Tuesday the 8th of March was International Women’s Day. This article may be a little overdue, but it’s still important. We all know that there are men who believe that women are less important than them, who believe that our issues are irrelevant and who accuse us of being too emotional if ever we bring them up. But we didn’t expect to hear these things from people in our own classes, people we have known for years and who have somehow failed to notice before the misogyny that has been ingrained in them.

And then we were shown a presentation to discuss women’s issues on this day to be able to acknowledge our struggles, and we heard the comments of “Why are we even talking about this?”, “Men have issues too.”, “We know women are suffering, but did you know suicide rates are higher for men? Why can’t we talk about that too?”.

We do everything in our power to point out that we want equality, not power over you. We know there are issues with men, but we discussed them already on International Men’s Day. Now, it’s our day. We want a chance to talk about our rights, values, and freedom for once. Yet still, some people will not understand. Still, some people will always want to reverse the focus of the conversation because women’s issues are less important than their own.

We think we understand that now, and we’re sorry. So sorry. We can’t believe we spent an entire ten minutes just talking about women before you had the chance to interrupt. We surely have more important topics to discuss than how 50% of the world’s population is not given the same rights as the other 50% just because they were born with XX chromosomes. It doesn’t affect all of us, so why should we blabber on about such a topic?

Yes, women might not be equal to men in society, but that’s just how it is! We shouldn’t try to bring about change, because it’s obviously pointless. I feel so sorry for all the men who had to endure such a painful experience of joining a conversation about women’s problems and society’s reality. It must have been really annoying and irritating, so we apologize for putting you through such immeasurable trouble.

We wasted a few moments of your precious time to talk about our own issues, which is ridiculous! How could we be so selfish and self-centered to not think about men’s problems instead? Everyone knows our problems don’t matter enough. Maybe if we had spent the time sharing homophobic and racist slurs between ourselves to enhance our vocabulary, you wouldn’t have gotten so bored. Or maybe if we had spent the time laughing about stories of inequality and injustice around the world, you would have been more entertained.

And so we are apologizing. For everything. We apologize for feeling compelled to talk about our problems, which would have helped to prevent others from growing up to be like you. We apologize for coming to the conclusion that discussing gender inequality and admitting that it is present in society is the only way things could get better.

We hope you can forgive us, because your approval is all we’ve ever wanted, and all that stands between us and satisfaction with our status in society.