My sister visited me at home two weeks ago.
She told me I was harming her and her son.
And that if anything bad happened to our mother, it’d be my fault.
She told me my whole life was wrong and unnatural.

It felt as if I was in a wrestling match.
That his purpose was to invade and destroy everything.
That he had no intention to listen.
That survival was for the fittest.

When you would try to touch me,
I felt like you couldn’t see me.
You could only see the body you were about to touch.

Were women just created for pleasure?
It doesn’t matter what we wear, how we look, or what we say.
Answering back means you’re playing hard to get.
I recently found out that people in our society think married women are easy.

We were all girls like you once.
I was a young girl just like you before marrying your father.
We all went through the same things.
We’d just play sports and take a cold shower.

For the longest time, perhaps until after highschool, I thought all girls were like me.
Then I found out that not all of them were like me.
I didn’t understand what it meant. What’s the difference?
I would always avoid thinking about the incident.
Until a black cloud formed in my mind, engulfing the memory of this incident.

Ever since childhood, people have treated me like I’m strange, provocative.
Ever since I was a child, I never felt like all the other boys.
gender identity, gender violence, harassment, body image, sexuality, social pressure, social stigma

It didn’t feel normal or spontaneous.
Between being scolded by your conservative [female] relative for doing something “immodest” and listening to your friends whispering about touching certain [private] areas on maids’ and female cousins’ bodies, you eventually learn to associate the opposite sex’s body with shame.
There has got to be something shameful about it.

"No, Hatem is such a girl. He's shy and doesn't like talking about asses and boobs and stuff like that!"

Everyone felt bad for her when they broke up.
“We’ll take you to a doctor for a virginity test. We need to know if he left you because you slept together,” her father said.