As much as I would like to believe that we are a nation above the objectification of women, I am so often reminded that this is untrue.

A few weeks ago, I was driving home at night through a part of town lined with bars and clubs when I pulled up to a stop light. A car pulled up next to me and the male driver began waving his arms to get my attention. When I turned to look, he proceeded to bark at me then laugh. That’s right, I mean bark – as in woof, woof, snicker, snicker. This type of behavior was nothing less than degrading and immature, yet he still seemed to think it made him look funny and cool.

The most disturbing part of my encounter was that he acted as though women had given him a positive reaction to this act before.

To any readers who doubt the frequency of this kind of behavior, let me make something absolutely clear: his is not uncommon.

I have watched men look up a woman’s skirt and howl at their momentary visual reward, and I have seen men grab their girlfriend like she only meant as much as the amount of butt he could grope in his fist. Some continue to doubt that this is a problem because they believe this only happens to women who “ask for it” by dressing or looking a certain way.

However, consider those who do not wear the low-cut shirts or miniskirts and still receive this treatment. In a world of push-up bras and thong underwear, I put tremendous effort into appearing modest while wearing something fashionable.

Still, I have found myself in too many encounters to count in which a male conversant has found something much more interesting to focus on below eye level.

Our belief that women have broken away from their historical position as “property” to being treated as equals is still a project in the works. In reality, I can understand the termed “lookers and gawkers” (and most do understand the boundaries of pursuit of attraction), but when it becomes acceptable for a man to bark at a woman like she is something less than a human being, then we have a real problem with our society as a whole.

When searching for the root of this issue, men are usually deemed the villain in these demeaning encounters and, in some ways, they can be.

In a historically male-dominated society, there remains some argument in saying men created the image of women that says it is acceptable to treat them as property or as objects. American women were intended to be pretty, youthful and to bend to the will of their husbands.

The problem truly arises when women are still expected to behave in this manner. Granting women rights allowed them independence and an education, both of which suggest that a women could be free of the traditional wife-husband relationship in which the man was expected to be the dominant figure.

Although men played a role in creating a socially acceptable attitude for the mistreatment of women, I believe women themselves are more the cause of their own misfortune in the present day.

Despite men initially creating the image of how women should be treated, women continue to sit by and accept this as the current attitude.

Women continue to adhere to fallacious traditional thought. Although some ladies have stepped forward and moved toward rights that truly aim for equal treatment, there remains a distinct group of women who accept being at a lower status than men.

Ladies who are more than happy to put on a short skirt do not realize the root of the attention showing some skin can get them. What a woman perceives as attention to herself as a person is really attention to the body parts she chooses to show. On the other hand, men perceive this body part as an object. Thus, the women are then treated as the “objects” they reveal.

This has then become a generalization to women who do not believe in showing off their bodies. For this, modest women get barked at in their cars, they get pinched in large crowds and they have their skirts looked up while walking down the street.

The solution rests on the women who currently accept the crude treatment by men who believe objectifying women is acceptable. They are the ones who need to step up for their own right to equality.

Treating women as property needs to become a thing of the past for us to truly advance as a society.