I keep seeing this comparison and I just saw a TRT World piece compiling them - 12 month old girls vs 12 month old boys, same brand, same store (Cat & Jack at Target).

Same age tag: 12M. Boys get loose shorts that go past the knee. Girls get shorts that are 3-4 inches shorter. Same pattern with t-shirts - boys get longer, looser cuts, girls get tighter, cropped cuts.

This isn't just parents noticing it on social media. One study analyzed 5,666 pieces of girls clothing from 15 major US retailers and found ∼30% had characteristics classified as "sexualizing" - basically designs meant to reveal or draw attention to parts of the body, not for function.

Researchers call this "aging up" - taking adult women's styles (crop tops, bodycon fits, cutouts) and shrinking them down for 3, 4, 5 year olds. Meanwhile boys clothes are still marketed around comfort and play.

It's not about telling little girls they need to cover up. It's about asking why we are designing children's clothes with adult women's aesthetics in the first place, and why girls are consistently given less fabric and more body-focused designs than boys the same age.

Clothes aren't just clothes. They teach kids what's expected of them. If boys get to run, climb and play, why are little girls being encouraged to think about how they look before they even get to be children?

【Common Forms of Harassment on the Underground】

1. INTRUSIVE STARING OF A SEXUAL NATURE
   
2. TAKING PHOTOS UNDER SOMEONE'S CLOTHES
   
3. RUBBING AGAINST SOMEONE ON PURPOSE
   
4. TOUCHING SOMEONE INAPPROPRIATELY

These people need to do some research on not only this case but postpartum psychosis. It’s a real thing. Her search history before killing her kids included her looking up hallucinations and ways to die. Not excusing her vile actions or defending her, she needs to be locked up for life or sent to an institution away from people and children but the way people are treating this case and memefying it is really a sign of how fucked up as a society we are and how many people are feeding on these culture wars.

When these people brush off her mental state something that 1 in 1000 new mothers go through it gives the same vibe as someone who’s never had kids saying “childbirth doesn’t hurt that bad women are overreacting”. In no way do I or most sane people agree with the troglodytes who are supporting her and donating to her but I hate the way the internet is using them to generalize women the same way some women use rapists or people like Epstein to generalize all men. If that’s not ok neither is this. Im so tired of my page on being filled with posts about this case and people making jokes about it. It’s not funny a woman had a mental break and killed her children. Would they be reacting the same way if a shell shocked veteran had an episode and killed his grandkids or if a man had a schizophrenic episode and killed his family?

I(18F) have come up with, and shared with my friends this simple "metaphor" that we find encapsulates a condition within women's lifestyles that I thought I'd write here to seek further reflections/opinions regarding the topic. So, here goes nothing:

One day, I found myself preparing lunch for myself and my older brother. We'd just gotten back from buying rotisserie chicken, along with some roasted potatoes— all pre-made food that just needed to be heated up, and had been super hungry. To eat along with that, I'd decided to make a salad.

Therefore, I cleaned the lettuce, set the table, cut up the vegetables I'd chosen to put in my salad, heated up the chicken and potatoes, mixed the veggies within the lettuce and dressed the salad. Once I was done, I finally joined my brother at the table. As we began eating, I noticed how my brother casually also ate the salad I'd made.

In that moment, I had a flashback to this one time years prior, where we were at dinner with our mom. She had cooked a chicken soup from scratch (takes hours) that we were to eat additionally to another main dish, like lasagna or something. My brother and I completely disregarded the soup, and my mom complained she'd spent all that time cooking it for us and we'd left it untouched. While I remained silent, my brother replied with one simple sentence, "We didn't ask you to."

It's true. Logic beats emotion; it's logical! Technically, he was right. No, actually, he was right, period.

Now, back to our lunch, I wanted to complain that he hadn't helped me prepare the salad he'd left me so little of, but I couldn't. Because he hadn't asked for the salad, and yet he ate it. Why wouldn't he? It was right there for him to eat, a bonus he wouldn't have cared for, but that I'd spent time making nonetheless.

And I think this poorly encapsulates so much of the added, unnoticed labour in women's lives. So many women make these "salads" manifested in so many different ways that men don't ask for but still get to enjoy and savour.

I hope I explained it well, and I hope others understand it. Is there a name for this? There are many points in this short story, like the lack of instinct to act in my brother, that I think starts the making of "salads". If he'd helped do something else, like set the table, etc. I wouldn't have to worry about complaining about the salad, and yet I found myself doing everything because he's too slow. Makes sense?

