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If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. —NELSON MANDELA
Humor, I realized, was the gift I could share with every woman and femme out there who was over it just as much as I was.
You have every right to feel the way that you do and express it in whatever way suits you best.
My parents named me Drew because my mom thought that a gender-neutral name would help me get job interviews later on in my life. She had seen a program on TV that explained how corporate businesses were more likely to choose the résumé of a man over a woman,
So many men are convinced that a woman in a heterosexual relationship who insists on being on equal footing with her male partner is asking for too much. Suddenly you’re high maintenance, difficult, and overall an undesirable woman. Because if you, God forbid, start to think that you’re actually EQUAL to men on an interpersonal level, you might start demanding respect in the workplace, media representation, and politics, too.
My mom makes my dad brave and gives him courage to try things. And my dad grounds my mom and reminds her that she deserves to rest and be taken care of, too.
there’s no such thing as “lesser” work when it comes to building a family and being a good partner—it’s all important.
Some people may say I’m being contrarian, but I say better to be contrarian than die a thousand little deaths of disrespect.
you can’t feel “emasculated” if your self-validation doesn’t come from overpowering your partner)—
the only thing I hate more than a blatant misogynist is a misogynist who swears he isn’t one. Because the latter means that he’s not only a misogynist, but also a coward who won’t admit it.
And that’s how I know talk is fucking cheap. A social media post applauding your wife’s cooking and cleaning skills is nothing more than a self-serving act. You really want to help? Then actually help.
“We’re all in the same boat, as a family. But it’s a canoe and we all row in one direction; if someone is rowing against us, or not at all, they aren’t being a team player in this family.”
Just like a flower grows through intentional care and attention, so does a family.
All in all, my mom is the coolest, most confident, and most hardworking person I know. She is 100 percent that girl.
All this is to say that one of the most beautiful, and scariest, things about growing up is growing into yourself.
The good news is that most people (operative word: “most”) eventually come to recognize how casually sexist these beliefs are. They start to see the harm in perpetuating an ideology that pits women against one another and props them up in a way that values them as nothing more than accessories in the lives of men. The bad news is that, like the flu virus, these rules and beliefs seem to mutate over the years as each successive generation deals with its own version of these gendered stereotypes and expectations, and it doesn’t feel like it’ll end anytime soon.
Men who think they deserve recognition for self-identifying as feminists but also act like that’s where the journey ends can miss me with that fake solidarity bullshit.
No one is born with sexist and racist beliefs—the idea that a group of people might be superior to others based on gender or race is a man-made construction, and a core part of Western colonialism and patriarchy. Hateful people beget hateful people, so if I meet a young person who has deep-seated sexist and racist beliefs, I know it’s because there was a series of adults in their life who really let them down.
It’s not our fault if we are born ignorant, but it is our fault if we die that way.
the beautiful thing about being alive is that there is something valuable to be learned at every phase of it.
Being a pick-me is the defense mechanism women develop in response when we understand, whether implicitly or explicitly, that the playing field has never been, is not, and may never be, level.
The contradictory nature of a pick-me is that it sets up a dynamic where you will never be equal if you have to ask for it in the first place.
No matter how many women you try to step on to be seen by the world’s most mediocre men, you will never be taller than any man. You will always be one step below. And how can they respect you when they’re always looking down at you?
When you see what boys are capable of, even at the young age of fourteen, is it any surprise that they eventually grow up to be the worst, most vile men?
When you let go of male validation, you not only take away all of their power, but also have the opportunity to redirect that power to yourself and others. Give yourself the permission to love yourself unconditionally, because there’s nothing more radical in
All I was doing was thinking about myself, while she waited for me to show up. I let her down, and to this day I hate myself for it.
That moment really taught me the difference between intention and impact. That is to say, while your intentions are certainly important, what’s more important is how your actions impact the other person.
If women really knew what they were capable of, and who they were capable of getting romantic interest from, where would that leave terrible men? The correct answer is in the lurch.
If your professional strategy is seeking the validation of men, or putting down women who are lateral to you in order to appear more capable to these men, in hopes that they will bestow upon you their approval and permission to move up in the world, you’re resigned to giving yourself no real agency whatsoever.
That doesn’t mean it’s your responsibility to heal them. That’s not how relationships are supposed to work.
When he tells you who he is, believe him the first time.
Love, adoration, and having someone care so deeply about you shouldn’t hurt. And it should never have to hurt in order for you to perceive it to be real.
Ask yourself: Why do I think relationships need to hurt in order to feel valid and tangible? It’s probably true that all love comes with some degree of turmoil, but you should never think you need to suffer alone in order to earn someone’s love for you.
When you look in the mirror, that is the person you are stuck with, day in, day out, for the rest of your life. And that is the most important relationship in your life, no matter what.
Women who decide to live alone are often looked down on because men assume that we would only come to that conclusion for superficial reasons, like being spurned or rejected, unlike men, who can remain bachelors their whole lives as they’re cheered on for not letting a woman tie them down.
Because that’s the hallmark of being a woman in this world. Soldiering on even when the unfathomable happens to you … because the world doesn’t give you a chance to patch yourself up.
I think what I started to realize, and continue to repeat to myself even in those moments of doubt, is that there’s a big difference between being lonely and being alone.
You should always love yourself enough to hold out for the best, and not let the voice of the patriarchy convince you otherwise.
Settling is a tool crafted by the worst men in the world, used solely to clip your wings. They want to take you down a peg so you don’t realize just how incredibly special you are, because if you did, you know what that would mean? That these men would end up being the ones dying alone, involuntarily (as they should).
Sadly, it comes as no surprise that our capitalistic society is terrified to embrace messaging that makes people feel seen and represented. After all, if they can’t keep us striving, how can they keep us buying?
When you give yourself the permission to love who you are and what you look like without fear of judgment and rejection from mediocre men, that’s when you begin to actually live, not just exist, and enjoy life.
We all deserve so much better than this, and our weight should never come to define us. Bodies fluctuate, so you need to be rock solid in yourself. Never let this patriarchal world celebrate you for taking up less space.
When there’s discrimination and suffering at the hands of systemic oppression, then it’s no longer a joke.
Don’t dim your light so inferior men won’t have to cover their eyes in your presence.
Always prioritize your safety over their feelings!
Terrible men only see you if they feel like they can use you for something, whether that’s physical or emotional, and even then, they don’t see you as a sentient human. They see you as a tool.
You cannot be expected to just internalize the harmful shit that someone else started, let alone continue to work alongside them as if nothing happened.
Being mean is not always required, but sometimes it’s necessary. And there’s nothing wrong with that!
when you stop believing the lie that women are on some kind of strict timeline, the world opens up to you and what it is you really want.
To think that the world wants me to believe that my true value and worth begin and end with what comes out of my uterus is asinine. It feels reductive and offensive to water down my dreams in order to fulfill an archaic idea of what it means to be a woman in this world.
