Caged

It is a deep, sensitive and personal topic.

As I write this, it runs deep to my spine and makes me shiver sometimes. That some things will take many more decades before they come to an end.

Especially the views in where I come from.

That women are lesser.

That women are weaker.

That women are slower.

That women are everything that makes a lesser person than men are.

My own brother cannot listen to me or a female news anchor, or a female guide or a female teacher. Or his own mother. Because, “no woman can tell me what to do. No woman can tell me something of value.”

He has no idea how much he has missed by having this mentality. I don’t want to call it names because it is wounds in me.

That I have grown in that family. That I am the most educated, the most hardworking person in my home, an athlete who has won several times but still I get these statements. That my opinions are still dismissed and seen as “of no value”, even by my younger brother. It is even sadder that this toxicity has been planted and grown by my father and people from my own tribe, community and country.

They are always openly disrespectful to women. Honestly, I respect them so much, nevertheless.

I am two oceans away from home, away from them but still, why am I writing about it? Why am I still getting bad days from their statements and actions made months or even years back?

It is bad that we don’t get to choose families or communities we are born into. Because my friend who was mutilated at a young age wouldn’t want to be part of the chaos. She would choose another planet, “perhaps aliens would be better to live with, it would be more bearable than humans who lost their humanity.” She always says this with a straight face. From her heart. She regrets everything. “Perhaps I was born in the wrong gender.”

She wasn’t born in a wrong gender. She is a brave and strong woman.

“Only your husband is allowed to touch you, we have to make sure of it.” She remembers every time she is talking about it. It is okay for men to sleep around but women are supposed to be touched by only the husband and they have to torture a woman like that to make sure of it?

It is them having a problem with women. Not what we do or say.

My father, he treats my brother’s opinion with respect and weight every single time over mine.

He doesn’t have a problem with my opinions or ideas. He has a problem with me. I wish I knew this much earlier. I wouldn’t try to doubt my abilities all the time when sometimes my entire existence felt like a curse.

It is a kind of toxicity that runs in my community that burns my heart. Like wildfire, it keeps spreading to more generations.

Men in my community believe that women should not speak about their views and if we do, it is always disregarded compared to our male counterparts.

I have grown past that now, or I would like to think so. It never sits well with me that my ideas, however brilliant, were always watered down though. It never sits well with me that no one believed in and encouraged me, as they did him.

The thing with gender inequality, is that it brings problems like resentment, pain, and humiliation. There are many organizations, groups and people fighting for the rights of women, and I am certain they, themselves face a number of challenges still.

The biggest thing I have to do each day is fight for my voice to be heard. The biggest fight I have had to bear is the fight within myself. That I wasn’t good enough as I am, that perhaps men are better.

Fighting to be seen and accepted, from our bodies to everything else we go though as women, but it really doesn’t matter from the outside. We just have to own our bodies, our past, our experiences as women and our voices. Because, women have a voice too.