A strong and wide-reaching feminist poem for our fifth selection by guest editor Jessie Joe Jacobs!
Ways not to treat Women
For enjoying a book too much
Refuse to educate them
In case men can’t satisfy them
Genitally mutilate them
If they get pregnant unmarried
Take their babies away
For suffering postpartum depression
Electric shock them
For answering back
Give them a slap
For fear of attachment
Denigrate motherhood
If they have an abortion
Send them to prison
If they have too many children
Financially penalise them
If they seem too intellectual
Keep them barefoot and pregnant
If they don’t want to have children
Call them unnatural
If they give the right answer
Knock them down to size
If they speak when not spoken to
Make them walk behind
When they don’t fancy you
Call them frigid
When they don’t like your wolf-whistle
Ask if they are a lesbian
If they are a lesbian
Call them unnatural
If their opinion is different
Shout them down
When they become emotional
Say turn off the waterworks
When they give you a smile
Call it womanly wiles
If they remain silent
Tell them not to be insolent
When they don’t see the joke
Tell them not to sulk
When you think they are cleverer than you
Talk right over them
When they can do all the things that you can do
Tell them your way is better
If they say we need to talk about this
Call them melodramatic.
Call them hysteric
Call them psychosomatic
Call them a witch
Call them a bitch
Call them anything…
Or, start valuing
How a woman
Can bring forth life
Nurture it from her own body,
And do everything else besides.
