I’ve just been reading people freaking out at Target in the US no longer labeling their toys “girls” and “boys”. A fairly common response is something like “How will I know what to get my granddaughter for her birthday if I don’t know which are the girl’s toys?” Hmm, well, what does your granddaughter like? Maybe you could actually get to know her and find out what her interests are rather than treating her as a generic representative of her assigned gender. Just a thought.
Month: August 2015
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It Was Easier to Give in Than Keep Running
By Anonymous
In first grade, a boy named John— a notorious troublemaker—systematically chased every girl in our class during recess trying to kiss her on the lips. Most gave in eventually. It was easier to give in than keep running. When it was my turn, I turned and faced him, grabbed his glasses off his weasel face, and stomped on them on the hard blacktop. He ran to the principal’s office and cried.
In fifth grade, I was asked to be a boy’s girlfriend over email. It was the first email I ever received. He actually told me he wanted to send me an email, so I went home and made an AOL account. We went to a carnival and he won me a Garfield stuffed animal, and then he gave me a 3 Doors Down CD. A few days later, he broke up with me, and asked for Garfield and the CD back. I said no.
In sixth grade, a girl in my year gave head to an eighth grader in the back of the school bus while playing Truth or Dare.
In the summer after sixth grade, I kissed a boy for the first time at sleep away camp. He was my summer love. During the end-of-the-summer dining hall announcements, where kids usually announced lost sweatshirts and Walkmen, an older girl stepped up to the microphone, tossed her hair behind her shoulders, and proudly stated, “I lost something very precious to me last night. My virginity. If anyone finds it, please let me know.” The dining hall erupted into laughter and cheers. She was barred from ever coming back to the camp again, and wasn’t allowed to say goodbye to anyone.
In seventh grade, I told my brother I decided when I was older wanted a Hummer. What I really meant was I wanted a Jeep, but I didn’t know a lot about cars. My mother overheard and screamed at me for “wanting a Hummer.”
In the summer after freshman year of high school, I went to sleepaway field hockey camp with many of my close friends. One of them, named Megan, I had been friends with since kindergarten. One night when I was showering, she ripped open the curtain and snapped a photo of me on her disposable camera. I screamed. She laughed. We both laughed when I got out of the shower a few minutes later. After camp was over, her father took the camera to the convenience store to get it developed. When he gave the finished photos back to her, he said, “Your friend [Anonymous] has grown up.”
Sophomore year of high school, one of my best friends Hilary had a party in her basement while her mom was away. We invited some of the guys in our grade and someone’s older brother bought us a handle of vodka. One of the boys who came sat next to me in Spanish class. His name was Thomas. I remember playing a simple game, where we passed the bottle of vodka around in a circle and drank. I remember being happily tipsy and having fun, to suddenly being very drunk. Thomas and I started chanting numbers in Spanish, and he leaned towards me and kissed me. We kissed in the middle of the party, with all of our friends cheering. Then we went into Hilary’s bedroom.
Hilary’s bedroom was in the basement, on the ground floor, with a large window next to her bed. When someone went outside to smoke a cigarette, they realized it was a front row seat to what was happening in the bedroom. It was dark outside, and the light on was in the bedroom. They called everyone outside to watch. I don’t remember getting undressed, but apparently we were both completely naked in Hilary’s bed. A friend of mine told me later she tried to open the door and stop what was happening, but Thomas must have locked it. They said they pounded on the door. I don’t remember hearing them pounding. I don’t remember seeing everyone’s faces outside the window. I remember Thomas holding my head down, and shoving his penis into my mouth. I remember trying to resist, pulling back, but he held his hands firmly on my head, pushing my face up and down. That’s all that I remember.
The next day, my friends and I went out to dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants. I couldn’t eat anything, and it wasn’t because I was hung over. Every time I tried to put food in my mouth, I felt like I was choking. Anytime a flash of the night before appeared in my mind, I felt like vomiting. My friends sat with me in silence. Then they told me a girl named Lindsey, who had briefly dated Thomas freshman year, had stood outside and watched the entire time. Even after everyone else stopped watching. My friends said they didn’t watch.
On Monday, Thomas and I sat next to each other in Spanish. We didn’t speak. We didn’t make eye contact. I went to the girls bathroom and threw up. I hear Lindsey and Thomas live together, now, ten years later.
Junior year of high school, my teacher for Honors Spanish was named Señor Gonzales. Señor Gonzales had all of the girls sit in the front row. Señor Gonzales called on any girl who was wearing a skirt to write on the chalkboard. Señor Gonzales asked a friend of mine, who had broken her finger playing an after school sport, if she broke her finger because “she liked it rough.” Señor Gonzales was a tenured teacher.
