Women have been judged and ridiculed by men for centuries on end. We have always been told how to speak, dress, act, walk, eat and even think.

We have been tasked with learning how to conceal and simultaneously flaunt our sexuality.

We are encouraged to act and dress however we see fit, but then our choices are immediately labeled as too provocative or too reserved.

We are told that women with harsh voices and loud opinions are too masculine and threatening, while soft-spoken women are considered submissive and spineless.

We’ve become very used to a male-dominated ideal of what every woman should strive to be. It’s commonplace to hear men discussing their various qualms about the way women express themselves.

They comment that girls are either hoes or prudes, too loose or too frigid.

Either we wear too much makeup, or we don’t care enough about our appearance.

Maybe we party way too hard, but if we stay in then we immediately become boring.

Even on the news, you can regularly listen to old white men debate and determine how best to control women’s reproductive systems. All things considered, it’s pretty clear that women have never determined the rules or been able to dictate our own behavioral standards. Since the beginning of time, men have been taught to criticize women, and women have been taught to listen.

But what could be more disappointing than the fact that the patriarchy, beauty industry, and the media criticize women?

It’s everywhere. Every day, you can hear girls, as young as even 10, commenting on each other’s appearances and behaviors. In middle and high school, groups of girls target and bully each other based on how they dress and how they interact with boys. And these young girls are just imitating what they hear.

Female reporters are constantly analyzing female celebrities, like what they wear, what they eat, and how they dress. Magazines and news outlets still publish columns titled “Who Wore It Better?” that pit women against each other.

And even on social media, it’s more often female users who are leaving hateful comments criticizing other women, whether it’s about how they dress, behave, and even raise their children. The standards by which we condemn other women have been set for us by the patriarchy.

Who are we to decide how many sexual partners another woman should have in her lifetime? The clothes she wears, the kind of food she eats, and her aspirations in life are not any of our concern. Of course, it’s tempting to criticize other women because that’s all we know.

Men are not scrutinized by the media and society even half as harshly as women are.

Our culture has become so caught up and obsessed with the fabled “perfect women.” In the heterosexual and cisgendered community, men want her and women want to be her. But that woman doesn’t exist. Just like there is no perfect man or human, there is no one woman who can meet everybody’s standards. In different countries, for example, people have completely different ideals regarding physical beauty, so there is no specific model that can truly be defined as a paradigm of perfection.

However, women have been burdened with the strenuous task of attaining flawlessness both in appearance and in identity. And this has created a cutthroat culture of women who compete against one another and cut each other down, all to earn the approval of a society that will never truly be satisfied. We as women cannot continue to hate and denigrate each other. With a misogynistic president to guide our country, a thriving rape culture, and a serious epidemic of anti-feminism sweeping the nation, we have so many battles left to fight. An army cannot achieve any measure of success if the soldiers are not united. Though we are all guilty of it at some time or another, women have to stop shaming each other.

We have to stick together, because if we’re too distracted by fighting with each other, then who will fight for us?