Member-only story

Men Invading Personal Space Like They’re Entitled

It shows a complete lack of respect for women

Shefali O'Hara
2 min readSep 23, 2022
Photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash

When I was younger, I often experienced something that is all too familiar to women — men invading my personal space without any regard for what I wanted.

I remember as a child, being in India and wearing shorts to the beach. My parents were there and maybe they’d been in America too long, because they thought it would be fine. It wasn’t. Men leered at me. Grown men.

I felt so self-conscious.

I remember being a little older, and being in Canada. I was still playful, immature, on the cusp of adolescence. I was thirteen years old and decided to use a fence as a balance beam. I was playing.

And then I saw the men pointing and laughing at me. They were Middle Eastern, speaking Arabic. They were violating my space.

I remember being fourteen, and walking to school, and getting stares by men walking by. Getting catcalls when I was fifteen. Having a man come up and snatch a book from my hand when I was sixteen.

Why do men think they have the right to act like this?

It’s so disrespectful. Why do men do this? Is it a power trip? An ego thing?

--

--

Shefali O'Hara
Shefali O'Hara

Written by Shefali O'Hara

Cancer survivor, Christian, writer, engineer. BSEE from MIT, MSEE, and MA in history. Love nature, animals, books, art, and interesting discussions.

No responses yet