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Following on from my true crime thread… I’m sick of dead women being described as “loved by so many,” as if the number of people mourning them is what makes their life valuable. As if their worth is only validated by how others saw them.
I’m drained by the same tired language: “She was so giving,” “She was always smiling,” “She never asked for anything.” This pattern of painting women as endlessly kind, self-effacing, soft, and sacrificial—as if that’s what makes them worthy of grief—is fucking disturbing!
It shouldn’t matter if she was loud or quiet, nurturing or not, sweet or complicated. It is absolutely enough that she existed, that she had the right to live, to be safe, to be herself—however that looked. It is enough that she loved and was loved or whatever she wanted to do!
This expectation that women must fit into this palatable, perfect version of femininity even in death—to be remembered as the “good kind of woman”—is a trap. It’s a standard forced on us by men, and upheld by other women who lack brain cells. And I’m sick of it.
Women don’t need to be saints to deserve to live. We don’t need to be selfless to be mourned. We don’t have to be “liked by everyone” to be worth remembering.
Our worth is intrinsic. Always has been. Always will be.
Males also do this with gender based violence.
They act as if you were prettier, or did more for men, then they wouldn't rape or hurt us, at the same time claiming that "ugly" women can't be raped.
Patriarchy makes us secondary, when really, our lives are less violent and more important to the species.l, regardless of how we look.
We need to go back to that, where men are expected to do things for society and leave women alone. A lot of matriarchies still make me leave women alone.
First off, most of these women were probably not even that nice. Misogynists talk about dead women the way they talk about ships and boats with female names they give them, "Ol' Jennie really was a reliable, sweet girl." I don't trust it because it is always the same story with dead women.
Secondly, men and people in general don't even really respect "nice" and "selfless" women. They have more respect for the "bitches" who weren't doormats and actually held them to some standards. Men don't pine for the easy, sweet girl who never questioned them. They pine for the "bitch" who wouldn't put up with them.
I'm also positive they all treated these women like s* while they were alive and now they want to act like they cared so much. 🙄
So, I just don't even believe these things are true about so many dead women, but it's like some weird societal brainwashing to make us think that's what we should aspire to be so they talk like this about us once we die. I really dgaf what they say about me when I die, because they have blamed me for things men instigated my whole life.
Peoples' opinions, whether good OR bad, should mean nothing to us as women.
I have seen this a lot, especially in news reports from the United States. When I was a teen and depressed I remember one time thinking what would the news write about me since I was not social and I didn't have friends, I was undiagnosed autistic. I was thinking of how they'd ask people around about me and nobody would say that I was smiley, extroverted and kind.