Sincerely, Jennifer x

I thought I’d write a flowery phrase about the women that inspire me,
all the aspirations they dared me to dream,
the ways I followed the paths they placed before me,
but,
no.
I won’t betray them by being docile in the face of disrespect.

It is a day for women,
and I tire of men doing the minimum.
I don’t want equality,
I want revenge.
I don’t want your tweets of solidarity,
I want your “hard earned” money.
I don’t want your kudos,
I want your unearned confidence.
I don’t want you to ask me how to help,
I want you to listen to what my mother said, and my grandmother too, because generations of women have already told you, and I will not stand here and tell you again.

Listen.

I don’t want equality,
I want revenge.
I want reparations.
I want repercussions.
I want to walk down the street without an animal howling at me from his boy racer car.
I want the wolves behind bars before they do irreparable harm to the women who report and report until their throats are sore, to laughing, lazy police officers.
I want my space to be sacred, never caught in the shadow of someone I have already told “No”,
but it never comes.

I am told that tweets of solidarity are the same thing as true equality.
Men can’t do more, despite telling me that “there’s so much more to do”,
I don’t want you to salute me, or shout me out.
I don’t want you to give me your “thoughts” and your sympathy.
It’s meaningless.
You think you’ve done enough, but I promise that you haven’t.
You have done nothing to earn the right to give me “solidarity”.
It is never going to be enough,
so I do not want equality,
I want revenge.