Senior year of high school, I got my first real boyfriend. His name was Colin. He was on the lacrosse team with Thomas. He told me that sophomore year, Thomas told everyone on the team what happened that night at Hilary’s. Everyone cheered. Colin said that, even then, he had a crush on me. Even then, he wanted to punch Thomas.
Colin and I lost our virginities to each other. Colin said if I got pregnant, he would make me have the baby. He didn’t believe in abortion. Colin said if I got pregnant, he would make me have a C-section. Colin said that if I didn’t have a C-section, my vagina would be too loose for him to ever enjoy having sex with me again. Colin said that he wouldn’t let our child breastfeed. He said his mother gave him formula, and that he turned out just fine. I didn’t get pregnant.
Junior year of college, I lived in Denmark for the spring semester and studied at the University of Copenhagen. Copenhagen is one of the safest cities in the world. Guns are illegal there. Pepper spray is illegal there. One night, my friends and I went to a concert at a crowded club in a part of the city I didn’t know very well. I brought a tiny purse with money, my apartment key, and my international cell phone. For some reason it made sense at the time to put my purse inside my friend’s purse. Maybe I didn’t feel like carrying it. We were both drinking. My friend left the concert to go home with her boyfriend. One by one, everyone I was there with left the concert, until I was suddenly alone and I realized I didn’t have my purse, or any money for a cab ride home.
I started walking in the direction that felt right. I walked for a long time. I had no idea where I was, and didn’t recognize the area. It was almost 4 am. I was on a residential street when a cab pulled up next to me. I asked the driver if he could drive me to an intersection down the street from my apartment.
I don’t have any money, I said.
I really need your help, I said.
I will do it for free, he said.
Sit in the front, he said.
I sat in the front. We drove in silence for some time, until he pulled over on the side of a dark street.
I don’t want to do it for free anymore, he said.
He locked the car doors and reached across the center console and slipped his hand up my skirt. He grabbed my vagina. Hard. I pushed his hand away and unlocked the door. I ran down the street and realized he had taken me a block away from the intersection I wanted. I walked to my apartment and threw rocks at my roommate’s window until she let me inside. She yelled at me for waking her up. I escaped. Nothing happened. I was fine.
The summer after I graduated college I helped Hilary find an internship. She was an art major and wanted something for her resume besides waitressing. We found a posting on Craigslist to be a studio assistant for a painter in the Bronx. It was listed as an unpaid internship. The toll for the George Washington Bridge was twelve dollars, plus gas, but she got the internship anyway. She wanted the experience.
The artist was a 38-year-old Canadian painter named Bradley. Hilary was 22.There was another intern there, an art student from Manhattan named Stella. Bradley needed assistants to help him make bubble wrap paintings. Stella and Hilary would take a syringe and fill the tiny bubbles with different color paints until it formed a mosaic. Bradley always had Hilary stay after Stella left to clean the paintbrushes and syringes. He told Hilary she was beautiful. More beautiful than his wife, who he only married for citizenship. He told Hilary they had a loveless marriage. He told Hilary he wanted to have her beautiful children. They began an affair. He told Hilary has wife knew and didn’t care. He told Hilary he was going to leave his wife soon.
Everyday Hilary drove to the Bronx, cleaned Bradley’s paintbrushes, and had sex on the studio floor. Everyday she went home with no money, and everyday she paid the toll at the George Washington Bridge. She needed the internship for her resume, she said. It was too late to find a new job, she said.
I could go on. I could tell you a lot more. About the whistles on the sidewalk, the kids who sat at the bottom of the stairs in high school to look up our skirts, my friend who was a prostitute in South Carolina, the men who’ve cornered me in parking lots and bars calling me a tease, the unwanted grabbing on the subway, the many times my father has called me fat, the time I traveled to the Philippines and discovered Western men pay preteen locals to spend the week in their hotel, the messages on OKCupid asking to “fart in my mouth.” About how I wasn’t sure if I had been raped because I was drunk and kissed Thomas back. How he raped my mouth and not my vagina, so that must not be rape. How easy it was for me to escape the dark street in Copenhagen, and how that made it not matter since “it could’ve been worse.”
Men have no idea what it takes to be a woman. To grin and bear it and persevere. The constant state of war, navigating the relentless obstacle course of testosterone and misogyny, where they think we are property to be owned and plowed. But we’re not. We are people, just like them. Equals, in fact, or at least that’s the core of what feminism is still trying to achieve. The job is not over. We’ve made great progress. There are female CEOs, though not very many. There are females writing for the New York Times and winning Pulitzer prizes, though not very many. There are female politicians, though not very many. But these advances are only on paper. The job won’t be over until equality permeates the air we breathe, the streets we walk and the homes we live in.
