On gender and sexuality

Maya Angelou once said, "Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible."

Why does a person's gender determine their power over others? Why cannot a woman become president without question?

For over a century, people have been fighting for equality and yet here we are now. I still get discriminated for being female yet masculine. Not only does this affect women, but also men. My male friends have been preventing themselves from crying because it is too feminine. Why do people assume that women are sensitive while men are impregnable?

Gender and sexuality is an issue we should all participate in since it involves all of us. Male, female, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transexual, queer, intersexual or asexual. The sexism has to stop, just like what Emma Watson said. "If not now, when? If not me, who?" Men and women should feel free to express their selves, and to be who they really are deep inside.

Gender discrimination results in the deaths of extra 239,000 girls per year in India. According to Emma Watson, violence against women resulted in more deaths than all the wars and

conflicts of the past century combined.

If we do not stop this now, the next generation will think that it is appropriate for women to be below men. That it is appropriate to think men do not feel. Someone’s son will grow up thinking that it is all right to treat women like a china doll, a decoration so fragile. Someone’s daughter will abuse men for they are boulders, zealous as ever.

Our city is in need of feminism, and people should stop thinking it is an uncongenial word. We need it because this city has long been oppressed by sexists and it’s time for a change.