Every time I walk into a gas station in any town along any highway in this country, I can feel the weight of my chest. I can feel the underwear I am wearing: how they fit, how they bisect my backside. I can feel the size, color, and softness of my lips. I can feel every muscle involved in my pivoting hips. When I open the cooler door to grab an iced tea, the cold air and the man to my left remind me that I am not wearing a bra and that I exist as a plane with peaking points of interest. My society forces me to be constantly self-conscious. I know what my body looks like. All the time. I am a woman.

The difficult thing about speaking to situations such as gas station elevator eyes is that they are seemingly harmless. There is no physicality to it. Discomfort is nearly silent. Nearly invisible. It is easy for our man’s world to brush it off as women playing a card or being overly sensitive, the way our man’s world brushes off many attempts at women feeling comfortable in their lives.

When a strange man asks me if the carpet matches the drapes or tells me that he bets I give good head, it doesn’t mean much to me on it’s own. It is commonplace. It is a set of words that at most makes me uncomfortable and a bit more pessimistic towards mankind. The real problem with calling a woman ‘baby’ and getting frustrated when she doesn’t react well to hollow compliments is that these verbal and nonverbal advances add to the lexicon of fear that we take with us everywhere we go. To every bar. On every walk to work. Into every form of public transportation. Each instance is catalogued. There is an overarching tone that looms, sometimes very quietly, over our tittied bodies.

My having a vagina puts me in danger and introverts me. Some nights, when I know I am to walk home alone, I wear something a bit less flattering than I’d like to. I change the way I walk; swaying less with my hips. When I am warm and want to walk around in my apartment with little clothing on, I have to close the blinds, whether or not I necessarily find that privacy important. Sometimes I can’t believe I do these things. Sometimes I can’t believe I don’t do these things more often.

Trust that I (and most women I know) would tell all catcallers off in some way or another. But, there are plenty of times when I have to curb my natural, angry reaction to ensure my safety. Will anger turn this pervert into an active predator? Will my standing up for myself color me red like a bullseye target? Because I don’t know the answer to this, I have to air on the side of caution. No matter how superior my mind and moral compass may be to these men’s, my body, inferior, will fail me.  It will submit. I stand up for myself by standing down. Trust that this is very hard on my pride. Trust that the last thing I want is for power to remain unchecked by opposition.

I am the first to admit that I worry too much about exceptional hypotheticals. When I assume a murderer is going to somehow break down all 3 doors of my apartment, trap me in my room, stab my cat, and then kidnap me for a lifetime worth of torture, I am worrying too much.  When I go for a run and for the first half mile think about how much it would hurt and cost to break my teeth in a fall, I am worrying too much. But, when I am riding my bike at night and imagining predators around every corner, I am not being paranoid. There is a reason I have to stay alert. We all do. We the half with sexuality that is treated as a prize or a drug or currency, we the half in a species displaying sexual dimorphism, especially have to. Rape culture is very alive and very well.

So, no, being stared down at a bar doesn’t ruin my life or even my day. Being told I should smile more doesn’t send my thoughts to a dark place where they can’t be retrieved. Hearing shit rappers tell me to suck their dick or shit country singers tell me that they’re gonna feed me whiskey and take me back to their pickup truck doesn’t hurt my feelings. It baffles me and frustrates me and makes me want to move to the middle of nowhere, but it doesn’t hurt me. Subtly and slowly, though, it does change me.

I don’t want to think about my breasts when I walk into a bar. I want them to just be there the way my knuckles are there. But, you know, no, I didn’t mean that. I don’t want them to be there the way my knuckles are there, either. They are cuter than that. They are cute little things! We shouldn’t need to desexualize every part of the body, and we never could. Physical attraction is a really fun part of being an animal.  What we need to do is sexualize people in a more civilized way. Associating the body with sex isn’t inherently bad; it is inherently natural. It’s relationship to provocation, however, gets it into trouble.  I don’t want to be a walking invitation, no matter how I dress or carry myself.

I am not a television set or a nice steak or a mirage, do not look at me like I am. You can think that I am sexy, but you cannot possibly think that I am yours.