If Men Could Be Women for a Day...or a Month |

IF I COULD PAINT A PICTURE TO HELP MEN UNDERSTAND WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE A WOMAN, THIS IS SOME OF WHAT I WOULD WANT THEM TO SEE, FEEL, LIVE

First we deceive ourselves

then we convince ourselves that we

do not deceive ourselves.*

To know what it is like to consciously have to worry about your physical safety. To always be looking behind you when getting out of your car late at night, or to wonder if you are safe in your apartment, or out at a club with your girlfriends, or….to know that no matter how fast you can run, or how hard you can punch, or how many self defense moves you have mastered your physical strength – for the most part – will never match that of a mans if he wants to use it.
To know what it feels like to live in a world of contradictions:

To be told you need to keep fit, skinny and pretty – but not too much or you might attract too much attention
To be told you need to be a woman, but to have that “woman” defined by men
To be told you cannot have sex before marriage, but that if your man cheats on you you probably had something to do with it because you weren’t fulfilling his needs
To be told that your sex drive is nothing compared to men’s, yet now that you are a woman you see you have just as many hormones if not more, especially during certain times of the month. Yet, because you are told you don’t have a comparable sex drive – you are afraid to talk about it with other women because your culture’s message has imprinted on you that you must be abnormal for a woman…so you try to suppress your hormones that make you a woman because that is the Good Girl thing to do.
To be told you can go after what you want, except when it threatens a man and his manhood you are now called pushy, aggressive or too forward by both men and women
To be told that your emotions are too much, that your emotions should make you embarrassed or they are making you ______ and you need to be medicated (message here is subliminally communicated: “you need to be more like a man and stuff those feelings”) yet society wants to paint you as the constant nuturer and care-taker…and in order to be that you need those very same characteristics that were shunned earlier.

To know what it feels like to enter the workforce knowing you most likely will earn less in money, power and respect because you are a woman without a _______ (trying to keep this somewhat clean).
To know what it feels like to earn less and then be told it is because the man is expected to pay for dates…only for your date to turn around and expect you to pay your fair share.
To know what it feels like to be driven by a cycle…

that – until menopause – is NEVER ceasing….nope it keeps going without your permission nor your control, month after month with no respite in sight.
that causes you pain both physically and emotionally up to – but not limited to – 2 weeks out of a 4 week month. That’s right – you only have MAYBE 2 weeks where you aren’t dealing with the pain of your cycle…but then let’s just say those 2 weeks are driven by some other hormones that we already talked about…
that is often blamed for every little complaint or grievance you try to voice…and you hear the subliminal message here that “shouts” quietly: Why can’t you be more like a guy and just ignore your feelings?

To know what it feels like to be physically pushed around by a guy and wondering if he will do more than just push you around
To know how scary men can be sometimes
To know what it feels like to have your skin crawl right off your body because a man has given you that look that tells you he sees you not as a human – but as an object he can use…and to be expected to be turned on by that
To know what it’s like to be vulnerable to man’s pleasures if he so wishes – if only in theory…and that in the end your physical strength would be no match to his if he decided to rape you.
To know how dirty and abhorred you feel when men’s looks, comments and smart alec remarks about your body, your gender, your womanhood, your emotions or anything else that makes it obvious you are not like them
To know what sexual frustration really feels like when your partner cannot, will not or has no idea how to satisfy you. And because the prevalent message around you tells you that this is your fault, that your “wiring must be wrong”, but that masturbation is wrong (leaving you with no idea how your own body works, that it is 100x more intricate than a male’s) you are left to feel inadequate, ashamed and malfunctioning. But remember you don’t have a sex drive like a man, so you must not care about sex as much and if you do – well you must be a deviant or something…
To know how it feels to hate your own body because it is not tall enough, petite enough, skinny enough, curvy enough…and your own mind because it is “malfunctioning” when the only problem is that it doesn’t function like a man’s
To know how it feels to be cursed by your body in so many ways
To know what it’s like to have a man minimize your opinion, your thoughts or your emotions with constant objections or comments like, “Just get over it.” “Move on” “Stop dwelling on the past.” or with a shake of the head and a disregard for you because he feels inconvenienced that you want him to actually talk to you like a human being
To know what it feels like to be overlooked for a job because you are a woman
To know what it feels like to get a job just because you are a woman
To know what it feels like to be told your greatest calling is to become a wife of one man, to submit your will to his and to become a mother
To know that you most likely, because you are a woman, will be in a relationship at least once in your life that is at least verbally abusive…if not more
To know what it feels like to have to be told that submitting your will to your husband’s is a sign of your womanhood.
To Know what it feels like to go to school for upteen number of years, to work hard for your success only to put everything on hold for the sake of the family…and then to know what it feels like to have to start over again at a much older age.
To know what it feels like to have men define womanhood for you, without asking you to feel free to pitch in (and thus how we get Victoria Secret vs. Proverbs 31 women)
To know what it feels like to have to have MEN validate that the Bible does indeed provide for equality among the sexes and does indeed provide for women to be leaders in our churches and equals in the home
To know what it feels like to have a God presented to you that looks and acts and reflects hardly anything about you
To know what it feels like to be afraid to go looking for God in a form that reflects you – for you must have come from somewhere right?
To know what it feels like to suppress your very soul because you have been so indoctrinated that seeking for anything feminine in or around you and especially in God is wrong and could lead you to a cult or idol/goddess worship and this is not of God, because God is obviously a man…
To know what it feels like to have been raised in a society that honors men above women if not outwardly (though it still does) at least subliminally, then to be told to submit your will to that of the Church (with a dominant male god) and of man…to then be abused in the process of that act of obedience (which at least 1/4 to 1/3 of women will be throughout their lifetime)…all the while told that God is a loving Father and is nothing like the men that reflect His image…and yet it is your fault you don’t have a right picture of God…
To know what it feels like to look around at your women friends and realize that we have all been defined by our culture and each other – that we are trying to live up to Patriarchy’s definition of women that never bothered to actually ask women who they are – and realizing it is no wonder so many of us suffer from PTSD, PPD, Anxiety, Depression, etc. and that more than half of us are on anti-depressants or anti-anxiety meds just so we can cope. Our lives are completely out of synch with our souls. How can you not be depressed when you have trained yourself to not listen to your own inner voice, your own soul tell you who you are? We as women are not being who we are created to be – and we are suffering, our children are suffering and the men in our lives are suffering.
To know what it feels like to feel, live and experience all this and more and to still have your reality dismissed or shrugged off, for you to be told you just need to “quit your bitching”…all because the men around you cannot see their own male privilege even after reading this list.

This list is based not only off my own experiences, but the collective experiences I have heard from other women over the years. Women – please feel free to add as I am sure I haven’t gotten everything.

*Can’t think of who said this at the moment…but it wasn’t a woman – it was a man.

If Men Could Be Women for a Day…or a Month

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