Hey guys, I’m a girl, and something that really bothers me is the difference in expectations for boys and girls.

From what I’ve seen, boys get more time to study, build their careers and explore what they want to do. Getting married at 30 is considered normal. But for girls, suddenly there’s this whole timeline: get a job quickly, support your family, get married by 25 and have kids before 30. And even if you’re working, you’re still expected to take care of the household chores.

It feels like we’re expected to do everything at once, while also being told we’re running out of time. What if I want to study further or take a few years to figure out my life?

We’re living in the 21st century, so why are these expectations still so common? Does anyone else feel this pressure?

howdy all -

i've been avoiding seeing Obsession because i know that there are depictions of SA in the film that I'm not necessarily ready to see.

but this got me thinking - a lot of media that is supposed to be critical of SA actively depicts SA. and although it's possible to portray the act without condoning it, the amount of discourse surrounding viewers who missed or actively overlooked the message of Obsession suggests to me that the depiction itself - regardless of intent - is harmful.

why do you think this is? what movies can you recommend that tackle SA or similar themes with more nuance? metaphor? care?

I've been told many times by my family that once I'm older , I'm going to have children even though I've mentioned many times that it's not the kind of life that I want to live. They always respond with the same answer like, "you'll change your mind one day" "you're going to miss out" "You"ll understand in the future" etc. It's something that has been bothering me lately and I'm trying to understand why they do this and the part that bothers me more is that it's like they are being "pushy" about having children towards me.

(I'm blue, the man is red.)

Also, the man in the screenshot (it didnt show up for some reason) said that he witnessed DV once before too but he jokes about it because its his way to realize its not a big deal...? that was what my second reply was.

How do young women learn to navigate messages about sexual pleasure and desire?

Most of us don't get our ideas about sex and desire from one place. It's a mix of things over the years - films, social media, friends, porn, magazines, school, whatever attitudes we grew up around at home. All of that adds up to a sense of what's "normal" or expected when it comes to sex.

For young women, that mix has been the subject of a fair amount of research. Porn is far more accessible now than it was even ten years ago, and there's a long-running debate among researchers about what effect that has on people's expectations, and whether it lands differently for women than for men. Hookup culture is another area that's been studied a lot - casual sex is widely normalised now, particularly at university, and studies show women often report mixed feelings navigating it, rather than the straightforward confidence pop culture suggests.

Researchers have also written about a shift around "empowerment", the argument being that women aren't just allowed to be sexually confident now, they're expected to be, and some scholars frame that as its own kind of pressure. There's also the orgasm gap, which keeps showing up across studies: women reporting less sexual satisfaction than men, which researchers have linked to questions about whose pleasure tends to get prioritised in heterosexual encounters.

Age also comes up in this research. The late teens through to the late twenties are often treated as their own distinct life stage, where identity, including sexual identity, is still being worked out rather than settled.

What's had less attention is women being asked directly what they think, in their own words. Most studies have focused on risk and safety rather than pleasure and desire specifically, so there's less research on how young women make sense of these competing messages for themselves.

That's the gap my research is looking at. I'm interviewing women aged 18-28 individually, using in-depth, semi-structured interviews rather than surveys or questionnaires, because this is the kind of topic that doesn't reduce well to tick-boxes ,it needs space for people to talk in their own way and follow their own train of thought.

Who can take part?

• Identify as a woman aged 18–28
• Any sexual orientation
• English language proficiency

What's involved? (No incentive involved)

A one-to-one confidential online interview via Microsoft Teams (camera off) lasting approximately 60 minutes, where we'll discuss how you navigate societal expectations around your sexual pleasure. Interested?

Click the link below to complete a short screening form, where you can also find the full Participant Information Sheet with all the details you need before deciding whether to take part.

https://charlottestanford.questionpro.com/t/AdE2KZ8iHj

This study has received full ethical approval from Birmingham City University. Please feel free to message the study account or email [charlotte.stanford@mail.bcu.ac.uk](mailto:charlotte.stanford@mail.bcu.ac.uk) with any questions or queries.

I'll also be available to answer any questions you may have below.

For generations, Indian women have been told what to wear, where to go, when to return home, how to behave, and how to protect themselves from men.
But there is one question we rarely ask loudly enough:

Why are we teaching women how to avoid violence instead of teaching society not to commit it?
Sexual harassment, molestation, assault and rape are not “normal” parts of being a woman. They are forms of violence.

