Today, I started an interesting conversation with the people I know online. It’s about the ways privilege affects men’s lives. But that’s not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is how even while having this conversation, I still had to be a woman.

 

You see, today I had to be mansplained repeatedly about topics I’m very well-versed in.

…and even though I’m having a very bad #PTSD and #Fibromyalgia day, so, want to tear everyone a new one, I still had to pretend it was OK when men who call themselves my friends posted rude, sexist, and misogynistic things (but they’re the good guys, just ask them).

…and somehow, it’s my job to make the men in my life feel good when they flirt with me even though I’d rather kill myself than get involved with anyone right now.

…and when I had the nerve to tell a man he was wrong, I had to take the verbal assault that followed, even though he was.

…and when I asked a community for help with something I didn’t understand, I got to listen to men tell me all the ways they would rape me for my ignorance.

These thing all happened between the time I woke up this morning around 5a, and now (almost 3:30p), and I never even left my house. This is a day in the life of a women. Some days are better. Some are much worse. But there isn’t a single day that goes by where women don’t have to smile and nod at all the things men do because as women, we have been trained from a very young age to tolerate it or suffer the consequences. And the consequences are dire.

So while my friends had wonderful lists of things that they are privileged enough to have just because they are male, this is one they forgot. The privilege to exist without having to defend their worth as a human beings.

 

Filed under: Feminism, Internets, mansplain, mansplaining, misogyny, privilege, True Story, woomanhood, yesallwomen