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To Men Who Write Women Off
Outlook
|January 01, 2026
“Women feel differently, so they talk differently, have a different relationship to words and to ideas of which these are the vehicle. Asserting difference at the same time as demanding equal rights is obviously the position to take. We must impose female cultural models, which have a universal value in a world where ‘universal’ equals ‘masculine’. In other words, cultivate marginality until the margin takes up half the page. We have a long way to go...”—Marina Yaguello, French linguist
BEHIND me, everything. The love, the hate, the people, the places, the moments and the memory, the issues I curated, the resentment against me, the truth and the lies, the sadness and the humour, the excitement and the anguish, the despair and the redemption, the possibilities and the impossibilities, the right and the wrong, the many betrayals, criticism, judgements.
Ahead of me, a long road. A road that I will take unapologetically. Now that I finally know what it means to be a woman in a man's world.
It isn't an equal life but keep fighting for your place.
That's what my mother tells me and I believe, her mother and many more mothers have told their daughters the same if they willed their daughters to carry on with being who they are.
Women, uninterrupted.
In a world of men, women have to redraw the maps if they are to find their place.
This story is from the January 01, 2026 edition of Outlook.
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