And Being Taught to Be Less
It’s been a few days now that I’ve noticed my mind returning to the same moment, over and over again.
It started small.
My five year old came home singing a song about boys being better than girls.
At first, I laughed. It sounded silly, harmless, almost cute.
The second time, I smiled less.
By the tenth time, I felt irritation rising sharp and unexpected.
Not because he’s five.
But because I know how early these ideas settle in.
I began asking myself why this bothered me so much. He didn’t invent this thought. He absorbed it. Children always do. Ideas arrive without context, without resistance and lodge themselves quietly.
Somewhere between annoyance and reflection, my feminist part woke up.
Not the loud version.
The one shaped by memory.
I thought about school. About how boys were always encouraged to be bigger, louder, more daring. How they compared themselves to superheroes while we learned early how to be reasonable, helpful and careful. How they provoked us into competitions where the rules were already skewed in their favor.
And how normal all of that felt back then.
What unsettled me most was realizing how little has actually changed.
Because the girl who learned to shrink doesn’t disappear when she becomes a woman. She just grows more skilled at navigating it.
As an adult, I’ve watched how men behave toward us in ways that are subtle enough to deny but consistent enough to recognize.
How confidence in a woman is often received as arrogance.
How assertiveness becomes “too much.”
How boundaries invite negotiation instead of respect.
How opinions are questioned, explained back to us or dismissed until repeated by a man.
How often we are talked over, interrupted, underestimated or gently corrected about our own experiences.
Not always aggressively.
Often politely.
And that, somehow, makes it harder to name.
I see it in meetings. In conversations. In the way we soften our language before speaking. In the way we pre-apologize. In the way we explain ourselves twice, just to be safe.
So when my son stood there, confidently singing about boys being better than girls, I felt the weight of that long line behind him.
I tried to respond calmly. I told him that girls can do many of the same things boys can do. That strength doesn’t live only in bodies. That courage, intelligence, creativity and resilience don’t belong to one gender.
And yes, at some point I said it plainly:
having a little bird in your pants does not make you invincible.
My Mini-me laughed, listened and quickly moved on.
I didn’t.
Because what stayed with me wasn’t the song. It was the reminder of how early superiority is taught and how long its echo lasts. How easily women learn to doubt themselves. How often we are trained to be quieter not because we lack strength but because our strength is inconvenient.
I wasn’t born believing I was less.
I learned it.
In classrooms.
In jokes.
In interruptions.
In the way confidence was praised in boys and corrected in girls.
Standing there as an adult woman, I realized something else too.
Unlearning isn’t dramatic.
It doesn’t happen in one conversation or one moment of clarity.
It happens in these small, everyday refusals.
In choosing not to laugh it off forever.
In naming things gently but clearly.
In teaching a child and reminding myself, that being a woman has never meant being weak, silent or less than.
It has meant being asked to be.
And I’m no longer interested in complying.
And maybe that’s the part I’m still sitting with.
Not the song.
Not even the memory.
But the question of how many of us are still carrying lessons we never agreed to learn.
How many adult women are still negotiating space, tone, certainty. Still translating themselves into something more acceptable. Still measuring their words before speaking, their ambition before naming it, their anger before allowing it.
Not because they are unsure of their strength.
But because they were taught early that strength comes at a cost.
I don’t want my son to grow up believing he is superior.
And I don’t want my daughter or the girl I once was, to believe she must shrink to make others comfortable.
Perhaps the work isn’t to reverse the roles.
Not to make boys smaller or girls louder by force.
Perhaps the work is quieter.
To notice when old rules try to reassert themselves.
To question who they serve.
To decide, again and again, whether we still consent to them.
Because being a woman has never meant being less.
It has meant being shaped by expectations that were never neutral.
And the moment we see that clearly, something shifts.
Not outwardly.
But inwardly.
And that’s usually where real change begins.
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