We teach girls shame:
Close your legs; cover yourself. We make them feel as though by being born
female, they’re already guilty of something. As so, girls grow up to be women
who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who have to silence themselves.
They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think….And they grow up
to be women who have turned pretense into an art form. – Chimamanda Adichie
It feels like almost every move I make, there’s
someone telling me I’m being too aggressive, too weird, crazy, asking for
trouble, that I need to tone it down. Which is funny, because every time I’ve
done something to be called “aggressive,” “weird” or “crazy,” it’s literally
just been me being myself and thinking I deserve respect for being a person.
All of my female friends who are similarly independent have dealt with similar
adversity for similar reasons. And I don’t want to cause “trouble”—I just want
to be understood and respected. But things aren’t that simple.
The truth is, most people do not want or like
independent women. The same reasons for which people have called me “aggressive,”
“weird” and “crazy,” guys my age would be called ambitious and assertive. They’re
“going places.” I was about to re-affirm that people don’t like independent
women, but let’s cut the bullshit: they don’t like women, period. So
they tell us by standing up for ourselves we’re weird monsters, and they’ve fed
us this gnarly idea about being “nice.”
“Nice” means, as most girls have probably realized
by their early teens: don’t talk too loud, let guys cut across you, don’t
disagree with guys, never tell them they’re wrong (it would make them feel
bad!), don’t do anything to make guys uneasy, don’t say no when a guy asks you
out, especially if he made a romantic gesture (that would be mean!), laugh it
off and be flattered when you’re being objectified and degraded, and generally
make yourself as easy to deal with as possible, especially for guys, and never
stand up for yourself.
Spelled out like this, it’s easy to see how
dehumanizing and sick this. When I think about it this way, I realize I have to
intention of being “nice” in the way that many people think about it. Yes, I want
to cause trouble for them: they cause a world of trouble for my sisters and I,
and it needs to end.
My girlfriend pointed out to me recently that I
speak so quietly a lot of the time that she can’t always hear what I’m saying.
She’s right, and I started thinking about why I do that. I started thinking
things like, Well, I don’t want to talk over people. I don’t want to be rude.
But why the hell is me speaking at an audible volume being rude? It’s part of
the internalized misogyny I’ve absorbed- that I should be sitting down and
shutting up. But that’s wrong. Women’s place is in the revolution—we are not a
product to be sanitized and commodified. My role is not to be easy to deal with. My role
is to call you out, sit you down, and rise up with my sisters to create a new
way of thinking. Where women aren’t “bad girls” or made to feel ashamed for
being humans with their own views and judgment calls. And it’s not just for next
generation—as Kwame Ture said,
“I don’t think that we should follow what many
people say, that we should fight to be leaders of tomorrow. Frederick Douglass
said that the youth should fight to be leaders today. And God knows we need to
be leaders today, ‘cause the men who run this country are sick, are sick.”
Black power has always resonated with me and is more
relatable to feminism than many would have you think.
So, do I dress a certain way to bother people? No, and
I’m tired of people being selfish enough to assume it’s about them. It’s not.
Do I sit around thinking, damn, how can I piss off the most people? No. I
gather information, do research and then form opinions. Ladies, we need to stop
taking shit and letting them distract us. Speak up, stand up and define “nice” for yourself. I'm right here with you.
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