As in other days, the day I rebelled I was walking home from school by myself. I was 13, and I liked to wear the skirt of that godawful Peruvian school uniform above my knees. I loved my legs, and I had recently waxed them for the first time. It was Lima in the 1990s, I was crossing a street avoiding illegally parked cars shining under weak rays of sunshine and I did not even see it coming. All I felt was a burst of discomfort, a whiplash of shame. A hand slightly raising the skirt, brushing my thigh, trying to reach me. It lasted a few seconds. Like every time I experienced a “metida de mano” — a local institution of sexual harassment — I froze and muted an agonized scream.

I should have kept walking, dragging my helplessness like any other woman groped in the middle of the street, but I decided to react. He was an older man, bald, who was quietly walking away without looking at me after his “impish” deed. I did not think long: I ran after him and raised my school backpack with both arms, and with all my strength I slammed it on his head. I flew out of there howling to the heavens my humble revenge.

A Peruvian girl is a full-time Little Red Riding Hood. Quite early she learns she has to take this, and not that other, road; that she must watch her back, and feign that she did not hear what they shouted about her vagina.

Any man alone at the end of a street is a potential Big Bad Wolf. A taxi: your last trip. Drinking at a party: gambling with your life. To desire: to be a whore. When I wrote a book about sex I got a flood of comments from men threatening to rape me so I would learn. My amazing boss came to the office once with a black eye. My ex-boyfriend broke my nose because he saw me and a girlfriend of mine kissing. I needed nose surgery.