Last week my male professor asked my class, comprised of all females, what it was like to be a woman. What we told him was that, essentially, we love who we are but the world does not. We are punished for being women.

I asked him if he knew what it felt like to walk down the street and have every pair of male eyes follow you, to gawk at you, but not really you. They follow your legs, your ass, your breasts. It's like I signed some invisible contract to relinquish my humanity every time I leave my house. I'm not a person anymore, just a body.

I asked if he'd ever been whistled at, or told to "smile darling," or shouted at to "twirl around in your dress for me." He said no, I said, I didn't think so. It's degrading and dehumanizing, and happens almost exclusively to women.

We also told him how expensive it was to be a woman. Newsflash: I can't really control the blood gushing out of my vagina every month. Girls need tampons, they need pads. So why the hell do they cost so much money?

And why do I feel compelled to hide my tampon in my hand or up sleeve when I need to change it in a public restroom? Why do girls exchange feminine hygiene products like a drug deal is happening? We've been shamed into hiding the natural things our body does. Everybody knows we have our periods, so why does a clean, wrapped tampon freak guys out?

Because they don't like thinking that a vagina does anything else other than offer a brief home for their penis.

We're reduced to our sexuality once again. We're objects for consumption.

Some guys just don't want us to be humans, to be people. They want to be able to mold us, shape us, into the perfect woman, to be able to explain everything and have us on a little leash for when they need us.

I told my professor that apparently I was too dumb to understand certain movies because I was a girl. One time, a guy asked me what my favorite movie was and I said "'Miracle,' it's a hockey movie." He said "I know what it is. I just thought you were a 'The Notebook' kind of girl." First of all, there is nothing wrong with liking Nicholas Sparks books and movies. They just happen to not be for me. I could have simply said that, but for some reason, I felt the need to defend myself against the notion that I liked sappy, romantic movies, building up my credibility for this guy by going on about how I'd never actually seen "The Notebook" and didn't plan to, blah blah blah. Then I asked him his favorite movie, and he said "Saving Private Ryan." I told him I'd never seen it and he said "Oh, that's OK, you kind of have to watch it with a guy to understand it."

Yeah, read that again.

Offended, I asked why. And condescendingly (as I would come to know as his way) he replied "Well how much do you know about history and World War II?"

World War II is literally the most often taught topic in any given history class; American, European, World, etc. Everyone with a basic high school education, perhaps even a middle school education, knows the details of World War II. In high school, I took AP European History, AP U.S. History, and AP Government, and passed all of them. I also don't live under a rock.

I have since watched "Saving Private Ryan" on my own without a guy present, and I'm happy to report that I understood all of it, despite my vagina.

(I am still friends with this guy, and when I asked if he would mind if I ever used this story for an article he said sure but that I had to say that we're still friends and that I don't hate him. We are and I don't, he's okay, just misguided.)

When I told this story to my class, my professor was shocked and my classmates furious, launching into a sharing time of other dumb things guys have said to us that insult our intelligence, our ambition, our worth.

Sometimes, it kind of sucks being a woman. I have to work harder to prove myself, to prove myself worthy.

I've stopped putting my head down when a man yells at me on the street; I glare at them, forcing them to make eye contact with a human being, not a piece of meat. I've stopped hiding my tampons when I leave my computer to use the library's bathroom; I hold it as nonchalantly as I would my phone or my keys. I've stopped defending myself against typical female stereotypes, as if that makes me better; I tell my boyfriend not to say "you're not like other girls," or to say something negative about another girl in order to say something positive about me.

We told this to our professor, that sometimes it sucks, but that's why we're feminists, that's why we won't stay quiet, that's why we're working hard toward our education.

I'm not going to apologize for being a woman anymore. It's exhausting, and I have better things to do, like dismantle the patriarchy.