In the last year or two I've started to find myself enraged with increasing frequency. I took to describing it as my "irrational anger at the patriarchy". Then I realized something. I am not irrationally anger. I am the perfect amount of angry. I'm not becoming oversensitive, I'm growing as a woman and losing the naivete of my youth that led me to think the way men act is okay.
Guess what? It isn't.
When numerous guys in college refused to date me because I set boundaries for physical intimacy, it wasn't my fault. I wasn't a prude. I had the audacity to tell men upfront that I would not have sex with them until I was ready and they shamed me for it.
When my first boyfriend pressured me into having sex with him because I didn't completely know how to articulate "I like kissing you but I'm not ready to have sex with you" it wasn't okay.
When men played the "sex isn't as good with a condom on" and I didn't know I had the power to tell them to take a long walk off a short pier, it wasn't okay.
When a man named Jerry came up to me at work and began massaging my shoulders without any effort to ask if I was okay with his hands on my body, it was not okay. When I spent the next year with my back pressed against walls to avoid him touching me again, because he was older and my superior, IT WAS NOT OKAY.
One of the only regrets in my 27 years on this earth is that I did not stand up the first time he touched me and loudly ask him what the hell he thought he was doing.
All of those not-okay moments led to me not reporting a rape. They led to years of me questioning if I had any worth. They led to bad decisions in bad relationships because I thought it was my job to make men happy, even if it meant compromising my safety and comfort.
I wish I could have known these things earlier. I wish I had always had my voice and used it. I wish I didn't live in a world where I am worth-less and worthless in the eyes of men purely because they are men and I am a woman.
So yes, I am angry, and I plan on using that anger every single day of life I have left to fight for women who don't have their voice yet. I will use my voice, at every volume necessary to let men know that I have value.
I have many wonderful men in my life, but you can bet everything you own that the men of the world who are not so wonderful, will be hearing from me. From all of us. Because we are sick of it.
