Rowan Blanchard Shares a Story of a Harrowing Encounter -- This is DISGUSTING

Sometimes sharing your own darkest moments can help people in ways you'd never imagined.Rowan Blanchard is kinda the voice of her entire age group, and she shared a scary story from her own life -- because she wants it to happen to fewer young girls:

"I remember I was at a movie with my friend, and we were both in skirts -- this was two and a half or three years ago -- we were waiting out side the movies for my dad to pick us up, and this grown man came over and was like, 'You guys need a ride anywhere?' I was 12 years old and my friend was 15, and I just remember sitting there feeling my heart sink into my stomach. It was such a surreal moment. Because I always see that happening in front of me; I always see girls getting catcalled. But up until that point, I hadn't experienced it."

Let's not mince words -- that guy was a predator.

Fortunately, Rowan understood that a strange grown man offering a preteen and a teen a ride anywhere is definitely not trustworthy. No, we're not being cynical -- harmless grown men know better than to offer something like that. If you see young girls who might need a ride somewhere, you keep an eye out for them, you contact an employee at the theater, you maybe even offer them your phone to use if you're in a crowd. You might even call a non-emergency police number to express your concern if the hour is late.

Almost as bad as that extremely shady encounter was Rowan's reaction -- the reason that she didn't tell her father about it. Because she and her friend had both been wearing -- gasp! -- skirts. The way that our society talks about women and about sexual predators in general really conveys the idea that it has anything to do with what women are wearing (or what they aren't). It's not true, but it's a convenient lie that monsters rely upon to make themselves seem blameless and cause women to blame themselves.

A lot of young girls are sexualized, and the creeps count on a whole host of social forces to make them feel like they're at fault. But, to be clear, if a grown man is catcalling an underage girl, he should probably be in jail.