How many of us
Classified as "women"
Categorized as "women"
Organized as "women"
Have felt the ache of loving
In a way that could never be returned?
How many
So-called, so-labeled, so-decided as
"Women"
Loved those
Who were identified as "men"
Who labeled themselves as "men"
Who were viewed under the category "man"
At the expense of our own selves?
How many
"Men"
Claimed
To love
A "Woman"
Because they were mesmerized
By what society labeled "beauty"
Because they liked the way
She made him feel
Throughout history
Throughout time
Women
Have loved
Endlessly
Thanklessly
Invisibly
While never being seen
As whole people
Themselves
While never being loved
Or cared for
Or listened to
Or understood
In return
And so men wonder why
Women
Don't care about them anymore
Must we spell it out for you?
After screaming it for centuries?
Do you still feign ignorance?
Obliviousness?
Incompetency?
We loved you
Endlessly
Tirelessly
Until we realized
That you could watch us bleed out
Or worse
And do nothing
A woman's love
Couldn't do the same
Women love
With their entire beings
And usually only halfway through their lives
Do they realize
That they have always loved more
Than they have ever been loved
That's why now
We are choosing ourselves
If it needs to be said explicitly
For you to recognize
That we mean what we say
When we say that we are better off without you
Because if we don't love ourselves
The way we have always loved you
We won't survive this world
That is determined to hate us
Our survival
Rests on our ability to love
And when men show us
That all they can do is betray us
We find solidarity in each other
I didn't grow up hating men
I had no reason to
The men in my family were kinder than the women
It was only when I stopped trying to please people
That I saw men’s hatred for what it was
Men
Have been my biggest disappointment
I never believed in categories
I never found a need
Or want
Or desire
To organize people in that way
Until I started to recognize
How differently men treated me
Compared to everyone else
Until I started to realize
That being too nice to men
Had consequences
That being too nice to others
Didn't
I learned late in life
That men are selfish
And I understood later
Why
So now
I keep them at a distance
And pity them from afar
Because they hold enough pity for themselves
That I don't need to add to their self-victimization
Men have been harming everyone else
For centuries
So now
That they are becoming the outsiders
The ostracized
The exiled
Of course they don't know how to cope
We've been working through our pain for generations
We have been building
On the generations before us
Men don't know the work we do
Because they haven't bothered
To pay too much attention to us
So instead of learning from our pain
From our injustices
They'll have to learn for themselves
The hard way
And while we do pity them
We don't pity them too much
Because at any point in time
They could have chosen something different
Even now
But they are so used to the pedestal
They can't tolerate their own humanity
That's the crux of it
They were always invited to join us
Always
And some of them did
Some of them
Had the courage
To let go of society's definitions of "manhood"
Some of them
Had the awareness
To recognize
That they were also not free
Under society's prescription for them
"Men"
Is the last category of human
That has yet to be dismantled and deconstructed
But men have never had to do anything for themselves
Men have never had to "figure it out"
What we all learned
The more we were afforded the privilege
To share their spaces
Was that most of them
Do next to nothing
For their pedestal
For their award
For their spotlight
For their applause
We learned
That we, too
Can learn from the mediocre white man's ethic
We realized
That our systematic scrutinization
Has made us perfectionists
Has made us thorough
Has made us evaluative
Progress oriented
Used to being perceived
As always doing something wrong
We're not afraid
Or at least less afraid
To reflect on ourselves
And choose to grow
When we surround ourselves with each other
We find we are met with kindness and compassion
Rather than anger, hate, and resentment
We know how to love
Because of the centuries of loving men
Who hated us
Who used us
Who abused us
And threw us out when they were done
The more we love ourselves
The less we need them to love us
Because we realize
That they never really did