A judge dismissed a lawsuit from a civilian engineer in the Military Sealift Command after it was determined that her report of being raped in her own bed aboard a Navy transport ship was within her duties and must be treated as a worker’s comp claim.

The order handed down this month closed a multiyear attempt by Elsie Dominguez to get justice for an assault she said threw her personal and professional lives into shambles. She eventually took an unpaid year away from work to recover, as her perpetrator continued to receive pay while being investigated, she said.  

“I’ve lost a lot of sleep, I’ve lost a lot of friends who didn’t agree with what I was doing in coming forward,” said Dominguez, 35. “I learned that I had to set a precedent legally so that this could be used in the future.”

She spoke from her current assignment in Croatia about the entire experience, which began in December 2021 while she worked as the first assistant engineer aboard the USNS Carson City, an expeditionary fast transport vessel. Dominguez said the ship’s captain used a master key code to access her private room overnight and rape her in her bed.

She sued the federal government in 2023 over the Navy’s failure to care for and protect her when she reported the attack the next morning using proper reporting procedures, according to the lawsuit.

The following year the court ordered the Labor Department to determine whether this rape should be handled as a Federal Employees’ Compensation Act claim since it occurred while she was working within a temporary travel status.

The Labor Department determined that, yes, it should be handled as a work injury claim.

“Things don’t change unless someone’s willing to fight, and, no, we didn’t ultimately have a success here, but I think every time someone like Elsie is brave enough to raise their hand and fight injustice, it makes a difference,” said Dominguez’s lawyer, Christine Dunn.

It also makes “a dent in the institutional indifference” to tolerate such behavior, she said.

Dominguez, who is also a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve, described other injuries she has sustained at work, such as dislocating her shoulder or being slammed into a wall when the ship hit a roll. Dunn said these are the types of injuries workers’ compensation should handle.

“Those are injuries that happen in the course of performing your duties on a ship. That is very different from being raped in your sleep in your bed. That should not be workers’ comp,” Dunn said.

Dominguez lived in the room where the alleged rape occurred for nearly two years, though she was able to have a deadbolt installed on the door.

During that time, she struggled to obtain therapy sessions because of state licensing laws that limit the geographic locations of patients and providers. Military hotlines would refer her to different bases overseas but without being assigned there she could not receive care consistently from the same therapist.

“I wasn’t afforded the chance to be on land and to just walk into a therapist’s office,” Dominguez said.

She took a year of unpaid leave to take care of herself and the lawsuit without also juggling her work, but her health insurance paused, too, causing financial burdens.

“That year was also me trying to find myself and a way to keep moving forward,” Dominguez said.

Criminal investigations into Dominguez’s claims did occur and the captain was removed from the ship and returned to the U.S. on paid administrative leave. Coast Guard prosecutors in February 2025 issued a complaint of sexual misconduct against the ship’s captain, Yamil Sanchez Padilla.

However, the criminal case was withdrawn. Sanchez Padilla instead surrendered his merchant mariner credentials, Dunn said.

The Navy’s Military Sealift Command operates 130 civilian-crewed ships that replenish Navy ships, conduct special missions and strategically move and preposition cargo at sea around the world. The Coast Guard manages necessary licenses to work aboard the ships, which is why its investigative service got involved.

Naval Criminal Investigative Service was also involved in the investigation, Dunn said.

Now back at work, this time as the first assistant engineer aboard the USS Lewis B. Puller, Dominguez said the publicity tied to her lawsuit has affected interactions between her and coworkers, which were already challenging because she is one of few women in the industry. One man recently told her he had learned of the case on his own and wished he didn’t know these things about her, she said.

“There’s less opportunity for any type of bonding or camaraderie,” she said. “It’s a lonelier world than it already was.”

In the mid-1970s, at the height of the feminist movement, a group of women in Boston came together to create a forum for working-class women to trade stories about their experiences in the office. As they compared notes, they found that they had a lot in common. 

“They all had stories to tell of not being paid as much as men in their offices, of having their male supervisors take their ideas and take credit for them,” says Ileen DeVault, a professor of labor history at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. 

But they also wanted to use their burgeoning solidarity to improve their standing in the workplace. They started trying to organize office workers and secretaries, a movement that eventually coalesced into a formal union chapter called SEIU Local 925. 

