I have often found that the men, or shall I say boys, around me love to ask questions that all essentially boil down to this: “How does being a woman make [insert situation] any different?” It happens often enough for me to conclude that they no longer truly care to find or understand the answer themselves, but instead seek a way to undermine our experiences, including the potential ones. As a girl in a video I once watched pointed out, yes, the fact that we have to teach our oppressors is irritating. We must be the ones who mature emotionally faster. We have to note that it is not entirely the fault of our male friends/family/acquaintances for not having the common sense to recognize the injustices that women face. We have to blame the patriarchy that their forefathers built instead. The men of society have taken it upon themselves to brainwash generation after generation of boys that what these women feel, what they fear, is normal. News flash! It’s not.
Women are Forced to Expect.
“You can’t stay out this late as a girl” this, and “As a girl you can’t–” that. Sure, the limitations parents place on their daughters are understandable, but that doesn’t stop her from thinking that if she were instead her parents’ son, she wouldn’t have to deal with such things. Ask any woman and she normally wouldn’t entertain the notion of talking a walk around at night by herself. For goodness sake, sometimes I walk around in broad daylight and in the back of my mind there is a voice warning me that every man I walk past might try to murder me. But why? It’s “not all men”, right? A common analogy that gets passed around in this conversation is that of wasps. If a wasp stings you once, or even if you’ve heard about a negative experience with one via hearsay, most people decide that all wasps are hazardous to them and try to avoid them. Unfortunately this feeling also seeps into the way many women feel about men. But of course, pardon me and my curfew.
Forced Expectations on Women.
If only that were where the limitations ended. Alas every day, every action is scrutinized. Girls fight tooth and nail to be seen, to be heard, and eventually, fight harder to not care about it all. The hardest part is realizing that the watchful eyes of society know nothing about you, your worth, your interest, your hobbies, your personality, your beauty, your intellect, nothing. Everything you have built from the ground up, since you were only an infant, that is yours. However, reaching that stage of genuinely not caring is like reaching the 5th stage of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We would not need to be fighting this hard if we did not live in a patriarchy, in a world carefully constructed by misogyny. It isn’t just society, either. Within families, the burden daughters carry is truly something else, especially in Asian households. Expectations for daughters are higher than for sons, and half of that blame once again goes to society, which makes it so difficult for female accomplishments to be acknowledged and praised. Daughters carry an unmatched level of empathy around them at all times though they never feel seen themselves. Part of that empathy lies knowing that they would not– could not– blame their mothers, for she, too, is a girl, a victim of this world.