My mother selflessly spilled her blood for me
on a Thursday night when the air was moist and the sky painted a furious dark blue
And so I suppose it comes to full circle that eleven years later I shed my first blood under that same sky
Staring at my plump walls, wearing Barbie pink pajamas, I attempted to bury my childhood
Although I suppose I had buried it long ago when fate decided I would not only be a girl, but an older sister too
They say that girls mature faster than boys, but that is the biggest lie society ever told
Truth is, girls are forced the responsibility of being women while boys are allowed to pamper their youth
We were taught what not to wear, what chores to do, who not to play with and that two is harder to kidnap than one
I find it rather disgusting that some cultures claim you become a woman when you shed your first blood
It’s very likely that if I was born into such a culture
I would have been married off a few days after that night
still wearing my Barbie pink pajamas
Should I be thankful I wasn’t born in Turkey or Greece? Where girls are slapped when they get their first period to instill a sense of shame throughout their lives?
Menstruation is the only blood that is not born out of violence, yet society forces women to find shame and disgust in it
No, I should be thankful I wasn’t born in the 92 countries where many cultures mutilate women’s genitals to ‘prevent’ them from having premarital sex
Forgive me, I’m being ungrateful
At least those girls are given the right to live,
unlike the female fetuses in India and China where sex-selective abortion is still at an all time high
All because their society believes men to be more valuable than woman
The irony of a woman exercising her right to control her body at the expense of another woman’s right to life never truly sat well on my chest
But our girls in the womb aren’t any safer than the ones born in Kenya where the alarming rise of femicide has brought protests to the streets
I believe I serve a God who died on the cross for my sins
So therefore, this capital crime society claims I committed by being born a woman, is already paid for
So why is there still a bounty on my head?
Oh, how idiotic of me, of course I’m wrong
I’m just a woman after all
It was not Christ I wronged, it was men,
who made themselves gods to rule over women as abusers
Sure you can say, ‘not all men’
But it becomes a weak defense when every woman has a story or knows another who does
I’ve grown weary of just blaming the patriarchy
The blood of my sisters has been shed by the gallons
Equality is no longer enough,
Vengeance is my right and I’ll claim it too
Perpetual Kahindo is a third-year Political Science major. PK973548@wcupa.edu