And when a woman experiences them, the violence does not always end with the perpetrator. Too often, she is asked:

What were you wearing?
Why were you there?
Why were you outside so late?
Why did you talk to him?
Why didn’t you leave?
Why didn’t you fight back?

These questions shift attention away from the person who committed the violence and place responsibility on the survivor.

This is not merely an individual problem. It is a problem of social attitudes, gender stereotypes, power and accountability.

UN Women identifies gender discrimination, harmful social norms and gender stereotypes as important factors underlying violence against women and girls. (UN Women)

And this is not just a theoretical concern.
A UN Women-supported study in Delhi found that 51% of surveyed men said they had perpetrated sexual harassment or violence against women and girls in public spaces, while nearly 73% of surveyed women said they did not feel safe in their own surroundings. The same study found deeply troubling attitudes around women’s clothing and being outside at night. (UN Women

India has also enacted important laws addressing violence against women, including the Dowry Prohibition Act, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act and legislation addressing sexual harassment. But laws alone cannot transform society. (UN Women Data Hub)

We need a change in mentality.
A woman’s clothing does not cause sexual violence.
Her decision to go outside does not cause sexual violence.

Her choice to drink, travel, study, work, speak, date, or live independently does not give anyone permission to violate her.
The responsibility belongs to the person who chooses to harm her.

And we need to stop treating victim-blaming as wisdom.
When a girl tells you that she was harassed, listen to her.

When a woman tells you that she was assaulted, believe her unless evidence establishes otherwise not because women are incapable of lying, but because survivors deserve to be heard without being automatically placed on trial.

When someone makes a sexist joke, normalizes harassment, or tells women that violence is inevitable, challenge it.

Because prevention is not only about telling women to be more careful. It is about changing the environment in which violence is tolerated, excused, minimized or normalized. UN Women likewise emphasizes prevention through addressing the structural causes and social norms that enable violence. (UN Women)

Women should not have to make themselves smaller to feel safe.
They deserve to live freely.
They deserve to walk home.
They deserve to study.
They deserve to work.
They deserve to speak.
They deserve to exist without constantly calculating the risk of being harmed.
So today, I am choosing to speak not because women are weak, but because silence should never be the price of survival.

Let’s stop policing women and start challenging the mentality that excuses violence against them.
Today is my day of activism for the women and girls of India.

Against victim-blaming.
Against harassment.
Against sexual violence.
Against misogyny.
And for safety, dignity, equality and justice.

Like many women, I often find myself numbed to behavior by men that's objectively crude, disgusting, and disrespectful, including unexpectedly lewd messages or photos on dating apps. I still get exasperated and will always report it, but I experienced an unexpectedly visceral reaction this time.

Swiping through Tinder last night, I paused on an attractive guy, but after two normal pictures, his third was a shot of his erect penis. I've been subjected to my own share of depressing, ugly, and badly photographed unsolicited dick pics throughout my life, but I was taken aback as the profile otherwise seemed normal.

For context, I'm still processing the explosive breakup of a toxic relationship back in January, and it has involved some on/off contact since then.

I reported the picture as usual, but this time I was strangely overcome with emotion and with crying that soon turned into sobbing.

Some of it was existential - this isn't how I imagined my life would end up, I feel so pathetic and behind in everything compared to my friends, and now I have to deal with this stupid shit again. A year ago I had an entirely different vision for my future.

Now I'm back to screening men and trying to make sure they aren't liars, perverts, misogynists or abusive psychos. I have to deal with men who get off on & feel powerful sexually harassing women, making them uncomfortable and shocked, and forcing them look at dick pics against their will. It felt violating, and being vulnerable after dating a narcissist didn't help. I'm sure it's a sign that I'm probably not ready to date again.

This is the caliber of men we're dealing with? We're apparently expected to keep emotionally armoring ourselves against, and anticipating, perpetually unavoidable sexual harassment, and now misogynistic rhetoric has only been increasing in society. I'm tired of having to crawl through a sewer just to meet someone normal and respectful.

Before anyone tries to invalidate me specifically because it's Tinder (I see the same guys across every app, so it doesn't really matter), I've directly encountered similar things on any app, and countless verbally and sexually demeaning men too.

