Right now, someone is probably being raped or sexually assaulted. That's disgusting, isn't it? Every 107 seconds, someone in the United States is sexually assaulted. That means, while you're reading this article, about a dozen or so women and men will be assaulted somewhere in this country - that totals to around 293,000 people a year.

Did you know that over half of rapes that occur are not reported to the police? Either because the victim is told "no one will believe you anyway" or a college brushes it under the rug to avoid hurting their reputation. In fact, 91% of colleges reported that they had zero rape reports on their campuses in 2014, but it doesn't take a degree to know that is simply not true. If you were to look up any school's data (if they actually make it public) on how many rapes were reported to someone on campus and how many actually led to police involvement and arrest/expulsion from school - you'd be very disappointed and amazed at the lack of care from universities. This results in a stunning 98% of rapists never even spend a single day behind bars. That's why when the school leaders or police don't care... somebody has to - we do.

Women need other women. Women need to support each other.

I once read a story where two women were grocery shopping late at night and both were leaving the store at the same time. Outside, there stood a man who stared at each other in a way that made both of them have chills down their spine and keep looking over their shoulder - this man was planning to attack them. As they both hurried to their car, they quickly shoved their groceries in the back of the car. As the first woman finished, the other one got scared of being alone in the parking lot with the man. With shaking hands, she kept throwing groceries in her car... until she noticed something. The other woman, now safely in her locked car was just sitting with her lights on that woman, refusing to drive away. Once the second woman finished putting her groceries away and got safely into her car, the doors locked and lights on, and she drove away, the other woman drove away. That is what we need.

I read another story on Tumblr by a user named natnovna. The story went as follows:

"I was 14 and I was walking through a mall by myself at 12am after my shift at Coldstone Creamery lol and a bunch of men started whistling and meowing and getting really close to me and they kept asking me questions and I kept not answering until I didn’t know what else to do so I said “I’m only 14” and almost in unison they said “we don’t care” I was so fucking scared i didn’t know what to do and they kept talking about how I looked and how my body looked and what they would do I was on the verge of tears I was all alone in a huge mall I knew I couldn’t outrun them all I felt totally hopeless until a maintenance worker came up to all of us with a huge industrial broom in her hand, I thought she was going to yell at all of us for being in the mall after hours bc she probably thought we were all friends but instead she cursed all of them out in spanish, threatened to press a panic button on her belt and then proceeded to walk me to the basement garage and waited with me until my mom got there to pick me up she had a death grip on her cart the whole time and a face of steel she looked so strong and I just kept saying thank you and she kept saying not to thank her because she had to stop them.

that was the moment I realized women were the most important beings on this planet and we have to protect each other bc nobody else is going to, she didn’t even know me, we couldn’t even communicate that well because of the language barrier, she could have lost her job for waiting with me in the parking lot but she looked out for me when she didn’t have to, she had nothing to gain from it, I’m 21 now and I tell everyone this story even though it happened 7 years ago, what she did that night helped me form and shape lot of my beliefs early on."

There is a war going on out there. A war that women are under attack all over the world and we're not going to end this war by ourselves. We have to work together, we have to support each other, we have to protect each other. We can't do this without each other.