Walk In Your Own Skin

(FreeImages.com/Griszka Niewiadomski)

I recently read a blog post where the author was attacking men who hold doors open for women.  She was stating that such actions devalue women and is too reminiscent of the misogynist, patriarchal culture.  The blog post talked a lot more about other things as well, but I wrote this in response to the part about holding open doors and being a gentleman:

What is so atrocious about teaching men to be respectful and gentlemanly?

What is also so wrong with allowing men to treat us with the value we are and deserve?

I am not a man, AND I am glad I am not.

Guys can’t do the things I can do, and I can’t do everything they can do. You know what?  That’s okay! 

If we are all the same, what fun is there?

Part of the coolness of us is our uniqueness.

Why do we keep trying to force women to be like men and men to be like women?

Trying to treat us the same or judge us based on our “sameness” is actually contrary to valuing a woman. It devalues a woman by trying to say she is only valuable if she is like a man.

I don’t have to be like someone else or like another gender to have value.

I am valuable because I am me — uniquely me!  No one else on this entire planet is just like me.

I do myself a disservice when I try to be someone else. I am, in essence, saying that I am only valuable if I am like that other person, other gender, or other thing.

It’s time we start accepting our own skin and being comfortable in it — regardless of who agrees or disagrees with us.

I want to repeat that one line:

“It’s time we start accepting our own skin and being comfortable in it.”

The issue isn’t what other people have tried to say we are or aren’t, who have tried to dominate us, constrain us, rename us.  The issue is when we allow those opinions to define us.

I am not weak or inferior because I am a woman, nor do I need to prove that I am more valuable by trying to conform myself to someone else’ preferences or likeness. 

I understand the frustration and abuse that women have experienced throughout the years because of oppressive societies and harmful philosophies concerning women, but when I react to them by trying to prove that I am the same as men, am I not actually giving more credence to the very dogma I am trying to stand against? 

Am I not saying that my value cannot stand in its own merits; therefore, I have to conform to the merits of the opposite gender?

The truth is I am me —  not anyone else.

To try to change the essence of who I am (who I was created to be) is the biggest rejection of my own value and purpose and image.

Note: I am not saying that we don’t stand up for justice and freedom from oppression.  I am addressing that we have gone too far the other way — that we have lost the appreciation for our own uniqueness.  We have rejected our very created beings and have become in many ways another form of the very thing that we have hated: selfishness, anger, bitterness…

When I believe the lie or react to the lie by believing a different lie, I merely find myself trading one kind of poisonous leaf for a different kind.  They look different, but the end result is it chokes out the very core of my created being and worth. I think I am walking in freedom, but I have merely exchanged one type of poison for another kind.