[tw: abuse, intersections with homophobia, sexism, and ableism]

Some gems from when I was bullied in middle and high school:

-Being asked if you want to become a nun when you grow up.

-Being told nobody will ever want to date you because you’re so ugly and gross.

-Having one boy pretend to be in love with you because it’s ZOMG SO FUNNY and harassing you sexually every time he sees you (I was twelve at the time and so was he, by the way).

-Being called a “neutral” (i.e., “hermaphrodite”) and told you should date the other “neutral” of the class (a chubby boy who hadn’t gotten over losing his mother when he was a child).

-Being called a “dyke” and having skinny classmates recoil in horror and protect their asses when they see you – because of course it’s a well-known fact chubby girls are lesbian ass-grabbers. (I came out in my early twenties, but what the heck?).

-Similarly, being told repeatedly for years that you’re unfeminine… because you have a belly and curves, then being told you’re growing feminine and even sexy when you go on a crash diet and lose your hips, ass, breasts… Eventually complaining about having “nothing feminine” to the owner of a gym and being told it isn’t true because you have hips. (I was already aware of the contradictory social message at the time.)

-Basically constantly being told that being “feminine” is having the body of a stereotypical fourteen-year-old, all of this while your body is still growing.

-Being called a clown and a rough peasant girl (I have nothing but respect for farmers, but you know what it’s actually about). Being told you can’t possibly have any delicacy even though you’re better at drawing, painting, reading, philosophy, and examining feelings than anybody else.

-Having people describe your “stuff” and how disgusting it supposedly is in details, thus revealing that they’ve been oggling you a whole lot. Because oggling obsessively someone you find so unattractive is in no way contradictory or creepy.

-Being told you can never be “cool” or earn the slightest sliver of respect or peace. Being made fun of or touched in unpleasant ways when you get a new haircut or wear something cute.

-Having objects thrown at you and boys threatening or assaulting you just because, then hearing gossip about it (“he got'er good!”).

-Hearing that the girl who never comes to class because of health issues isn’t welcome to show up because she’s fat and has a history of self-harm.

-Dreading going to the swimming pool as part of PE class.

-Being persuaded for years you suck at PE and sports, then discovering you have great flexibility and stamina.

-Having a slightly less chubby girl constantly talking shit about you in a desperate effort to draw attention away from herself. Hearing one skinny boy with a metabolic problem (he was eating all the time but never managed to gain weight) call her “ham thighs.”

-Hearing gossip about how that one fat boy is fat because he produces too many oestrogens and is growing man-boobs. Interesting, so being fat gives you attributes from the opposite sex, how does that work exactly?

-Having a “friend” discover that you “actually have a pretty face when I really look at it.”

-Kind of having fantasies about living in Rubens’s time. (By the way, not that it matters much but I wasn’t actually overweight.)

-Having your academic achievements reduced to the idea you have nothing better to do than study during your free time because fat girls have no friends and no life.

-Hearing that one disabled fat female teacher is “certainly a Virgo, if you know what I mean.”

-Hearing another fat female teacher called a particularly cheap prostitute (while the very obese male teacher was mostly left alone).