This is very long but please take the time to read it!!! •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••I'm not by any means an outrageous or outspoken feminist, but I do have some views about the way women are treated by men. Today I was minding my own business, trying to engage in a class wide activity by playing a game on the computers in my classroom. In this game you can name yourself and I named myself "anna" because that's my name, well one boy decided it would be funny to put "idf*ckanna" as their username. I blew it off thinking that "oh they're just teasing again" because most of the time they don't mean harm and just want to get a laugh out of their friends and try to impress a girl. If only it had stopped there. They continued to name themselves complete and utterly demeaning disgusting and even racist things about me. For example: "anna is tight" "anna f*cks n******" and "gang bang anna" I would go on but some of them were too gross to say. I immediately told them to stop and even built up the courage to tell the teacher. (telling the teacher can result in even more teasing and name calling and bullying) she did nothing which is even more upsetting to me, and the boys continued. I had to stand up for myself so I said quietly and with a straight face that "it wasn't funny, it's gross, and it's embarrassing." I don't care what they thought about me when I said it, and you could tell that they were trying to hush me up about the situation by saying "anna it isn't that big of a deal" and "oh we were just joking" ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! Saying you are going to gang bang me is a violent, horrific threat that potentially could cause repercussions! If I was an adult woman and a group of men said this same thing about me, I would call the police!! But them being teenagers lets them get away with it?? Absolutely not. The thoughts I had after a minor harassment (compared to some women who have experienced much worse violation) were:
-what did I possibly do to provoke this?
-am I making this too big of a deal?
-did I maybe wear some revealing or tight clothes I shouldn't have?

And more like this. Immediately after these things went through my mind, I shut them down. The way women are trained to think is that we DESERVE what has happened to us despite the fact that NO MATTER WHAT:: there is absolutely nothing you could ever do to provoke someone into sexual harassment. That is not even real. Someone sexually harassing you because of something you did is a concept made up by a harasser to make the victim of the situation unsure about what has happened. Like I said this incident was much better than some of the things other women have gone through but in order to begin to resist the disgusting pigs that are out there, you must know the truth! That you are beautifully and wonderfully made, it's NOT your fault, and that there is hope. not all men are like this. My prayers go out to the women and girls who have experienced harsher violation and rape.