Hi, my name is Annabelle Seader, I’m nineteen years old and from the heart of the heartland- western Kansas. I go to a college also located in western Kansas, and I identify as a feminist. Growing up in rural America in a strictly conservative household, it’s strange to think I’ve turned out this way. I’m young and know I still have a lot of learning and changing to do, but my young mind works, and my young heart bleeds. Right now, it bleeds a hell of a lot for the fact that I was blind to the issues that women like me are facing every day.

It must have started when, after a particularly rough day of classes and work, I was yelled at from a lifted pickup truck while walking home from work. Or one night, while I was walking alone, in the dark, to go hang out with my friend on her porch, someone honked at me and sped off. Maybe it was the first time I heard - in regards to one of my friends - “I don’t know why she’s wasting her time on a degree. No one’s going to hire a woman to do that.” Maybe it’s because when I’m trying to hold a conversation about my accomplishments, I’m interrupted by somebody asking if I’ve “found a good man, yet.”

I know that some of you are thinking that it’s not a big deal or that I’m overreacting and I should just get over it. Let me shed some light on why some of these instances anger me, and why others scare me right down to the bone.

It was just a blurb on my timeline - a young woman walking somewhere was catcalled from a vehicle full of guys who wouldn’t take no for an answer. They stopped and tried to assert their dominance. She got away, but several other women in her area were missing. Was her fear of the guys in the vehicle and her fear toward the situation “overreacting?”

In detroit, a woman was shot and killed for not giving a young man her phone number. She was in a relationship and going home from a funeral.

Another young woman’s case has recently gone viral. A victim of sex trafficking who killed her oppressor, now serving a life-sentence.

In some states, the fact that a man raped the mother does not diminish his parental rights to the child born from it.

I understand that “it’s not fair” to be wary of all guys. Some of them really are trying just to give us a compliment. But I’d rather not be “fair” and safe than give one of the bad guys a chance and be injured, dead, or serving jail time that I don’t deserve. We need feminism because we can’t tell the difference between good guys and bad guys. And, okay, maybe these are just the “sexy” stories that make headlines and go viral. This doesn’t happen every day, does it?

How come when I, personally, decide that I don’t want to be in a relationship with a self-proclaimed “nice guy,” because my heart isn’t in it and it isn’t the right time for me, I have to be afraid? How come I was more than justified in being afraid? Was it the fact that a man with an easy foot and a hundred pounds more mass than me was standing before me and screaming at me in my yard far too early on a sunday morning? Was it the fact that he was belligerently drunk and my phone was inside of my house and I felt legitimately helpless? Was it the fact that he had to make a point of telling me that I don’t scare him? And after all of that, and knowing I’m lucky because it could have been so much worse, I’m supposed to be okay with strangers yelling at me for no other reason than the fact that I’m a woman? After I was faced with my worst-case-scenario just a couple of weeks before I began my junior year of college?

Yes, I’m a feminist, because I don’t think that we should ever feel like our lives are in danger simply because we were born with an X chromosome where half the population has a Y. I’m a feminist because the first thing one of my favorite people did when he heard a statistic was jump to the conclusion that women were making a bigger deal out of harassment than it was. I’m a feminist because Cintoia Brown should not have been given a stricter sentence than Brock Turner. I’m a feminist because I don’t think that we’re overreacting when we want to be able to safely walk down the street without worrying what percentage our phone is at and whether we should have charged our taser the night before. I’m a feminist because I don’t think about “if” I’ll ever need my taser, pocket knife, or pepper spray, but “when.” and I’m not okay with it.