#Metoo

Women everywhere are posting it. On Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. Even Snapchat, in a few rare cases. They post it in response to a plea: to spread awareness about the actions of others. "If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote 'Me too' as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem."

It started with Alyssa Milano. The actress ("Charmed", "Who's The Boss", "Wet Hot American Summer: 10 Years Later"), wrote it in response to Harvey Weinstein's blatant abuse of power and sexual assault. The tweet went up on October 15th, and it's gone viral since.

You may have seen him on the news recently. It's this big whole thing.

And to be honest? Yeah.

Me too.

Ask any woman you know and they can tell you some stories about being catcalled, being harassed, being followed by strangers, shouted at, demanded things. There's one woman on Instagram who even takes selfies with her catcallers and posts it on the site (her name is Noa Jansma and her Instagram account is @dearcatcallers. It's amazing).

Me too.

There was one morning when I was out for a run over the summer. The sun had been up for a while. I'd been doing a five-mile trail that morning and I was sweating buckets; the particular stretch I was on had no tree coverage. Because it is Florida and it was 7:00 AM and it was already 85 degrees outside, I was running in my favorite pair of running shorts and my favorite sports bra. I had my watch, but I'd accidentally left my pepper spray at home. I recall that I had about two miles left until I got home. I was booking it.

And then I zoned in from my zoned out state and realized that about 8 high school lemurs (ugh, youths,) of about fourteen or fifteen were spread out in a line across the pavement, and they were staring at me.

They were smiling.

It stopped me in my tracks.

I remember immediately being disgusted. Immediately being frustrated. Immediately being embarrassed.

Because that was the way I had to go, I had no choice. I had no phone. I put my head down and tried to puff myself up (ha, I'm a midget, good luck with that,) and barreled towards them.

No sooner had I taken five steps than they started to shout at me. First, they crooned. Disgusting things. The called me baby, legs, beautiful. "Where you going, gorgeous?"

When I ignored them, at ten feet away, they begin to shout. They began to curse. How dare I not acknowledge them? How dare I try to avoid them, running through the grass?

At two feet away, one of them stepped directly into my path and reached out to grab my sweaty arm.

I recall adrenaline flooded my system. I remember screaming at the top of my lungs for them to get away from me, get off, don't come near me, and the whole time I was charging through the line and away. I didn't slow down until I was a mile away, and my split time decreased by 40 seconds. Once I slowed, of course, I had to stop. I cried for a little bit while I slogged the rest of the way back home. I was that scared.

And that's not the only instance I had. Times even in the winter, times were I was fully clothed. It happens all the time.

It happens to nearly every woman out there, even those too young to realize it's happening.

(For some of us, it starts as young as eleven years old.)

Eleven. Let that sink in.

So, gentlemen, if there's any of you reading this, consider this: If you've ever been a catcaller, or if you've ever considered it, it's not a compliment. Don't shout at us. We don't like it.

It makes us disgusted and afraid.

And ladies, maybe it's our turn, too. We've posted our statuses, we've ranted to our friends- but it's time to sit down with our male friends and tell them the truth. We can't just expect them to know (although we all wish they did).

It's on both sides to fix the issue - one a little more than the other, true, but still. If every woman told one male friend what it was like, imagine the difference it would make.

In the meantime, catch us uploading our statuses.

#metoo