A Poem about Gender Inequality by Safwan Aziz

A POEM ABOUT GENDER INEQUALITY

“What is gender?

Is gender an identity?

Certainly gender is not a choice.

But gender is shaped, molded to young new minds,

strings hang from children’s joints to dance as society tells them

No matter man or woman, we are born into roles.

The woman, the one whose mind stands and pleads on her legs, bring about equality

But whose body reacts not out of her own accordance and moves

Moves, graceful, gentle, elegant, and FEMININE.

As society tells her, she is a woman, and that is her role.

Where she wishes to stomp, she stands on her tiptoes.

Where she wishes to thrash, she glides across the floor.

A puppet bound by the hands of society, pushing, pushing

To free herself, to change what being a woman means,

what (gender) equality means.

The man, he is castrated by the hands to be a MAN.

What does that mean? Better put, what does that mean to society?

I don’t dance.

I am the example to others, and know how to do everything

I don’t feel things, or at least show them, because that is not what I do.

I am powerful and MANLY,

funny that should be made into an adjective…

But, I am not one who should be played with like a puppet, much like the woman,

I do have feelings, but they cannot be expressed for society tells me I will be seen otherwise,

I don’t know everything even when I’m expected to,

I have my pride as a man, and am no one’s puppet, I too wish to change the meaning of “man”.

But strip us down, wash away our skin, we are bare, we are the same,

INSIDE

What makes us, us?

Is it our gender?

Is it society?

No, what makes us, what makes you, is ultimately your decision,

and that's something, not even society, can take away from you.”

Literary Exhibition | T03.Group 2