Created Equal: A Poem by McKenzie

Mothers. Daughters. Sisters.

If you think they are equal to you,

you're wrong.

Straight cisgender males have always been considered better;

Why else would companies insure viagra

but not birth control?

It's not as if women can,

perhaps,

make their own decisions about their own bodies.

We live in a society where

rather than telling men not to rape,

we tell women not to get raped

and typically completely disregard situations with a female rapist because

a woman having power and control over a man  is unheard of, and laughable.

When a man has sex he's glorified;

when a woman has sex she's demonized.

This inequality grows like a vine,

weaving into our society the way it has for thousands of years,

shaping itself into gender roles stricter than

the parents who unwittingly enforce them.

Mothers tell their daughters to be pretty and kind;

the sons are told to be leaders,

to be strong,

to be smart.

 The leaders grow up with the pretties.

They believe they are entitled to be in charge 

and the pretty girls never learned any different.

Separation of church and state means nothing when you are a man

born to lead

born to control

born to opress.

Stop telling your children that their gender dictates their lives,

that your little girl will forever be pretty and nothing more.

All men are created equal.

Maybe the rest of that phrase should be

'to women'.

For more information about gender roles and inequality visit: http://therepresentationproject.org/

Image citation:

Sex and Housekeeping - The Careerist. (n.d.). The Careerist. Retrieved July 28, 2014, from http://thecareerist.typepad.com/thecareerist/2013/01/sex-and-housework.html