I Am Tired of Having to Prove Everything to You
I didn’t ask for advice, feedback, or your explanation
Being a woman is exhausting. It’s exhausting to shrug off mean comments, harassment, and attributions coming my way. It’s exhausting to fight off constant unsolicited advice, feedback, and other comments.
I get comments on my weight. I am being asked about my relationship status and when I will start having kids. At night, I avoid certain streets on my way home because they are not well lit and accept a detour. I am regularly not taken seriously in meetings and experience how men use my arguments and then pass them off as their own.
The truth is that as a woman, you’re never safe or immune from all the criticism society throws at you. I am done trying to sugar-coat how often I am not being taken seriously at work. I am done responding to sexist comments on my articles. I don’t even bother getting involved with mansplaining screaming matches. I am done proving that my lived experience is valid. To me, it all boils down to this:
Men have learned to take their experience as irrefutable truth. Women have learned to explain their experiences away.
There is something profoundly wrong with this. It’s setting male experiences as default while dismissing divergent lived…
