Texan who was tricked by Used Husband into moving to Milwaukee. Fomenting feminist revolution based on potty parity, pockets, and psleeves. Bad bacon eater. Also, cats. Also, REVOLUTION.
Have we internalized the patriarchy so much that we think it’s normal to care what strange men think of us?
CNN “Fed up with hearing catcalls on the street, women around the world are fighting back – with chalk”
My friend Tina is gorgeous. Even without a drop of makeup and in baggy clothes, she is gorgeous.
She has always drawn male attention, most of it unwanted.
She just started a new job as a flight attendant and was worried that she would be hit on all the time, but – it’s not happening. The passengers are not hitting on her. At all.
When I moved to Chile as a Peace Corps volunteer, I discovered piropos. That is, the compliments strange men throw to women in the street.
I had experienced this before, when I was in high school in the Panama Canal Zone. When my friend Julie and I would take the city of Panama bus home from weekend swim meets, men we did not know would hiss at us: “Ay, chica ameri-caaaaaaaa-nah!”
It made us very uncomfortable, but we were together in broad daylight on busy streets, so we were not too scared.
In Chile, I heard comments like, “Saint Michael opened the gates of heaven and you fell out!”
Heads swiveled when I walked past.
I found it disconcerting and freaky.
When I tried to explain to my Chilean female friends, they laughed and said, “Do you want them not to say anything?”
Even when I explained that in the US, this kind of behavior can be the precursor to stalking and assault, they laughed it off, saying that’s not how it worked in Chile.
(I also had people tell me there was no rape in Chile during the dictadura, to which I replied that of course there was but women just didn’t report it.)
When I finished my two year stint in the Peace Corps, I came back to the US over land.
The piropos got worse. In Guatemala, a man whispered, “If I were your pants….” as he passed me on the sidewalk.
My jaw dropped and I stopped.
“What if someone said that to your sister?” I demanded.
I don’t think he cared.
Even though there were a million empty seats available, a man sat next to me on the ferry in Honduras and started talking to me.
I ignored him as long as I could, but he kept talking.
I finally told him to stop talking to me.
He was confused. Was I not feeling well, he asked.
I feel fine, I told him. I just don’t want you to talk to me.
His jaw dropped. Wasn’t his attention the most precious thing in the world?
When I crossed the border back into the US, the catcalling stopped.
I was relieved but I was also concerned. I looked at my reflection in shop windows and in public restrooms. Had I suddenly become ugly? Was I now completely unattractive to men?
Tina is puzzled by the lack of male attention.
She doesn’t want it but the stories are out there – that’s just how men are with flight attendants!
We wonder if the world has changed, but we also know that human nature has not evolved so much in the past few years that all men now always conduct themselves with propriety.
And we wonder why we even care, knowing that we didn’t want the attention in the first place.
Why should it matter if we are attractive to obnoxious men?
Great news! There’s yet another treatment for erectile dysfunction. Thank goodness more and more research dollars are being devoted to solving the scourge of ED. LIVES ARE BEING SAVED.
Eroxon, a topical gel intended to treat erectile dysfunction, may soon be available in the United States.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized the marketing of the product as a medical device on Friday. Eroxon, a first-of-its-kind treatment for erectile dysfunction, will not require a prescription.
Eroxon isn’t a drug; the FDA calls it a “non-medicated hydro-alcoholic gel.” Futura Medical, a U.K.-based company that manufactures Eroxon, markets the topical treatment as a “fast-acting gel” that helps men “get an erection within 10 minutes.”
On another note, I stopped at the pharmacy to pick up a prescription after yoga. TMI alert (but I have to share with someone who will share my rage!) The prescription is for vaginal dryness (more or less the female equivalent of Viagra, right?!). Pharmacy tech looks up the prescription and looks back at me in shock. Steps away to talk to the pharmacist and returns to tell me my insurance didn’t cover this prescription; would they like me to call the doc to see if there’s an alternative? How much is it without insurance, I ask.
$500!!!!!!!!
Yes I’d appreciate your contacting my doc. And no I will not be taking the prescribed medicine. Please return it to the shelf.
And if this was for a man, you can bet you a$$ it would be covered!!!! WTF!!
I thought I had come late to activism. I was the one who rolled my eyes at the TexPIRG organizer who wanted me to sign a petition against an arms manufacturer in our district.
“They bring jobs and tax revenue,” I said. “And how much are you getting paid to circulate that petition? If you really believed in the cause, you would do it for free.”
HOLY SMOKE I WAS A JERK.
TexPIRG organizer, I am so sorry. I was rude to you and I was wrong.
So there’s that.
But there’s also over 20 years ago at my old job at a Fortune 100 company. I discovered they didn’t cover birth control pills but they did cover Viagra.
(OF COURSE THEY COVERED VIAGRA. OF COURSE THEY DID.)
