179

all colors.

men as boys are taught that the only two crayons they can use, the two types of feelings society will tolerate from them, are sexuality and anger. women as girls, by contrast, are taught that they may use the entire box of crayons, minus the two that belong to the boys, so long as they color within the lines and as instructed. we need to let our girls know that art in technicolor flows naturally through each of us, and for our boys to know that all colors belong to them just the same.

the divine is embodied here, in each of us, for the highs, lows, losses and redemptions of the human experience. we are not meant to apologize for our might, our light, or our humanity.

we then go on to teach boys that their feelings don’t matter, not even to themselves, and that the only person who would ever care how they feel is their woman. if she doesn’t, then there’s no one. we teach girls that they must provide for themselves, lest they go hungry, and that to receive, to be connected, would leave them vulnerable to harm. we teach our children that they are alone in these most profound ways, that what we need must be outsourced or extracted, or that we will inevitably go without — that our worth lies only in what we achieve and produce. this isn’t right and it is exactly how we built a cruel, unsafe world from the inside out.