Land of the Free

August 26, 1920

Just over twenty years ago, half of this American population received their right to be heard. The tape over their mouths was removed. 

And replaced by glue – glue so clear and so thin, thus those who placed it there didn’t have to look at their defiance of liberty in the eye. Glue so much stronger than tape, so much more secret, as if the men placing that bind wished to hide themselves as the glue did, as if hiding would keep their victims from knowing it was they who glued them silent. 

But they try to tear through their invisible chains of contempt. 

But we shake and shatter our chains despite their contempt. 

My dream is to live in a world where I don’t have to break free of chains, where chains aren’t placed on me for reasons that I cannot come to understand or explain. My dream is to be heard, seen, and respected. 

When I’m sitting at a table full of men, I don’t want to feel as if I’m an animal in oncoming traffic – like everyone is traveling 80mph and I’m an inconvenience that they must swerve around; however, sometimes I am not even big enough to swerve, to notice. I’m simply driven over. I can wave my arms, I can yell, I can stand up on my chair and demand to be acknowledged, demand to be recognized; but then I’ll be waved off as dramatic, irrational, or another word from a list of adjectives meant to make me feel small. 

I want to be able to do an activity without a man coming to me in an offer to “explain how it works,” or suggest “no, not like that,” as if I’m a toddler incapable of simple tasks. 

Now I almost deleted that sentence, in my mind it seemed dramatic, like if I were to actually say that to someone they would think I was melodramatic. The chains placed on me since I took my first breath have become engraved in my skin – as if they are now the bones that I use to move. 

In my dream, it has become self-evident that I cannot completely remove these chains and their scars all on my own. Although it pains me to say, we, as women, cannot remove these chains all on our own. We can shake and shatter, bend and break, but without the effort of men, we can only go so far. 

I have a dream that our glass ceiling will be shattered – that the ceiling becomes our floor. 

I have a dream that we will be heard, seen, and respected. 

I have a dream that this “land of the free” will one day include all those that walk on it.