As a woman, I have been sexually harassed. This isn’t a particularly earthshattering notion – in a study of nearly 2,000 people, approximately 65% of women have endured some form of street harassment, and 23% of those women have been sexually touched. I have been catcalled, I have been followed, I have been propositioned, and I have been inappropriately groped with no prior provocation. It doesn’t matter if I am dressed up in a bar with friends or walking home from the library at 1:00 in the morning in my sweats and slippers. It has never mattered if I was single or dating someone, if I was with friends or alone. For some bizarre, wildly unnerving reason, this is normal. Worse, it’s unmentionable in most cases – unless I’ve been assaulted in the absolute worst-case-scenario sense of the word, my cries for retribution and acceptance of responsibility fall on deaf ears. The simple fact of the matter is that most people who commit sexual harassment genuinely think that they are “just flirting,” that it isn’t a big deal, and that I, for bringing it up, am “a bitch.”

There were the numerous times I was shouted at to “back it up” or “take it off” by random men leaning out of car windows or following me around campus. There were the times I’ve had my rear end grabbed or spanked by people I didn’t know while waiting at the bar for my drink or talking to my friends. There was the time a drunk stranger asked me to kiss my friend for him while he watched, and when I refused to do so and refused to dance with him I was screamed at, chased into a corner, filmed with the man’s iPhone, and swung at. My only responses to his inappropriate behavior had been “no, sorry,” and “you’re making me uncomfortable.” I had to get bouncers at the bar in question to drag the man outside and still needed an army of male friends in tow to safely leave the bar, and still I was screamed at as I tearfully rounded the corner. There have been too many times that I have been followed or threatened with violence or had “it’s just a compliment, bitch” shouted after me as I ignored a man’s advances. There were the times I’ve spoken up, told the guy grabbing me to back off, and there have been the times when out of fear and embarrassment I’ve “let it go” as I was told and walked back to my room feeling dirty and humiliated. And if that’s uncomfortable for you to read, imagine how it felt to tolerate it.

I could try to put into words how all of my experiences with sexual harassment have made me feel, but I wouldn’t know what to say. How do you accurately convey to people who are already on the defensive when they click on your article what it feels like to have your body belong more to a drunken stranger’s hands than yourself? To feel, when walking home at night, frightfully aware of your body and what the man shouting at you from across the street wants to do to it, and how much closer it is to him than your safe, warm bed? How do I prove that just because I haven’t been assaulted, in the gravest definition, doesn’t mean that I haven’t been affected by harassment?

I decided to conduct my own informal survey and asked a small but diverse group of people (all anonymous and of varying gender identities) how certain forms of sexual harassment made them feel. I tried to place emphasis on the things that got written off as “no big deal,” the catcalling and quick ass-grabs that people are subjected to daily and asked to “let go.” While most of what I discovered mirrored my own experiences, other accounts took me by surprise.

Of the people surveyed, more than 94% admitted to being catcalled. Of that 94%, roughly 82% saw catcalling as exclusively negative – read: nothing about it was flattering to them. Many survey-takers expressed feelings of general discomfort and anger, stating that they felt “unsafe,” “threatened,” “dirty,” “misvalued [sic],” and “like less of a human being.” The majority admitted to feeling genuinely scared when they were catcalled by strangers, and even those few who said it “for a moment made [them] feel attractive” said that if they were not in a safe situation and surrounded by others they would be frightened or that even when taking it as a compliment they still felt “dirty and ashamed.” So, chances are, if you think that it’s just a compliment when you are catcalling someone, your logic is astoundingly flawed.

In addition to catcalling, survey-takers were asked if they have ever been touched by a flirting stranger in a way that made them feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Approximately 82% said yes, and admitted to feeling helpless, scared, and disrespected by the unwelcome touching. Many said that the experiences made them feel “less than human” or like they “weren’t viewed as a person.” For the majority of survey-takers, groping was not just unpleasant but a genuinely dehumanizing experience, and left them feeling “violated” and “inferior.” In many cases the people surveyed felt helpless to stop the situation, and in approximately 59% of cases of either unwanted verbal or physical attention, survey-takers felt unsafe in rejecting the advances and tolerated it to avoid retaliation. Basically, we are so acclimated to the idea of violence as a reaction that we let ourselves feel this uncomfortable just so we don’t get attacked.

