Now, it seems a couple of high schools girls have me totally figured out.

Somewhere, in some bedroom painted some shade of pink with a collection of kitten heels and lace collars, there is a teen girl. You know her. You know her name — usually something like Sarah or Becky or Brittney. You know her clothing — usually floral and low cut, but not low cut enough for her father to look up from his newspaper and send her back upstairs to change. You know her boyfriend and her relationship with her mother and her Instagram feed. Her attitude and the sound her gum makes when she smacks it between two rows of straight, pearly teeth. She is stupid, even when she is not. She is two-faced and talkative and her neighbors will call her trouble. She is everything you think of her. Every daydream and fantasy and film. Everything your mother was when she was a girl, and sometimes, when some fossil of a popstar makes an appearance on the television, she is her, again. Swooning and hollow. Just a silly, young girl.

Santa Clarita City Councilman Bob Kellar, after facing backlash for racist remarks, made a statement regarding the young women who spoke out against him. “Now, it seems a couple of high school girls have got me totally figured out. That I am a racist, bigot, along with a few other adjectives. The truth is these young ladies do not have a clue as to who I am, what I have done in my life, or what this country called America is all about.”

You would think that, eventually, a girl grows used to her intelligence, actions, and competency being degraded casually by men with power. But each time, it stings the same way it did the first time. Whether the first time (that one can remember) was the preschool yard where she always assumed the role of house-wife who, even in that playhouse, swallowed silence like a sweet cherry pie (made by her of course). Or if she was lucky enough to have waited until elementary school to learn her positioning within society. Where every school play had a knight in shining armor and she was a damsel (she should have been grateful that she got a lead). Where the boys got an extra recess while the girls were stuffed in a classroom and taught about the inner workings of their bodies (that their brothers had already convinced them were disgusting). Regardless, however, whenever it was taught, it was learned.

There is no escaping the idea that young girls are inferior. It is so deeply rooted in our societal blueprint that even the word girl feels like an insult.

It is routine at this point — the degradation of young women who speak up. And even still, I find myself incredibly upset by Councilman Kellar’s words. I have spent the entirety of my girlhood hesitant to display emotional vulnerability because I know it will chip away at the level with which my intelligence and maturity are perceived. But I am sitting in bed, beneath the same sheets I spent my high school career tossing in, crying. Not because I am on my period. Not because I am upset about a boy. Not because my vagina has magical powers that make me overly-sensitive. But because this man who wields power in my hometown thinks less of me, and we let him.

I am upset because I have realized how much the idea of female inferiority has fermented inside of me- I have started to believe the world when it tells me I am less than. I am mad at myself for completely understanding what was meant by the words “a couple of high school girls.” I should not be ashamed of this title — a phrase that, at face value, should define nothing but one’s age. If misogyny was not so deeply ingrained within us, this phrase would illustrate a group of strong, educated young women who are taking a stand against a system of power that they find to be oppressive. Kellar should be applauding, not degrading that. His words reflect society’s sexist and ageist notions of young girls, a stigma that has been internalized and runs rampant throughout generations. As young women, we know exactly what “this country called America is all about.” We have witnessed it from the moment our mothers taught us to smile.

I am upset because we all immediately knew what Councilman Kellar meant when he said this. He meant stupid. He meant dramatic. He meant weak. He meant unworthy. And we heard him. We understood him. I understood him. High school girls here and everywhere understood him. And we continue to understand him everyday of our lives. We instinctively associate girlhood with a negative, inferior connotation that, try as we might to kick and scream our way out of, we cannot escape. It is within us.

“A couple of high school girls” is consciously coded language that targets every young woman whose intelligence and tenacity threatens rigid men with hollow power, like Mr. Kellar, who resort to derogatory rhetoric as a means of belittling the voices of female youth. If Councilman Kellar would like me to phrase the prior statement in teen girl terms: He’s like totally scared and like calls us names so that he can like feel big and important. Instances like this consistently remind me that, no matter how valid my argument, educated my ideas, and important my words, I will always be seen as just a “high school girl.” I refuse to let meek men with minuet power squeeze me into a small box simply because their microphone is louder than mine.

Why do we perpetuate the narrative that high school girls are incapable of calling out blatant racism and injustice? Young girls are consistently told from a young age that they are inferior mentally, emotionally, physically, etc. As our world progresses and is perceived to have surpassed misogyny, there is no denying its presence when it is perched in front of a city, speaking its stereotypical nonsense into a microphone, and coming from the mouth of a man with legislative power. In remaining silent about Kellar’s words, the city of Santa Clarita maintains complicity. Its opinions towards Black people, people of color, and women, are heard loud and clear.

And to Councilman Kellar — I guarantee that “a couple of high school girls” most definitely have you figured out. They have everything figured out. You are identical to every man who has ever stood in their way their entire lives. Every condescending smirk, degrading conversation, and quiet misogyny takes shape in your image. They know you. They know all of you. And it is with this familiarity that they will defeat you. People like you have spent a lifetime teaching teen girls to fight, tooth and painted nail, for a small scrap of their desires. Like small, sparkling soldiers, we are ready to fight.