By: Haylee Chavers
The world that women must endure is cruel.
And what makes it unbearable is not only this cruelty, but the unspoken expectation that we are supposed to quietly endure it without complaint. I feel like most people don’t grow up seeing the evilness behind the way that women are treated. It’s something that gets passed on in a young girl’s development or later in life through stories passed on between women. I’ve seen countless women suffer from the laws and policies that have come out since the pandemic. I’ve seen story after story on the news and social media of this violence resulting in the deaths of women at the hands of men and inhumane policies surrounding our bodily autonomy. A person’s body is something that I’ve always felt no one else can control or take away from you, but our policy makers have proven otherwise. Looking at the history of the way women are treated through textbooks, it has always made it feel like this type of oppression was a thing of the past. And that our bodies and identities were our own and not something that could be taken away, rewritten, or had policies formed against. Looking over our past and recent events, I see that our oppression was not a thing of the past, but a dystopian, grey filled sky in the middle of December present.
Why do women’s rights vary by state, but men’s rights are the same no matter which coast?
When I close my eyes and look into the static void of the back of my eyelids, I think of all of the cases I’ve seen. Cases of women being used, abused, and killed for no reason other than cruelty disguised as morality and religion. I wish more people cared about our sufferings the way that I do. Not because it happened to themselves or the people around them, but simply because they have empathy for other humans. I’ve never suffered at the cruel hands of these policies and their impact on women’s health, but I care.
Policies like total abortion bans, policies that remove sex education, policies that remove funding for places like planned parenthood, all which make me care because I want people to have empathy for women. I want people to treat women with a semblance of the humanity that they treat animals and children with. I want women of all ages, races, and sizes to receive adequate healthcare. I want women to have a choice and for someone to be there to advocate for them. Because the world women must endure is cruel, cruel in its laws, cruel in its medicine, and cruel in its morality.
Despite this cruelty women endure.
Women endure speeches, telling them that they’re wanting dreams means nothing.
Women endure laws written to control and cut them off at the knees.
Women thrust into violence that society tunes out like background noise.
Woman endure silence pressured upon them, yet they persevere with speech.
Whether or not because our suffering is horrible, our need for survival outweighs that. Because Hope is the Boulder you hide under in an avalanche.
Because liberation spans generations.
Our stories matter.
Our deaths matter.
Our feelings towards the cruelty we are forced to endure matters.
Because the pain we suffer should not be just a story on the news.
Because cruelty against women should not be normalized.
Because women and girls should be allowed to be ambitious without ridicule.
The world women are forced to endure is cruel, but we do not have to endure it quietly.
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