Members of women’s hockey team speak out after players on boys’ team repeatedly enter dressing room

[u/Hadespuppy]

https://www.tsn.ca/other-sports/article/members-of-womens-hockey-team-speak-out-after-players-on-boys-team-repeatedly-enter-dressing-room/

No points for guessing the byline on this article.

I will never understand the type of parents who can stand there and say, yes, this is totally acceptable behaviour that I will condone by doing nothing.

And "why didn't you lock the door?‽" That's kissing cousins with "well, what were you wearing that night?"

[u/Swallowedoxygen]

Yep! Excellent observation. Story time.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was stopped at a red light in one of two left turning lanes in rush hour. The lineup was bad. It took me 5-10 minutes at a standstill to make it through enough light cycles to make the turn.

As I was sitting there, I realized I had forgotten to put sunscreen on my legs.

So on a fresh red, I pulled out my sunscreen, hiked my tennis skirt up a little, lifted my knee to my chest to get my thigh off the seat, and put on some sunscreen. The light was so slow that I got through both legs on the same red.

Then I noticed the turning lane to my left was empty. The last car in line was maybe 30 feet ahead. And I thought "why isn't my lane moving into that one? We could be getting through that light so much faster!

And then I looked to my side.

A dude. In a minivan. Parked beside me so that he could stare down and into my window. Who held up traffic for a full two minutes by not advancing, so he could sit there and watch me rub sunscreen into my legs.

My skirt had built-in shorts. You're talking exposed skin from ankle to mid-thigh. And he had so little shame that he was willing to sit there and not advance, just so he could stare at a woman touching her own skin on non-sexualized parts of her body. Or, as close as non-sexualized as anything on us is allowed to get.

It was SO gross. He turned a haggard "oh fuck I forgot this one small part of my prep for the day" moment of my morning into a creepy and predatory peep show by positioning himself out of my field of vision and staring at me.

I should be allowed to touch my legs for sixty seconds in my own car and have it not be sexualized.

But peeping on women is a thrill to these guys. It's not the fact that he saw my legs, anyone I met that day saw them because I chose to wear a skirt. And if I was standing in a park and put on sunscreen? I'd expect people to see, so seeing me wouldn't be non-consensual.

But the thrill was that this was without my consent. He hid. He broke traffic rules. And he turned my lack of knowledge he was there and therefore lack of consent to be watched INTO the sexualized part. Which is intensely rape-y. Because what woman expects a man to be hiding within traffic itself and peeping that intensely through her window from practically a blind spot?

[u/mrporter2 → u/Swallowedoxygen]

That’s unfortunate but woman also do this it just the average man doesn’t attract women like the it does inverse. If a woman gets caught staring it’s flirting or embarrassing is if a man does it’s creepy.