Woman

It's Sunday. I am eating a gluten-free cranberry chocolate chip cookie I baked yesterday. I put in too much milk, so they're very thin and very flat and mildly burnt. Oh well. I am flipping through the new TIME magazine: "100 Women of the Year." Around page 65-ish, there is a list of said one-hundred women. I go through them all with a highlighter. In five minutes, 27 names are highlighted; these are the names I've heard. Of those 27, I know more than a single fact about ten women: Virginia Woolf, Frida Kahlo, Billie Holiday, Queen Elizabeth II, Marilyn Monroe, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, J.K. Rowling, Serena Williams, Malala Yousafzai, and Greta Thunberg. I know enough to have a conversation concerning 10% of these one-hundred women. Only 4 of the women I know about are of color. That's it. I wonder why I've never learned about the other ninety influential women. Their names are not in my history books. Before high school, the only time I'd heard the term "suffragette" was in that one Mary Poppins song. I can easily name more than ten influential men. I wish I could say the same of my own gender. It makes me sad.

My math teacher likes to read us stories from Chicken Soup for the Soul before class begins. A few weeks ago, he read one about how lucky we are to live in a country and a world where, if one works hard enough and dreams big enough, they can accomplish anything. And I scoffed. Out loud. I didn't mean to, not really; it was just the daily Soup. It wasn't anything to get all hot and bothered about. But alas, I scoffed, and my math teacher asked why. So I told him. I said something about institutional barriers, racism and sexism and homophobia, classism, poverty. I think I said you can't pull yourself up by the boot straps if you don't have boots to begin with. We had a polite debate that culminated in class notes on logarithms. Very fascinating, I know. As much as I respect other people's opinions (including my math teacher's), I stand by what I said. We are not living in a post-racial America. There are still very real human prejudices. Though we've made progress, we have a long, long, long way to go. Maybe fifty years from now, I'll stumble across this post. I hope things are better then. I hope the world is a little more equal and that feminism is more intersectional. We'll see.

Today is International Women's Day. In light of this, I thought we'd have a very unorganized, meandering chat about what it is to be a woman in 2020.

Here are my ramblings:

- Sex v. Gender. Being a woman is not defined solely by biology, because gender is not the same as sex. Being a woman is a shared experience; it can be a beautiful one, but it is laced with shocking amounts of misogyny, internal and external. I define a woman as anyone who identifies as a woman. Simple as that. Use the bathroom you feel comfortable in, love who you will, wear what you want. Unfortunately, much of the world isn't on the same page. According to the Human Rights Campaign, "in 2018, advocates tracked at least 26 deaths of... transgender or gender non-conforming people in the U.S. due to fatal violence, the majority of whom were black trans women. [Moreover,] the victim's transgender status may have put them at risk in other ways, such as forcing them into unemployment, poverty, [or] homelessness." Then there is the issue of the transgender military ban. Accepting someone for who they are seems so straightforward to me, but in 2020, that does not ring true universally. I've said it before, I'll say it again - we have a long way to go. We all need to be an ally. 

- Objectification. Stop cat calling girls. Stop judging the self by the shell. Realize that objectifying thoughts aren't entirely your fault. Our society has conditioned people (especially men and boys) to objectify girls; that is the culture we live in. Yippee for the patriarchy. Try to recognize when you're having objectifying thoughts, and actively work against them. Compliment a girl on something other than her looks. Ask her about her future. Don't use belittling terms in conversation, like 'sweetheart' or 'doll.' However well intended, these names are incredibly condescending. If you're a guy, and you hear your friends talking about girls as items instead of humans, call them out. It's not cool. 

- Internalized Misogyny. Nearly every woman in the world is bound to have a dose of internalized misogyny. Sometimes, I wonder how much of my disdain for math and my conviction that I suck at it is rooted in the stereotype that mathematics is a man's world. I find myself judging women by their looks. I compare myself to and compete with other girls. These are not things I am proud of, but they are so important to acknowledge. We have to band together. We have to support one another. When I notice I'm having misogynistic thoughts, I do my best to turn them around. Other girls are not my competition, I tell myself. Real queens fix one another's crowns. Maybe a little cat poster-y, but oh so crucial. 

