Tell me why
this unwelcome swarm of words
has to stand its ground in the inboxes of myself
my friends
my peers
Why they come in like soldiers looting people’s dignity and pride
and they steal everything from us until we’re breathless
Tell me why I’m so ashamed to try and stand up for myself
Why I was so ready to present my intense research

on the gender wage gap

an unwanted entity
at 12 years old
but my confidence was shot down
by the people laughing in the back
“Feminazi!”
“Aggressive!”
“Sensitive!”
Tell me why the large majority of women receive verbal sexual abuse
purely because of who they are
Because we live in an evolving society
where gender is a big pink sign on our backs that read,
“Catcall me”
“Bother me”
“Make me uncomfortable”
“Make me feel worthless”
“Make me feel like I’m good for nothing except sex”
It shouldn’t take the voices of hundreds of powerful women
and the booming voices of courageous men
to try and push these numbers out here,
because they’re real
Feminazi!
They’re true
Aggressive!
They need to change
Sensitive!
Tell me why my friends and I have been called names,
threatened,
put down,
and humiliated,
but it took us this damn long,
because this world makes us scared but that uninvited nature
isn’t going to waft into our ears anymore
My friends weren’t ‘hoes’ for wearing bathing suits
I don’t want to have sex because someone had a crush on me
My sister wasn’t aggressive for asking a boy to homecoming
My mom is not wrong for being a boss in her workplace
She’s not a prude for wearing a hijab
and she’s not a sl*t for wearing a crop top
Women are not less than men
Women are equal
We have a voice
and feminism is not a bad word
It ends
It ends with us
It ends now
It ends