It was a typical Sunday afternoon in mid-September driving home to Jersey City, New Jersey after visiting my family. That warm, summer humidity had not yet completely retreated, but there was an occasional, faint fall breeze, the kind that us northerners welcome with open arms after long summer days. And so, driving down the highway, I decided to roll down the windows to enjoy the air, slightly raising the volume of whateverreggaeton song was playing on La Mega 97.9. As is mandatory heading back home, I hit some major bumper-to-bumper traffic, and then, staring off into the distance in this headache-inducing traffic, it happened.

The driver next to me, a man in his early forties, alone in his car, asked me, “Why are you sad, mama?” Startled, I shook my head and smiled, not expecting nor desiring to start a conversation with a random man. And seriously, who starts a conversation in traffic? But it kept coming. “Mami, I’m talking to you, are you listening to me?” I turned up the volume on the radio. “You’re so sexy, you know, don’t be sad, mami.” Immediately, I rolled up the windows, turned on the air conditioning, and blasted the music. Yet, despite not being able to hear his catcalls, I could still feel the glare of his eyes on me, his mouth continuing to move. To make matters worse, he refused to advance his car in his lane just so that he could follow me, causing the drivers behind him to honk endlessly! And then, he managed to get behind me. Heart racing, I called my partner just in case, I said to him, “some craziness happened.” Eventually, my harasser lost interest and his car melted into the anonymous Jersey City traffic.

No doubt, I was relieved when I got home, but I couldn’t stop thinking: should I have done something perhaps a bit more aggressive? Maybe give him the finger, or tell him off? But I remembered that generally, I try to avoid responding to all street harassment. You never know how crazy or unstable people are, or what weapons they carry. But especially in light of the past few weeks, when one woman was murdered while another was critically injured after ignoring and refusing a man’s advances, it’s clear that even your silence won’t protect you.

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On the evening of October 5, Mary “Unique” Spears, a 27 year old mother of three children, left the funeral of a relative and made her way to a local bar to celebrate her loved one’s life with another family member in eastern Detroit. “She was having so much fun the whole night,” recounted a relative. At some point in the evening, a 38 year old man took interest in Spears and began incessantly harassing her, asking her for her name and number, which she refused to give. The harassment continued and escalated around 2am, when on her way out, the man grabbed and hit Spears, with her fiancée stepping into what became a fatal fight. Armed, the man shot once at Spears, who was running away, and then shot her twice in the head, immediately killing her. Her fiancée, family members, and other bystanders were also wounded when the man shot rounds into the crowd outside the bar.

Just a few days earlier, on the early morning of October 1, at 5:15am, a man approached an unnamed woman in the lobby of an apartment building in Queens, asking her out on a date. When she turned him down and started to walk away, the man attacked her, grabbed her from behind and slashed her neck with a blade before running off. She is reportedly in critical condition, but is expected to survive.

Neither silence, nor even the presence of their family or friends, could protect these women. But these recent attacks are just two of all-too-many instances of street harassment and gendered violence condoned and sustained by institutional and everyday patriarchy.

Recall earlier this past year in May when Elliot Rodger, a 22 year old man, who killed six and wounded thirteen others in Santa Barbara after posting a video claiming that it was a “crime” that women had never been attracted to him. A few hours prior to the incident, Rodger posted a YouTube video announcing that he was going to “slaughter ever single blonde slut I see.” Or just a month before Rodger’s misogynistic murders, in April, when a 16 year old girl in Connecticut named Maren Sanchez was stabbed to death in the hallways of her high school by a male classmate after she refused to go to the junior prom with him. Or earlier in 2011, at a bowling alley in South Carolina, when a 33 year old man flung a 12 pound bowling ball at a woman’s head after she rejected his offer to let him buy her a drink. Her skull was visible from the assault.

