"being quiet never got a damn thing done."

People have argued nature vs. nurture for decades, centuries even. I have always wondered when it is that boys begin to capitalize upon their privilege. I see it when little boys chase after little girls and the little girls’ mothers tell them that it is only because he likes them, and then wonder why, years later, many of those girls are in abusive relationships. How can it surprise anyone, when I was told for so many years that a boy was only mean to me because he liked me?

We are so quick to place blame anywhere but the man, and I never really understood it fully until we talked about the Eve myth. We are helpless, but conniving, seductive but weak. Women are scapegoats, the scapegoats of a patriarchal society constructed with us either on a pedestal or degraded into dirt, and no matter what, we are always second to the man.

And I guess this comes back to wondering what the best way is to combat our situation. Do we educate women, and show them that it doesn’t have to be this way, or is that not enough? In my experience, things never change until people are angry, so angry they won’t take it anymore, and civil unrest becomes inevitable.

It wasn’t being intellectual that changed things for the suffragettes; it was being disruptive. They aren’t exclusive, and I think people forget that. We demonize Malcolm X and exalt Martin Luther King, Jr. always forgetting that they shared more traits than we probably are comfortable with. They were, in many ways, two sides of the same coin. Feminists must be the same; voracious learners and fierce warriors. In my experience, those who say, “we would listen to you if only you were polite,” are the most unapologetic liars in the world. It is nothing more than a technique to derail righteous anger.