WHEN I was 16 years old, I was accepted into a prestigious senior high school that was previously exclusive to boys. Having come from an all-girls junior high school, I was shocked to learn that sexism and misogyny were things that actually existed elsewhere in the world.
It was 2017 at the time, and we were then the second batch of girls to have ever been granted admission to the school. In a class of forty students, there would only be five or six of us girls, and our teachers would constantly remind us of how special we were. According to them, we were given the rare opportunity and privilege to be educated like men, alongside men.
As time passed, we were also made to feel like our presence in the school was a commodity—an essential feature in the education of these male students. It was almost as though our purpose at that school was not to be educated, but rather to aid in the education of the male students who were there before us. Our teachers told us to help them and be patient with them. We were there to make them better men.
I heard the things these boys said about our female classmates—overtly sexual, prejudiced, and hateful. In hindsight, many of my male classmates probably didn’t realize their own misogyny. At the time, I wasn’t fully aware of it either. I was just equal parts scared and in denial that they would also speak about me in that offensive manner. It was at this point, though, that I could sense that this world I had fought so hard to enter did not favor me.
Desperately wanting to be seen as equal, I allowed myself to fall into the trap of misogyny as well. Maybe in witnessing discrimination, my gut-punch reaction was to distance myself from the very thing that made me vulnerable. If I wanted to be equal to men, I had to act more like them. But by playing patriarch and pretending that the power I sought liberated me from my own femininity, I became stuck in patterns of self-hatred and internalized misogyny.
At 22, I’ve come to realize that seeking equality alone, given the patriarchal bias of society’s values, is to assume that women want to be like men or that men are worth emulating. Even if I insisted on acting like a man to gain their favor, this wouldn’t address any deeper cause for the gender inequalities I’ve faced. Embracing masculine values was an act of self-preservation that only deepened my dependence on male privilege, and my allegiance to patriarchal thinking only hurt myself and other women.
Our patriarchal society has made it so that women can be the equals of men and power, in all its forms, can be shared among the sexes, albeit inequitably. But what it has not created is a true culture of equality. Instead, it has allowed women to participate in a society built upon masculine ideals, without questioning the extent to which that society is even worth participating in. Ultimately, it’s one rooted in aggression and competition that frames all relationships in the context of power.
I look back at my teenage years and wish I had a bit more guidance and a lot more strength. It took shedding male expectations for me to grow comfortable in my own skin. Once I managed to do this, it was as though a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
Both men and women are socialized into patriarchal thinking, but the patriarchy can be challenged and changed. At the risk of sounding utopian-minded, I believe that attacking the foundations of the male worldview has the power to heal the traumas inflicted upon us by its oppressive and annihilating culture, and help us realize a more expansive way of being and relating. Most importantly, it would reject the idea that women should live more like men, but instead allow everyone, regardless of gender, to live how they want.
