Dear All Women

Dear All Women,

I know you have spent your whole life in a society that tells you that you are less. You are vain for being pretty, and wasting all that time yet you are disgusting for not altering your body so that it pleases their eyes. You’re stuck up for your intelligence and dumb for not thinking it through. You’re prudish for your modesty and slutty for revealing your flesh. It really doesn’t matter what you do, we are always less.

I know because I was raised beside you. I was the woman in the room next door, screaming alongside you, ‘let me out, this is not where I belong’. We screamed until our voices were hoarse, as we’d watched our mothers do before. Desperate for the world to see the cages in which we lived.

We stared at the walls of our prisons filled with images of perfection that not even the women in the photos could achieve, and yet we still dreamed. We listened to the voices around us; coming from the walls themselves, saying to be quiet, speak up, and don’t be so loud, no matter what you did it was not right. We watched the parade of men held on pedestals for their greatness and wondered where the women in history were hiding, for you never heard their stories unless they were a warning.

We could see the men with their great success and a part of us wondered, are we not as good as them. The subtle words of those with whom we lived, seem to remind us we were different. The occasional woman was held up for being ‘as good as a man’ but even when they said that there was still a ‘however’. ‘However she is still a woman, two letters more than man, and for that added syllable let us remind you, she is less.’

And yet trapped as we were in these rooms built from impossible standards we were not safe. We’d hear the screams but mostly we’d hear the whispers. The softly spoken words describing the moment you were touched without your permission. The obscenities that were foisted upon you from a man who was told he was more, and thus he had the right to take from you what he wanted. And you’d wonder if it were your fault, had you behaved differently maybe he would not have taken which you did not want to give.

And to the women who remained untouched, rare as they were, who received no comments from the men who were more, they wondered what is wrong with me, that I remain unscathed. Maybe I’m not good enough to be wanted in that way. And this is the double edge of the sword that keeps us here, when you grow up in this structure, you think there is something wrong with you when you do not suffer.

And so the walls grew taller with each passing year, you could now have a career and you should want one too, but you still have to be a mother and balance both the things you choose. No longer did you have to wear a dress, you can now wear pants, but even in your new clothes built for purpose try and find a way to feminine. Be independent but find a way to please. More rules, more ways to be.

We tried to play the game we were taught, if we did everything right maybe we’d be enough. And the door in front of us would open and we could emerge into the life we had chosen. And when that didn’t work, when the game only changed again, so that you could not actually win in any way, we tore up the rules, trying to break free, slowly but surely, we will get out of this game.

And this is what the women before us did, tore up the rules they were given, but every time we did this, another list fell from heaven, masquerading as freedom, when it was just the rules rewritten. The cage was larger but it was still a cage, even with the successes along the way.

We tore at the walls and raged at the door but no matter what we tried we stayed stuck inside. As we fought our prison, it fought back, yelling louder that we were not enough. Better still sometimes the disembodied voices said, there is no prison it’s all in your head. And those that acknowledge the harsh boundaries of our life often claimed that it was their right. ‘Biology says that men are more, you can’t fight science, you silly little girl.’

And these poor men, we eventually learn, are trapped by the same prison in which we live. They are limited in what they can do because they are denied anything associated with us, this is true. But their prison is built on top of ours; they are lifted by us all, stuck at the bottom, so they can be tall. But since their success is greater than their suffering it’s hard to convince them to let go of this structure.

And when we try to show them the prisons in which we all live, they start yelling ‘not all men’. Well of course not, that hardly needs to be said, the point is that it is all women. The system in which we live requires you to step on our heads. That was the game you were taught, it’s not your fault you played along until you became aware that we suffered for your success, and then it is your job to help us dismantle this mess.

And not all women will fight, which can be hard for some of us to understand, but not all of our rooms are built from the same sand, some of them are comfortable and they’re happy day by day. Some have a mirror in which they can see that they look like the image of what a woman is supposed to be. Some have beds wide and comfortable and room service for every other thing they’ve wanted. And like the men who benefit from this system, it’s hard to convince them to fight a room that brings content.

So we’ll fight for all of them, those that still benefit from the system, until they can see that a gilded cage is still an unwanted prison. And so here we are now, trying to find the boundaries of our jail, for you cannot breakdown what you have not revealed. And layer after layer we’ll fight again till we have no prison, no structure, no game.

So to every woman that has walked in this world, held in an invisible cage of pressure to behave a certain way. You will never be less for playing the game, nor will you be less if you rage. We’re all strong in our different ways. And together we’ll never stop fighting and screaming till the day we are freed from this place.