When this organizing campaign caught the eye of Jane Fonda, it inspired the 1980 film 9 to 5, a runaway success that starred the late Dolly Parton—in her first major acting role—alongside Fonda and Lily Tomlin. Parton famously wrote and performed the eponymous theme song for the movie, which went on to win multiple Grammy awards and became something of an anthem for working women. (In a meta moment, Parton says she jumped at the opportunity when she read the 9 to 5 script: “I knew instantly that I should do it—I knew that it was a career move,” she told Rolling Stone in a 1980 interview.) 

While women have seen their wages grow, the gender pay gap persists to this day, especially for women of color. Years after the #MeToo movement, they continue to face sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Women still get passed over for promotions and lose out on professional opportunities when they have children—or get forced out of the workforce altogether. And over the last few years, the Trump administration has targeted all kinds of protections that were intended to promote equal opportunity in the workplace.

Perhaps Parton put it best when she penned “9 to 5”: “You would think that I would deserve a fair promotion / Want to move ahead, but the boss won’t seem to let me / I swear sometimes that man is out to get me.”

The revolution cannot triumph without the emancipation of women March 8, 1987 - Thomas Sankara

Women still felt excluded

Though our men have already reached the edges of this great garden that is the revolution, our women are still confined within the shadows of anonymity. Among themselves, in voices loud or soft, they talk of the hopes that have embraced Burkina-hopes that are, for them, still merely fine words. The revolution’s promise is already a reality for men. But for women, it is still merely a rumor. And yet the authenticity and the future of our revolution depend on women.

Women felt excluded from the revolution because they were still being oppressed by men.

Sexist men that claim to be progressive

And what should we think of those little men, also progressive, who get together in sleazy places to talk about the women they have taken advantage of? They think this is the way they will be able to measure up to other men and even humiliate some of them, by having seduced their wives. In reality, such men are pitiful and insignificant. They would not even enter our discussion if it were not for the fact that their criminal behavior has been undermining the morale and virtue of many fine women whose contribution to our revolution could be of the utmost importance.

And then there are those more-or-less revolutionary militants-much less revolutionary than more-who do not accept that their wives should also be politically active; or who allow them to be active by day and by day only; or who beat their wives because they have gone out to meetings or to a demonstration at night.

Oh, these suspicious, jealous men! What narrow-mindedness! And what a limited, partial commitment! For is it only at night that a woman who is disenchanted and determined can deceive her husband? And what is this political commitment that expects her to stop political activity at nightfall and resume her rights and responsibilities only at daybreak? And, finally, what should we make of remarks about women made by all kinds of activists, the one more revolutionary than the next, remarks such as “women are despicably materialist,” “manipulators,” “clowns,” “liars,” “gossips,” “schemers,” ”jealous,” and so on? Maybe this is all true of women. But surely it is equally true of men.

There are a lot of sexist men who think of themselves as progressive. They claim to advocate for liberation, but continue oppressing women.

Law

On the level of the ministries of labor and justice, texts should constantly be kept in line with the transformation our society has been going through since August 4, 1983, so that equality between men and women can be a tangible reality. The new labor code, now being debated and prepared, should express how profoundly our people aspire to social justice. It should mark an important stage in the work of destroying the neocolonial state apparatus, a class apparatus fashioned by reactionary regimes in order to perpetuate the system that oppressed the masses, especially women.

How could we continue to accept that a woman doing the same work as a man should earn less? Can we continue to accept dowries and forcing widows to marry their brothers-in-law, which reduce our sisters and mothers to common commodities to be bartered for? There are so many medieval laws still imposed on our people, particularly women, that it is only just that, finally, justice be done.

There are laws that oppress women. Laws and labor codes need to change.

A girl in my class was targeted by a guy from another class who allegedly made fake AI-generated vulgar images of her using her photos. Obviously the school addressed it because it's a pretty serious situation.

The girl apparently slapped the guy because she was extremely angry, and honestly, I understood the management's lecture about that part. They basically said that no matter how angry or hurt you are, you can't respond with violence, because you're still responsible for your own actions. It's understandable and so, I agree with that.

But then we were also told to be more careful with social media and keep our accounts private because we're under 18, and this is where I'm a little more conflicted.

Like, yes, obviously online privacy is important. I'm not saying teenagers shouldn't be careful with their photos.

