Apparently my dad cried really hard when I was born because I was born a girl and not a boy. That should tell you enough about the years to come and basically my whole life.
I come from an Eastern European country which still has a fundamentally misogynistic culture. It's deeply, deeply rooted, especially in the north from where I have the luck of being. It's old, old school misogyny. I was reprimanded for going away to college. I became a sort of pariah in my extended family for it, all low key and hush hush. Never make a scene, you know? Judge everyone really hard and shut your eyes real tight and pretend you've disappeared so nobody judges you in return. People loved throwing the word whore around in conjunction with my decision to leave home at 19. They still do sometimes. In my family and many many more like it, girls shouldn't leave the house until they get married. I was taught how to make coffee and shut up before I was taught how to ride a bike. Actually I taught myself how to ride a bike because no one would, what would I need to know how to ride a bike anyway? I couldn't play outside because girls don't stay in the sun and get dirty, duh. They don't get loud, laugh hard and loudly, they don't just let themselves go and be kids. They stay indoors doing fuck-all. Listening to neighborhood gossip and being threatened so not to cause a scene in front of the neighbors. My mom's nails digging in my arm or thigh. Never do anything wrong. Never speak up because what you have to say is probably dumb and other people are talking anyway. I was taught to make myself as small as possible, as subservient as possible. Though I never bought into it as a kid (when you're raised like this you recognize injustice pretty early on and the absolute rage just gnaws at you inside), my god, the years of therapy that that resulted in.
The difference between the treatment of boys and girls was very, very blatantly apparent. I mean, it wasn't a damn secret. Everyone openly admitted boys > girls. Thank god I never had brothers because I'd see my female cousins being forced to do like everything for them. Even fucking homework.
Anyways, I'm in my mid 20s now and my aunts' favorite topic of conversation is still how I haven't gotten married yet and how I'm getting too old and who'll want me then and blah blah blah. Every other month I'm at some 20 year old's wedding who promises she'll finish community college and then transfer but by 22 she's pregnant, by 24 she's pregnant again. Can't leave the kids alone, heavens forbid. So wait until the kids are like 16. And all the resentment and anger and shit that you've endured your whole life has the fortunate luck of being passed on to their kids.
Being a woman in my family means making the lives of men easier. It means being invisible and essentially handing your life over to these "customs." But I got out of it as early as I could and I couldn't be happier about it. I will say though that things have changed drastically since I was a kid. It's very different now. Though we may have cut the tree, the roots of it are still there though. Anyways. It's not that bad now. It's actually great having moved out and being so far away from that world.