Mansplaing

Mansplaing 

I am 36 years old today I finally got something. Something so sad, and also oddly freeing. I grew up in quite a misogynistic house hold (farms tend old fashioned by nature). There was "woman's work". There was "man's work". Sexist and sexual comments were everywhere. Yet not once did I feel anything accept mad and entitled to equality. I never backed down. I said what I thought, mostly when I thought it. I did what I wanted, when I wanted and somehow made me determined to be so smart, so right, so strong, they would see I was their equal. One day. They would see. 

I lifted and carried with the boys (who still got stuck making the tea too). It didn't matter because I was going to show them! All of them!

My Dad, though he wouldn't say it had always wanted a boy. One he didn't get. It some how made me more fierce that I would be "as good as a boy" or screw that, better.

Today, before I was even caffeinated I got mansplained at. It happens a lot.

I couldn't really know what I am talking about. I have tits, so duh. 

Normally I will argue passionately. Put across my clever, logically rhetoric and reasoning, drawing on my years of knowledge and experience. I made one short post and then the thread was swamped.

That was the moment.

Right there.

No matter how smart I am, how clever my reasoning, or even, how right I am. It doesn't matter a spot. Not the tiniest smidge. 

I have never had "penis envy". Never wanted to be a man. In fact I thought the very idea was ridiculous. 

Yet maybe all women have this moment.

I am a woman, smart, proud, fierce and I will never be taken seriously, thought of as important because I female. I can't win.

I can't be enough, not because of me. There is nothing I can do about the "me" bit. If the singer reaches perfection it doesn't make a difference to someone who is deaf. Or worse, doesn't want to hear.

How do I make a difference in the world that doesn't seem to want me in it?

I always thought if I fought long enough or hard enough we would win. That there would be equality, that being smart enough, talented enough and pushing would win out.

Bind our feet, twist and burn our bodies, torture us, rape us, abuse us. Nothing hurts like this pain.

Nothing hurts like denying our voice, which is of course why it is done.

It doesn't seem as important as physical safety. It's only Instragram, Facebook censoring, talk about Western woman privilege.

No. NO NO! It is her voice. It is her expression; remove it, dismiss it, mainsplain it away and you destroy something. Bodies heal, sexual scars heal. Take away her voice and all she can hear is the echo of how she is not good enough, over and over and over again.

I am reminded of the last speech in The Taming of the Shrew. Kate has been staved, dressed in rages, made to say night is day, with very little sympathy from the women around her. She was too difficult, refused to play the game. Didn't make nice.

She stopped fighting. For if she is not his equal then she might as well be his docile slave, much to the horror of the women around her. That is the truth now as it was then. 

We women who carry around light, and beauty and knowledge and hope; are nothing but a lump of meat to stand on to make yourself taller while you thump your chest.

I am tired of my body and being bearing nothing but the foot prints of men.

I am so tired.