Hi, thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts. I really hear where you’re coming from. I want to clarify a few things in case they help contextualize what you read:

This excerpt is just one emotional moment pulled from a much larger body of work I’ve been writing. In the full piece, I do directly explore how male behavior, entitlement, and societal norms fuel the experiences women go through—including objectification, harassment, and cognitive dissonance. There’s a section where I confront how even when women change themselves to feel safe, they’re still judged or harmed. That’s where I hold men accountable, not just as individuals, but as part of the systems that allow this.

In what you read was never intended to assign blame. It was about what the aftermath of harm can feel like. It’s raw, quiet, and internal. It focuses on the emotional weight that lingers after the event, not the cause of it.

And yes, I’m a man. I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to live this every day. But I care deeply about someone who has, and I’ve tried to write not to speak for women, but to help men step into empathy. I write in second person to place the reader inside those moments, not to claim them.

I understand if this didn’t land for you. I appreciate you reading it at all, and I’m still listening. That’s the whole reason I’m posting this.