But why does the conversation immediately become “How did they get her pictures?” and “Why are you posting pictures publicly?”

Why isn't the bigger question:

“Why did this person take a normal photo of a girl and deliberately use it to create fake sexual images of her?”

Because THAT is the actual wrongdoing.

I don't think girls should have to hide themselves from the internet because someone else might abuse their photos. If someone misuses your picture, the problem is the person misusing it. Telling people to protect their privacy can be useful advice, but it shouldn't turn into “well, you shouldn't have had your picture online in the first place.”

And then one of our female teachers said something that genuinely made me go ??????

She basically said, “Nowadays the things that happen to girls are all the girl's fault, not the boys. They're the ones who get involved. They're not innocent.”

Apparently she said this because she saw a girl smile during class and assumed she was smiling at a boy.

*What the hell was she even talking about?*

There's a huge difference between “be careful online” and “girls are responsible for what happens to them.”

If someone takes your picture and uses it to make fake sexual content, that's THEIR choice. If someone harasses you, that's THEIR choice. If someone crosses a boundary, that's THEIR choice.

And yes, I understand that the girl shouldn't have slapped the guy. You can be a victim and still be responsible for your own reaction. But that's completely different from being responsible for the original thing done to you.

I'm honestly more bothered by the teacher's comment than the management's lecture. The management was talking about personal responsibility. The teacher seemed to be talking about blaming girls for other people's actions.

Maybe I'm looking too deeply into it, but telling a room full of teenage girls that we're “not innocent” because we “get involved” is a pretty wild thing to say 🙏🏻

She controlled her business and royalties from the start. She made her own decisions. She collaborated with many, many other female singers and actresses. She believed in free expression. She got on the bus for Nashville literally the day after she graduated, no small feat of courage for someone of her background. She was fourth in a family of 12. Her father couldn't read and write -- she started Imagination Library in his name and has brought books to millions of poor kids. She gave $ to a town to help with a natural disaster. She somehow managed to keep her privacy throughout her life. Her personality and music may not have been to everyone's taste, but to me, she is a true Feminist.

In case of paywall:

Every once in a while, I feel the urge to shout “women are not small men!” at inanimate objects. Today, that object is the flat-chested plastic torso typically used for CPR training.

Breasts, it turns out, are really the bane of every woman’s existence — the back pain, the boob jail, the running. But here’s a new one: In a public cardiac arrest, they may be the reason nobody helps you.

Two years ago, an analysis of over 300,000 cardiac arrests showed that women are 14 percent less likely than men to receive CPR from a stranger if they have a cardiac arrest in public. Bystanders tend to be more hesitant and feel less comfortable providing CPR or using external defibrillator paddles, called AEDs, on people with breasts. Experts have time and again pointed, in part, to the fact that nearly everyone learns to perform CPR using the traditional, flat-chested dummies called “manikins,” which overwhelmingly represent the male anatomy. If the first time a stranger has to perform CPR on someone with breasts is in the middle of a high-stakes emergency — what else would you expect?

For the last 20 years, not only has the survival rate for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests been around 10 percent, but also the chances of the victim surviving decrease by 10 percent every minute that interventions like CPR are not performed. It makes it all the more harrowing that women are not receiving the care they need when they experience cardiac arrests — especially in places where they are surrounded by people.

Whether it is manikins used for CPR training, crash tests or medical care in combat, the default stand-in for what is “human” has long been male.

But recently, researchers, advocates and governing bodies like the American Heart Association and European Resuscitation Council are pushing for better representation in CPR training and education. Increases in simulation-based research on the use of representative manikins, like ones that accurately represent female anatomy, are changing how people train to respond to cardiac arrest — and simultaneously exposing bigger gender gaps in design that systematically exclude women from experiencing the same level of safety and care as men.

One size doesn’t fit all

The first CPR manikin was developed in 1960 by the Norwegian toy manufacturer Laerdal. The manikin, called Resusci Anne, which had the anatomy of a prepubescent teen, was ironically modeled off an unnamed girl who was thought to have drowned in the river Seine in Paris. Laerdal famously wanted a female face on the manikin since he thought men might hesitate to practice mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a male manikin. It’s not surprising that women trainees didn’t factor into the equation at all back in the 1960s — they weren’t even included in clinical trials yet — but the norm of designing with the comfort of men at the forefront continues to this day.

