This is for my friends that are living the life of the “fairer sex”.
At least once a week I’m reminded how lucky I am to be built physically larger as a cis woman.
I’m 5’8″ and put on muscle as easy as a man, which I took for granted for most of my life.
But, at least once a week I see a post from one of my more slight or petite friends that unnerves me.
I’ve been lucky to not feel the fear of being around people that could cause harm to me just because they are bigger, very few people can physically intimidate me just because I’m the size of a smaller man, and very few people are dumb enough to size me up in a threatening way.
But my friends who are more compact experience this fear, and it sounds like it’s quite often.
One friend posted about police not investigating male on female assaults on the streets and how it made her want to get ripped.
My reply was as follows:
Get ripped. As far as I can figure, the ideal of women maintaining positions of physical weakness in their careers, homes and fitness to “be the delicate flower of femininity” and shunned for anything but, is a patriarchal tactic to ensure women can be continually subjugated, live in fear of the “stronger sex” and stay dependant on the manliness of men to keep us safe, which, happens to also be what is most dangerous.
A couple of my strength mantras:
Women are just as capable of physical strength and prowess, we’ve just been socialized otherwise…
Get ripped, learn to throw punches wear steel toed boots, and remember it’s always better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
How much of the world is built and maintained on the backs and shoulders of women?
Women who, while carrying the next generation in their bellies and on their hips, also tend fields, clean war zones, fix homes, tend livestock, carry water for their family in sweltering heat, keep the house standing.
Western privilege is a lie for women the most, because we’re still doing the lions share of it, and being gaslit into believing that it’s not enough, and that we’re weak.
I knew a man that went to Sub-Saharan Africa as a child on Baptist missionary work and subsequently became an atheist and feminist for all he saw there, and to quote him:
“If hard work made a person rich, there would be millions of wealthy women in Africa”
And it’s global, women aren’t weaker, but we’re expected to look and act the dainty little part, “Don’t get too big or you’ll look like a man”, “That’s men’s work”, stay clean and slim and hairless, and have soft skin, don’t lift heavy things, so and and so forth.
Its a deal with the devil. Have the privilege of not doing physical labor, but be placed in a position where fitness is idealized, sexuality a form of power, and independence from patriarchal rules of being are vilified, and one has to trust the patriarchy to protect you from the patriarchy itself.
So, what am I rambling about? Instead of living in fear of assault, and hoping the police help you if or when it happens, get ripped, get swole, lift, take martial arts as a lifestyle, work in construction, force changes in what makes up the feminine ideal, and live in less fear.
We can’t change the behavior of others, but we can change ourselves, and how others are able to approach us.
Cheers!