Witches, Queens, & Other Evil Things

Rewritten histories and media do their best to paint women as monsters. From a young age, we're taught haunting stories about ugly, old witches cursing innocent people, and evil queens whose reign of terror emerged from some obscure obsession with beauty. If you've ever met a real-life woman, these are not the struggles we fight. We don't care about being the most beautiful, and we don't buy into the horizontal-hostility hatred of other women media loves to portray-it's pure propaganda. Women in power get villainized, while falsified histories erase women's voices, stories, inventions, and discoveries.

These harmful narratives don't just affect the past-they affect what happens to us now, with today's political climate fighting to strip our rights, proving the ongoing impact. While 'history,' movies, and TV portray women as shallow, envious of other women, man-hating harpies, this poet has found the complete opposite to be true. Women are powerful leaders, filled with empathy, compassion, love, and rationality. Women support each other, build each other up, and show genuine care. But this rhetoric undermines femininity with profound hatred. You could be the smartest, kindest, most interesting person in the room...

But to an oppressor... you're just an Evil Thing.