The first time you abused her was when she was sitting across from you in class and you looked at her with your condescending gaze. You turned to your friends who were sitting right behind you and told them, in a loud voice so that she too could hear it, that you are so sure however much she studies that she will never get higher marks than you. Not because your work ethic is better than hers, but simply because you are a guy and she is a girl. And then you wondered why she was even putting in much effort studying, when, in your mind, she won’t need those chemical reactions, integrals, and simple harmonic motion formulae she was learning to be a good wife, as your “wise” mind was so sure that is all her future holds, to be someone’s wife.
The next time you abused her was when you saw her picture on her WhatsApp status and started making nasty comments about how she looked slutty because her dress was short and you could see a big part of her legs and thighs. With you being you, you didn’t just comment in your own head and leave it just there. No, you couldn’t! Your friends in the WhatsApp group you share with her had to know about what your thoughts were. They call it “freedom of speech”- so, you went on and expressed your thoughts. Many of your friends in that group cheered you up and also continued your line of thoughts with their own insulting comments. And unsurprisingly, none of them was wise or thoughtful enough to call you out on your immoral and cruel act, because of course it’s “normal”, and actually “okay” in our societies to talk about women in that disrespectful manner.
Your abuse didn’t stop right there. How could it! You also had to laugh off with your friends about the news you had seen on TV about that sixteen-year-old young girl who was impregnated by her thirty-seven-year-old so called “boyfriend” who felt entitled to having sex with her, though she didn’t want it, hence the rape and the pregnancy. But of course, you couldn’t believe it! You were like, “Aaah, girls of nowadays we know them; maybe she had sex with him willingly and when it got out that she was pregnant, she started making up the story that she was raped.”
The worst thing about it is that you are not the only one who has those imperious thoughts and that shameful mindset about girls and women in general. There are still thousands and thousands of people, if not millions of them, who think just the same way you do and maybe even worse. There is still a world of people out there who still think of girls and women as second gender. There is still a world of people who still think paying school fees for a girl child is squandering money because a woman’s most sought-after dream and aspiration should be to get married and be someone’s wife, that all she is is just her body- the one to be used as men please.
With every hurtful word you have said, you ripped her heart out, shred it into pieces, and left it bleeding on the street ground for more like-minded people to crush it all over and over again. With every disbelief and lack of support, you have turned her once confident self into an insecure shell of a lady she used to be and now all her hopes, dreams, and ambitions for the future are all blown up in smokes because worthless and incapable is all she thinks she is now.
I have maintained my silence for a long time thinking that maybe one day your genius mind will tell you how many lives you have destroyed and how many young girls you have abused with your loudly shared hurtful thoughts and words. But after waiting for a very long time, I am tired. I am tired of waiting for you and others who have the same attitude to change your minds and look at her as your equal and not your inferior. Because in case you didn’t know, just because you have testosterone running in your blood and she has oestrogen running in hers doesn’t make you any superior, scientifically wiser, or entitled to use her let alone to reduce her to nothing but her body, at all. Because She is a human being too who deserves to be respected and treated with nothing but care and thoughtfulness.
I just hope that you’ll remember that in the future!