Be offensive.

The strongest women are the ones with the courage to offend.

Throughout my life I have prided myself on being confident and assertive. As a child this was often to my detriment, my headstrong nature left me spending much of my elementary school years in the principal's office or on timeout. Regardless, I loved my assertiveness. I believed it made me strong.

But as I’ve aged I’ve realized that my confidence has an achilles heel: agreeableness. I at times found myself resisting being assertive so that I could instead be acceptable. The urge to be palatable is something many women have, and that is by no coincidence.

Agreeableness, high rates of empathy and cooperation are fundamental to female socialization. This isn’t all bad. People being able to work well in a group and care for the feelings of others is vital to a well run society (this might have something to do with why the happiest countries are the ones run by women.)

However it’s when agreeableness meets femininity that the trait becomes poisonous. Women are not just meant to be kind and good group participants, patriarchy wants that agreeableness to make them erase their own thoughts and desires and take on others, often a mans. When you get a boyfriend you start making the food he likes, wearing the clothes he likes, engaging with the hobbies he has, you do most of the daily tasks in the home so that he has the time to do what he wants.

The sort of slavery patriarchy does to women only works if women make themselves blank vessels that are entirely occupied with everyone else's interests. If women were assertive and allowed their interests and feelings to be prioritized they’d be difficult to make small and submissive. This is why a critical piece of deconstructing patriarchal conditioning is being offensive.

I used to think I had this down pat but then I’d find myself overly upset because someone was mildly critical of the food I made, or I found myself not talking much about my interests because I assumed no one cared, or I found myself not correcting a man on something he got blatantly wrong but telling myself it was okay because I didn’t want to “stir the pot.”

Time and time again I’d shrink back into a smaller and simpler version of myself. I beat myself up for minor mistakes and inconveniences, out of fear it was making me unlikable. The desire to be looked at kindly is innate and understandable but in women’s brains this desire often becomes allconsuming. Women's sense of self is oriented around men's desire for us, that is why being submissive and palatable is of the utmost importance. Women are not allowed to exist outside of male validation.

I’d often be amazed at some of the things men say with so much ease. I would be shocked when a male coworker wouldn’t do everything he could to cover another person's shift. I would be shocked when a male family member would inconvenience restaurant staff by asking to send a meal back. I would be shocked when men would speak about minor accomplishments as if they were Academy Award winners. That sort of self-confidence, the belief that you are valuable, that you deserve to take up space and that other people want to hear from you, is not something women are trained to have.

For many of us women the scariest thing we can be is inconveniencing and offensive, but these qualities are liberating. Not being afraid to have your voice heard, get in a disagreement, not do something perfectly, that is where you allow yourself to exist as a person. That is where you step out of submissiveness. That is where you get the sense of self the patriarchy so desperately wants you to not have.