A Curse!
I
hold a Masters degree and a PhD degree in Politics and Public Relations. I have
a lucrative job that provides me with enough money to have everything I need. I
drive a fancy car and have a fancy house. Yet, if I walk down a street alone, men
stare at me and verbally harass me. With their luscious looks, they strip me
off my clothes and rape me.
I
thought if I get married and wear a wedding ring, men may stop acting like that
with me. I bought a very big ring so that it is going to be noticeable and eye-catching.
To my surprise, the ring changed nothing and men still behave in the same way.
I
thought if I am with my husband, men will not dare to stare at me anymore. This
is a patriarchal society after all. Ironically, I still get stared at;
especially by men who are accompanied by their wives.
If
you are a man who is reading this, you’ll probably be thinking that I don’t wear
decent clothes, that’s the reason why men stare at me like that. Huh! What a
good excuse men use to harass women and even rape them! But no, you are wrong! You
may be surprised to know that I actually wear very decent clothes; never
anything tight, or short or sheer. It has nothing to do with men. I just
respect my body enough not to expose it in that disgraceful way.
I
sometimes get phone calls from men who want to have fun and spend some “lovely
time” on the phone with a girl. I yell at them and ask them to never call
again, but they never listen to me and keep calling until they hear the voice
of a man answering my phone.
I
aspire to become an MP in the future, and I work towards that, but I think even
then, I will not be able to escape any of the problems I face as a woman every
day. A friend of mine is already an MP. She is a widow and in her fifties. A
man one day called her and said that he wanted to meet her and “talk” to her.
My friend has given up on men long time ago and she’s faithful to the memory of
her husband whom she loved very much. When she received that phone call,
surprisingly, she found herself yelling “Don’t dare to call me ever again,
otherwise I’m going to tell my brothers.” She said that she could believe that
after all these years and after being an MP, she still felt like she had to use
a man as a way to threaten someone who was disturbing her. However, I don’t really
blame her for reacting in that way. No matter how many achievement we make in this
life and how many high posts we fill, the curse of being a woman is always
going to be following us and men are always going to give themselves the right
to verbally or physically harass us. All this for one reason: Being a women.
