Do you pick up every penny you find in the parking lot?

Attraction is like a penny in the parking lot: a momentary glint against a drab expanse. Some of us can walk past it; others have to head over there and pick it up. It doesn't matter if we have a full jar of coins at home or a fat bank account. There's that penny, in this moment, and what we decide to do reveals much about us. Our impulse control, our sense of enough, our weakness for infatuations, our need to possess. I'm trying to teach myself that connection is what deserves my energy, not just any attraction. If my intention is to connect, it will show up in how I relate to people. And that's how I read the way others relate to me, too. Isn't it better to be treated like a person, not a penny?

When a man thinks he got away with something...

What does a man gain when he cops a feel? A moment of titillation, some self-satisfaction, a feeling of superiority over the "hapless" female?

Tell me, because yesterday when I was standing on the platform waiting to board BART, the San Francisco adventure ahead was all I had in mind. I was barely aware there was another human being just inside the doors, waiting to exit. I would not have registered whether that person was male or female if he hadn't grazed my right breast. Not enough to bruise, but enough to get my attention. And then he did a dramatic stop-and-look-back, waiting. Everything in me rose up to make sure I was NOT going to give him what he wanted.

What he wanted was a reaction. Oh, look, haha, I "accidentally" felt you up. Now you're all flustered and pink, and you're looking right at me, and I have your undivided attention. You will remember this; you will remember me.

Except I did no such thing. I didn't look back, I didn't let on I had felt anything. It did not embarrass me—why should it? I did nothing shameful. I exist, I am a woman, I have soft, feminine body parts. They are not for general consumption. They are for me to decide who has access to them. They are for intimacy, not objectification.

When I was a girl in the Philippines it was common knowledge that you had to look out for thigh gropers every time you took public transportation. In my "colegiala" uniform, rosary in hand, wedged in tight three to a bench seat built for two, I was a sitting duck for perverts. Thigh presses against mine, and then predictable as clockwork, hand invades my space. The adult in me wants to go back in time to say to those pathetic males, "Do you know me well enough to touch me like that?" And do you have any inclination at all how a woman gets turned on? It isn't with what you're doing. Go home. Review sex education.

I send this message now to that person on BART: There was plenty of space around us as we both walked through those doors. You were transparent in your desperation. I was not vulnerable. You did not diminish me. You took nothing from me. What you gave up was your own male dignity. You showed me you cannot sustain a loving relationship that gives you enough consensual intimacy.

My body is a temple. That doesn't mean I think of myself as a a minor goddess. It means I have dedicated body, mind and soul to my Creator. The same one who created you. Do not desecrate this temple. Do not desecrate yours. There is always an accounting, buddy. You have lost your humanity already.