In fact, a 2000 person survey in the United States by Stop Street Harassment, a non-profit dedicated to documenting and ending gender-based street harassment, found that 65% of all women had experienced street harassment at some point in their life in 2014. Among the women surveyed, 23% had been sexually touched, 20% were followed, and 9% were forced to do something sexual. Street harassment and gendered violence furthermore disproportionately affects the lives of women, people of color, and trans and queer brothers and sisters. Just as an example, the DC Trans coalition found that 80% of trans residents of DC experience harassment and assault. Especially for trans and queer sisters and brothers, rejection of harassment comes with fatal consequences.

No matter where you go, it’s almost impossible to escape this routine misogyny and violence. In a series of statistics compiled by Stop Street Harassment, studies from across the world document the everyday sexual harassment especially confronted by women. In Tokyo, Japan, for example, a 2004 survey of 632 women found that 64% of women in their 20s and 30s reported being groped while commuting. A 2005 study of more than 200 youth in Gujranwala, Pakistan found that 96% of girls experienced some form of street harassment. In a 2008 study from Egypt, 83% of Egyptian women reported experiencing sexual harassment on the street at least once in their life, while about half of those surveyed claimed they experienced it daily. Another 2014 study by the Organization Against Street Harassment in Chile discovered that nearly 40% of women are harassed daily, while 90% reported being harassed at least once in their lives.

Only organizing can end the patriarchal rule of sexual harassment on our streets and in our communities.

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In the past few years, fighting back against street harassment has taken many forms. Back in May, after Rodger’s misogynistic slaughter, feminist activists took to twitter using the hashtag #YesAllWomen in response to the “Not All Men” meme that was making its rounds online, a meme that dismissed the structural violence against women and harassment because “not all men” act like that. A tumblr called “When Women Refuse” allowing women around the world to share their stories also emerged in the days following the Rodger’s murders, and it continues to compile incidences of gendered violence today. Brooklyn-based artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh created a public art project called “Stop Telling Women To Smile,” where she draws portraits that are later plastered onto walls in public with captions directed to street harassers including, “Women Are Not Outside For Your Entertainment,” “My Outfit is Not An Invitation,” “My Name is Not Baby, Shortie, Sexy, Sweetie, Honey, Pretty, Boo, Sweetheart,Ma,” and “Women Do Not Owe You Their Time or Conversation.” Groups like Hollaback!, an international organization committed to ending street harassment founded in 2005, and Stop Street Harassment also offer suggestions for taking action against street harassment, including how to respond in the moment of harassment. Last year, a Cartagena, Colombia-based two-women cultural and audiovisual activist collective called Acción Awala publicized an experimental video called “NO QUIERO TU PIROPO, QUIERO TU RESPETO” (I DON’T WANT YOUR COMPLIMENTS, I WANT YOUR RESPECT). In the video, the watcher only sees the feet of the woman protagonist who constantly confronts the unwanted catcalls and misogyny of men from the moment she exits the door of her home.

So, no, it’s not okay to “let men be men,” as claimed by hosts of Fox News back in August when discussing catcalling. It’s not okay for a random man to refer to me as “mami” as we’re both parked in traffic or anywhere really. We need to openly talk and organize in our homes, schools, workplaces, communities, and our streets to rightfully reclaim these spaces as ours. And in order to transform this patriarchal society, it’s crucial that men take feminism seriously, making it central to their lives. As a starting point, check out Chris Crass’s piece“Against Patriarchy: Tools for Men to Further Feminist Revolution” from his most recent book, which offers a list of tools and suggestions for those struggling to understand how to better work for feminism. As Crass writes, “the everyday violence and oppression of sexism in our society is epidemic and not only must end, but can end. Sexism devastates our relationships, communities, social justice efforts, and our lives. While we did not choose to be men in a patriarchal society, we have the choice to be feminists and work against sexism.”

Yesenia Barragan is a PhD Candidate in Latin American History at Columbia University. Based out of NJ/NYC, she is the author of Selling Our Death Masks: Cash-for-Gold in the Age of Austerity on Zero Books.