I still think about how easily some men dismiss women at work

Dear Delyara, Not because I’m fragile. Because it happens in ways that are hard to prove and impossible not to feel. A tone. A repetition of your point as if it originated elsewhere. A question answered to the man in the room instead of to you. A slight smile when you speak with certainty. It’s all subtle enough that if you complain, you risk sounding oversensitive, and if you stay quiet, you carry it home in your chest like stale air. I’m tired of that. It’s not only the moment itself. It’s the afterwork it creates in me — the replaying, the self-checking, the anger with nowhere clean to go.