I Am Entitled To Walk Down The Street Without Fearing Men

What is it like to be a woman in 2018? It's fear, and paranoia, and unjust patriarchal societal rules. It's unobtainable standards and sexist ideas of what we can and should be. It's living in a constant state of fear because we die for saying the wrong thing all the time.

For example, January 2017, Misha Moore is savagely beaten and then shot for refusing $8 in exchange for sex.

And on February 2nd, 2016, Caroline Nosal is shot and killed by a former co-worker, Christopher O'Kroley, after she rejected his attempts to ask her out, and reporting him when he began harassing her after she rejected him.

And most recently, May 18, 2018, Shana Fisher is shot and killed in class by a boy who had been rejected by her for four months because he couldn't take a simple rejection.

We live in a society where the men think they are entitled to women just because they ask nicely, and "no" is less potent than "I have a boyfriend" because we as women aren't valued as equals by our male counterparts.

Women walk down the streets every day, prepared to be harassed, catcalled, ogled, touched without consent, and everything else we can think of. We have to carry pepper spray and keep our keys between our fingers to protect ourselves, or we risk our well being, and sometimes our lives.

And at the same time, we risk our reputations leaving the house every day because if something happens to us, our reputations get dragged through the mud. We were "asking for it" or something equally stupid.

I, a human woman, am entitled to walk down the street without having to accept that men are going to come put their hands on me and tell me how many things they want to do to me because I was given the crappy chromosomes that cursed me with curves instead of a thing dangling between my legs.

I am entitled to be a human being, and make decisions freely, without fear of death for saying no. But there are people who don't seem to agree with that. Men who hold women responsible for their own rejections.

There are men who take the word "no" and turn it into a "yes" because they don't think there is any logical reason for a woman to say no to them. Because they are clearly just perfect, and how could any woman not want them?

But it is 2018, and women are still dying for having a backbone. Women are dying to justify saying no. Women are dying. And they shouldn't be. But we are every day. Something needs to be done, and respect needs to be given to the female gender. We deserve to be treated as humans, because that is what we are.