A female co-worker told me just to have my doc say the prescription was medically necessary. (I guess insurance companies don’t think contraception is medically necessary but that’s a whole different story.)
I could have done so, but what about all the young women working at the factories making close to minimum wage?
Thirty dollars a month for BCP would be a lot for them. Our plan at the time had like a $5 copay for a 30-day supply of prescription drugs.
I wrote a letter to the head of benefits and hit a few points:
Middle-aged men who couldn’t get it up had coverage for something that wouldn’t kill them and that they could probably afford because they were late in their careers, whereas young women making not very much money did not have coverage for something they really needed, especially if the men taking the Viagra wanted to use the Viagra. (In retrospect, maybe I should have left this part out.)
BCP were not covered, but pregnancy and abortion were. Both pregnancy and abortion were more expensive than BCP.
Sure looked sexist to cover Viagra and not BCP.
I sent the letter and thought nothing more of it, because honestly who actually effects change with the bureaucracy of an F100?
Guess what I did.
I made them change.
Or, at worst, their change coincided with my letter.
Also. The new VP of HR – which was separate from Benefits but I’m sure they talked – was a woman.
It might be Lysistrata time. It might be time to challenge the employer. It might be time to challenge the insurance company. Because this age group of men who need Viagra? Who are they going to do it with? If it’s with their OG wives, the wives might be saying, “Yeah it’s good but it’s not $500 good.”
In a world of only women, I would be, to quote my Grandma Sylvia, “fat and happy”
From All My Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toews
I didn’t even get to complete the sentence – “If [your husband] dies, will you re-” – before my friend Leah answered, “Nope. No. No.”
The same with my friend Judith. “If [your husband] were to die in the next few years, would you re-” was as far as I got before she said, “No!”
I asked the same question on facebook. “If your husband died in the next few years, would you want to remarry?”
No. No. No. No.
Not one single yes.
Not one.
My friends are happy. They are happy in their marriages. Or, if they are unhappy, they have not told me about their unhappiness.
My mom was a widow at 54. She had five marriage proposals in the ten years after my dad died.
She turned them all down.
I think she had a happy marriage. I hope so!
My friend Joyce was widowed a few years ago. I’m pretty sure she’s not looking to get remarried. I haven’t asked her and she just turned 100, so she doesn’t get out much.
Shortly after her husband, who was also my friend and was, as far as I know, a lovely man, died, I asked her how she was holding up.
She was fine. She was fine.
It was the first time – at 90something – that she had ever lived by herself her entire life. She’d gone from home to college to grad school to marriage.
She was finally alone.
“I eat what I want when I want,” she said.
“I watch what I want when I want.”
“I can read whenever I want to.”
“I don’t have as much laundry.”
“I don’t have to cook as much.”
“I feel so empowered!” she said.
I haven’t done a scientific survey. This research is all anecdotal. My friends are, for the most part, middle class and either employed or employable and would be OK financially if their husbands died, so they would not need to re-marry for money.
(I assume they all have wills and, if appropriate, life insurance. I hope so, after all the talking I’ve done about MAKE A WILL MAKE A WILL MAKE A DAMN WILL.)
Also, and more interestingly, I have not asked any men this question.
* runs back to facebook to ask if husbands would want to remarry *
I love Mr T. I like him.
But I made huge changes in my life to marry him when I was 43.
I don’t think I would ever meet someone I would love enough again to make that kind of effort.
My friends love their husbands, I am pretty sure.
But man are we tired.
I am tired.
I adore Mr T, but it is exhausting to share a house with someone.
It is exhausting to compromise and to listen when you would rather be reading your book but you listen because he is lonely and wants to talk and that’s part of the deal.
It’s exhausting to have the same arguments over and over and over (and if Mr T and I are the only ones who do this, please don’t tell me because I don’t want to know).
It’s exhausting to not be selfish.
And sometimes, I just want to be selfish.
I just want peace and quiet and to have complete control over everything.
I asked the “would your husband remarry” question and the answers are all pretty much “yes.”
So the women – who are happy in their marriages – stay single and the men – whom I assume are equally happy in their marriages – remarry.
Hmmmm.
Here’s my dream life (if Mr T dies before I do, which is pretty likely looking at our family histories, although Mr T is not an alcoholic like his parents, so maybe he’ll be around for a long time? I hope so. I would miss him):
All of my women friends and I live on a small compound (within walking distance of a library and a grocery store, of course). We each have our own little house. I don’t need much space – I need so much less space than I have.
Maybe there’s a communal kitchen? Or maybe just a communal area where we can hang out together when we want? I haven’t worked out the details, but there will be a way to be alone if you want and a way to hang out if you want.
Imagine what we could accomplish if we fought for our own needs and even our own wants
All the time we waste waiting is time we could spend on The Revolution.
I was at the library and noticed the books the 70something woman next to me was checking out.
Me: Wow! I like your taste. Those look great!
Other woman: Oh. Now I feel guilty taking out so many.
