A phenomenon in DC recently is guys wearing suits to clubs. It’s mildly funny because they can’t dance properly with suits- they’d get too overheated. All they can do is stand around and sip their drinks. As I was investigating the roof bar with my friend a man in a suit made eye contact with me and asked me how I was doing. I said “good” and asked him how he was but I was moving on, not starting a conversation. He asked “Hey, where are you going?” in a harsh, razor-edged way like he required something else besides just a “fine, how are you.” It made me want to tear him down, expensive suit and all. How many women has he bested? How many of those girls has he convinced that they are to be quiet, weak, unassuming? I would destroy his senseless ego, but I press on through the crowd because it gets dangerous, besting a man who isn’t gracious.Not only because of him, but because I can feel that wash of ego in my own soul, clawing its way into being again. I remind myself of my shoulder blade,what it means, and beat the ego back with that twinge of pain. Remember your place and what happens when you flare up into unchecked self-importance. Calm,calm and reality.

A blog I read today was reassuring women that they are loveable, even when they don’t think they are. Another questioned honestly whether it was ok for a woman not to defer always to her husband’s decisions. Comment after comment from other women saying they knew exactly how she felt. It made me feel alone in a way, for I was in middle school the last time I questioned whether or not I was loveable and I have never thought it was audacious to consider myself the equal of the other gender. It has simply never crossed my mind for I have lived in equality since birth. Thank God. Equality is inherent, not some hierarchy of humanness. Everyone is an equal until we are convinced or convince ourselves that we aren’t. I was told that I’m surprisingly confident for a woman. I was told I’m surprisingly strong for a woman. I was told I was surprisingly smart for a woman. I wasn’t sure whether they were compliments or insults. Something is wrong with the world when I do things that are ordinary for a man and people are surprised by it, like being a woman is a disability that I must work to overcome.

I have read books that suggest that women are dangerous by their very nature, that they are tempting in body and conniving in mind. It suggested that without even knowing it we were a burden to the men around us and that men had to guard themselves against our unwitting wiles. It instructed how to curb our innate evilness, how to speak carefully, dress carefully, not put ourselves in situations where compromise might occur. I hurled the book across the room in disbelief. How dare they? How dare they suggest that I am dangerous because I am a woman? How dare they insult me by suggesting that I am dishonorable enough to pull men from their senses or that I do it as a child would, without even being self-aware? (Furthermore, how dare they suggest that all men are weak enough to fall into such a trap? I know many with more sense than that.) No, I am dangerous when and where I choose. I am dangerous if you threaten me, I am dangerous if I lose who I am in a moment of poor restraint. If I chose to be conniving then I am conniving. If I choose to be manipulative then I am manipulative. These are not things that merely happen because I am a woman. They are part of every human if we are self-serving. If a man feels that I have in any way “drawn him in” then he is sorely mistaken. I have treated him the same as I try to treat every human being- with respect and kindness. If he feels that I haven’t, he should call me out on it and I will consider whether I’ve had one of those moments of poor restraint.

If I could erase all of those lies that women have been told and tell something else in its place, I would tell them this: Live as fully YOU as you can be. Don’t twist and mold into something that you’re not, because who you are IS good enough. Never let anyone tell you that you are unequal, or that you are not expected to be as good as someone else. Let ability and personality determine that through demonstration, not through assumptions that you just ARE this way because you are a woman. I feel sick for you, those of you who believe that you were just created lesser. It aches because it isn’t true. It aches because I shouldn’t be told that I am surprising. I shouldn’t be surprising.This should not be a surprise, for it isn’t an epiphany it’s a truth that I’ve lived throughout my entire life: You are yourself, and yourself is whoever you choose to be- you are not obligated to act a certain way. You choose how you’re going to behave. Then no matter what happens you’ll never feel like you don’t know who you are, because you’ve been yourself all along.