Walls

While my brothers and sisters are genocided by these resentful nomidians, who don't even know the erasure of an entire peoples is happening right under their noses. They know not the suffering they cause their own people, I never knew a goliath to throw away the concerns of their people so easily, and I have spent many hours trying to find out why this could be. Part of it must lie within the way Nomidians interact with each other, they put up walls, both emotional and physical, to avoid their so dreaded neighbor. I often find myself being more familiar with the people of Hollow Oak than the people who have lived with them for their entire lives. Their buildings are large, and often built for only a single family, it is also where most nomidians decide to spend their resting hours. In my culture we would build houses or tents, but they were often merely a storage facility for goods we didn't want to carry at that moment, and a place to keep warm at night. My people would spend their resting hours talking, drinking, and playing together, often in friendly but competitive games. Nomidians seem to lack a concept of equality as well, their women are often confined to a torturous isolation with only gossip to break the monotony. These women are often more capable and competent than their husbands, but they are relegated to child rearing even if when it is not the most efficient use of a couple's skills for the community. I mean, Nomidian men are somehow the most hearty but wholly incompetent individuals I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, I don't mean to insult them, but when I was discussing with some women, I had recently hired she was explaining that her husband doesn't know how to cook! I was even more shocked to find out that she truly meant couldn't cook, him and his kids were starving when she returned home from work. My other employees recounted similar experiences with their husbands just not to such an extreme. My culture treats women and men as one in the same, the only time the sex of an individual is relevant is when a wet nurse needs to be chosen among our tribes! This oppressive emphasis on the sex of an individual not only hurts those most repressed, women, but hurts the men around them, they are unable to express vulnerability to their comrades as showing weakness is seen as an embarrassment, one that reflects on his entire family, and if a man is perceived as too weak then his family is seen as vulnerable to exploitation and collapse. All physically intensive labors are also put squarely on the bruised shoulders of men, even though women are equally as capable as men in these tasks.
 
It is also notable that the work women do is often not acknowledged as genuine labor. Even though the mother is the only one who rears children and is often responsible for raising their husbands, she receives no financial compensation. These women are often left dependent on their husbands for an income, and even when they somehow find the time to get a financially compensated job there are very few employers that will actually take them on. This employment discrimination is often justified using a false and patronizing construction of women, believing them to be fragile and unfit to do the hard physical labor, yet I have witnesses with my own eyes Ishvalan women fight just as hard and take as much damage the men, and continue fighting. I've seen Nomidian women fight with a ferocity to rival the most zealous Dagaal worshippers, and need I remind you the sex of Dufaan and Dagaal? The financial burden families bare being placed squarely on the man of the house puts a lot of pressure on this man, and even more worryingly leaves the family open to financial destitution or exploitation. If a man gets sick, or arrested, or grows weak with age earlier than anticipated, the family loses its only financial provider. This also leaves men open to exploitation in the labor market, if a man is desperate to ensure his kids can eat, he will take on almost any job even if it has bad hours, bad pay, bad conditions, and is physically taxing, my comrades in the logging business are more than aware of this. The families of my employees are more secure than those around them, because if their husband is unable to work then at least they still have a source of income, and mothers are not made to prostitute so their kids can eat. Men of Billow I urge you to reconsider what you consider care for your women, I understand you think you are protecting them from a harsh labor force, but the reality is that you are simply condeming them to a purgatory, making them take a spectator's role within their own lives, watching the world pass them by through the panes of the windows.