WHY FEMINISM IS IMPORTANT

To the people who wash their hands of us, of the voices with bruised knees and hearts banging in our chest too loudly to let us sleep, to those who walk with blinders on because it can’t be as bad as we say it is, to those who don’t believe,
Would you want your daughters grow up in this society?

Why is it that unless someone you love is staring down the barrel of a gun, you finally start to worry that it might be loaded? How is it possible that you have been surrounded by a constant chatter of voices saying “This world is cruel, and we have been broken,” but for some reason, you pride yourself on assuming we are wrong - god forbid someone be a “feminist,” not one of those, not those bitches

here is my feminist agenda, and it is a little girl on the streets of her city, and here are her rapists telling the police, “she looked older, she looked fifteen.” Here is more comments on what she was wearing than the smell of gasoline on their fingers, than the wounds they left on her and in her soul, here is my manifesto: I will not let there be any more stories about little girls.
I will not let there be stories about teenagers who are swallowing selfhatred and nothing else, I will not watch them be called sluts for dressing in shorts, I will not hear stories of girls who are burning themselves into nothing because their teachers refuse to use the correct pronouns, I will not let any person who defines themselves as a girl become a side note, a sex toy, a background dancer. I will protect their bodies and their souls and I will not let you buy them anymore, I will not let you lead them into the hellhole I walked out of. I will keep shouting the same thing, over and over: “Don’t listen to anything they tell you, it is who you are that makes you beautiful - and not anything they could sell you,” I will not let you infantalize them by assuming they “simply cannot” learn about sex without becoming “impure.” You will no longer put teens in their underwear across the front pages, I will not let you sexualize them any longer, they will be in movies for dialogue instead of silent romantic action.
Here is my goddamn manifesto: young women should not think that sexual assault “just happens” and is something everyone should expect. Their bosses should not be like the beefy 6-foot Tyler who asked me “Are you a slut? I bet you’re a slut,” in the middle of the office, their coworkers should not call them up at four in the morning and whisper dirty drunken things over the phone like my friend’s did. Young women should not believe that silence is the best option because it means they make no enemies and get to keep their job. You don’t believe it can be as bad as we say because are not under the assumption that every day, one item will be stolen from you. You would be horrified if that happened. Yet a million things are taken from women and it is constantly happening - every time a politician calls a college girl a “slut” for wanting birth control, every time we’re told our body has some mystical way of “shutting down that sort of thing” as pregnancy control, every time a lady gets turned down as C.E.O
You want my feminist rant? You want the bodies I have counted among the broken ones, our backs heavy with every slur you throw at us, our arms carrying your babies and your mistakes and your expectations and your fucking society that you made this way

you want my mani-fucking-festo? My riot act? The reason for all this anger I have? It’s because my best friend drank from the wrong glass. See, some asshole was trying to roofie a girl at a party my best friend happened to attend - he got drugged instead. And when he woke up, it was in somebody’s bed. And you wanna know something? They told him he should feel lucky because he got laid, at least. He remembers nothing from that night. Not one single thing.
And my best friend? My best friend will never see justice for this, because rape is a joke. It doesn’t really happen unless the girl is asking for it. Rape is seen as the attack in the alley. Rape is not close, it’s not home, it’s not a broken bone that never sets for you. Rape is not a sore subject to you because your friend has not wept bitterly about her abortion she was forced into after her boyfriend raped her without a condom. Your friends are largely safe, and the ones that haven’t been have kept silent. You don’t have a sister so you never feared for her life just because she went out into the city late at night.
But you might have a daughter. Tell me you’d laugh about feminism then, tell me you’d really think it’s such a fucking joke when you realize you haven’t been fighting the way the world works. And now she’s going to grow up with the same war wounds you have ignored in everyone else, the same silenced battle cry, the same downcast eyes and shrinking spine and splinters in more places than you could ever pick out and it won’t happen at sixteen years old it won’t happen at eleven
it happens before she is born. You will be in the toy aisle of the store and you will look around you to the guns and army men and violence of boys and suddenly notice the soft pink wilting flowers that you are supposed to buy for your girl
and when that happens, when you realize that the world you have laughed at has now become her battle: do still you want us to be too quiet to disturb your sleep when that happens? Or do you want to hear our feet, stamping in the distance, fire in our hands and scales too thick to pierce through, mouths full of teeth and the bones of bullies we have chewed through, hand in hand and ready for her, ready to fight for her right to breathe the same air that you did - ready to make sure she still has some sort of a fighting chance even though you never stood up when we asked for help because you just made a “dirty feminist” joke and went to bed assuming we all shared your laughter
but I don’t care if you are the scum of the earth.
She cannot control her father.
Whomever she is, I swear to god
I’ll protect her.