To be a woman in this world
To be thought half as good,
but to try twice as hard.
To be asked if I could
do tasks without reward.
To raise her voice is to
be loud, aggressive, a BITCH.
To raise his voice is to
be assertive leadership.
To emote is to be
hysterical and weak,
when he would be “sensitive”
and immune to critique.
To also keep a home,
a family, afloat
is expectation BUT
only if it’s unnoted.
To “babysit” his child
deserves a rich reward,
but parenting his child
is so hard after work.
To keep children alive,
happy, thriving, cared for,
is only allowed if
career still comes before.
To be a man in this world
must be so exhausting.
To be a woman in this world
is worthy of exhalting.
2 thoughts on "To be a woman in this world"
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I’ve had many false starts on a feminist poem, you hit on so many of the issues that spark my rage.
Good job from a fellow bitch
It’s a shocking source, but Chairman Mao said, “Women hold up half the sky.” There’s an excellent book with that title.
Debbie Cameron, PhD, has published remarkable work on dysphemistic language. She’s on faculty at Oxford. This is from their website:
“Research interests: Sociolinguistics, especially the relationship between language and gender; language ideologies and linguistic normativity; discourse analysis.”
Her research on the damage done to women via dysphemistic language is excellent.
Also, bell hooks addresses this issue, how our language has a patriarchal bias.