I am a woman, but above all I am a person. My gender, my sense of style and the desire to look my best, deserving of compliments, and my search for connection does not make me a piece of meat.
First I am a person, but I am also a woman. I am strong because I must be, but I am also proud of that strength. Because of your masculine lack of commitment and responsibility, you force me to be strong and I find that I am excited about the well of strength that I discover within me. But by using this force, you call me “male”, “castrator” and “bitch”.
I am a person and unless a man treats me as a person, there is no real future for us as a couple. Attraction and stubbornness may help us for a while, but eventually we will long for a life in which we are not discarded as livestock, personal property, or children. I long for love, but I demand respect.
I am a person with dreams, desires and preferences of my own. Don’t feel like you can decide for me with impunity. Do not give me gifts that are what you want me to have without taking into account my heart, my mind, my wishes. You ask your friends what women want when the women you talk to don’t fall at your feet when you throw empty comments at them. What do women want? Can you tell me what all men want? We are as diverse as men. We all want what we want and no two are alike.
If you love and respect your mother, remember that she is also a woman, not a piece of meat for convenience. Show all women the same respect that you should show until, perhaps, you find out they don’t deserve it.
I have sexual desires too, but will often choose to suppress them so as not to ruin any chance of a lasting relationship. Many women turn off when his habit of lust causes him to treat them disrespectfully. I would be unreceptive to a woman who started out demanding this and that. We don’t like that treatment either, especially when those demands are sexual in nature. Ask, don’t demand or try to manipulate, and then respect our answers. It almost invariably does not mean no. However, depending on the situation, it may never mean never, so his treatment of me and the situation could determine when and if he cannot become a yes, and force or manipulation are not the ways of my acceptance. .
I am a person and my performance in the workplace deserves an impartial evaluation and payment equal to that of any other person in my level of performance and responsibility. Whether I’m a secretary or CEO, I deserve my salary.
I am a person and, together with many of my sisters, I am in contact with my body. When we tell medical professionals what we are feeling, those explanations should not be dismissed simply because we may not have a doctor. If I say I’m in pain here and want to find the cause, don’t assume I’m just whining. Don’t superimpose your expectations on the map of our suffering and ignore everything that just doesn’t fit. Listen to us with the same care that you would use when listening to a man.
I am a person. I am young, old, black, brunette, yellow, red, white, educated, uneducated, happy, sad, depressive, manic, impulsive, methodical, cunning, naive, fat, slim, charming, simple, but always beautiful in life and spirit. Judge me only how you would like to be judged. Love me for who I am, not for the size of my breasts or the curve of my calves.
I am a person, but woven through my sense of myself and the life I live is the wonderful and inevitable fact of my female gender. I am a person who, inescapably, is a woman, but above all, I am a person.