Imagine.

Imagine feeling safe as you walk home alone when it’s dark.

Imagine not being hyperaware of every movement around you.

Imagine not being viewed as an easy target by society.

Imagine speaking up about racism and being met with silence.

Imagine having your name called exotic.

Imagine being called exotic.

Imagine men telling you they didn’t expect you to be so opinionated.

Imagine being asked where you’re from. Again. And again, if you don’t say somewhere in America.

Imagine being approached at train stations.

Imagine being called racial slurs.

Imagine men proudly telling you they have an asian fetish.

Imagine society expecting you to be quiet and keep your head down.

Imagine being told to always be quiet and keep your head down.

Imagine seeing news of asian women being targeted and killed in hate crimes all over the media, and being told to keep your head down.

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Imagine growing up in a society that thinks feminine traits are seen as weak.

Imagine never seeing anyone who looked like you in politics. in music. in history books. as CEOs.

Imagine being told that “boss women” need to have masculine traits to be valued.

Imagine seeing that empathy, compassion, and sensitivity are undervalued, under appreciated, and underpaid in society.

Imagine learning that stay at home moms “have it easy.”

Imagine society undervaluing women’s labor.

Imagine being interrupted multiple times.

Imagine always having to say “If it’s not too much trouble”, “I don’t know if that made sense”, “Sorry if this is a stupid question” because you’re worried about taking up too much space.

Imagine having to constantly apologize for simply existing in the world.

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Imagine having to listen to straight men make sexist jokes, and being told you’re “too sensitive” if you don’t find them funny.

Imagine feeling the burden of having to educate ignorant men.

Imagine having to make excuses for the behavior of men.

Imagine the frustration of being around men who don’t see sexism, don’t see discrimination.

Imagine hearing the stories of women after women feeling burdened with housework and domestic labor.

Imagine hearing the stories of women feeling they had to sacrifice their careers, instead of their husbands.

Imagine hearing the stories of women who went into male-dominated fields and experienced feeling alone.

Imagine overqualified women having to justify and prove their intelligence to under-qualified men.

Imagine feeling scared and anxious that your own future could be affected.

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Imagine being in medical school and seeing how medical tests were researched using men as the standard.

Imagine seeing few people who look like you in textbooks.

Imagine learning that the “Father of Ob/Gyn” was a white man who conducted crude experiments on black women slaves.

Imagine always learning the symptoms and characteristics of how disease presents in men, before learning how it presents in minorities and women as the deviation from the standard.

Imagine watching a patient interrupt an asian female doctor more than they do a male doctor in a shadowing experience.

Imagine the realization that you will probably experience more and more and more of this down the pathway of medicine.

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Imagine feeling too tired and frustrated to fight sometimes.

Imagine not understanding the gravity of the situation.