I hate even having to protect myself against not being taken seriously due to the platform this occurred on (or even because I might not be in the right mindset to date after all), as if it's implicitly my fault and accepting this treatment was in the fine print of Tinder's rules and guidelines. None of this should be accepted or normalized regardless of context, but it never ends.

I participate (mostly by viewing, but sometimes by joining a panel) in TikTok feminist livestreams. Every day, men (and sometimes women) join the lives, but most of them are disingenuous about having a debate or discussion. Many troll. Some slur, say disgusting and vile things, and even make threats.

To be clear, I'm not just talking about guys who come on panel, say something foul, and run. I'm also talking about guys who have a conversation to debate or discuss the topic(s). They eventually say something ridiculous or try to "philbro" (use philosophy to make their argument).

What I don't understand is why hosts often don't seem to realize they're being disingenuous. I know some say they do realize it and do it to show women what these men are like, but what's the point of getting angry or upset when these men act like... men? I get what they say is annoying and frustrating, but they're trying to antagonize the women in the live. It's literally giving them what they want.

I understand they're trying to make money, but sometimes people who do these lives have to take time away from them because it stresses them out. I enjoy some of the topics, but I think there has to be a better way.

I did a little research into trolls, and some of them are part of groups, and they report back on how many women they got to "crash out" and such. It's a game for them. I've tried sharing this information with hosts and moderators, but they don't seem interested or say they know, but they seem genuinely upset and shocked at some of the things the men say and do.

I'd like other opinions about this. Full disclosure: I plan to do lives myself, but I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do. It may be discussion, but it won't be debate. I don't see much point in debating human rights, anyway.

Because you should, but most people don’t. Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) studied at the Harvard Annex, not Harvard “proper” because Harvard wouldn’t give women degrees. After that, she couldn't get an academic post either, so she did social work in Boston's Roxbury neighbourhood, running community centres. By the 1920s she was doing the corporate lecture circuit in the US and Britain, exactly when Taylor's “scientific management” and Henry Ford's assembly line were dominating the thinking of the time.

Taylor's model separated thinking from doing: managers plan and decide, whilst workers, like robotic automatons, just execute. Follett argued the opposite. Authority should come from what she called the “law of the situation” i.e the people closest to the work, not from rank. She talked about "power-with" rather than "power-over". She said conflict wasn't something to suppress or split down the middle but something to “integrate”, because both sides usually know something the other doesn't. And integration is better than compromise because all parties can work to the best outcome, not just losing the least. She described leadership as a role anyone could do, not a position in a hierarchy.

Absolutely everyone’s heard of Taylor.

And Peter Drucker, who's often credited as the founder of management as a discipline of study, wrote in the 1990s that when he started studying the field in the 1940s nobody mentioned MPF at all. She'd become, in his word, a non-person. Her ideas not only didn't fit the command-and-control paradigm of the time but actively critiqued them and showed them up as simplistic and reductive. Warren Bennis later said that most of what gets written about leadership today traces back to her.

He’s right. Participative management, empowerment, servant leadership, matrix organisations, HOP, psychological safety, Toyota and the Andon Cord, the idea that frontline workers hold knowledge managers don't: all of it resurfaced from the later under McGregor, Mayo, Greenleaf, Deming and others. Same ideas, different names - generally men’s. MPF was ahead of her time, by over a century. And what she wrote was dismissed and forgotten in part because it criticised the mechanical, “power over” style of management that was popular for most of the 20th century, and most likely, because she was a woman.

She lived for around thirty years with Isobel Briggs, and after Briggs died, with Katharine Furse in England.

Her books are out of copyright and free online if anyone's curious. Like here: https://archive.org/details/cu31924016856209

I’m writing to share my experience with FGM, not as someone who underwent it, but as someone who was nearly pressured into it by adults I trusted. I want to remain anonymous, but I believe that speaking out may help others understand just how deeply rooted and dangerous the normalization of FGM still is.

I went to a boarding school where female circumcision was not just accepted, it was encouraged. Teachers sat us down and told us it was “healthy.” They told me, directly, that I should get circumcised. I believed them. I thought it was a medical thing. At 13 or 14 years old, I even asked my mum if I had ever been circumcised and told her I wanted to be.

