The Cage Looks Different, But It’s Still a Cage

Some men enforce gender roles by pushing women into cages:
Be obedient. Be soft. Be nurturing. Be silent.

Other men wear those same gender roles like a costume and declare:
This is what makes a woman. I embody it better than you.

The strategy looks different, but the effect is the same.

Women’s voices are silenced.

Women’s boundaries are ignored.

Women’s dignity is reduced to stereotypes.

One presses us into the cage.
The other slips inside, locks the door, and claims ownership of it.

But in both cases—the cage remains. And women are punished if we try to break the bars.

At their core, both groups—men who enforce gender roles from the outside and men who wear those roles: define women on terms that keep women small. The difference lies in style, not substance.

• Enforcers of gender roles demand women perform femininity in ways that serve male power: obedient wife, nurturing mother, silent helper. They dictate: “Do this because it’s what a good woman is.”

• Performers of gender roles adopt the very stereotypes themselves, then insist: “This is what a woman is, and I embody it more purely than you.” In doing so, they still reduce womanhood to an exterior expression or costume of stereotypes, while silencing women who resist or object. “She isn’t being a female human being “correctly.” The correct way to be female is some fantasy sexualized version that males “approve” of. 

In both cases:

• Women’s voices are erased.

• Women’s dignity is subordinated to performance.

• Women’s boundaries are ignored.

The result is chillingly similar: women are told that their reality, their bodies, and their truths do not define womanhood—male-centered interpretations do.

So, what’s the difference? One presses women into cages, the other slips into the cage himself and then declares ownership of it.

But both keep the cage standing, and both punish women who dare to break the bars.

The only way forward is self-definition. Our truth, our dignity, our right to speak and be heard do not come from permission slips written by men or by systems. They are ours by birth, by breath, by existence.

We are not costumes, outfits, accessories, or adornments.

We are not “birthing bodies” or “breeders”.

We are not “period havers” or “menstruators”.

We are not cages, we are not roles to be borrowed or imposed.

We are not shields from violence between grown adult males. 

We are women—defining ourselves for ourselves—and every cage built to contain us will be broken, discarded, and left behind.