I’m an English major, but in order to full fill my hours requirement I started taking women and gender studies courses. I thought they would be easy classes. Honestly, I thought it was a bit much. I just thought it would be a bunch of crap about how the world is out to get women and it’s unfair. I thought it was just life and that’s how it is.

I was wrong.

The history, as much as it proves women have been treated poorly for years, it is in the past. So most people dismiss its importance. So what’s the issues now? A well-known issue is the media. Women are treated as sex icons and given impossible standards to meet. I emphasis impossible, because they are, not even the women they use as examples look like what they are trying to sell. You could write a couple of books about the media issue. There is also the pay issue that everybody knows about by now.

Neither of those issues scare me. What scares me is the fact that I have to watch my back if I take night classes. While guys are out buying dorm stuff and their books for freshman year, girls need to go and buy pepper spray and a Taser. However, some schools don’t allow those things on campus because they are considered as “weapons”. We live in a world where a girl is blamed for getting raped or sexually assaulted. They asked for it by being at the party. They asked for it by drinking. They asked for it by dressing like that. But according to society we are supposed to dress like that, it’s the image they sell. Even if society didn’t push that image, why can’t women feel confident in what they are wearing? Why are we not allowed to drink and have a good time? Why can’t guys just control themselves?

Brock Turner never should have gotten just a six-month sentence after what he did. He blamed alcohol for his actions, which is absurd. Then there was his father saying he was paying a steep price for twenty minutes of action. Seriously? Women are not here to service men whenever and however they like. We are human beings and we deserve to be treated with respect.

That’s not the only instance though. Awhile back I found a page called Breaking Out and it is was started by Duke students. These girls were victims of sexual assault or rape and in some cases Duke let their rapists back into the school. So apparently Brock’s dad didn’t need to work, he wasn’t even convicted of rape, but he could still go to Duke. You can’t tell me we aren’t a rape culture. We justify it, we joke about it, we accept it. Instead of blaming the guilty party, we blame the victim. I can deal with unequal pay. I can even deal with society trying to shove body images down my throat. I can’t deal with the lack of justice being given to women.

So don’t tell me women have equality. Don’t tell me that the arguments made have no validity. There is a problem if I can't go for a run at night because I have to worry about my safety. There is a problem when I have to worry about taking night classes because of my safety. Megan Trainor's song "No", I've heard guys talk about how it's a little rude. Why can't you just give a guy your name. Why can't we just have our privacy respected? Not every guy deserves a girl's name and number just because they asked. We should be allowed to go out with friends and not be judged for our clothing or judged for not giving some random our number. Women have come a long way in the world, but the fight is nowhere near over with.