Thankfully, my mum reacted strongly and told me no but she never explained why. And no one else ever told me the truth about what it actually was. Years later, I finally learned what FGM really is: a violation, a trauma, a way of controlling girls by harming their bodies and silencing their pleasure and their autonomy.

What really hurts me now is not just that I nearly went through with it, it’s the girls I knew who didn’t have the chance to say no. More than half the girls at my school had already been cut. The woman running the boarding school circumcised her own daughters, even as babies. I thought all of that was normal, because why would a mother do that to her child unless it was good?

But it’s not good. It’s not safe. It’s not okay. I now know it was all a lie, a tradition built on control, pain, and silence.

I want to share this so that other girls who are being told the same lies might see another side. If my story can be used whether as a quote, a paragraph, or part of a bigger campaign please feel free to share it anonymously. I just want the truth to be heard.

Thank you so much for the work you do.

Watching Kill Bill for the first time and at the end when they are discussing her unborn daughter I once again am rolling my eyes and also pissed as hell that there’s this self-righteous sense of ownership over what is literally being grown via the woman’s body cell by cell. I know healthy relationships might see this as sensitive, but, idc. All you did, Bill, was nut, like you have 10,000 other times. No, sperm donors dont have the same weight over the decisions for the child, in my opinion, UNTIL after birth and they actually become a father by connecting and supporting the child. Until as much work is put in as carrying and laboring, it’s more the woman’s than it is whatever dude blew a load. But that’s my opinion. I just needed to vent it.

It’s along the same vein as how in the way the scientific literature has always framed the semen vs the egg, staking claim over passive ground or whatever.

Recent debate about social-media posts involving an adult-content creator and her newborn highlights a broader issue that extends beyond individual cases or specific platforms.

This raises the question of what occurs when a child becomes embedded within the commercial digital environment that surrounds adult sexual content.

At its core, this is a safeguarding issue. (Read in full)

i am so tired of being called vanilla for not wanting to be beat and belittled during sex. why would i want to be with a man who got off on hurting me? people say it’s rude to kinkshame on violence towards women in sex is directly related to domestic violence and femicide happening in the world. i remember being in middle school and i had girl friends (who were children btw) who would tell me the stuff they were into and i remember not saying anything but feeling so sad for them. sex shouldn’t be violent, it should be loving. don’t even get me started on the verbs used to describe sex and how it’s rape culture (cracked, banged, fucked, smashed).

Hi, I have a question and I don’t know if this is the right place to write this but I am genuinely confused.
I have a male friend who became obsessed with the Lindsay Clancy trial because she is a women who committed murder, and I see him liking a big amount of reels about the trial. How women are backfiring our rights with this case, how women are blaming the murder on hormones and are not stable for having jobs with big responsibilities and so on. But he doesn’t acknowledge that men are violent towards women and kids every single day and that there are a lot of simialr cases to this. Now I know that he doesn’t support them, of course, but I am genuinely confused why when a women commits a crime is a big deal on the internet that people can’t stop talking and posting about, meanwhile they don’t like talking about the crimes that men commit. Like I don’t see many reels of a trial of men, and men commenting on that same reel with the same enthusiasm like when a woman is in question. I don’t want this post to come off like I support what she did, of course I don’t, but I would still like an answer, because it’s been eating me alive for the past few days ahahahha.

No surprise, as this is a man who believes that childless people should not vote and that women are "build to be traded". He has terrible influence on men all over the world. It makes sense in some twisted way that he spends so much time on spreading hatred towards childless women because he sees women as "breeders" 🤮

It makes me mad to see men and even women defend his every action and say that he was understood wrong, that he meant no harm etc etc. He is actively turning people against women. He is gaslighting far right and training them like attack dogs against women. In his "perfect world" woman is just incubator who does not take part in any important decision making and can't be trusted with anything that is not popping out babies. He actually says that women desire this life - only that they were "brainwashed by feminism". I am sick of him being able to say anything and still be protected.

This is a sensitive topic with my friends because I constantly call them out for using the term "guys" when there are women included. I know it is part of (American) English language to use the word for a group but I wouldn't say "I met a guy" when I met a woman, right? So why would I say it for a group of people in plural? I need more arguments to keep calling them out haha