I felt the way you feel when you bury someone who's dead, or maybe I felt like the dead person. All over my body, flesh was raised into goosebumps and hair was standing on edge- caused in part by the stale conversation that was inevitably heading to a culminating point, but majorly caused by the air conditioning blasting in my mother's car. I was in the backseat, directly behind my aunt in the passenger's seat and diagonal from my mum. My stomach felt full, heavy, considering we had just eaten a large dinner, but my heart felt heavy too. “I didn't need any prompting to do any of that, right mum?” I asked, referring to my excellent academic standing come graduation, my full time job, my scholarship, and the early achievement of my class G driver's license. To be more specific, referring to how neither of my two older brothers had succeeded quite like I had at my age. And then she said them, the words I knew she was going to. My heart dropped even further. I felt like she had tossed the first handful of dirt onto my closed casket. “Yes well, that's because you're a girl,” she said, with a slight chuckle, no further thought, and a silent car ride home. I wanted anything but to be silent then. I wanted to scream and cry, to try and explain what she had just inadvertently done to me, to try and explain what has been inadvertently done to all young girls- what must be recognized and come to a well overdue ending. Instead, however, I held my tongue. I've heard the dreaded phrase, and many similar variants of it, throughout my entire childhood. Toxic phrases that cause harm to an entire gender, that perpetuate a system of archaic and outdated belief systems, that make my heart ache for all women and girls, past and present. If you can't quite picture it yet, allow me to give you another example: “well, girls mature faster than boys do…” This saying is only ever used to justify why it is acceptable for men and boys to be lacking in social skills that girls are forced to develop from a young age. This directly leads to other harmful behaviours, such as catcalling, locker room chat, and even criminal sentences that have been lessered for young, male, sex offenders, Phrases like these broaden the gap of acceptability in which men can choose to ignore obvious social cues of disinterest, and much much more. Teaching girls that they mature faster than boys is only ever used to encourage them to forgive their male counterparts for being behind in the world of young sociality. It is rarely used to encourage young boys that girls should be looked to as an example of leadership and guidance. The saying itself insinuates that women are “ahead,” somehow, and that men and boys have time to mess around before catching up; but women are not ahead because they mature faster, boys are behind because they do not mature fast enough. If you don't like how that sounds, chances are you benefit from the privilege this unequal use of language entails on a much larger scale. If the previous paragraph sounds much too harsh for you, than consider it hyperbolic, as I have a grander scheme in mind, allow me to assure you. Some may think it is unfair of me to state that boys must change the rate at which they must start accepting responsibility, some may combat me with the phrase “boys will be boys.” To this I then raise the proposition, should it not be “kids will be kids?” If it's unfair of me to ask boys to meet their female counterparts, why is it not unfair for me to suggest girls must grow up quicker? To put it simply, it is not fair that the unwarranted and predatory gaze of grown men forces young women to mature faster, and then continually excuses the unacceptable behaviour of young boys that will inevitably perpetuate the same vicious cycle. As if that's not enough, the successes of young girls are then directly invalidated because of it, through colloquialisms like the aforementioned two, and others like it. Do not dismiss the hard work of women by calling their exceptional ambition some sort of “gender prerequisite.” Men, too, can be mature, ambitious, and socially aware when they are young, they just aren't expected to be. That is where the seed of systematic flaw is planted, and our language, (the medium through which we engage in all relationships, public and private) is a large part of that perpetuation when it goes unchallenged. I am disgusted by the fact that my excellence and achievements are continually invalidated based solely on my gender. I don't care if it's supposed to be a compliment, my success should not be attributed to a trait I was forced to adopt from a young age, and then invalidated with the daunting prospect of “well he could do that too, if…” It should be this we are tossing our handfuls of dirt onto, but unless systematic oppression is challenged in seemingly trivial matters such as language, women will continue to be buried under it.