“When I got punched, and everyone went and shook the hand of the puncher.”

I'm a Mumbai-based writer who loves all things pop culture and feminism.

Responses have been taken from threads 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

"And I wasn't exactly thrilled at the time, but now I realize that this teacher was really just trying to get me acquainted with maths, as she would with any other student, in spite of how rude I was and how easily she could have just given up and said "Fuck it, this little jerk doesn't want to learn". But the horrible thing was, even after she started teaching me after class, and even after I started to appreciate her efforts towards the end of my year, I still gave in to peer pressure and made fun of her behind her back.  I didn't have the balls to tell my friends what I really thought, or to openly acknowledge that I could be very wrong about people. These days, I'm pursuing a career that often involves programming and maths, and in addition to the fact that I find maths more and more useful each year, I'm also really starting to see how fascinating and elegant it is. I really wish that I'd been a smart enough person back in class to see what my teacher was trying to show me, instead of just mocking her like a little prick." — Anonymous

"Apparently her maternal grandfather had hid his Jewish ancestry and just told everyone he was Hungarian. That was the moment I really started to think. If this woman that I loved, this woman I knew to be so kind, so intelligent, so beautiful and of such good moral character, if she could be 1/4 Jewish, what does that mean? She was a muse for my ideology. I saw her as a prime example of Aryan purity. A model of European values and beauty. And she was, as far as we were concerned, a Jew (or what the Nazis would have called a mischling). A few other things happened too before I would snap out of it and leave the movement. Two years ago I left and now I'm back together with that "Jew". That wonderful, wonderful "Jew"". — FormerBadMan

"Couldn't everyone tell that they were the confident ones and I was terrified of them? Well no, they couldn't. It was an epiphany that wow, other people are actual worried about what I think of them just like I'm worried about what they think. And if you avoid talking to people, that's actually hurtful." — Catharas

"I finally got frustrated and started stealing his stuff and making him chase me to get it back. He graduated a year ahead of me and blocked me on everything and it still took me three to four years to realize how much of an insanely creepy stalker I used to be. I wanted to apologize but he never answered my contact attempts and I found out recently that he died in a car accident last year." — Suyefuji