30% of survey-takers have experienced violent reactions to rejection. 59% say they don’t feel safe walking home alone at night. 56% say they don’t feel safe in a bar setting without friends or a significant other and 88% have either considered carrying a weapon to feel safe walking alone or already do (mace, box cutters, and knives being popular choices among those that do). And I am one of those people. I can’t leave the house at night without a box cutter in my purse and mace on my belt, and while I’m a very outspoken person and will not hesitate to turn around and confront someone who is being inappropriate with me, there are times I have thought to myself, “if I tell this guy to back off, I could get hurt.” We wear fake wedding rings and give out fake phone numbers and have friends pose as significant others because inventing a life you cannot insert yourself into is a safer way out of the room in many cases than simply saying “no.” One surveyor admitted that on multiple occasions, when politely saying, “I’m not interested,” they got “I would beat the shit out of you, bitch” or “I’ll kill you bitch” in response. Having gotten similarly aggressive responses myself, I have to admit – I wasn’t at all surprised. Disgusted, angry, but not surprised.

Worst of all, 77% of people surveyed believed that they could not talk about their experiences or how it made them feel because they believed they would not be taken seriously, and only a deeply unsettling 18% felt that if harassers knew how their actions affected people they would change their behavior.

I know, it was only a survey of a few people. Many of you reading this are probably thinking, but that doesn’t apply to everyone or well I don’t ever get responses like that. Take a look at the national statistics and you’ll find that women and men alike have all shared in the dehumanizing, uncomfortable experience of being harassed. Yes, my particular survey group was small – around 30 individuals, because I wanted to place an emphasis on personal experience and feelings – but the numbers don’t lie. There is something inherently wrong about how our society handles harassment and “flirting,” and we need to change it. But how do we do so in a way that is constructive?

For that, I don’t have an answer. I personally believe that if we can help harassers to see what they’re doing to people, at least a decent percentage of them will look inward and change their behavior, but maybe I’m being overly optimistic. A number of the people surveyed said that they didn’t think harassers cared about anyone’s feelings, that they harass others exclusively “to make [people] uncomfortable” or that they “enjoy the power” and don’t feel any desire to change their ways because they “still get an ass-grab out of it.” Others expressed that they were frustrated with recent movements to get perpetrators of assault to change their ways because it was futile, and that the best way they could think of dealing with it was to go out less or learn to fight people off. Some admitted that they never felt like a victim until recent conversations about assault assigned them the title. I got a wide variety of opinions from even this small assortment of participants, but all of them seemed to agree that they didn’t see society changing anytime soon. Which was really, really disheartening to hear.

I definitely agree with both sides – while I think I shouldn’t have to learn to fight anyone in order to safely get from building to building after dark, I recognize that, because people are awful, I need to. I recognize that forfeiting my safety because "they just shouldn't harass people in the first place" or because it's genuinely not my fault isn't a viable option. I'm still going to take measures to protect myself. And while I can't, for my own safety, always call out my harassers (that's what fake numbers and good friends are for), I can tell the majority of them to back off and make them face their own behavior. Instead of putting up with it or staying silent, I can say, "you're making me uncomfortable." I can say "you're creeping me out" and "I said no" and "don't touch me." I'll ask them why they think their behavior is appropriate. If I'm safe, if I'm in public and can get someone else's attention doing it, I'd rather draw attention to the inappropriate behavior than be forced to endure it silently. If I can make them embarrassed in front of others or make them feel disgusting about themselves for even a moment, it's a victory. I could just call them an asshole, but then I'm being "crazy" and "unreasonable." If I can make them feel like an asshole, I've won, and hopefully saved the next girl from enduring the same experience.

There are going to be times that you can't do this, of course. There are always going to be exceptions. But I feel like it's important to realize that we have options, that we are allowed to have a voice. Maybe I'm optimistic, but I hope that by making our harassers uncomfortable with themselves and their behavior, we can begin to put an end to sexual harassment.