- The Male Gaze. Wikipedia (high school's favorite source) defines the male gaze as "the act of depicting women and the world, in visual arts and literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer." Yeesh. This is one of the reason I'm not a fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Daisy only exists in the plot to further along Jay Gatsby's story line. She is beautiful, and foolish, and doesn't have any wishes or desires of her own. The manic pixie dream girl is another manifestation of the male gaze. It's really hard to find a realistic female role model in literature or cinema. There are too many stereotypes. The term "strong female lead" is incredibly misguided (see Brit Marling's opinion piece I Don't Want to Be The Strong Female Lead. Pretty, pretty please. It is amazing). All of this, I feel, is rooted in the fact that the entertainment industry (and practically every industry) is overwhelmingly dictated by one demographic. This is one of my big problems with the English curriculum in American high schools. I haven't read a single novel written by someone other than a white, dead male, with a white, troubled male character this year. That has to change. 

-The Wage Gap. It needs no explanation. It's ridiculous. I am angry, especially because multiple boys at school have tried to tell me it doesn't exist. I'll leave it at that. 

- The Lack of Intersectionality. The feminism movement is overwhelmingly white and privileged. Feminism in itself means equality; not just equality for white women, but for all. Often, the disabled community, people of color, and LGBTQ+ community are left out of the conversation. Another group we need to join the movement is... men. Men are vital to the conversation. They created the world we live in today, and women need them to help innovate that world. We are all equal. Maybe, we'll one day live in a world that reflects that.

Our Bodies. Abortion is a big headline at the moment. In 2019, abortion bans were on the rise in the United States. "By the end of the year, 25 new abortion bans had been signed into law, primarily in the South and Midwest" (Guttmacher Institute). Though it's a complicated issue, I firmly believe that women should be in charge of their own bodies. I am pro-choice. Outside of extreme and isolated cases, no one is anti-life; no one wakes up excited to have an abortion; no little girl imagines an abortion being a part of the magical land of When I Grow Up. Do I plan on having an abortion in my life? No. Do I think all women should have access to safe abortions? Absolutely. You may disagree with me, and that's okay. Discussion is important.

- Hope. There are so many women in my life who inspire me endlessly. My mom heads a team for a big telecommunications company. My aunt is a certified pilot. Genna is insanely smart, Kamila has the biggest heart, Lianna has a stunning voice, Esther makes English class less torturous, Zoe is a phenomenal soccer player, Janhavi is the hardest worker. Cornelia is an incredible filmmaker. My Spanish teacher is a Cross Fit warrior. My theatre teacher wrote her own show. My grandma is the bravest woman I know; my other grandma has the dirtiest sense of humor on the planet. And all of the women I know have different dreams. Audrey wants to be a stay-at-home mom. Orezi, a psychiatrist. Billeigh wants to be some sort of brilliant rocket scientist lady at NASA. Taylor will be a nutritionist. Sam already has an agent, auditions weekly, and will be an actress. My sister wants to be an engineer or work in technical theatre. Surrounded by so many phenomenal people, I can't help but be excited for what the future holds. I will support all of the girls. I look forward to the day when there are no posters in English classrooms reading "Best Female Authors of All Time;" instead, there will simply be all genders represented on a "Best Authors of All Time" poster. One day, we'll have a female president. The future is bright, and despite all the reasons not to, I believe in a better tomorrow.

The world can always improve, and so can I. My feminism is not perfect. I have so much room to learn and to grow, and I am beyond ready to do so. I am excited to read this post in fifty years. Maybe then, tampons won't be taxed as luxury goods. Maybe the domestic violence stats (against men and women) will go down. Maybe gender will not dictate the way people are treated.

So, sixty-six-year-old Maya. How's the world?

Happy International Women's Day.
- Maya



Photo by Katherine Hanlon on Unsplash, Photo by Maya, Photo by Jameson's mom, Photo by Jameson's mom, Photo by Maya, Photo by Jameson's mom, Photo by Jameson's mom, Photo by Lily