71.

There are so many useless wars being fought. While the world fails to debate the necessity of drones and dams, burqas and birth control are once again dominating public discourse. It seems that women's bodies are the oldest battle territory, being trampled on endlessly by men who believe boots on the ground are best way to fight the war against feminism.

Rush Limbaugh thinks all women who buy birth control are whores.
The Komen Foundation thinks it can support one part of female anatomy while neglecting the rest.
Lawmakers think a fetus I grow inside me has more "personhood" than the rest of me.
Slow-moving drivers on the road want me to know the skinny jeans under my kurti are whatever filth they utter as they pass.
Judges in courts want me to know I was probably asking for it.
The technician in the X ray lab wants to know if I am married, not pregnant.
Internet trolls everywhere say that if I protest, I must protest within the boundaries of male-defined modesty. Like a lady, not a slut.

So you have taken my health, my breasts, my not-pregnant period, the way I walk, the way I talk, how I move and what I say and I will regulate my behaviour so as not to shock your tiny mind, so as to safeguard your virtue. I will. I will because I can walk down the street wearing the tightest jeans or a shapeless bag and you will never understand it is all relative and you will never look away (or even smile). But you will curl your lip and smirk when I demand to know why I am different, because one should have balance in life yaar, one shouldn't be a feminist. I will let you believe you are inherently more reasonable, more practical, less flooded with hormones, more entitled to success and respect and the streets and justice and even God. I know this is your war, not mine, because mine is fought in my head and that-that is something you will never control.

And every day, I will thank god for every man who put down his arms (or who never took them up to begin with), for every woman who holds onto her thoughts and for every undefined binary-rejecting friend who ignores it altogether. Old conservative men are welcome to be an authority on menstruation, pregnancy, modesty and women's delicate emotions, they are welcome to their war, they are welcome to have us laugh at them, but their battlegrounds know this is another great game that will never be won.