Dear Men, Please Stop!

Dear Men, this is a way for me to politely make you aware and ask you to stop what your doing for a minute; put yourself in mine and the million other girls' shoes and think about how you would feel as a young teenage girl that is getting harassed by much older, ignorant, disrespectful men. See, you wouldn't like it, and yet men still carry on, unknowingly torturing us inside when we ask for you to simply stop, but most of you refuse and carry on until you get something out of it.

As a 16-year-old girl, I would love to go a day without being catcalled, or stared at as you walk or drive by. I often feel like I am a piece of meat waiting to be snatched up and chewed to pieces by the great stare and smirk you display on your face. When I am out in public I don't go a day without a man twice my age whistling and shouting stuff at me, such as "Yummy, aren't you delicious?" or "Heya, babycakes." And I know it seems stupid and silly for me to care so much about it, but it makes me, a teenage girl trying to live her life as much as she can, feel uncomfortable, insecure and scared because of the middle-aged man that should be fully aware that I am young enough to be his daughter, but still he carries on and will do to the next young girl that catches his eye.

I once confronted a man after him approaching me and demanding my social media information and continuing to do so even after I politely refused. This made him agitated and he spat on my new trainers and rode off on his bike. This shows the disrespect some men have towards young women. Before he rode off, I asked him to stop and told him my age. He said he didn't believe me because of the way I dressed and that it is my fault he can't keep himself together. "The way I dressed" was no reason for him to harass me. That day I was on my way home from a friend's birthday meal, so we had all put on our best posh outfits and did a little eye makeup. But I still did not look a day over 16. The man looked as if he was in his late 20s or early 30s. When this event happened, I was only 13-years-old and even though I was tall for my age, I still had a baby face of a child.

But the worst part for me is that I am a femme teenage lesbian, which I have come to believe is a struggle for older men to understand. When I simply tell them that I'm "Not interested in men and that I like girls" they think that I am lying and tricking them, so that they will leave me alone and go away. But even if that was the case, why wouldn't they take the hint that I'm not into them?

Men need to know and be aware of how "cat calling" makes women/girls feel. It feels like harassment and it can sometimes be intimidating. What happened to the good old fashioned gentlemen that we see in old American movies? But that is a no longer reality. Those are dreams.

Note: This is not me saying I hate all men. This is me simply just wishing that some would have more decency and take our feelings of being cat called under consideration and see that it can be taken as verbal abuse and harassment.

Thank you for reading!