I think back to how easy it was for me, in first grade, to feel fearless and strong in my conviction to stomp on John’s glasses. I felt right in reacting how I did, because John’s behavior was wrong. But his was an elementary learning of the wide boundaries his gender would go on to afford him. For me, it would never again be so easy.
– Anonymous, age 25
HOLY FUCK.
Read this.
This is very very very important.
this is so heartbreaking.
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“Good cops”
[Transcript:]
Dad: I hate, when discussing police brutality, people like to say “But there are good cops, too”– “There are good cops, too.” Fam, there’s clean water. If I live in a house where the tap water is comin’ out dirty sometimes, I don’t just say, “well, it’s not always dirty, so… it’s okay, nothing wrong.” No! I need to replace the system. I need to examine the system and the source, so my water is clean, and acting like water every single time. The idea of a policeman is to be good. So if he’s not acting like that, and if more policemen aren’t acting like that, we got a system to examine.
Dad: ‘Cause see, tap water systems in houses–tap water systems have filters, that are supposed to stop, uh, the dirt from comin’ thru. When water comes out of our sink and into my cup, I’m supposed to trust that that water is safe for me to drink, on sight. I’m not supposed to have to test it at all. Same thing with policemen. I am supposed to see a man with a badge, and trust him, on sight, and know that justice and nothing but pure things is supposed to come from him. So when there’s a possibility of that not getting done, there’s crap getting through the filter! We gotta fix this filter!
Dad: So if that water in my house is coming out dirty sometimes and clean sometimes, when I pour a cup o’ water, I have a reason to be worried, until I fix that system. Until something changes, I have a reason to be nervous when I pour a cup of water from the sink. And I look at it, and I’m like– ‘is this gonna be a dirty glass of water, or is this gonna be clean?’ ‘Is this gonna be a bad cop, or a good cop?’ I shouldn’t even have to worry about that. I should see a cop, and know for a fact that’s gonna be a clean cup of water, every time I see it.
(Source: tumblr_ntcooupdds1sokg1w-2“Good cops”
[Transcript:]
Dad: I hate, when discussing police brutality, people like to say “But there are good cops, too”– “There are good cops, too.” Fam, there’s clean water. If I live in a house where the tap water is comin’ out dirty sometimes, I don’t just say, “well, it’s not always dirty, so… it’s okay, nothing wrong.” No! I need to replace the system. I need to examine the system and the source, so my water is clean, and acting like water every single time. The idea of a policeman is to be good. So if he’s not acting like that, and if more policemen aren’t acting like that, we got a system to examine.
Dad: ‘Cause see, tap water systems in houses–tap water systems have filters, that are supposed to stop, uh, the dirt from comin’ thru. When water comes out of our sink and into my cup, I’m supposed to trust that that water is safe for me to drink, on sight. I’m not supposed to have to test it at all. Same thing with policemen. I am supposed to see a man with a badge, and trust him, on sight, and know that justice and nothing but pure things is supposed to come from him. So when there’s a possibility of that not getting done, there’s crap getting through the filter! We gotta fix this filter!
Dad: So if that water in my house is coming out dirty sometimes and clean sometimes, when I pour a cup o’ water, I have a reason to be worried, until I fix that system. Until something changes, I have a reason to be nervous when I pour a cup of water from the sink. And I look at it, and I’m like– ‘is this gonna be a dirty glass of water, or is this gonna be clean?’ ‘Is this gonna be a bad cop, or a good cop?’ I shouldn’t even have to worry about that. I should see a cop, and know for a fact that’s gonna be a clean cup of water, every time I see it.
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for the briefest moment.
i glimpsed a different world, where we weren’t separated, and i was working in some cafe in some foreign land and it was alright.
and we shared some room somewhere and we had a balcony and it was so romantic, in the way novels are – not real, not true, but so beautiful.
i imagine that world, for the briefest moment, and i think, “why not, why not, i am capable of anything, i am capable of everything,” and then i wake up.
but do i have to.
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stop looking at old photos and stop reading old messages and stop listening to old songs and just stop stop stop stop stop.
now go.
