Some movements show they are not interested in seeing or hearing from all women. We should not ignore that.
“New” or rebranded movements, same old male-entitled and defective vision of women.
The thing about being a woman is how much of your life happens beyond anybody’s limited use and temporary opinion of your looks.
It is doing the school pickup and knowing that leaving work on time may count against you when promotion season comes. It is cutting your paid hours to raise children, then growing old on a pension that reflects the wages you gave up, with no payment for the care you gave.
Photo by 150 Billi
It is sitting down after work and still being the person who knows what needs cleaning, whose appointment is tomorrow, and whether there is anything in the house for dinner. Work somebody notices the minute you stop doing it.
It is being the person relatives call when an aging parent needs help, as though your time comes with fewer obligations. People praise your devotion without necessarily offering to take a shift.
It is planning how you will get home before deciding whether you can go. Watching your drink, checking the back seat, and weighing whether refusing a man directly might make the situation more dangerous. Then hearing someone ask why women are so anxious.
It is having pain dismissed as something women simply have to endure. Menstrual pain, childbirth recovery, the changes of menopause. Being expected to carry on can become so ordinary that people forget to ask what carrying on costs you.
It is discovering how quickly people turn your private decisions into public business. Whether you have children. Why you have none. Who looks after them while you work, and why you “gave up your career” if you stay home.
And depending on where a woman lives, it can mean people treating her menstruation as grounds for exclusion, or armed men treating her body as something they have a right to capture and claim.
Women do not all live the same life. These burdens differ across countries, communities, race, disability, and income. But reducing womanhood to appearance leaves out the very things women have spent generations fighting to change.
Some men give looks so much weight because looking at women is familiar to them. They may know exactly what they find attractive while knowing very little about what a woman has to consider before she leaves the house, asks for a raise, or says no.
That gap deserves some humility. Especially when women are explaining our own lives.
Being seen is more than being looked at. And women deserve to be understood beyond what someone sees.
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