Garden of Eden

When I was in high school, I attended the local girls' middle school that was my first choice.

Girls' school is like the Garden of Eden to me. It can be called the most dreamy and beautiful period of my life.

This certainly does not mean that men are the source of social chaos, but without the "biological male", we are more able to accept ourselves as we are and break away from social expectations and stereotypes.

When you're in a school with only biological females, you don't stand next to heavy objects waiting for the boys to help you, but you carry heavy new textbooks across the playground. No one will tell you: Girls can’t do this. Because we are all girls, we have to do everything ourselves. No one is saying we can't.

When you attend a girls' school, your "biological sex" has already been affirmed. So you are free to be yourself. No one will say that your behavior is rude and ungirly, and no one will question you for cutting your hair short. No matter what you look like, you can be a "female" and no one will use stereotypes to measure you.

When you live with a group of girls, you will find that life in a girls' school does not have the rumored intrigues. On the contrary, everyone is extremely friendly. Perhaps it is the natural connection from "biological women", and you have a basis for unity. Your life experiences may be different, but you have all been oppressed by social values ​​to a greater or lesser extent. So no one will cast discriminatory eyes on you because of your sexual orientation or gender identity, because people who have been hurt will be gentler to each other.

Perhaps I was too lucky to find a warm and welcoming place in an all-girls school. Because of our homogeneity, we are better able to understand and respect each other. We transcended society's expectations and rules for women, and we learned that how we treat each other is how we like to be treated. We are not denied because of our gender because we are all the same.

After graduation, just like Eve eating the fruit of wisdom, we left the Garden of Eden and faced the outside world. We were forced to grow because we protected each other so well.

After Paradise Lost, I wasn’t used to dealing with men. I don't like their discriminatory "jokes", I'm not familiar with their topics, and I'm not sure how to deal with each other. But just like human beings, they have to eat the apple that represents wisdom, instead of living in a paradise without knowing anything. We must face the real world that we once lived in but are no longer familiar with, instead of being obsessed with the beautiful world of girls' schools and forgetting the problems faced by women in the real world.

But precisely because of our experience in the Garden of Eden, we know what it feels like to be respected, and we know what a blueprint for a utopia without gender stereotypes and discrimination should be. So we want to work hard to create a real paradise, rather than indulge in the simple and closed dream of the Garden of Eden. We must grow up, face the wind and rain, and then one day be the one who withstands the wind and rain.

I don’t want to build a Tower of Babel that is doomed to collapse and look forward to a return to the Garden of Eden. I hope that the world will become a paradise where people can respect each other and not be denied or discriminated against based on gender, sexual orientation or other reasons.

The dream will wake up one day, but the changed society will survive.

Note: Some people may not know the high school ecology in Taiwan, so I will briefly explain that at present, the first choice high schools in Taiwan are almost all male and female branch schools. Nowadays, some boys' schools have music, art or science classes for biological females, but no girls' schools admit biological males.

Postscript: Although the main theme is different from the previous article, it can be regarded as a sequel to the previous article. I was lucky enough to join an all-girls school after realizing the unequal treatment. I felt like I belonged, got the support, and got the respect I wanted. But not everyone can have this experience, so I hope that one day society won’t need women to escape into the Garden of Eden to find solace. One person's power may be small, but when everyone embraces hope and longing, I believe that such a tomorrow will eventually come.