Recently my best friend Annie asked me what I thought about catcalling, an extremely common form of sexual harassment commonly affecting women and femmes (including Annie and I). It is getting warmer outside, and more people are walking around doing fun summer things…and a lot of them are getting catcalled.

The first time I was in my early teens, walking through my neighborhood with my mom. Two little boys would not stop yelling, “Hot thing in the blue shorts!” and giggling. It was funny and cute. They were just doing what they saw grown-ups do.

Next came a pig call paired with a sneer from a man smoking in the Walmart parking lot. I was incensed by the implication that I did not deserve to be referred to as a person.

College in a big city and long walks by myself came with a barrage of catcalls, ranging from awkward compliments to creepy, thinly veiled threats. Oh, and just to disprove Amy Schumer’s racist assertions, these catcalls come from all kinds of people. (Some more thorough arguments on this aspect of the issue are included here and here. My disgust or even just my disregard was often met with angry yelling that seemed to explode from nowhere.

“SMILE!”

“Hey, beautiful, how old are you?”

“Where did you find that one? Can I have her?”

“Ew, Look at her THIGHS!”

“Hey, let me get up under that!”

“BITCH! Come here!”

I had always been led to believe that this was the price I must pay to be feminine in public, but no matter what I wear or how I react, it happens. Catcalling is not a compliment; it is a power play. It is a physical manifestation of how society picks people apart for consumption, for instant gratification. They do not harass you to flirt or ask you out, they do it to watch you shrink in shame, to blush and clamor to cover up and be invisible. It elevates them to remind you that your body, from which you live, love, and see the world, exists only to be judged and ridiculed by others.

My best friend wondered why it was often considered nothing more than a funny summer cliché to harass strangers. Why is it so socially acceptable? Everyone in the theater laughs when someone whistles at a lady from their car window in a movie, but those movies do not show the car slowing down and getting closer. You never see the lady’s uneasy smile turn into a tight line of fear as she looks for witnesses in case the driver of the car decides to grab her. That is not a worst-case scenario; it happens all the time.

See, my best friend always asks the toughest, most nuanced questions. My answer is that as long as people continue to treat certain bodies like garbage, harassment of all varieties will continue. As long as our president gets away with joking about sexual assault, it will linger. As long as people are dehumanized and even killed for what they look like or who they love, people will be harassed and disrespected. Catcalling is silly and annoying, sure, but it is also a symptom of an enduring social sickness.