The social experiment

Take away the scales

Add a boy and a girl

Place one in front of the other

Blind the boy with sugar

Tie the girls hands

Bake the boy in golden sunshine

Beat the girl down and leave to rise

Measure only the material

Add judgement to the girl

Add praise to the boy

Discard cause and effect

Walk away from the results

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in Behind the Facade, Camille’s debut contemporary poetry collection. The social experiment speaks to the manufactured nature of gender inequality — exposing how praise, restriction and bias are unevenly assigned, then falsely treated as proof of natural difference.

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Further perception

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The rise of hope