The Women in Your Life Are Watching

The women in your life are watching as you debate whether or not we were assaulted or abused. Questioning our truths, our pain dismissed in a courtroom of whispers and scorn.

The women in your life are watching as you decide how we are supposed to act and what we should have done better.

The women in your life are watching while you debate whether or not we can get healthcare. How sick we have to be before we get what we need. Our bodies politicized, our choices constrained in a world that deems our worth conditional.

The women in your life are watching while you debate whether we are feminine enough. The women who were bullied for being too tall, who were tomboys. They’re watching.

The women in your life are watching you debate what kind of careers we are allowed to have and what place we fill in this world.

The women in your life are watching as you debate how much money we should make.

The women in your life are watching while you debate whether or not we earned our promotions or if we slept with someone to get them.

The women in your life are watching while you debate our access to education.

The women in your life are watching as you decide our right to leadership roles.

The women in your life are watching while you decide exactly how supportive of our partner’s career is too supportive.

The women in your life are watching while you decide what we should look like, how much makeup is too much makeup, how skinny is too skinny, and what makes us relationship material.

The women in your life are watching while you debate how we’re allowed to conceive, when we’re allowed to conceive, and what makes a perfect mother, and whether or not we have a say if we are not yet mothers.

The women in your life are watching while you decide our right to safety, then blame us when we feel unsafe. As we navigate a world where harassment and violence are everyday realities, our fears often dismissed or trivialized.

The women in your life are watching while you debate our right to express our identities freely.

The women in your life are watching while you decide how our stories are told.

The women in your life are watching as you decide our value.

Mothers, sisters, daughters, friends.

The women in your life are learning how you really feel about us.

Say it with your chest. But don’t be upset when the women in your life don’t want to be in your life anymore.

Megan Berger