I do believe that every single woman in Egypt and the Middle East had to do something, anything, to please those around her.
I did. Maybe if you are a woman reading this now, your mind started having flashbacks of the many instances where you did whatever those close to you asked you to do.
I wish it was just people who are close to you who order you to change yourself in order to “please them.” Of course, them being close to you doesn’t justify or lessen how harmful it is to be ordered to change YOURSELF and YOUR identity for the pleasure of OTHERS.
But maybe it would have been better, you know? Maybe it would have been better if you only had to deal with your family but as a woman you find that people and strangers believe that they have the right to order you to change along with your family and those close to you.
It’s not just ordering.
It’s bullying.
Threatening.
Harming®
Traumatizing you just because you were born as a woman.
So you may refuse to change when they order you to. You may be strong in the beginning; if you are lucky then you maybe have a supportive family who doesn’t care about what society wants you to be. We aren’t lucky. We aren’t blessed to have a normal life where we can be ourselves without having to explain why we are ourselves.
We are cursed; cursed since the moment we were born into a society that has a majority of people convinced that they are allowed to change and shape you as they see fit. But is there really a shape that they see as “fit?” Do they ever stop? No.
You are a woman, we are women, and that’s enough for them to never see us as fit.
So they order us to change. If we refused then they would bully us to change and if we survived this bullying then they would threaten us. If we spoke up and called for help, no one would extend their hands to help us. They can only extend their hand with the intention of harming us. Harming us isn’t enough. They would traumatize us. That if we survived till the end.
But there is no end to their shaping and to their harm. There is no end to our suffering even when we endure because enduring and surviving in this type of society don’t give you any healing.
I can’t really blame those who didn’t endure. I can’t go to a woman who allowed those around her to change her into whatever they wanted and blame her. How can I? How can we blame someone who couldn’t endure their suffering? We all have our limits. Most of the time they manage to make you reach your limit quicker than you thought.
Maybe if it was only those close to you, it would have been easier. But it’s almost everyone. Almost everyone wants to change women.
Thave seen girls who were younger than 15 years old change themselves because they were told that they weren’t enough.
I saw them cut their hair short, make it longer, or be forced to wear a hijab or a niqab not because they want to do all of that but because people want them to be that.
So yes I won’t blame these women.
I won’t blame them for not realizing that these conditions will never end because they don’t realize that the love they seek from those around them will never be given to them.
We will never gain that love by changing ourselves because we will never please them.
So, we keep changing until we realize that changing will never please them or until we become them and try to change those around us. Many women changed into those who demand them to change because they were told that this is the right thing.
They were told that every woman should change to please those around her because being a woman is already a mistake. A failure that we must try to compensate for. We are told by these demands for change that we are already doomed because we identify as women.
But here is the thing: we will never be enough for them.
We will never be enough even if we cut our hair, made it long, wore a niqab, wore a hijab, stayed at home and left our jobs, dropped out of school, learned how to cook to please our future husbands, convinced ourselves that it is our fault when we get sexually harassed, married someone they want us to marry, dress in a certain way and talk in a certain way, or have a piece of our flesh cut because otherwise we will be called sluts.
Even if we died they will still blame us and say that we weren’t enough. It turns out that they don’t see us as humans but they see us as women and that makes all the difference. To them women are not humans; they are their property and their sin. A sin because we exist and their property because we are women.
So here is the thing. We can do every single thing that they want us to do. We can seek and beg for their acceptance. We can try to avoid being hated. But we will always be hated.
Even if we change everything they want us to change, they will keep finding more and more things in us and demand us to change these things as well.
If you are a woman then be yourself and don’t believe that you must change to be loved.
