inkskinned:

it is tiring, being endless political just as someone existing. my teacher asks me if i’m writing more of that “feminist poetry.” a lot of it is just talking about me, being a woman, being afraid in the city. i write about walking a line, about how i am expected to choose between home and work, how each comes with a slew of its own insults; how it feels when i am wearing shorts and there are too many men outside. these are just facts of my life. someone in the comments says, “where are woman even coming up with these crazy generalizations in their feminism?”

i hold hands with the prettiest girl i’ve ever seen and someone sighs when they see me. “do they have to make everything gay?” she asks her friend, loudly, “like, do you have to force those views in my face all the time?” i can’t stop blushing. my girlfriend holds my fingers tighter, tighter, tighter, until my knuckles are white, and i let her. somehow, this is us, protesting.

my father’s cuban blood stains my skin, i think. when i am honored with a position in the dean’s private council, a boy sneers, “you only got in because you’re hispanic.” did i? i spend the rest of our meetings wondering if i was selected for my stellar academic record, for the multiple recommendations, for the clubs i lead – or if i was just a move the dean made, to make use of me. when we all take a picture, the dean brings me in the front. in the first three we take, i am not smiling.

it is odd. “i exist.” i say, “i deserve to exist.”

“oh my god,” he groans, “we get it, you’re a feminist.”

Meanwhile the women, POC, and LGBT who are actually going through shit and have seen REAL actual oppression don’t try to make everything about us political or whine and winge about being oppressed all the time.

We fight oppression by living our lives one day at a time, by becoming self reliant, by getting an education and a career so nobody can say anything to us because of how useful we are to the community. We make sure that we are upstanding and liked people and that we protect our friends and family by encouraging them to fight too.

You aren’t going to change anything by complaining. You aren’t going to empower yourself by parroting drivel from political news channels and you tubers that you only half understand.

You empower yourself through DOING. Through ACTION. Westerners don’t understand this because they have it so good that they don’t know what it’s like to see real injustice.