Receiving attention from men wasn’t framed as an imminent danger — at least not for many of my friends and me growing up. Instead, it felt like a challenge; a live test of our own adherence to the subtle but strict rules of being the “right” kind of Black girl, one who denies every aspect of her sexuality. We should hide it. We shouldn't explore it. We shouldn't be talking about it. We shouldn't be thinking about it. And we shouldn't be susceptible to sexual advances by anybody, let alone older people, are lessons that are drilled into the Black girls, according to Odeleye. She’s right. I grew up with an acute awareness that when it came to engaging with boys and men of all ages, I should just know better. Finding myself in any sexual situation — with or without my consent, with people of any age or gender — always felt like a failure on my part; the result of some moral misstep that lead me away from the promises of respectability. Even as my friends and I buzzed with the thrill of sexual exploration in our teens, it was shrouded in shame, making it sometimes difficult to even discern when we were in the grasp of sexual predators. Odeleye summed it up perfectly: “We want to make girls to blame for all of the things that happen to them, especially when it comes to sex.”