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Miss, Ms., Mrs.
When I was in secondary school, majority of my classmates were born in either 1993, 1994, or 1995. When I thought about that a few days ago, I thought, “Would you look at that? The new class, if you may, of the third decade of life.” Now, I started thinking about all of these because of the video of a Chinese woman I watched on X on the precipice of saying goodbye to another year. In China, she said, if you’re a woman, single, and over 30, you are called a “left-over woman” in Mandarin. In Cantonese, they have a few choice phrases including, “orange at the bottom of the…
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Call a thing by its name
“When you name something, it comes into existence – did you know that? There is strength there, bone-white power injected in a rush, like a trembling drug,” – Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater. Imagine menstruating and being ostracized singularly for that reason. Imagine being banished to a menstrual hut outside your house made from weak materials and barely able to stand against weather conditions. Imagine being so cold because of that and having to create fires to warm yourself up. Then, imagine dying from asphyxiation because you inhaled too much smoke from the fire you prepared to keep warm. This Chhaupadi huts are real in Nepal, and although they have been legally…
The Isle of Jade
