Hey, Society
Can we stop telling women what to do with their lives, making them feel like shit for every single decision they make, no matter which direction they go in — she’s always wrong — and start supporting them, like normal people?
You dress too short, too slutty, too prudish. You wear too much makeup. You don’t wear enough makeup. Your hair is too short, your hair is too long, your eyes are too brown, your face is too imperfect, your face doesn’t have enough unique markings…
You’re a mother? That is now all you are. A mother. You can’t have anything else in your life. You don’t want to be a mother? You’re literally the worst person alive, the world would be better off without you. You’re a sex worker? You’re the scum of the earth. You do it because you were forced to keep a baby, and now you’ve to work 2 jobs, including this one everyone judges you for, to keep it alive and fed? Who asked about keeping yourself alive? No one cares about that. You’re a mother. Your job is to serve everyone around you.
You don’t want to become a mother? What’s wrong with you? Or, my absolute favourite — you will want to, eventually. Nah, you didn’t think about this thoroughly, and decided you don’t want kids. You’ve no idea what you’re talking about. You’re a woman, after all.
You know what little line really got to me? “Girls should go out in the world, make up their own minds.” In Little Women. I hadn’t seen it before, and when I heard that line, it felt a little bit like I was given an oxygen mask. Like for the first time, I was told that hey, you actually have your own agency, inherently, by virtue of being a person, a woman, a girl, even, and it stayed with me ever since. And they’re right. Girls should go out in the world and make up their own minds. I am so damn tired of being treated like I can’t make my own decisions, especially by other women, like we’re all participating in and perpetuating this mass delusion that we all have to bow our heads down, be obedient, disturb no one with our individual ambitions and desires, keep calm, be always nice to everyone, and take the blame for everything.
Instead of making it clear to creepy men that women are not objects to be used for whatever desire they may have, you tell your daughters they can’t dress a certain way, because if you get raped, it’d be your fault, for provoking the man. How sickening is that? If a man gets hit by someone in a car accident, do you tell them it was their fault for being in the car? No? How strange, then why is it a woman’s fault for getting assaulted? So, I have to limit my own personal freedom even more, for men, yet again? It’s as if history has somehow found it beneficial to always diminish 50% of the population — or more, to be honest, but this isn’t a post about racism or classism or other forms of discrimination. It’s about how we live in a world where every woman and little girl feel like they were wrong for being born a woman. Like their very existence is inherently wrong, because we were born with the wrong set of genitals.
Honestly? I’m sick of it. I am whole-heartedly sick of being treated like I’m a problem. Like my individual being is an issue somehow. Like I can’t have goals or desires or my own fucking thoughts and opinions. No, I am not wrong for being born a fucking biological female. People are fucking people. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. We all inherently share the same fucking rights and values, and then people’s decisions, their behaviours, their effects on others around them… that’s what they should be judged by, not by simply being born the wrong human concept.
