– Written by Aneiry Zapata. Activist, Speaker, Community Advocate, Organizer, and QDEP member –
I’ve recognized that identifying as a woman is one of the strongest challenges that human beings have had throughout history.
Women have to fight a little more for each of the opportunities they have today, in fact, it is women who have fought for the strongest reforms, and we are continuing to fight today.
I believe that “giving life to society” is the greatest work that women do.
Men think that we want to eradicate them from social positions and commitments, however our fight is for the eradication of inequalities and privileges that have been given to them over our existence. Feminism encompasses equality and equity of law for all. We want to be seen and treated with respect.
I cannot imagine a society without men, but a society without unjust or despotic men. I dream that one day I will be able to take a taxi without fear that the taxi driver will take an alternate street to abuse me, I want to go out one night, have fun and go home without having to send a message to all my friends saying “I got home fine” because behind that message is a hidden “today they did not kill me, not yet.”
Those who identify themselves as men will hardly understand that feeling.
Being a woman puts our life and death in question at all times, we are constantly criticized for our vocabulary and behavior; and if they mistreat or kill us, they try to explain everything bad that we did or think we have done, to subtract the guilt of the abuser or murderer.
Women, we are in the fight for the abolition of prisons and the abuse that is done to our bodies, we will reform the world in which we live. We need Black, Indigenous, Women of Color, and low-income women who can explain our reality, because only we know what is lived in our homes.
We need women leading our congresses, leading and working in our schools, banks and supermarkets.
I want to live in a society where we don’t have to celebrate loudly that there is a woman in political office, I want that to be normal.
I want it to be recognized everywhere that “If women lowered our hands, even the sky would fall.”
