So, it’s been a week…

Many people are still speculating what a Trump America will look like for the vast amount of minorities whom he has threatened– and it is for the most part speculation, because no one really knows. But I have been living for the past two months in a culture where machisimo has been allowed to run rampant and I can tell you exactly what that looks like.

It looks like obtrusive stares and men going out of their way to follow me as I walk down the sidewalk.

It sounds like cat calls and kissing noises and men yelling over and over “Taxi pretty lady? Miss? Miss you so pretty, taxi for you miss? Taxi? No? Boyfriend? No?”

It feels like sober men going in for kisses and drunk men holding on too tight when they try to show me how to dance, and always always having to be on guard in case it goes further.

On my walk home from school one day I was cat called by every man – age 8 to 55 – that I passed.

I want you to take a moment and think about that. For the duration of 10 blocks down a busy neighborhood street I could not pass a single male without them eyeing me up and down, kissing at me and saying “Que linda”. At one point I was literally boxed in by three of them at once, all yelling at me, asking where I was from, and getting progressively cruder and cruder as I ignored them. Even when I was obviously on the verge of tears, they kept coming. And when I got to the Malecon – my place of refuge – and started crying hysterically, a man came and sat down right next to me. Eleven miles of seawall and some dick decides that sitting next to the sobbing girl is a good idea.

And this is everyday life. The only way to get one afternoon of being treated as a normal, off the market human being is to carry around a boyfriend-shaped bodyguard.

My friend Stephen and I went museum hopping one afternoon and made jokes about looking like the most touristy couple ever. When we got back home at the end of the day I couldn’t figure out why I still felt so happy and energetic. Then I realized that I hadn’t had to fend off a single cat call or obtrusive look for the whole afternoon. Sadly, that realization killed the “happy and energetic” almost instantly.

I can’t imagine what luxury the male students here must have to be able to go out whenever they want wherever they want without first laying on their bed for 20 minutes and deciding if it is going to be worth it to face the world.

I wasn’t going to write about this publicly. I told myself it was just a cultural thing. I told myself to not let them get to me. To just suck it up for another month and a half, enjoy my time and then go home.

Because the thing is they aren’t bad people. They simply live in a society where no one has ever told them “No, you can’t do that.”

And one week ago we also failed to say “No, you can’t do that.”

And I’m not just talking about him. I’m talking about all of the rape cases which have been ignored or turned into a media spectacle. I’m talking about every disgusting music video, every time a female boss is called a bitch. I’m talking about every time I’ve been asked if I have a boyfriend yet when I come home from school. Do you realize how infuriating that is? To have your entire life reduced to what man in is in it?

Because it’s not just Cuba, far from it. I was in Seattle once and I saw some young hipster types doing product photography at a café. I was just finishing my internship doing the same thing and so I screwed up my courage and went and talked to the head photographer. We exchanged contact info and he messaged me that afternoon with links for the agency he was working for. Then, in the next message, he asked if my blonde girl friend whom I had been sitting with that afternoon was available. He’s at least 30 and she was 19. I shut him down and didn’t talk to him again.

And this was in Seattle. Seattle. The hipster “feminism” capitol of the world. I couldn’t even flip him off the way I wanted to because he was a business contact and I might need him later on.

Most of these things are things I have never talked about before, or only with those people closest to me. Which means I’m just as much a part of the problem as anyone else. Because by staying quiet, by ignoring the problem I am also failing to say “No, you can’t do that.”

But I’m not going to do that anymore.

I know that most people who read this blog will be my conservative friends and family, who voted for Trump, and who live in an insulated bubble of society where things like this are ghost stories of what happens “out there”. And that’s fine. I don’t blame you for that. But I’m telling you emphatically now, these things do happen and they are happening to me.

Of course I was looking forward to seeing the first female president of the United States, but there’s not anything we can do about that now. Donald Trump is a disgusting individual willing to reduce the hand of the government to a size he can conveniently use to grab a pussy with, but we’re stuck with him.

So the question remains, what are you going to do about it? Whether you are a Republican voter tired of being called a sexist or whether you are a woman tired of being the subject of sexism, we all suffer from the same problem: complacency.

So the next time you hear someone tell a joke that makes you cringe, or the next time you look at a woman in a leadership role and wonder if she can really do it, or the next time you get asked when you are going to settle down and start a family, take a moment and think to yourself “No, you can’t do that.”

And then say something. It might be scary, it might be hard, it might fell useless or redundant or unneeded. But I do not want to see my country reduced to the level where young women like me have to habitually wonder if it is worth it to step outside their door. We are better than that. And I’m not going to let some tangerine man from the dark ages make me doubt that for one moment.