Why is it necessary for guys to catcall these days? I never truly believed how often it happened until it started happening to me.

No, seriously. It's a thing. And I'm sick of it.

I don't know if it's something I just ignored until now, but it is definitely getting worse, no matter what I'm wearing. People honking at me and yelling, approaching me and then yelling at me when I don't respond to their catcalls, even being in my car with the windows down as I'm driving. Just stop.

What has happened that this has been made okay in today's society? Why is it that when I leave my apartment at night I have a key in-between my knuckles just in case something happens? No woman should be afraid to walk in the dark at night, or at all.

My story is surely not the first and will not be the last. Some of these catcalls end in a nightmare, and something needs to be done to make sure that our future children don't feel the paranoia, the nervousness, that we go through now.

So how do we, as a society, stop this problem? How do we make the women of the world feel safer as they venture out into the world? Maybe we should get to the root of the problem. Parents need to stop being afraid of their children and actually raise them to be respectful. These men need to remember that someday they're going to be fathers, and someday their daughters will be the one being catcalled. Men need to remember that women don't want to date boys; if they're going to act like children we're going to treat them as such.

There's a lot that needs to be done before this problem is solved, however. There is an actual website that documents cat calls and what these individuals were wearing and their experience. "But What Was She Wearing?" is a project documenting what street and sexual harassment looks like (http://stopthecatcall.tumblr.com/). I highly recommend that everyone look at this website and learn more about what is happening all around us -- silently or not.

Let's start treating one another with respect; the world will be a much happier place, and who knows, boys -- when you turn into men you may actually end up with that date you want.