naamahdarling:

yerawizardharry:

Nüshu (literally “women’s writing” in Chinese) is a syllabic script created and used exclusively by women in the Jiangyong County in Hunan province of southern China. Up until the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) women were forbidden access to formal education, and so Nüshu was developed in secrecy as a means to communicate. Since its discovery in 1982, Nüshu remains to be the only gender-specific writing system in the world.

Read more here.

This is what fucking gets me, okay?

Women get told that they can’t learn to read, can’t learn to write, develop a writing system to transcend this, and it’s fucking 1982 before anyone knows about it.

They take away our words, denying us our place in history, and then claim that there is no history.

They take away our words, and then claim that we have nothing to say.

They take away our words, so we can’t communicate with anyone beyond those people we see face-to face, reducing the scope of our world to arms’ length or the permission and assistance of others.

They take away our words, we learn to speak anyway.What a powerful symbol of oppression and determination at the same time.