It started the day I came to life. The man who impregnated my mother denied the blood that runs in my veins. “It’s not mine,” he said, parading his cowardice. He painted my mother as a Jezebel, a woman his mother would spit on, and hurled vicious insults our way.
It was my mother’s mother who saved us. “No honey of mine will remain unknown,” she declared. And so she named me Rich Knowledge, a name that would invite mockery and confusion, which people assumed belonged to a boy.
“I am not a boy,” I hissed, tears pouring down my young face as I trashed the notebook of the class bully who mocked my name. In high school, I punched a classmate who called me pandak, bulilit, and bata. It was like being small was a sin, like I was a mascot. On exam days, they would suddenly sit beside me and ask for answers, for a fee, of course. It was a good deal, but it didn’t erase the daily harassment. Boys brushed their arms around me so their hands could ‘accidentally’ graze my chest. I didn’t tell anyone. Maybe I thought it was my fault for developing breasts earlier than the others. The teasing went on for months. I fought back with fists, with rage, but it was never enough. They still laughed.
When I went to the guidance counselor, she excused their behavior. “They’re just boys,” she said. “They need understanding.”
I replied, “I’d break their arms if it means they’ll understand not to touch me.”
At home, things weren’t any better. The women worked. The men lounged. I cooked. I cleaned. And yet I was still reprimanded when the house wasn’t spotless, while my jobless uncles and spoiled boy cousins sat with their feet up. I was the youngest girl, and so they thought I was born to serve.
In college, nothing changed. My university was an hour and a half away. I woke up early, ate what my aunt prepared, and left in a rush. I didn’t have time to wash the dishes. I assumed someone else in the house, especially those on their day off, would do it anyway. But when I came back, the dishes were still there. The mud stains on the floor had dried. My uncles and cousins were on their phones, giggling.
“Can you cook me an egg?” my older cousin asked. “You make it better.” I thought it was a compliment. An egg. The simplest thing to cook. Something anyone could do blindfolded. But he wouldn’t. Because he’d rather touch himself in bed than lift a finger for his own meal. Ah, weaponized incompetence—a lazy man’s favorite tool. Now, I just shrug at his requests. He buys his own food, even when I’ve already cooked for everyone else.
I opened my phone to read the headline: “MONITOR LIZARD GANGRAPED, COOKED, AND EATEN BY FOUR MEN.” India, I think. Another article: “Women in Afghanistan barred from education, forced to cover up.” Every day there’s something. A woman whose hand was chopped off for refusing to cook. Another, killed and thrown into a blender. A man, pretending to love her, then ends her. And the same men are mad that women would rather choose a bear, that meme where women say they’d rather take their chances with a wild animal than trust a man.
Men laughed and said, “The bear would kill you, too”, and made comics where bears mauled women. And you know what? Yes. Maybe it would. At least the bear wouldn’t pretend. At least it would kill me quickly, without pretending to love me first. The bear wouldn’t call itself my soulmate before violating me. It wouldn’t burden me with its laziness and then murder me once I was used up.
At the same time, all over social media, men cried about their loneliness. The epidemic of male silence. How no one appreciates their pain. How their emotional labor goes unnoticed. The very same burdens women have carried for millennia, and still we’re told to endure because it’s ‘natural.’
Another story—a woman set her male friend on fire after he joked that she belonged in the kitchen. I cheered. I cheered for her. I cheered for the Gulabi Gang. I cheered for the victims who shot or stabbed their rapists. Even when they were imprisoned, I still cheered because men have done nothing but rob women of their voice, their body, their time, and their dignity. Across all cultures, there is a woman weeping. In every household, a mother is drowning in unpaid labor. In every room, a girl was robbed of her opportunity. Ask the women around you, and you’ll hear it—nearly all of them have faced silent oppression. The stories. The hands. The stares. The silence. We have been touched, followed, humiliated, laughed at, and blamed. That’s not a coincidence.
It’s a confusing time. In many parts of the world, girls are still sold into marriage, still denied education, still reduced to nothing more than a ‘wife’ and after that, a ‘mother.’ Then, the cycle repeats. A daughter is born. She suffers what her mother suffered. Brings forth more daughters. The pain continues.
And yet, in some places, women are praised for being ‘empowered.’ They earn. They lead. They break the mold. And what do men do? They adapt. They turn ‘empowered’ women into unpaid caregivers. They whine about burnout while unloading their burdens onto her shoulders. The very same woman who fought for the right to work now finds herself working day and night—in the office and her home. And he? He calls it equality. She calls it love.
But she is being used. The man is no longer the tyrant of the past, at least not obviously. He is softer now. Cunning. He has evolved, and he has sharpened his weapons.
Fu Vedic Marchan is a Master of Arts in Literature student at University of Southeastern Philippines.