My cunt doesn't agree with you.
Today I remembered why it sucks to be female.
Starting at birth, society (and its pages, the people, our families, the church, the schools, and above all the media) tells us the most important thing we can be is pretty. I tried this for a long time. By the age of 15 I was in rehab for bulimia. Since then I've struggled with relapse and most of all, the deep deep deeply seated self-loathing that comes with years of striving for unattainable ideals. I had fully internalized pop culture's misogyny.
It's been about two years since I started to study feminism in earnest as a sort of self-imposed therapy. It's helped. A lot. I think the hardest parts of the transformation, of the healing, are over.
Since moving to Oakland I have slowly but surely gone about eradicating the symptoms of socially acceptable femininity from my repertoire. From saying "fuck no" to dudes who try to hit on me at the bar, to being single for more than a year (this seemed impossible to me a year ago), to letting a two-month casual relationship go without getting hurt at all, to quitting wearing heels and skintight clothes ever, to actively seeking girlfriends and consciously knowing that no amount of male friends is ever going to satisfy me intellectually. Because dudes don't get feminism. Or women.
In fact, every shred of evidence in my memory bank suggests that the majority of men who seek my individual company do so because more than anything they are sexually attracted to me. Intellectual connection comes second, if at all, for a guy.
I wore a knee-length pencil skirt and two-inch heels to my interview in Berkeley this morning. Pretty conservative stuff, but way more dressy than what I wear normally (nowadays). About 8:15, as I waited for the bus, a guy actually turned his car around and tried to get my phone number from his passenger window. His opening line: "You are hecka beautiful."
All morning all sorts of men gave me way more attention than I'm comfortable with, much more than I ever get wearing jeans. Apparently dressing the way any businesswoman is expected to dress is also an invitation for strange men to visually consume me. A skirt apparently screams, I WANNA GET FUCKED.
By the time I got home I was about to cry. I like looking pretty. But I don't feel safe or in control of my surroundings that way. I fucking hate the attention it warrants. The fact that it's SO OBVIOUS that my personality comes second to the male sex. When my personality is what matters. I'm expected to dress a certain way to get ahead professionally but have to put up with blatant objectification as a sort of tax. Is this what it's like to pay dues for being a female who gets to work?
One particular thought has crossed my mind fairly frequently during the last few months that makes me very, very sad. It came about because a guy friend of mine made a habit of being a very nice person-striking up a conversation with a stranger on the train, at a restaurant, someone working at an empty bar. A friendly conversation. Because being nice made him feel good. I admired him for that.
It occurred to me that I don't do that. I don't strike up conversations with strangers. And then I realized why. Because to speak to a man I don't know without him first speaking to me implies sexual interest. I can't start a nice conversation with a guy I don't know unless I want to risk having to tell him to fuck off when he starts hitting on me. I hate the immediately present tension that apparently comes about as a result of the existence of my cunt. And my youth. And all this whether or not I care to dress "feminine"-yesterday a guy asked for my phone number and I had on jeans and a t-shirt and was sweating and wearing combat boots and broken sunglasses. All I'd done was be nice to him.
Men's assumption (I know I'm generalizing a lot, this isn't true of all men, but it can be easy to feel this way) that a woman won't engage in conversation with a man unless she wants something from him stems from society's assumption that women exist solely for men's enjoyment. Some guys just can't seem to grasp that a woman can want to live her life without some dude's approval. Without dudes' attention in general.
I like talking to men. I feel there are far more interesting intelligent men who will talk to me than there are women who will talk to me (let's take a moment and lament the lack of proud feminists and the society that teaches females to immediately suspect one another of fakeness and conspiracy, to view each other as competition, of which I am still guilty, to a degree), but I can't help feeling that guys wouldn't want me around if I wasn't physically attractive.
I want the female body to be unavailable to public scrutiny. I want to exist as an entire human being, not a pair of legs on the street, regardless of what I'm wearing. I want to be able to decide who consumes me visually. I want that permission to mean something.
I want to be able to speak to anyone on the street as a fellow human being, not from one side of an invisible divide or as a sex object. I want to feel a sisterhood between me and every woman I meet, the way men have a brotherhood amongst themselves. I don't know if the fact that I don't feel this way is because of how I think, or because other women really are that suspicious, but either way, it's something that has to change. We must treat all other women as friends right from the beginning.
I have a lot to say, but I'd like to start off with this: My body may look like that of an obedient woman, but it's owned by my mind, which is about as far from obedient as one can get. Stop. Making. Assumptions. I will defeat you.
