“You’re just a girl.” Remember that phrase? How long has it been since you last heard it? Has it been said to you? Has it been said to your daughter, niece, granddaughter? Do you remember what hearing it felt like? How everything base and disgusting and stupid and weak was summed up in that last word, “girl.” And you were that word. It wasn't like being called a “bitch” or a “slut,” you can deny those accusations easily, logic them away with the incontrovertible evidence of who you are. But you couldn’t change the fact that who you are is a “girl.” There was no getting out of that and the boys said that word like it was the dirtiest most foul thing anyone could ever be called. Said it like being a “girl” wasn’t being a “human.” And they always said it when you succeeded at something, when you showed them you were their equal in every respect. They didn’t have to acknowledge anything that you did because you were “just a girl.” You could be trod on, shoved to the side, and no matter what you did or how hard you worked you should feel lucky that you simply got to associate with the “big boys.” And the harder you worked the more they expected you to do for them. And the less they did.
We have a double standard in this world when it comes to women. We women are somehow less than men, but we are supposed to be ten times better, work ten times harder, than any man alive just to be worth 0-70% of one man depending on where you live. Why have we let this continue? Every day there’s some new report of violence against women, of public sexual harassment and male misconduct in one form or another. How did we let this line of thinking, that women are toys or less, continue in this country? We bought into it.
We let the boys tell us who we are, who our daughters, nieces, sisters, friends, mothers, granddaughters are. And we let the older boys tell the younger boys who they should be. We didn’t tell the boys who we thought they should be, compassionate, caring, respectful, smart, hardworking, loving, motivated, themselves, because, like the boys, we were taught and thought that those traits were inferior to physical prowess. We women undervalued ourselves and the core of what makes us women. We didn’t display it as the noble, heroic thing that it is. We spent so much time hell bent on proving to the boys that we were equal to them when what we should have been doing was showing the boys that they are equal to us. We are not a threat. Physiology aside they are capable everything we are capable of and they shouldn’t be afraid of that.
When you look at the candidates for the presidency this year you can clearly see the fear the boys have of the girls. How the girls have to be far superior to the boys just to be competing in their league. And the boys are retaliating violently to this threat they themselves have created in their own minds. Hillary Clinton embodies every woman, as they see it, and every woman embodies Hillary Clinton. And Donald Trump has made it okay for them to harass us physically to symbolically harass Hillary Clinton. That’s what the boys are doing when hey catcall, and shout profanity, and attack us. They’re doing it to Hillary through us. And there are no men telling them to stop. There are no men saying that the boys should be respectful of women. There are no men saying it’s okay to be like women. We know what we’re doing, we’re capable, we’re competent, there’s nothing wrong with being like us. And we women need to stop sabotaging ourselves by not being ourselves. We’ve proven hands down that we can do anything the boys can, now we need to make the boys realize they can do anything we can. If the boys finally get it that they are our equals, they’ll stop feeling so conflicted in who they are and so will the girls.
That’s how I see the problem. And I am just a girl.