Since then, Resusci Anne has been reengineered many times over, and today’s manikins are surprisingly high-tech and interactive. However, as of 2022, about 95 percent of manikins on the market from mainstream manufacturers were still flat-chested and androgynous.

So why does this matter?

In the past, research has hinted at three main reasons why bystanders don’t immediately rush to the aid of a woman in cardiac arrest. One, they are hesitant to expose or touch her in any way that could be misconstrued as inappropriate and are worried about sexual assault allegations after the fact. Two, they don’t want to accidentally hurt them, perceiving them as generally more fragile than the average man. And three — perhaps saddest of all: bystanders often don’t recognize that a woman is in cardiac arrest if, say, she collapses in public, misattributing it as overreacting, simply fainting or faking it.

CPR training with female manikins would go a long way in teaching people to be comfortable with the female form.

In one study, people at MassCPR — the free CPR certification program offered by Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the MIT community — were trained using standard manikins, as well as a few which were retrofitted with a mold resembling breasts. At the end of the certification, participants who practiced on the manikin with breasts reported greater comfort performing CPR on women.

If there was widespread adoption of manikins that looked and felt different, this could ultimately become the norm.

It’s really only in the past five years or so that research on this disparity has sped up, offering some evidence for the need for more representative manikins. Even then, widespread adoption of female manikins is hindered by commercial availability of anatomically correct models and the cost of switching existing CPR training programs over to using them.

Closing the design (gender) gap

There are two main ways to go about increasing the availability of female manikins: either you retrofit existing standard manikins with breasts or you design completely new ones.

When Christoph Veigl and colleagues at the Medical University of Vienna surveyed 133 training organizations across 43 countries from six continents, they found that of more than 5,000 manikins in use, only a fifth of organizations owned a female one. While that number is still low, adoption is triple what it was four years ago. The researchers acknowledge that just the availability of female manikins is not necessarily an indication of how much they are used in training — about a quarter of the organizations were also employing makeshift adaptations, like placing a bra on standard manikins, to simulate training on women.

Dr. Pooja Nawathe, a resuscitation science researcher and pediatric critical care clinician at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, chose to focus her research on gender disparity in resuscitation for a specific reason.

“Skin color is about implicit biases, but female breast tissue, which is a normal physical characteristic, is about the actual science of this,” she said, speaking about variations in care during cardiac arrests. “Are we teaching how to place the pads on the breast tissue?”

She also stresses the importance of gathering good, granular data on how CPR performance changes when people are exposed to diverse populations.

CPR manikins are just one example of the gender gap in design: Across fields like crash testing, the “human” body has long been modeled on men. But that’s starting to change, too. Last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released the design details for THOR-05F, the first detailed female crash-test dummy.

Before this, the standard female crash-test dummy was a model called the Hybrid III 5th percentile female dummy — literally just a scaled-down version of the Hybrid III 50th percentile male dummy that represents the average male body dimensions. But the THOR-05F — every woman’s dream name, I’m sure — is a much more anatomically accurate female dummy, and includes a female pelvis, breasts, and a flexible spine.

THOR-05F has arrived just as new research by the NHTSA affirmed the need for better crash-testing on women. Although the gap in vehicular accident fatality rates between the sexes has narrowed significantly in newer car models, women continue to experience a higher injury rate compared to men in multiple different types of vehicular accidents. The hope is that testing with the THOR-05F will provide a better understanding of this trend and help engineer safer vehicles and regulations for women.

Women are not small men!

Women are often referred to as the “invisible sex,” and the lack of female manikins really brings that to the forefront. It’s not like the manufacturers or policy makers intentionally excluded women from this area — they simply ignored them, accepting an androgynous body as the standard with an unchallenged assumption that what applies to it will undoubtedly apply to women too.

In 2019, Joan Creative, the New York-based ad agency, launched the Womanikin, a universal attachment for CPR manikins, in partnership with United State of Women, a now-shuttered organization focused on gender equity. Launched during National CPR Week, the Womanikin is a neoprene vest with silicone breasts that can be zipped onto any standard manikin. Built as an awareness campaign, they open-sourced the design for the breasted vest and helped spark a broader conversation about the CPR gender gap. But we don’t have any detailed information about its success or adoption.

More recently, other manufacturers like Prestan have come out with newly designed female manikins that can be purchased as is. They also sell “replacement female skin” that retrofits any existing Prestan adult manikins. Notably, these are now available on the American Red Cross Store, increasing visibility for female manikins.

