So at my uni there’s this middle school aged girl who’s going there. She and I are in the same study group and I said something along the lines of “I wish i got to go to college at your age” (just because I like the class structure more) and she replied with “there are a lot of pedophiles on campus so there’s some trade offs.”
I didn’t like…freak out externally. Luckily I’m good at hiding my emotions. But I just felt sick. Like physically sick. Like i nearly wanted to go throw up in a bin sick.
I don’t even know why specifically I felt like that. To be honest I don’t know how much she was being sarcastic. I don’t know if its that I feel like i can’t trust people at my campus [I already know there are bad people here. No shit. So why would that cause it?], or if its because i felt bad for her for having to be afraid of that [she’s pretty “mature” (for lack of a better term) so i don’t know if that makes sense either] or…I don’t know. I just wanted to tell someone because my therapy appointment got canceled and I just flet really, really bad.
Sorry I didn’t mean to come off as invalidating either. Assuming you’re a trans woman (correct me if I’m wrong) you get your own experiences and confrontations with misogyny. Any of these experiences you can avoid are wins, it’s not a right of passage to face misogynistic abuse as a girl to be a woman. I’m a trans man who has faced disproportionately much when I lived as a young girl, it doesn’t make me less of a man either.
When you live your live as a women, you are at some point be forced to learn that dangerous people live among us. They can be your friendly science partner who suddenly takes advantage of you when you are in a vulnerable state. It’s a really sad reality but I think people just learn to live with… Everyone has different ways to cope with it though.