April is a junior at Duke who will be working with Hollaback this summer.

Let me start with a little story:

My legs are flying down a steep Seattle hill. “Wahooooo” I think to myself. I am killing it today. Give this a girl an Olympic medal because she has earned it.

Honk. Hoooonnnkkk.

As an enduring optimist, I wave uncontrollably believing that it is a neighbor or a friend who is saying hello.

Oh. Creepy man in the car you got me again.

My brain never registers that a honk could be anything more than a friendly hello. I quickly go from happiness to annoyance, to anger, and then finally to acceptance. This “acceptance” makes me so frustrated with the world I live in. It is this frustration that inspired me to apply to the Moxie Project, and I am very excited to work at Hollaback! this summer.

As little girls growing up, we are promised equal treatment wherever we go because gender equality has been achieved and is a problem of the past!

But how are the genders equal if one faces a commonly accepted daily harassment and the other does not?

Street harassment and other gendered problems are accepted to the point that women don’t mention it or bring it up in conversation. When I mentioned how annoyed I was at the street harassment that occurs in Durham, a male friend looked surprised and seriously asked,

“Oh, that happens?”

Yes, it happens. Yes, it happens to all women and often to many LGBTQ community members.  Hollaback! works to end this kind of acceptance and unawareness. Hollaback targets street harassment through online forums and aims to bring awareness to the normalization of this subject. The misconception of gender equality within our society is another reason why I applied to the Moxie Project. There still is a lot of work to be done to advocate, support, and help those who are discriminated against because of their gender.

Now that I have voiced my issues with our society, let me introduce myself. My name is April, a rising junior from Seattle, WA. I am majoring in Economics, and minoring in Women Studies. I enjoy a good run, yoga, puzzles, and breakfast foods. My beliefs have simultaneously been shaped by my Nepalese father, my large Irish Midwestern family, and my Catholic school education. While many of my friends had their feminist births in college, my all-girls high school allowed me to see the light earlier than most. This was both a blessing and a curse. During high school I was sheltered from domineering male opinions and I wasn’t subject to a lot of social scrutiny or pressure. However, I was not prepared for what was coming.

I wasn’t prepared for both females and males to say, “ I know him; she is definitely making it up for attention.”

I wasn’t prepared to hear my guy friends measure each other by the hotness of the girls they had hooked up with that weekend.

I wasn’t prepared for the interrupting male voices in my freshman seminar.

I have sadly grown accustomed to the male-dominated world at Duke, and while I have tried my best to interject when I hear something sexist or gendered, I admit it is exhausting bearing the burden of gender equality on my back.  When I first met my fellow Moxies, I thought finally people who actually want to talk about one of the most pressing issues facing Duke and our society.

In this moment of reflection, I will also admit that I am nervous. I have never been to the city that never sleeps (hopefully I will), and I have never had to face the difficult and thought provoking questions that are coming my way. However my nerves are mostly overshadowed by my excitement for exploring a new city, learning from other Moxies, and working for a passionate organization.