To speak or not to speak?

Through years and years, rules were set to define gender behavior that last to this day. Rules that we have to abide by to supposedly have a better life. Some of these rules are pretty stupid and ridiculous. Our parents always tried to teach them to us, but fortunately times change and a lot, not all, of those rules are obsolete, especially the one that women can’t have a mind of their own. The generation of our grandparents was quite conservative in that way. Women were brought up to serve husbands, have kids, and do house chores. The women that spoke more than what was asked they were thought as a bore, mainly because wanted their women silent. They didn’t have much of a say in a lot of things. Men said that women to the house with a broomstick at hand, which is kind of sexist phrase for them to say. The men said, thought, and decided for them thinking that we couldn’t make a wise decision.

When women started to realize that they were like puppets with strings controlled by their husbands, they began reading and educating themselves to begin to ask for more rights and, most of all, to let them speak their minds and stop the controlling game that men had with us. I see my grandma and I see how subdued women were and some still are because, in order to speak your mind, you have to know what you’re going to talk about, therefore you have to know your little of everything. I was not so long ago at my grandma’s house and she was making breakfast to my grandpa and me, and after my grandpa ate he said: “Clean this mess and while I go rest”. I was pretty surprised by what he said and I said to him that he was being sexist that instead of going to sleep, again, he’d get up and help grandma clean and take of my cousins, and he answered me “If the foundation of the house breaks, the house comes down”. I was really mad with this. That’s why she always tried to raise me that speaking what was in my heart wasn’t bad and that I shouldn’t be intimidated by any man because I could do anything that I set my mind to, just like any man alive. She always pushed me to wish higher, and to this day she’s helping with what she can with college, because I’m the first-born granddaughter and therefore the first one in college.

To this day, I’m not intimidated and can take any man on and defend myself very well and get out of the situation winning. Many women have gone were no women had gone before. Thanks to those women, that through protest and speeches, won rights and men-controlled fields, we are able to be what we are, outspoken and all. Being the person and the woman that I am right now, I really couldn’t live like my grandma did. I just hope that women keep proving wrong these “gender rules” that were made for women, because some of them just limit our right of free speech and thought.