I’m not a woman, right?
I’m no longer a woman, am I?
How can I be a woman,
If I don’t get my period every month?
A little thing was gone,
And with it a lot of blood was lost.
My secrets were gone with it.
Where will I keep my secrets now?

Growing up, I was taught that girls were responsible for preserving their honor.
I, as a man, have nothing to do with it.
My mother never brought up the word “honor” around me or my brother.

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.

I know that a lot of women unknowingly enter into marriages with similar types of men, and that I was lucky and all that.
But I never imagined that something like that could ever happen to me.

My father was the first person to touch me.
I used to tell myself that I was imagining it.
When he’d touch me with his leg from behind,
I’d tell myself he was just being playful.

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.

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

I don’t have the right to ask about your past.
But I think it’s important to talk about this.
There’s no such thing as a woman’s virginity.
There’s no difference between a man and a woman’s virginity.

I was 14 when people around me started talking about jerking off and puberty.
I didn’t understand anything.
I hadn’t reached puberty yet.
I was so happy when I did.
And I told my friends about the dream I had the next day.
sex, sexuality, masturbation, adolescence