hole father out of my life 2 years ago would magically fix everything. I’m doing way way way better than I was but I still need some help and I’m still going…

I’m going to ask you to please take a hard look at the ‘harmless’ jokes between you and your buds. Because some people don’t take these social ‘jokes’ as real ‘jokes’ but as a baby step towards more sexist, harmful, and downright dangerous actions/comments/etc. Jokes that make fun of women for being women are not…

and women just find all men to be cuddly, safe, teddy bears?