A few weeks ago, I was waiting for my friend outside a restaurant when this group of loud, drunken guys walked by me, and one of them (presumably in an effort to show off in front of his friends) yelled something along the lines of, “Hey sexy baby, how you doin’?” at me. I had been completely zoned out, staring at my phone when they all approached me, and was so startled that I automatically slipped into the typical polite/charming mode I default to when interacting with strangers and responded with a friendly, “I’m doing well, thanks. How are you?” The aggressor, who was standing in front of me expectantly waiting for my reaction, was so taken aback at my response that he literally stumbled back into his group of friends, didn’t even reply to me, and stuttered to them that he wasn’t expecting me to react in the way I did & be so nice/polite.

As they all hurriedly walked away, a few confusedly looking back at me, I realized what had just happened. Men catcalling, hitting on, and otherwise harassing women (particularly in such an aggressive/abrasive manner) is rarely an attempt at actual human interaction; it’s a means through which to invade a woman’s space and establish dominance. And by responding in the way I did – as a mere human being courteously communicating with another human being – he was struck by the reminder that I’m an actual person: not a sex object, or a means by which to validate his masculinity/dominance, or anything less than a human individual with thoughts/feelings/hopes/dreams of my own. The fact that the simple realization that I’m a person was enough to send him reeling and leave him (and his friends) visibly shaken is why I need feminism.