You were told from birth to fear harm, because your body has a uterus, and men will want to use the way to it.
You were told not to walk so far down the street, where your brothers were never told not to go. They were boys, and you were not, and no other explanation was necessary.
You were told not to be alone with boys, because boys could not be trusted. Boys would want to use you, and once you are used, what are you?
Your brothers were never told not to be alone with girls. Never told to be someone girls could trust. Never told not to use girls, or that girls should not be thought of as “used” at all.
You were told not to dress to attract attention, because that attention distracts men, and men cannot be held responsible for what they do if you distract them.
Men are never told that they are more than base urges, that they can resist distraction. Unless, of course, what is being discussed is their right to be in charge, in which case it is women who cannot rise above their innate nature, and it is men whose intelligence knows no bounds.
You were told not to speak your mind, because men do not like to hear a woman’s reasonings. Even if—especially if—she knows more than them.
Because when a woman speaks, a man feels either small or angry, and a woman’s career—an unnatural thing to begin with—can go nowhere if she cannot comply.
But a woman’s career is already going nowhere.
You were told to always flatter men. Always smile and listen and be agreeable. Because only palatable women can be tolerated, can be allowed our so-called freedoms. Because when women are unpalatable, they break the mould society has constructed for them, and then it is women who must be viciously broken back into that mould.
You were told to be nothing, because only nothing can go beneath a man’s notice. Only nothing fails to be a threat. And only when you are no longer a threat can you be safe.
But you were born a pill too bitter to swallow, with spite on your tongue and rage in your heart. You are made of sharp edges and jagged teeth, with a mind that thinks its fill and lungs that are a bellows for your words. Because you have always known that everything you have been taught to fear is a lie.
Not the violence and pettiness of men—that, you know, is all too real—but the belief they have tried to beat into you: that their violence and pettiness is your fault.
Your responsibility.
Your sin.
The lie they tried to make you swallow, that if you could be less, you would be safe. But the truth is that you can never be small enough, meek enough, nothing enough to be safe.
Because the less you make yourself, the more less they will demand of you.
If you begin as the outer layer of a nesting doll, they will demand you make yourself into the next smallest one, then the next and the next. They will demand you keep going, but they will not be satisfied until you run out of dolls, until you cannot make yourself any less. But even then, they will not be happy, and by this point you will have become so small that you are easily thrown away, and so that is what they will do with you.
So refuse to make yourself small. Refuse to make any concessions at all. Even when you are beaten down, and tired, and angry, and tired to your death of being tired and angry, do not let your edges soften. Do not let your heart’s blood cool.
When you need respite, curl yourself into a ball of spikes, that you may be protected until you gain the energy to wake and once more be ferocious.
You were taught from birth to fear.
But it is not you who should be afraid.