Intelligent women

Working on womens' self esteem

One thing that is still trauma-inducing for me is men shouting at women. This may be anyone and the anger doesn’t have to be directed at me but I feel myself cowering and feeling small. Sometimes for them, sometimes for myself. Most of the time I have noticed that these men shout at women on the most trivial things. Why did you park like this? Why did you buy this? Why did you cook like this? If do you this, you will drop that or spoil it or hurt yourself, etc etc. that on the surface it looks like care. I know this because that’s what I used to think too. But the shouting made me so scared, that either I would be too scared to share general things that happened in my day. I would be so anxious around my ex, that I would mess up - mess up those things he may have told me not to, already got mad at me about it, or spoil something he specifically gave directions to. Like spilling tea, dropping something he would tell me not to carry, messing up his eggs when he said not to mess it up this time, etc. It’s like my body feared the consequences so much, it suffered even before it happened.

This I remember made me feel stupid. Made me feel less intelligent and has impacted my self-esteem to such a huge extent. I remember this one time, I felt so stupid around him usually, that once when I travelled alone through the airport, I felt very proud of myself. When mentioning that to him, he replied, “What’s the big deal in that? Even small kids without caretakers travel alone!.” Why I’m writing about this, is because I still see it happening so often and makes me think about how it impacts so many women’s self-esteem. How we don’t believe in ourselves enough because really we were taught to. Patriarchy has taught us that women aren’t capable of intelligent conversations, politics, or academics, a few decades ago they weren’t even allowed to work in offices or become doctors or engineers. For sure now that is not the case but to keep the women well in check, it is important for patriarchy to break their self-esteem.

I hope you know that this is a trick to keep you submissive. To keep you thinking you’re not good enough means that you could never be better than them. That is why men cannot absolutely stand their partner earning more than them, getting more recognition than them, or even paying their bills at a date. Like how dare they?

I say we dare! Because we are amazing! And nothing that these men have been conditioned to think will affect our self-esteem. We can touch the sky if we want to and we all know we have this capability. Women for centuries have shown us their amazingness and have been able to defy their odds. Defy yours and shine out!