By Hilary McMurray

Scholars have circulated thousands of theories as to why women don’t run the world. Women have been called the weaker sex. We are said to be more emotional, more caring and more nurturing, and somehow this has translated into meaning we are incapable of making rational decisions. It has been said that women would be unlikely to go to war when necessary. Girls are made of sugar, spice and everything nice, and whenever a girl does something “unladylike,” we can rest assured that she’s just on the rag, and she’ll be fine in a week.

I’ve listened to these beliefs about my gender being nice, compliant and sweet for 23 years, and I’ve been wondering who on God’s green earth came up with this load of crap? There is nothing out there that can convince me beyond a reasonable doubt that women aren’t just as aggressive, strong and obnoxious as men.

Ever since I figured out women and men aren’t treated equally in society, feminism has intrigued me. Unfortunately, the word “feminist” tends to conjure up images of hairy, militant, bra-less man-haters rallying in the streets shouting that the penis is the enemy. I constantly wondered why all these women hated men. Sure, men fart and have a tendency to lose the ability to put a coherent sentence together whenever they see breasts, but I never really had problems with men. I remember thinking, “If these chicks want to see an enemy, why don’t they just look in the mirror?”

To explain that question (which is probably going to get me book-burned by hordes of patriarchy-theory-spewing feminists), I offer this reasoning: