A Speech About Being a Woman
Updated: Jan 4, 2021
How do you define yourselves?
A teacher, a student, a mother, a man, a girl or a woman?
Let me guess, most of you would include your gender in your answer, right?
But today, I am not going to discuss being a man or being a woman with you. I will talk about being unable to be a woman.
In my country, people say “When a baby girl is born, there occurs silence”. Not laughter, but silence. At your very first moment in this world, you invite all your family to be quiet because of your existence. Why? Just because you will not pass your surname to your children.
While growing up, you listen to your mother’s valuable advices to be honest, pure, modest, obedient and most importantly untouched. If you are not, there are possibilities: you can be killed because it was too early to be a woman or you can be forced to marry the appropriate man that your family chooses.
If you get raped, you are guilty, touched, embarrassing. However, if you marry the man 30 years older than you when you are 13, it’s just the time to be a woman and to be touched by your husband, or shall I say your husband who is at the same age with your father?
In the country I live in, if you get pregnant after being raped, your family has the right to kill both you and your baby because you stained their honour. However, if you get pregnant from the man 30 years older than you, it’s just the right age to be a mother. Yes, you can be a perfect mom while you are still a child.
Not seems real, right? In the country I live in, 167 children, under the age of 15, gave birth in 2018. In the same year, 11,636 children between the ages of 15 and 17 gave birth, in the country I live in.
In the country I live in, ministers talk about passing a law which says a raped girl can marry her rapist to make her family’s honour unstained.
In the country I live in, Özgecan Aslan died, on a February day. Her guilt was that she had excited the bus driver sexually. She got raped and then they burned her. They burned a university student. We all said “Enough is enough. This was the last, RIP little girl. We promise you that none of us will come there”. We couldn’t keep our word. After that day, 1,961 more women died. And we are all frightened to get on a bus at night.
Let’s look at another scenario. You fell in love with a man and asked for your family’s consent, let’s assume that they accepted. While your lovely husband-to-be comes to the door of your house to get you from your father, your father ties a red ribbon on your waist, to prove that you are untouched, still pure. I suppose it is not hard to infer that no one asks about your husband’s sexual background.
All these possible destinies of the girls in my country are based on the women’s body, as you see. Important point is that the girl should become a woman in the arms of her husband.
I am here today, speaking to you as a woman at the age of 15. Someday, I might have sexual relationship with a man. I can be a mother. When talking to my little daughter about my childhood, I’ll start with these words: “When I was a little girl”. What I actually mean?
“Before I was touched by your father”, or “when I was still innocent”. Right?
Now, I want to ask, what makes a woman?
I’m telling these words on behalf of all women who has been silenced each time they want to speak out.
“Do not judge me with my body
Do not judge me with my sex
Do not judge me with my motherhood”
Do not judge me, because I do not accept the system that traps my soul into my body. No. I do not accept. I do not consent to lose one more sister. I do not want one more girl to give birth to her brother. No.
I don’t accept the silence which occurred when I was born. In my 15-year-long life, I brought laughter, happiness and merriment along. I don’t accept the definitions that put me next to silence. No. I do not need anyone to become a woman, I am a woman.
I want to ask now, one more time
How do you define yourselves?
Men and women
Do you all accept to be human?
Elif Sude Yanık
Very powerful!