What would the world look like if girls were taught they were volcanoes?

One day when I was four years old, a man stopped his car on the street under my family’s balcony, pulled his penis out of his pants and beckoned for me to come down. He did the same to my friend who had been talking to me from her family’s balcony across the street. I was so small that I needed a stool to see my friend from above the balcony railing. I was enraged. I waved my slipper at him to frighten him away.

When I included that incident in an essay I published (in Arabic, in an Egyptian paper) about the many times I’ve been sexually assaulted by men, a man emailed to ask me “What was so special about you at four that anyone would expose themselves to you?” As if having a penis flashed at you was a compliment. As if a four-year-old girl could, under any circumstances, be “special” enough to have a man expose himself to her.

If I were to use paint to mark which parts of my body have ever been groped, pinched, or otherwise touched without my consent, my entire torso, back and front would be covered. But I am enraged the most at that man who exposed himself to me and my friend.

What if instead of breaking their wildness like a rancher tames a bronco, we taught girls the importance and power of being dangerous?