So, let’s talk politics.  
Or let’s not because you cower behind religion instead of facts. 
Alright, we’ll talk about human rights instead. 
Well, no we can’t do that because you want to erase them all. 
I begin to speak of youth and the innocence of it -  
And you join in, and I think we’re on the same page, that we’re getting somewhere - 
Until you tell me your pro-life, and you start demanding we steal rights from women to save the Unborn Child. 
And I say, no: you’re not pro-life, you’re pro-birth. You say what’s the difference?  
I say you only care about controlling women’s bodies: using pregnancy as a cover for misogynistic dictatorship. 
If you were pro-life you’d care about the mothers, and the children forced into suffocating foster systems, and the teenagers drowning in debt. 
That’s when the word “woke” is used, not as a noun or an adjective, as an insult:  
One that is supposed to drive deep, like a knife through my heart, but it barely taps into my veins. 
I wear wokeness as an armour, much like you do bigotry.  
But, unlike your flimsy and self-indulgent shell,  
My humanity is sewn into my skin – like the feathers of a bird, or fresh ink on old paper. 
So, I start again, except this time I speak more clearly: 
“I want to speak about saving women’s spaces.” 
You try to participate, saying you do too. 
But I know that what you mean is that you want to keep trans women away from “actual women”, you want to keep the “men” out.  
So, let’s go by your ideology: let’s keep men out, but that doesn’t include trans women (hint: clue is in the name). 
Let’s keep men out: let’s convict the rapists who took advantage of a fully-clothed school-girl. 
Let’s find guilty the fathers and the husbands and the brothers of domestic abuse.  
Let’s keep the racist and the sexists and misogynists out of women’s sports. 
Let’s– 
Then you shout and tell me that I’ve said enough. That I’m too emotional, and that this is why women could never lead in government.  
I tell you I’m non-binary and then that’s when you lose it.  
But I don’t believe that anything I’ve said is back-handed.  
I believe in women’s bodily autonomy; you believe in a world that condemns them to being an incubator.  
I believe in trans rights; you believe in God and a right and wrong way of being man or woman. 
I believe in gay rights; you laugh loudly and tell me that the Bible says it’s a sin.  
I believe in human rights; you do too until you’re forced to think of the genocides in a country that is not yours – it’s not genocide if they don’t believe in the same God you do, if their skin is not the same colour as yours.  
I believe in saving the planet; you believe that it’ll make a comeback on its own and that your oil consumption, your over-fishing, your AI usage harms nothing and no one.  
You, much like a new-born baby, possess the egotistical nature that is entitlement,  
But, unlike a new-born baby, you lack the innocence and purity of being young.  
You lack empathy and sincerity, and in its place we find mould. 
We find capitalism in a world that is blessed with natural beauty.  
We find class division in a world that was built by one human race.  
We find misogyny in a world that wouldn’t exist without women.  
So, yes, let’s protect women: trans women, black women, gay women, poor women, indigenous women, mothers, daughters, sisters.  
And let’s protect the children: the infants, the trans kids, the gay kids, the black kids, the foster kids, the neurodivergent kids, the kids with disabilities, the poor kids, the Gazan, Sudanese and Congolese kids.  
So, let’s tall about politics, because these things need to be said.  
I wear “woke” like a badge of honour, plastered across my forehead to represent my magnanimity. 
Find it in yourself to have compassion where you used to have selfishness. 
Replace your anger with understanding. 
Have a heart when it comes to suffering and otherness.  
Swap out your Bible for stats and figures – focus up on the child victims of shootings and rape. 
So, we talk about human rights, before your closed-mind and stuck-up insincerity collapses the foundations we tried to reinforce.  
We talk about politics, before the world comes crashing down.  
We talk about compassion, autonomy, freedom; because it’s Important. 
And then we pray that the horrors of the past do not reincarnate into the people of the present.

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A little bit about the author :

Name : Ezran

Pronouns : they/them/he

Age : 18

Location : United Kingdom

I’m an avid reader, writer, photographer and footballer. I’m an undiagnosed (but very obviously) autistic (which means I’m obsessed with sharks and spiderman), I love old indie music and heartbreaking literature-based films (dead poets society hates to see me coming). My poetry inspiration largely comes from Emily Dickinson, my go-to quotes from her being: “hope is the thing with feathers,” ; “I wish you a kinder sea,” and “because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stop for me, the carriage held but just Ourselves and Immortality.”

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