Maria Stoian

I'm crying.

This is such a powerful graphic novel. All of these stories are so raw, and so real, and I wish I didn't relate to so many of them. I hope that the people who contributed to this piece feel some sense of closure or validation or found compassion after they shared their stories.

Rape culture is a thing. Rape is a thing. Harassment is a thing. After the video of that woman walking around the streets of New York in a t-shirt for ten hours, I shared my experiences with street harassment because someone asked me to. My story was pulled to pieces by some asshole who told me to "take it as a compliment." "You can just tell him to stop." "It's not that bad." "Don't take it so seriously, it's just a joke." "Lighten up, don't be so sensitive. Stop being such an entitled feminist."

Shortly after, many friends of mine rallied around me and he managed to storm off in a huff, writing angry Facebook posts about bitchy dyke feminazis for some time.

... I could go on with other stories, but I'll leave it as an example.

SO THIS BOOK validates me. And my experiences. It's so hard to read, and it could be triggering for a lot of people so please take your time, take care of yourself, you don't have to read this book if you don't want to and it's perfectly okay if you don't.

But this is such an important book. There are so many different stories about men, about women, female victims, male victims, domestic violence, abuse, street harassment, about lack of consent and everything in between.

Please read this book.

(tw: domestic violence, rape, harassment, suicide, victim-shaming)
… (mais)

A rather difficult to read graphic novel, one that depicts what it is like to be a woman in the world (and yes, there were some that demonstrated abuse of males, too). Women and girls being grabbed, being given ultimatums and threats, being disregarded and dismissed, or worse. This was derived from real life stories told by real life people, and as such has even more of a punch, though one of the stories was difficult to believe as written, which adds some level of doubt to the work and loses it a star. A quick read, but not an easy one.… (mais)