My friends and I get honked at. Daily. And catcalled. Some of us are only 16.

I have received death threats after cutting contact with a boy who “loved” me. He threatened myself, and my family.

A boy I met online somehow bullied me into giving him my address, and kept just deciding he was going to come over. I was terrified. So was my mother.

Another boy I met online was my boyfriend for several months. I have tried repeatedly to cut contact with him. The day after I broke up with him, he messaged my younger brother to ask why I had ended things. He didn’t understand why I was furious.

My biological father told my mother to kill herself when she refused to abort me.

My stepfather attempted to push me down the stairs. He refused to leave the house when my mother told him that he was a danger to my brother and I. His name was on all the deeds; we were essentially homeless.

Not all men are like that. If they were, I wouldn’t leave the house.

If all men were “like that”, most women would be dead.

One man being “like that” is enough to kill six women in California. One man being “like that” is enough for lifetimes of PTSD, of fear, of teaching your daughter self-defence so early in her life that she would answer to “Get his eyes first.”

Too many fucking men are like that. I don’t care about statistics. I don’t care about “Not all men”. Too many. Too fucking many.