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chris and i had amazing and heartbreaking last weekend together – some parts beautiful and some parts tragic – and i came home and stumbled upon this song and listened to the lyrics and basically lost it, so now i can say i’ve cried to a carly rae jepsen song.
knowing it’s over is so hard, but i’m so grateful for everything we’ve been through. at one point he asked me if i’d do it all over again knowing where we’d end up, and i said yes without any hesitation.
because even through the hard parts – the broken, teary, lonely parts – i still felt kind of like this song, and i’ll remember that feeling for the rest of my life.
everything changes, but what we had was pure and beautiful and real, and what we had is ours to keep.
i’ll write about our weekend later, if i can ever bring myself to do it, but for now, i am going to rummage through the golden memories of my first love and wonder about the things to come.
goodbye.
i love you i love you i love you
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
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“She had only to hang on until Son returned and shout – fifteen minutes, not more. And she would spend it edging up the tree that wanted to dance. No point in looking down at the slime, it would make her think of worms or snakes or crocodiles. Count. Just count. Don’t sweat or you’ll lose your partner, the tree. Cleave together like lovers. Press together like man and wife. Cling to your partner, hang on to him and never let him go. Creep up on him a millimeter at a time, slower than the slime and cover him like the moss. Caress his bark and finger his ridges. Sway when he sways and shiver with him too. Whisper your numbers from one to fifty into the parts that have been lifted away and left tender skin behind. Love him and trust him with your life because you are up to your kneecaps in rot.”
Tar Baby by Toni Morrison
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The Police Union in Missouri just declared “Darren Wilson Day” on the anniversary of Mike Brown…..
This can’t be real
it’s hella real and disgusting
lmao the “unintended message” is still loud and clear, friendo
that’s actually insane???
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but rape culture don’t exist
Men are trash
this is so terrible
this is absolutely DISGUSTING.
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🙁 🙁 🙁
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I think my dad gets really confused about who asian people are. He pointed to my friend Dasher yesterday, claiming she’s Chinese. I said “no. Dash is black, Dad. Why the fuck would think that?” And he was like, “Well, she ate all the pasta.” I said, “that’s racist.” Dad was like, “Fuck the patriarchy man, we gonna light up dis blunt.” I left the house immediately because I think my dad is fucking crazy.
i just read this hilarious and alarming anonymous message in my ask box! who sent me this!!!!
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here i am –
guided by the light of a crescent moon, which i pretend is the northern star.
guide me home, guide me home.
no need for strangers’ kisses on my neck,
no need for foreign hands on my hips,
no need for all these strange caresses.
here i am,
myself,
my own.
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!!!!!
from what i’ve seen of self-proclaimed meninists, they’re not actually fighting for progress or anything. they’re just fighting against the people who are fighting for progress. where other movements are reactions against oppression, the meninist movement seems to be a reaction to feeling the power of the oppressor slowly slip away.
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in and out of a rut.
i’ve been feeling really lonely lately, and i think it’s because i can feel people drifting away from me and there’s really nothing i can do to stop it.
i guess that comes with the territory of finally finishing undergrad and hopefully embarking on new journeys in life. time changes everything – lovers and friends included – and eventually we all learn to live with new rhythms.
at night, sometimes i wonder who will stay by my side, and who will go, and who will still want to share their lives with me. i’m the kind of person that wants to grow old with people. i want my relationships to mean something. i want them to be beautiful testaments to the strength and power of friendship and love.
but things change, and people often slip away, sometimes slowly, quietly, with whispered goodbyes, and the worst thing you can do is cling on to those who don’t want to stick around anymore, because to force anything is to break it.
still, after investing so much, and becoming so close, it’s hard to feel people begin to grow separately and away from you.
when i start to feel sad about the distance and the space, i think about the future – always so bright and shining through this lens of hope – and i find strength in the strangers who have yet to walk into my life; strangers who will become new friends, close friends, best friends, lovers – sources of comfort and joy and love – and i am happy life is so long and full of surprises.
who really knows what the future has in store for any of us. maybe there will be distance, maybe that distance will close. maybe people will walk away, maybe they will come back. i of all people know that things have a funny way of working out, and sometimes people can really surprise you. i have enough faith to know that eventually everything turns out okay. all you have to do is keep looking forward.
for now i have the support system i need – a few best friends who have proven and shown their unfailing love, and my infinietly loving and dependable family – so i know i am and will be okay.
actually, writing this has made me feel a lot better about everything.
i just have to remember that some people come and go, and some will stay forever, but there will always be love to spare. in the end, everything will turn out the way it’s supposed to, and those who are meant to stay in my life will be there.
now i just have to bring myself to recap the past month and a bit. i’ve been really lazy with my blogging lately, which is funny because i remember promising myself i’d write every day just a little while ago.
joffjoff and noemie both came to visit and osheaga just happened, which was exciting and absurd, and i want to write about all of it, eventually.
but for now i am sleepy, and all i want to do is curl up with a good book.