“Why do you always engage them? If you didn’t engage them, they wouldn’t keep talking to you.”

It is nighttime and it is bitterly cold and I’m at a bus stop with my then-boyfriend. We’ve just left a performance of some sort and are trying to get home but our evening has been interrupted and it is, apparently, my fault.

An intoxicated man stands about two feet away, swaying like a thin tree in the wind, staring at me with a fixed gaze. He appears to be living in extreme poverty, most likely sleeping outside tonight, and, just moments ago, I was worrying about how he’d stay warm.

I’m still worried, but now I am also annoyed, mostly on behalf of my boyfriend, who is visibly upset by the encounter.

The man’s knuckles are wrapped around a garbage can and his other hand is beckoning me with one finger. He has already spoken to me, too close and smelling like hard liquor, about my body and my appearance. He keeps pinballing from his garbage can to me and back again, prompting me to talk to him. This goes on for at least 10 minutes, during which I am courteous and my boyfriend grows more and more anxious.

The sexual harassment isn’t what irritates me. For me, this isn’t frightening or even that uncomfortable. This is every single day. I leave the house. Men talk to me. I hold my breath and I am polite and I am unshakable and then I get home. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

What annoys me is the fact that I am being blamed for this moment in time, for this interaction. While this isn’t new to me—this is the price of living my life, of going to things—it is new for him. And he doesn’t enjoy it.

“Just don’t talk to him. He’ll go away,” my boyfriend tells me again. His face is pale and he is clearly nervous and perhaps downright afraid of what the man will do to us — to him — next.

I’m not afraid, because I’m doing what I have learned to do to keep us both safe. The exact thing that my boyfriend thinks is causing this interaction is the thing that I know will ensure it is over more promptly and without incident.

I remain courteous as we wait.

Sometimes when I get home, I tell my boyfriend about the persistence of interactions like this, the pervasiveness of it. He seems aghast, but I get the feeling that he, like of a lot of men, think I’m exaggerating.

I can’t entirely blame him; most people have a hard time grasping the gravitas of a situation until they, themselves, have experienced it. He’s never seen this happen in public. He’s never had it happen to him.

And, of course, he has told me to just ignore it because that seems like the most logical approach. When you ignore things, they go away, right?

This time, though, he bears witness. His presence at my side does nothing to dissuade the drunk man because, as much as men like to think that just being there is enough to protect women from other men, that is rarely the case.

Example: The time a man on a Greyhound bus put his hand on my leg and physically blocked my path as I tried to wriggle away while the man on his side, someone’s white-collar business dad lured in by the promise of nicer seats and outlets on the bus, looked worried but said nothing.

Example: The time a customer cornered me in the alley outside of the restaurant where I worked during a cigarette break and two college men lingered with a concerned air, but ultimately decided to keep walking.

Example: The time a man who was visibly having a psychotic break swung a padlock at me and threatened to “smash your face, bitch” despite the company of an extremely nervous male friend who was very graciously walking me home “for safety.” He asks after the fact how I could remain so calm and I just shrug.

Example: The time when, walking with my current partner, a drunk man stumbled from a bar and waved a golf club in our direction and it was me that he locked his eyes upon, but my partner who was the most upset. I oblige the imposition just long enough to steer us into a bodega until the man leaves.

It’s hard to even be disturbed by an occurrence that happens so often because if I were to allow myself to feel it every time, I would never be able to leave the house again — something I’m reminded of whenever a man is present for an incident like this and is so very visibly shaken and at a loss for what to do or how to react.

Seeing it happen this time, though, doesn’t seem to breed empathy in my boyfriend. Instead, it confirms everything that he believes. I didn’t ignore the man, and now he’s here, in our presence, in our life, wicking up our time and attention like water. I smiled and I was polite and that is why he talked to me — though of course, I was paying exactly no attention to him before he began to demand mine. I was doing exactly nothing to invite this man’s leering and sexually aggressive language, except for existing as a woman, which for many men is more than enough.

“Seriously, stop being nice to him. You’re making it worse.”

This conclusion exhausts me because we have been over this and he should know better and I am tired of holding the hands of men in my life while also keeping my fists clenched as men I don’t know penetrate my space and expect my time.

It’s also decidedly untrue. He doesn’t know what makes it worse, because he hasn’t lived it every day. He has gathered much less anecdotal data than I have.

He is a man who is, for all intents and purposes, considered one of the “good ones.” He participated in Walk a Mile in Her Shoes. He has seen the Vagina Monologues. He has read Judith Butler and bell hooks and he knows about the male gaze and the Bechdel Test. He would never harass a woman on the street. He would never blame the victim.

Except right now and every time it happens to me. This is still my fault. I did this. That man is making my boyfriend uncomfortable because of me.

This is the thing about being an ally — it requires very little nuance of understand. Catching the sexism in a beer commercial? You’re an ally. Lamenting the gender wage gap? You’re an ally.

Blaming women for the behavior of men in everyday occurences of sexual harassment? Well…

It is one of the few times in life when actions are relatively silent, but words are cacophonous.