Starting at birth, society (and its pages, the people, our families, the church, the schools, and above all the media) tells us the most important thing we can be is pretty. I tried this for a long time. By the age of 15 I was in rehab for bulimia. Since then I've struggled with relapse and most of all, the deep deep deeply seated self-loathing that comes with years of striving for unattainable ideals. I had fully internalized pop culture's misogyny.
It's been about two years since I started to study feminism in earnest as a sort of self-imposed therapy. It's helped. A lot. I think the hardest parts of the transformation, of the healing, are over.
Since moving to Oakland I have slowly but surely gone about eradicating the symptoms of socially acceptable femininity from my repertoire. From saying "fuck no" to dudes who try to hit on me at the bar, to being single for more than a year (this seemed impossible to me a year ago), to letting a two-month casual relationship go without getting hurt at all, to quitting wearing heels and skintight clothes ever, to actively seeking girlfriends and consciously knowing that no amount of male friends is ever going to satisfy me intellectually. Because dudes don't get feminism. Or women.
In fact, every shred of evidence in my memory bank suggests that the majority of men who seek my individual company do so because more than anything they are sexually attracted to me. Intellectual connection comes second, if at all, for a guy.
I wore a knee-length pencil skirt and two-inch heels to my interview in Berkeley this morning. Pretty conservative stuff, but way more dressy than what I wear normally (nowadays). About 8:15, as I waited for the bus, a guy actually turned his car around and tried to get my phone number from his passenger window. His opening line: "You are hecka beautiful."
All morning all sorts of men gave me way more attention than I'm comfortable with, much more than I ever get wearing jeans. Apparently dressing the way any businesswoman is expected to dress is also an invitation for strange men to visually consume me. A skirt apparently screams, I WANNA GET FUCKED.
By the time I got home I was about to cry. I like looking pretty. But I don't feel safe or in control of my surroundings that way. I fucking hate the attention it warrants. The fact that it's SO OBVIOUS that my personality comes second to the male sex. When my personality is what matters. I'm expected to dress a certain way to get ahead professionally but have to put up with blatant objectification as a sort of tax. Is this what it's like to pay dues for being a female who gets to work?
One particular thought has crossed my mind fairly frequently during the last few months that makes me very, very sad. It came about because a guy friend of mine made a habit of being a very nice person-striking up a conversation with a stranger on the train, at a restaurant, someone working at an empty bar. A friendly conversation. Because being nice made him feel good. I admired him for that.
It occurred to me that I don't do that. I don't strike up conversations with strangers. And then I realized why. Because to speak to a man I don't know without him first speaking to me implies sexual interest. I can't start a nice conversation with a guy I don't know unless I want to risk having to tell him to fuck off when he starts hitting on me. I hate the immediately present tension that apparently comes about as a result of the existence of my cunt. And my youth. And all this whether or not I care to dress "feminine"-yesterday a guy asked for my phone number and I had on jeans and a t-shirt and was sweating and wearing combat boots and broken sunglasses. All I'd done was be nice to him.
Men's assumption (I know I'm generalizing a lot, this isn't true of all men, but it can be easy to feel this way) that a woman won't engage in conversation with a man unless she wants something from him stems from society's assumption that women exist solely for men's enjoyment. Some guys just can't seem to grasp that a woman can want to live her life without some dude's approval. Without dudes' attention in general.
I like talking to men. I feel there are far more interesting intelligent men who will talk to me than there are women who will talk to me (let's take a moment and lament the lack of proud feminists and the society that teaches females to immediately suspect one another of fakeness and conspiracy, to view each other as competition, of which I am still guilty, to a degree), but I can't help feeling that guys wouldn't want me around if I wasn't physically attractive.
I want the female body to be unavailable to public scrutiny. I want to exist as an entire human being, not a pair of legs on the street, regardless of what I'm wearing. I want to be able to decide who consumes me visually. I want that permission to mean something.
I want to be able to speak to anyone on the street as a fellow human being, not from one side of an invisible divide or as a sex object. I want to feel a sisterhood between me and every woman I meet, the way men have a brotherhood amongst themselves. I don't know if the fact that I don't feel this way is because of how I think, or because other women really are that suspicious, but either way, it's something that has to change. We must treat all other women as friends right from the beginning.
I have a lot to say, but I'd like to start off with this: My body may look like that of an obedient woman, but it's owned by my mind, which is about as far from obedient as one can get. Stop. Making. Assumptions. I will defeat you.