It’s because girls are taught we deserve to be mistreated and abuse is love.
It’s because I had rocks thrown at me when I was a little girl with skinny legs, with blood streaming down my face, leaving a scar that stays with me to this day, and I was told “he does that because he likes you!”
It’s because so-called “love” stories, all over, everywhere, tell women that the man who obsesses over them, controls them, and abuses them is the one who loves them.
It’s because genuinely good men (not Nice Guys™ who think women owe them sex for basic human decency) are desexualized and sidelined because they don’t conform to the ideals of domineering, entitled, violent masculinity.
It’s because women are told they are responsible for fixing men with the power of their love, that women are selfish if they don’t offer their emotional labor and bodies to men who demand it.
It’s because women are told we should revolve around men, their success, their self-realization, their redemption, because we are not our own persons but accessories in others’ lives.
It’s because women and girls don’t get the space to see themselves cherished and treated as equals in relationships, and instead are bombarded with messages that we are milestones in men’s stories, their rewards, their conquests.
It’s because we’re not taught to say “no,” we’re taught to smile and accommodate and let them down gently and give and give and give and ask for nothing back.
It’s because we are blamed for the wrongs committed by men, because men can do no wrong and we must be tempting them to evil.
It’s because if we speak out we are called names and barraged with threats, because we must be silent, silent and smiling and sweet and we are not allowed to scream when we are hurt.
Because he likes you.
It’s because women are not treated as human beings. It’s because we’re taught to swallow the message that we are less, and we are taught to like it.
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