I Am a Woman

I am a woman, this is true.

What exactly does this mean for me and you?

Let me unravel the questions in my mind,

And with any hope, you will have questions of the same kind.

Are we, as humans, living in an enlightened age:

Welcoming new ideas, thinking for oneself,

Using our ability of reason to progress human nature?

Do we have the courage to disagree and

Find an answer that may look different?

I live in the land of the free,

This is true.

Should I proudly wear my red and blue?

What does it mean to me,

To be born as a woman in this time of change,

In a place where I have choice and voice and worth,

But when others around the world are bearing shackles still.

How can anyone dare say this is God’s will?

Oh the sorrow it would be to be born in a common jail cell of this world,

Where my body is shameful and tempting,

Where my mind is worthless

Where my voice is never to be heard

Where my cries of injustice are regarded as lies.

Here I can lounge on the grass wearing anything I may

But wait, aren’t these things still true at the end of the day?

But I feel the wind shifting and time drifting

To a change that will break all of these chains someday.

I believe in a being that will come once again

To save the oppressed, to save women from this world, and guide them home.

If Jesus came this afternoon,

Would you be guilty of holding women back, holding me back?

Are you a Pharisee of our time?

[Or better yet, am I, in one way or another?]

Are you guilty of shaming my gender

Of telling me I cannot preach the gospel

Or lead this land of the “free”

Because of my sex, because I am too emotional

Because I cannot lead,

Because I am too timid and weak to be an example?

Or simply because I lack the male member,

If that’s really the only reason?

Well I am here to tell you something about my gender.

Do not blame me for the anger I carry

When just this past century I could choose whom to marry,

And many around the world are still regarded as a burden

Or just a delicate little flower,

[Which one is worse?]

To whom their patriarchs have all the power

To beat them down both physically and mentally

Until they have no self worth or regret their birth.

How lucky am I to live where I do,

But how often do I spend my time actually trying to help You?

You who are battling with insecurity

Because of the systematic oppression of lack of worth.

When will this stop, when will our daughters truly be free?

We are not cute, nice objects of beauty, unable to participate in conversation

So why do so many women readily believe

We are made to submit, because I must admit,

You are limiting yourself to the thoughts of others,

While all along you have the power to uncover

Your own thoughts and a future to discover.

I am writing to You about a time when your daughter will be safe.

Safe to think, live, love, and breathe,

Safe to preach, work, and feel what it means to be free.

There will be a time when submission to man is a historic tragedy;

When You will not be known by fragility.

A time when you will be cherished for your mind,

A time when you will never shame your body

Or your soul or your dreams.

A time when you will not be told that you cannot preach

And that you should “just accept” what these chauvinists teach.

There will be a time when she won’t be afraid to be smart,

Afraid to speak her opinions;

Looking for beauty to give her a start

Somewhere in this big, wide world, afraid of

Speaking in class, her confidences as fragile as glass.

I am a woman living in the land of the free

Yet I am still breaking out of this longstanding misery

With a grand plea:

There are no pink virtues or blue,

We all have souls wanting what is true.

So here I am to recriminate,

Are you living in an enlightened state?

How can we be? When half of the world population is struggling so-

Nothing is done or finished

Until women are respected and abuse is diminished.

Society has told us by nature we nurture,

But who was the one to put a doll in my arms?