When I was 8, an older boy from my school tricked me into getting under the fence to part of the school, and threatened to beat and rape me if I didn’t sneak into the school and let him in. This was 50 ft from my front door.
A guy in my highschool was so desperate to date my friend that he figured out where my sister lived because he knew I liked to go visit her after school, and he sat on her stairs so he could force me to befriend him.
A male friend of mine once said “I’d have dated her but you got to her first” when discussing me to my then boyfriend.
A man tried to follow me home from Wawa one night claiming it “wasn’t safe out for a girl my age.“
A man at Wawa once harassed me while I was picking up milk at 2am because I was in my pajamas and not “dolled up all pretty for him”.
I have, on multiple occasions, had to duck inside buildings to lose the tail of a creepy man following me in the city.
I had an elderly gentleman stare at me for an entire 20 minute septa ride while sitting right next to me, blocking me into my seat, and upon my getting up to disembark the trolley, pulled my headphone out and creepily whispered “thank you for sharing your beauty with me” while touching me.
I’ve had my boss at the pizza place I worked at joke about how he could rape me during my shifts at work, and only backed off once he realized I had steel pointed knuckles and a knife onhand during every shift.
I’ve had customers at said pizza shop wait until we closed and try to follow me to my car because they knew the only free parking nearby was blocks away in the dark unpopulated areas.
I’ve had the guys from down the street from my old apartment try to follow me to my car and to my apartment because I wouldn’t respond to their catcalling.
I’ve had people proposition me for sex on my way to interviews, midday in corporate Philadelphia.
Don’t tell me “not all men”. Not one man, upon hearing these stories, has ever reaffirmed that whatever happened wasn’t my fault, never that the men who did it were in the wrong.
I don’t care how much it hurts your feelings. Men everywhere make me and women and girls around me feel so unsafe they have to plan their outfits around whether it will make people blame them if something goes wrong.
I live my life in fear. At least live five minutes of yours in guilt.
