Made a Poem

Today's subject at the conference is about gender equity. We read alond these poems written by teenagers about what it meant to them to be male or female and then we were asked to write our own. I have been noticing and processing around the amount of energy it takes to be constantly sorting what is real for me and and what is not when I am regularly labeled in one way or another.

This is the poem that I wrote, it describes this process.



Sit down
Sit straight
Sit still!

You can do anything, be anything you want to be.

Comb your hair
Change your dress
You're not going out of the house like that, are you?

You can do anything, be anything you want to be.

Quiet down
Wash your mouth out
Enunciate

You can do anything, be anything you want to be.

You're too skinny
You're too fat
You're too quiet, too loud
Too prim, too proper, too helpful
You're too demanding

Slut

You can do anything, be anything you want to be.

Speak up
Share
Go, Risk, Do, Be, Change, Resist

Busybody.

Bitch.

You can do anything, be anything you want to be.

Except. Know what in the hell that means.