In the last 24 hours, I’ve received many private messages on Facebook encouraging me to join a “female blackout” to “show what the world might be like without women.” As far as I can tell, this “project” consists solely of having women replace their Facebook profile pictures with a black square.

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Ok. I get what they’re going for.

This week has dredged up so much for so many. I’ve had friends retell their stories. I’ve sadly (but not shockingly) had so many other friends tell their stories for the first time. 1 in 3 women will experience some form of contact sexual violence in her lifetime. I hear their words and I think, “I’m lucky that isn’t me.”

Except that time…

The truth is that I have my own stories. The things that have happened to me aren’t as violent as some others, but they happened. Those things got filed away under the category of “that could have been much worse” or “I probably shouldn’t have been there” or “that’s just what life is like for women.”

We’re taught to compartmentalize. To minimize. To excuse. Forget.

Those experiences don’t go way, no matter how far down we push them, no matter how small we try to make them. The laws of physics are immutable, even in our own psyches—matter cannot be destroyed, so the mass can be compressed, but it is conserved. It is always with us, a weight reminding us that the safety we carefully orchestrate is facade that can be ripped away in an instant. We know that acts of violence, of violation, aren’t confined to darkened alleys. They happen in our homes, in our schools, while we’re just trying to do our jobs. The stark reality—one that has always existed and one I don’t see going away anytime soon—is that there is no place to be safe as a woman. The light is never bright enough to fully illuminate the shadowy corners of power and misogyny, where what men want supersedes all else and women as individuals are invisible, reduced only to what can be used, what can be taken.

But I’m not here to tell you about that. You either get it or you don’t, and this isn’t a post about convincing you, though lord knows so many need convincing.

I’m here to talk about this black square idea, this “project.” I get what the purpose is. But if our very existence, our presence as human beings isn’t enough, then what will be? God knows I’ve spent enough of my time making sure I did just the right thing, walked just the right line, said just the right things, knowing I could never be right enough to guarantee my own right to exist, full and whole and sound. You want a world where women—as themselves, not as objects in service of others—are invisible? Guess what…you are here. You don’t need an hour of missing profile pictures to simulate that.

So, I’ll pass. I don’t want to make even the tiniest bit of me—a picture on a social network—a void. I want you to see me. Really SEE me, see all of us, not as you expect us, not in the context of you getting what you want, but as separate, as whole, as worthwhile. You can’t do that by passively scrolling past a black square. Instead, I suggest you read Alexandra Petri’s moving piece and then maybe you’ll understand why I’m so tired of all the effort. Maybe then you’ll see that a black square is somewhere on the same continuum as a skirt that isn’t too short or the white knuckle grip of my keys between my fingers, just in case. But most of all, I want you to really understand that if a missing photo was enough to make a difference, I would have already done it, carefully, perfectly, just the right way.