There’s a reason why God is portrayed to be a man, and it’s because of religion’s purpose… To control and oppress. Having been founded based on the need to control society, it was always going to be men controlling women.
Girls are born with the awareness that it is their ‘privilege’ as the lesser sex to have no privilege.
From what they wear on their feet to what name graces their birth certificate, many women find themselves on the receiving end of condescending remarks, time and time again, by misogynistic men who try to discredit their right to be there…
‘There must have been a mistake.’
Because of the cards that they are dealt at birth, the innocence of lost youth brings with it a starkness that no girl can escape, try as she might, when whatever she does in life/ however hard she works she is almost always guaranteed to be several steps behind her male counterparts, the ‘superior’ sex.
With reduced life experiences and a reduced lifespan, even, based entirely on what is contained between their legs, girls are poised to fly but destined to fall, the patriarchy underpinning their whole existence.
Getting sent home from school for wearing ‘inappropriate’ clothing (See also: skirts that sit above the knee), girls have been treated like they are just a body and not anything or anybody for generations, a theme that unfortunately persists throughout most women’s lives.
Walking down the street, keys sandwiched between knuckles ‘just in case’, necks straining over shoulders with every step, a woman never knows when (or how, or why) a man will strike…
Will it be at eighteen when you’re leaving a nightclub on the arm of a man who promised your mum that he’d get you home safe?
(He did, this time. One of the good ‘uns).
Will it be at nineteen when you’re walking home from college and a man pulls up alongside you and asks you if you want a ride? It’s only 5 pm but the clocks went back last week so it’s dark already. You say no because you’ve never seen this man before in your life, and you might be nineteen now but you still remember what your mother used to say, and your mother’s mother, and your mother’s mother’s mother.
Will it be at twenty?
Twenty-one?
Will it be today?
Will today be the day that they all stand at your graveside asking why…couldn’t she have just…covered up?…
The question that persists in my mind, however, is:
Why is it always the responsibility of girls to resolve the responsibility of men?
Baby tries to take what’s not theirs = Bad baby. Baby punished.
Learn. Do better. Try again.
Man tries to take what’s not his = ‘Here, let me help you with the rest.’
Uphold. The system. Of the patriarchy.
(& repeat)
Portfolio of Hope 