No, I did not wear high heels for four years. Nor did I live in a large shoe-shaped house. In October 2018, I founded the FemMetal project with a friend. In the beginning, the whole project was an Instagram page. Later, FemMetal became a website and an online magazine.

Now for some reason, a large number of the men roaming the social media outlets like mindless zombies, tend to assume that if a page posts about a female musician, then the admin behind the page is, without any doubt, a woman. That would be the smarter lot of the social media male horde. There is an even dumber faction that has acted as if I – the admin – am every woman I was posting about. I received countless messages and comments from men complimenting “my” looks on different images of different musicians. How smart. The most logical explanation for their action is that they thought I’m a shapeshifter. I am not.

In either case, whether these miscreants believed the admin is a woman or that I am the musician in the posts, the least I can say about the messages I received is that they were disgraceful. Some even included a visual aid for their fragile masculinity, as my inbox flooded at times with pictures of ding-dongs, of all shapes, colours, sizes, and circumcision. It’s terrifying that if I was only assumed to be a woman by this witless bunch, and received that kind and amount of messages objectifying women and sexually harassing them, then what kind of messages would actual women – actual female artists simply trying to share their art with the world – receive.

To add to the travesty, I lately added a feature to the website that allows visitors to chat with us live through Facebook Messenger. The purpose was to allow fans, bands, and promoters to reach us as easily as possible. However, for some reason, the brainless dudes who were hanging about on some of the interview articles, definitely not reading because I highly doubt their ability to read, have made the brilliant (sarcasm) assumption that if they click the button they would be able to chat with the lady the article is about. What sort of education has led these nincompoops to that conclusion is a mystery. However, the stream of harassing messages flowed again through the new channel.

The world is a safer place for women to live in than it was a hundred years ago. However, the veil hiding people behind screens from the other end of the social media outlets or websites they are using is revealing the animalistic instincts of some people. The same savage ideas that made men burn women or bury them alive or treat them the same way they’d treat furniture drives some of the men cowering behind screens to objectify women and make the internet a hell of a place for them to be on.

And again, I felt the impact of this only from the few idiots who assumed they are talking to a woman, only from being a half-time woman. I am terrified of how full-time women, constantly under the lens of these horrible men, would feel.

What brings me joy is that these simpletons have wasted their messages and dick pics on a straight average-looking dude.