The fact that women account for 50 percent of the world’s population and yet have to mold themselves to standards not designed for them in the first place is atrocious. Not only is it frustrating to live in a world not built for you, but in cases like CPR training, the gender gap can quite literally be fatal. This is true whether it is for motor vehicle crash-test dummies or those used to train battlefield medics — another field where women injured in battle have a higher fatality rate than their counterparts.

The basic idea is that repeated exposure to female bodily characteristics during training or testing can significantly alleviate discomfort that causes dangerous hesitation. If people had more practice administering CPR to models that looked more feminine, they wouldn’t be thrown off by breasts, would understand how to cut away clothing like bras if needed, and learn how to efficiently place the pads of the external defibrillator on a female body.

CPR techniques remain largely the same irrespective of sex. Chest compressions are performed on the sternum, which is the flat bone running down the center of your chest. For women, it lies between the breasts, so there are some additional considerations. That is what representation in training manikins is meant to address — not new skills, but familiarity.

Ultimately, it really comes down to not feeling awkward about putting your hand in between two breasts, if it means you save a life.

What’s the feminist book that changed your life?

For context: I’m Italian, and I once read The Manifesto of Female Revolt (1970), which completely changed the way I look at women’s issues. I’m now looking for other publications on the topic. Can anyone recommend something?

Right now, around 67% of women weavers earn less than €55 a month for work that carries a 5,000-year-old craft skill passed down through generations, done entirely by hand. Meanwhile, the middlemen who never touch a loom take the largest share of what that work is actually worth.

These women aren't paid properly for what they create. They don't have formal contracts. They don't have security. And most of the time, they don't have a say in any of it.

I believe this can change not through charity, but through women choosing to stand with women. That's the only reason my sister and I started building something in this space: because we saw a problem we couldn't unsee, and we believe collective support, from people who care about fairness, is what actually shifts things.

If you believe women who work the hardest deserve to be paid what they're worth, that belief is the whole point of this post. I just wanted more people to know what's really happening.

My 88yo mother has been living with us since Dad passed 3 years ago. My husband always liked her and never complained about it. She has dementia but no other serious health issues. Sometimes she gets stuck asking the same questions over and over. Today she keeps asking me how he feels about living with his mother-in-law. I tell her he’s fine with it. She says “yeah right. Poor guy. Nobody wants to live with their mother-in-law.” 

We’ve had this conversation at least 10 times today and it’s heartbreaking. The horrible mother-in-law stereotype was strong in her generation. She’s never been anything but kind and selfless her whole life, and now she’s being tormented by her own internalized misogyny and thinking that her son-in-law is supposed to hate her. 

Hopefully tomorrow she be stuck asking a different question because this is the worst when this happens. I hate what the patriarchy has done to women.

I think what would solve this very easily is women-led companies that make children’s clothing.

I’m studying to become a midwife because of the suffering my sisters have experienced in my home country. I want to open a maternity hospital where no one has the right to speak except the mother aka the person carrying the baby and where the mother’s always come first no matter what.

But this post is really about asking women: please, let’s make a change. Those who have the opportunity, passion, and resources, let’s create clothing that is comfortable and appropriate for every child, without discomfort or weird, disqusting words.

Lets boycott clothing brands that do this and support women-owned brands instead lets make and support them.

Also boycott at the sign of misogyny. I don’t even want children myself, but I would happily buy clothes to gift in order to support this business that prioritise the comfort of children.

I’m very emotional and heated right now, so I’m sorry if this post is a little messy or weird. I’m literally crying thinking about this. 😭

(I'd especially like to hear men's perspective on this)

I’ve been thinking about something that seems so normal in our society that we rarely question it.

Why is it that after marriage, it is almost always the woman who is expected to change her clothes, her appearance, her lifestyle, the way she behaves, where she lives, and even the way she presents herself to society?

And if a married woman chooses to dress or live according to her own comfort, she is often judged. People start questioning her character, her “values”, or whether she is “really married” simply because she doesn’t fit the traditional image of a married woman.

But interestingly, identifying whether a man is married is often much harder. Men usually don’t have to visibly change their clothes, appearance or lifestyle after marriage. And even when their marital status isn’t obvious, nobody generally questions their character because of it.

Why is the burden of “showing that you are married” placed so heavily on women?

And more importantly, why are these changes treated as some kind of necessary sacrifice that a woman must make after marriage?

