I Am a Proud Woman. And I Am Tired of What We Have Been Taught to Accept.

I am a proud woman. I am proud of the women who came before me, the women who stand beside me, and the women we are raising to come after us. I want to continue raising proud, strong, courageous women.

But I am tired. I am tired of a society that tells women to be strong while simultaneously expecting us to make ourselves smaller to accommodate the emotions, desires, and behaviors of others. I am tired of women being told to watch what they wear, where they walk, how they speak, how much they drink, how friendly they are, and whether their kindness might be mistaken for an invitation. I am tired of the phrase, "You know how men are." What does that even mean? Are we suggesting men cannot control their impulses? That they cannot tolerate rejection? That their emotions and desires somehow outweigh another person's right to safety and autonomy? I don't believe that and I refuse to accept that as the standard we set for men. Because men are capable of respect. They are capable of self-control, compassion, emotional maturity, and accountability. When we excuse harmful behavior with "boys will be boys" or "you know how men are," we do a disservice to everyone, including men themselves.

We cannot demand that women take responsibility for their own emotions AND the emotions and actions of men while simultaneously excusing men from taking responsibility for themselves.

I want something different. I want a world where my daughter, my granddaughter, my friends, my clients, and every woman can walk alone at any hour without fear of being violated. Where a woman can be friendly without being accused of leading someone on. Where she can flirt without owing anyone intimacy. Where she can change her mind without fearing retaliation. Where she can say no without calculating whether that word will put her in danger. Where she can say yes to one thing without surrendering her right to say no to everything else and where a woman who experiences harm is not immediately placed on trial in the court of public opinion. I want women to feel safe being women. Not because we have learned every possible way to avoid danger, but because we have built communities where violating another person's autonomy is neither tolerated nor excused and I want men to be part of building that community. Not as adversaries. Not as enemies. But as people equally responsible for the culture we create. I want fathers teaching sons about accountability as passionately as mothers have taught daughters about safety. I want friends challenging friends when their words or actions cross boundaries. I want us to stop laughing off behavior that makes others uncomfortable and I want the responsibility for violating someone's boundaries to rest where it belongs: with the person who violated them.

Not with what she wore.

Not with what she drank.

Not with where she went.

Not with whom she trusted.

Not with whether she kissed him first.

Her choices do not give another person permission to disregard her consent.

I know this is an uncomfortable conversation. It should be. Because perhaps discomfort is what happens when we begin questioning beliefs that have gone unchallenged for far too long. I am not writing this because I hate men. I am writing this because I love women. I love our strength, our courage, our compassion, our complexity, and our capacity to continue showing up in a world that too often asks us to carry more than our share and I want better for us.

I want better for our daughters.

I want better for our sons.

I want better for everyone.

I do not want to raise another generation of women who believe that someone else's harmful behavior is evidence of their own failure.

I want to raise women who know their worth, trust their voices, honor their boundaries, and understand that their bodies belong to them and I want to help create a society that honors those truths, too. Because women should not have to spend their entire lives learning how to survive the behavior of others.

We deserve the freedom to simply live.