"i'm imagining things"

"You're the boss."

I heard that for the first time in my entire life, I think, several days ago. Upon hearing that, I felt like I could have cried.

I do not understand why I need that validation, and I know that it meant more coming from a man. No matter how hard I try to unlearn this internalized misogyny that I live with, I know that I placed more value on what he said because he wasn't a woman. It gives me all kinds of mixed feelings.

On one hand it makes me ecstatic, because he respected the authority that I have, but I also should not have to feel so good that a man recognized me as able to hold authority. I should expect people to treat me that way. It makes me feel like I have not quite overcome the power structure I am so used to living under. One of the most important things of being a feminist is being self-evaluative like this, and I am definitely not always the best at it. It certainly is not easy, and it is easy to slip into hopelessness. What is the point of trying so hard all the time when there is always something else to improve on?

To me, internalized misogyny is one of the scariest things in the world. It rips people apart and they do not even realize it. It lets people demean themselves over and over again, and because of structural attitudes, no one ever bothers to correct them. It is scary enough in older women, but perhaps at its most heartbreaking in young girls. When I was little, I wanted to be any and everything but feminine, because there was something about being a girl that I hated. I was only six or seven and I did not know any better, but when I told teachers that I did not want to wear a dress because, "Girls are stupid," they just laughed and didn't bother correcting me.

Of course, I don't think I quite understood I was a girl at the time, but that's besides the point. Even at six or seven, I knew better than to want to be a girl because girls were less than boys. When I was eight, I even told my best friend (a boy) that I should have been born a boy because girls were stupid and weak and there was no reason to be like that. I was probably ten before anyone ever really informed me that what I was saying was so incredibly awful.

Even when they told me that I could be a girl and not be weak, though, no one ever told me I could be a girl and be the boss at the same time. I had to wait almost ten years for that.

"You're the boss," shouldn't mean that much, but it did.