I think what sickens me most,
Is the way you fear the way I think,

Because had I been a man
You would praise me for it,

Rather than taunt me.

H I S , T O R Y.

     From the Greek word histōr;
     Learned, wise man.

                                               Need I say more?

I am no ordinary girl
I am not just a girl.
I am woman.
I am powerful
Elegant
Graceful
They knock us down with their fists
But we arise
we arise
to a new dawn
a new day
they accuse us and portray us as monsters
because they know we are getting closer
to winning
winning the fight
for may our fists not be strong
but our voices are mighty
our voices are mighty
we are mighty

I have grown tired,
After only a short twenty years,
Of being something for your eyes.
Tired of slurred compliments,
Uttered from behind glazed eyes,
And catching eyes flick up
from where they had been stuck-
Wow! This person has *******!

Sick of hearing calls and jeers,
shouted from across the street,
from inside of a car,
from the base of an over-sexualised,
and over-sexualising brain.

And so in an attempt to remove myself from such *******,
I have been de-sexualising myself.
I wear long, ill-fitting trousers,
Baggy tops, and thick Doc Martens.
I pull up hair up,
Put my glasses on,
I do not bother with make-up.
I glare and I scowl.
Yet still unwanted attention
Has been able to find me.

Still you grab and grasp at me,
As if I were but a toy at your disposal.
I turned to one,
and looking in his eyes,
I clearly said "No.".
A dog, a child, a human,
Would have understood me;
Yet he did not.

I turned again when his hands didn't stop.
"*******, I said No."
"Slap me, baby, I'm sorry!"
He leered, not sorry in the least.
"I'm not going to hit you.
I'm saying no,
and you're going to respect that."

He left for a moment,
Only to return as handsy as before.

I tell you honestly,
I have no idea
What more I'd need to do
To get some people to see me
Not as a real-life *** toy,
But as a *******
human
being.

He whispers their name like a prayer,
says it carefully, beautifully as if it were the names of the goddesses.
He bathes them in praise
but is drowning them in holy water.
Repeating their sacred name
over and over and over,
blessed so that he can say he’s become enlightened
once he’s received the holy communion of their body
on his lips.

He’ll call them royals.
Dressed in purple
lifting them to their highest class,
placing them on a pedestal
sitting them, perching them delicately
on the throne held up by their womanly duties,
their feminine expectations.
He’ll call them his queens but in the end
he will commit treason against their realm.

Suddenly they’ll become a witch,
a hypnotist.
He says they enchant him.
Trance him with how they dress, move, breathe.
He’ll create signs of black magic in their eyes,
rituals in their steps,
and chants on their tongue.
Blaming his actions on theirs,
“they made me” he says
so he’ll have an excuse to curse them back.

Hearing someone you thought was a friend of yours say,
"Women can totally look to get *****".
Then you scratch one friend off the list.

Beginning in WWI,
The men were at war,
Fighting, killing,
Causing their own Post Traumatic Stress.
And we stayed. Our country, our families needed us.
We replaced them. The men. We replaced them
In their jobs. We did as they did.
We kept the country and the troops
On their feet.
Created weapons.
Kept businesses running,
Did the banking.
The women took charge for once.
The war and the economic trouble got us
On our feet and we did the same
For our nation and our men.
Some did not like that we were working as they had,
Walking in their shoes, but we sure did.