is there a right way to be a thinking woman?

for as long as i can remember, i have been afraid of saying the wrong thing. not just in the social way, not just the fear of being awkward or impolite, but the deeper kind — the kind that makes you second-guess your entire interior life. it’s a fear that arrives early for some women. especially the women who think too much, feel too much, and learn too early that the world does not respond well to complexity in a female form. we learn to scan the room before we speak. we learn to read people before we read books. we learn to monitor the impact of our sentences as they're forming, to edit before we speak, to cushion intellect with softness and self-effacement, to perform a kind of linguistic charm that makes even conviction seem flexible.

there’s a script we internalize: be informed, but not too political. be opinionated, but still open-minded. ask questions, but not too many. know things, but don’t show it. speak, but not too much. and if you’re going to say something, make sure it lands — make sure it sounds impressive, sounds intentional, sounds wise but never severe. it’s the emotional labor of making your intellect digestible. of being thoughtful in a way that doesn’t make other people uncomfortable. and in this, there’s a strange paradox: the more nuanced and layered your thinking becomes, the more effort it takes to keep it palatable.

i’ve noticed it in the way women soften their tone mid-sentence. in the unnecessary “does that make sense?” or “i don’t know, i could be wrong.” i’ve seen women explain ideas that are precise and nuanced and well-researched, only to end with a laugh or a shrug or a verbal disclaimer — a kind of apology for taking up too much space. and i’ve done it too. even when i know better. even when i’ve written essays on this very thing. that’s the insidiousness of it — you can be conscious of the problem and still participate in it. because some performances are so deeply socialized, they become muscle memory.