Your UnSlut Project

Submitted by @liliancarmine Author of the "TLB" Trilogy

I have to say I've been very lucky growing up as a child. I had parents that encouraged me to be true to who I am and supported everything I wanted to do.

They endured through all my phases, the swimming phase, the volleyball and then later the gymnastics obsession (where I spent every day doing pirouettes around the apartment, to the deepest annoyance of the neighbor downstairs, sorry neighbor!), then there was the writing poems phase, the artistic drawing and the books!

It was all I asked for birthdays, books and more books. I was always happy with a book in my hands.

I grew up in a house with a younger and older brother, and quite a bunch of male cousins who tagged along in our play games. To my parent's friends, I was 'the girl in the middle', but I was never treated any differently by my brothers or by my parents. I was just a kid, like any other kid.

Gender really didn't matter to them and now, as an adult, I see the impact that this view and treatment had in my life and how it affected the way I would see the world in the future.

My mom tried to give me a few dolls when I was little but soon she realized my preferences lay elsewhere. Dolls were to me kind of boring. I didn't want to play the 'be a mother' pretend game. Give the baby a bottle of milk, change its diaper, give it a bath.

I couldn't see the appeal in that, not when I saw my brothers playing Playmobils, Legos, chemistry set for kids, play-dough, all this amazing toys that stimulated a child's creativity and imagination.

So I preferred to play with Thundercat action figures instead of plain old boring baby dolls. Thundercats didn't need feeding or changing diapers. They were super heroes! They fought villains and saved people! They were fun!

So as a kid, I saw no difference in treatment for being a girl.

As a teen, I began to notice things were not quite the same. I've heard from friends of my age and adults as well a lot of 'girls don't do that' and 'that's a boy thing' in that period of my life.

I never liked hearing those things back then. I still don't. I won't ever like it.

People are ever so ready to tell you what you cannot do, especially for girls. It slips out of their tongues effortless, especially with the backup of everybody around to support you. It becomes a stagnant quicksand of prejudice. It's easy to fall into the trap and let it engulf all your thoughts, and worst of all, your actions.

It can come sometimes from your own parents, from your friends, your boyfriend, your teachers and many other figures of authority. Sometimes it can even come from yourself. After hearing it so many times, you begin to tell the lie to yourself as well.

'Why can't I do what that boy is doing?'

Because you're a girl and girls don't do that. So you can't. That's why.

I saw girls saying that many times _to me and to themselves_ as I grew up.

I learned from my mother that you don't have to obey what people tell you to do, if it's not the right thing. It doesn't matter if everybody is saying and doing it. If it's not right, you don't have to do it. You raise your head, and you say no.

If they push, you push back harder.

Because a girl can do whatever the hell she wants.

And not only 'boy things'.

Any thing.

I learned that from my mother's many words of advice, but most importantly, from her actions. I saw her fighting and pushing back all her life. She's fierce, fearless, a force of nature when she's mad about injustice.