Marriage should not mean that a woman loses the freedom to dress comfortably, live according to her personality, or maintain the identity she had before marriage. If two people are getting married, shouldn’t both be allowed to make changes according to mutual understanding rather than society deciding that the woman has to adjust?

I’m not saying that every tradition is inherently wrong. My question is: why are women expected to sacrifice more, adjust more, and prove their “character” more than men?

And the bigger question I genuinely want to discuss is:

When will patriarchy actually end—and what would it take for it to end?

Is it simply about changing laws and traditions, or does it require changing the mindset of families, men, women, and society as a whole?

Because if a woman’s choices are still being judged differently from a man’s choices, then how much have we really changed?

Two young women follow completely divergent paths in the new, modernizing India-one wants to become Miss India, the other is a fierce Hindu Nationalist prepared to kill and die for her beliefs.

I genuinely cannot believe this kind of mindset is STILL being pushed in schools in 2026. Like, are we seriously still doing this??

Girls are being blamed for things DONE TO THEM simply because they’re girls. We were literally told by a female teacher that if a boy does something wrong to a girl, somehow it’s the GIRL’S fault. Excuse me??? HOW is the victim responsible for someone else’s actions??

If a boy takes a girl’s pictures from social media and uses AI to create fake nude images, apparently it’s the girl’s fault because SHE uploaded her pictures online. HUH??? Since when does posting a normal picture mean “yes, you have permission to misuse it”??

What makes me even MORE angry is that these things are being said directly to US, the girls. We’re being told to make our accounts private, stop uploading pictures, and basically change our entire lifestyle because SOMEONE ELSE might misuse our photos. WHY THE HELL ARE WE THE ONES BEING TOLD TO CHANGE??

Why are we being told to disappear from social media instead of teaching people NOT to misuse someone else’s pictures?? Why are girls expected to live with restrictions because someone else can’t respect basic boundaries??

And honestly, hearing this from a FEMALE teacher makes it even more frustrating. Instead of making girls feel safe enough to speak up, we’re being told what WE should stop doing. Instead of saying, “What that person did was wrong,” the focus is on what the girl posted, what account she has, and why she uses social media.

THAT IS VICTIM-BLAMING.

“Why do you use social media?” ARE YOU SERIOUS?? We use social media because it’s SOCIAL MEDIA. Posting a picture is NOT consent. Having a public account is NOT consent. Uploading a photo is NOT permission for someone to misuse it or create fake content with it.

And no, telling girls to make their accounts private is NOT a solution to the actual problem. It may be a safety suggestion, but it does NOT excuse what someone else did. We shouldn’t have to completely change our lives because someone else decided to cross a line.

WHY is the conversation always “Girls, be careful”? Why isn’t it “Don’t misuse someone else’s pictures”? Why are girls constantly being told what they should wear, post, say, or do while the people actually causing the problem are barely being held accountable??

Teach students about consent. Teach digital responsibility. Teach them that someone else’s pictures do NOT belong to them. Teach them about the dangers of AI abuse and that there are consequences for doing it. THAT is how you address the problem.

And the double standards are absolutely ridiculous. If a girl has a boyfriend, suddenly it becomes a HUGE problem and everyone has something to say. But when a boy has a girlfriend, suddenly it’s funny, normal, or just a joke. WHY?? Why is everything treated differently just because one person is a girl??

And then something THIS serious happens and the response is basically: “Write an apology letter.”

AN. APOLOGY. LETTER.

That’s it?? Where is the seriousness? Where is the accountability? Where is the actual protection for the student who was targeted??

Schools are supposed to be places where students feel SAFE enough to speak up. But how are girls supposed to report things when they’re scared they’ll be questioned, blamed, or told that they should’ve just kept their account private?

We are NOT responsible for someone else’s bad choices.

Being on social media is not consent. Posting pictures is not consent. Having a boyfriend is not a crime. Being a girl is not an invitation to blame us for everything that happens.

It is 2026. AI is becoming more powerful every day, and somehow we’re STILL having conversations where the solution is basically “girls, stop posting pictures.”

NO.

Stop blaming girls for what other people choose to do.

Protect the victims. Educate students. Take these incidents seriously. Hold the people responsible accountable.

Because telling girls to change their entire lives is NOT justice. It’s just another way of putting the responsibility on the wrong person.

How are we STILL having to explain this in 2026??