Me: Why?
OW: Because now you can’t check them out.
Me: What? No! There are plenty of other books for me to read. You take as long as you want with those! I’ll get them when you’re done.
Years ago, my mom, my dad, and I were at my grandmother’s for lunch. She had half a cantaloupe for dessert.
She cut it in half and gave a quarter to my dad.
She cut the remaining quarter in half again and gave an eighth to my mom and an eighth to me.
There was none for her.
How much are we expected to sacrifice for others?
How much do we drain ourselves?
When do our wants and needs matter?
My mother said, “Oh no. Nope. [My dad] has not been working in the fields all day.” She gathered up the cantaloupe, cubed it, and portioned it out into four bowls.
When my neighbor, who was in her mid 70s, thought she was having a heart attack, she didn’t go to the hospital for three days.
Three. Days.
She was helping with a potluck at church.
She was busy.
(No I didn’t know she was having a heart attack or I would have called 911 myself.)
Same thing with a friend’s mom (FM), who is 80.
She was having a stroke.
A mild one, but a stroke nonetheless. And it was her second stroke. FM’s next-door neighbor, who is a physician, knew about the first stroke (friend did not) and had told FM to call her immediately if FM had symptoms again.
FM did not call.
Instead, she waited until the end of the church service, where she was singing in the choir, and then she drove herself to the ER.
(Do I even need to mention how terrified these women’s children were when they heard about their mothers? About how scared they were while they sweated out their moms’ first few days in the hospital? How worried they were about what could have happened?)
None of these women would have hesitated a split second to get help for someone else.
None of these women worried at all about whether someone else’s needs mattered.
The lady at the library was concerned that others might not have access to the Good Books.
My grandmother made sure that her guests got cantaloupe.
But when it comes to their own needs?
Those come last.
Why?
Why does what we need come last?
Why does everyone else come first?
Why does what a stranger wants to read come before what you want to read?
Why does your family’s dessert preclude yours?
Why does a church potluck or a choir take precedence OVER YOUR LIFE?
They have a beautiful little girl, Sadie, who is almost four.
Today, when I was out for a walk, I saw them out in their yard. Sadie was twirling in her dress and then she curtseyed.
“Sadie, did you just curtsey?” I asked.
Her mom rolled her eyes.
“Yes!” Sadie answered. “I’m going to be a PRINCESS!”
Her mom rolled her eyes again.
When I saw Sadie last week, she informed me that she is going to let her hair grow down to her toes, “like Rapunzel.”
“But you’re not going to let The Patriarchy keep you in a tower, right?” I asked.
“Nooooooo!” said her mama. “We are against The Patriarchy!”
“ME TOO!” I said.
Sadie’s moms are definitely pro-woman, anti-patriarchy, anti-gender stereotypes feminists.
So why is Sadie, at not even four years old yet, already steeped in the sexist stereotypes that we have been fighting to get rid of?
Bigger question: Why won’t our culture support getting rid of these stereotypes?
When we were students, my college friend Heather used to say that she would raise her children to be gender neutral. Oh how I laughed at her. That’s impossible, I told her. And why would you even want to?
Sorry, Heather. I was wrong about everything.
If I had had kids, especially girls, I hope I would have been buying their clothes in the boys’ department so they would have had pockets and pants that weren’t skin tight.
I hope I would not have been reading fairy tales to them (I know my neighbors don’t), but I hope I would also have been asking the day care not to read or show those stories. No more Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella or Snow White. No more stories where the woman’s entire plot is to wait to be rescued by a man.
I mean WHAT THE EVERLASTING F. Why did we ever think that was a good thing to teach children?
And of course we didn’t. We didn’t think it.
Those with an interest in preserving the existing system think it.
There are women who all along have struggled and fought against this system.
How do we fix this? How do we fix this at scale?
I can’t believe it has taken until now – more than 50 years after it was published – for one of the most beloved girls’ books ever, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret – to be made into a movie.
How many Star Wars movies have been made since the late 70s?
And don’t tell me that’s a girls’ movie. I think there’s one woman in it. Maybe two? I googled.
Here are a few ideas.
Elect more female legislators, judges, and presidents. Elect more female everything
You, my dear female readers – volunteer for your local boards. Make your voice heard. We have a point of view and it matters and we need to change our world for all the Sadies
Give presents that don’t reinforce harmful sexist stereotypes. I love to give books as baby presents. These are some of the books I give to girls – maybe I should give them to boys as well. Hmm. Nancy Drew, Heidi, Pippi Longstocking, A Wrinkle in Time
What do you all think? What else can we do? This is for democracy and for all our Sadies.
And an ugly attitude is a choice (which is not where I thought this post was going but that’s what happens when you start writing – sometimes you end up in a place you didn’t know you needed to go)
You know what’s beautiful? Women supporting each other.
My friend Claudia, whom I met in college, is beautiful.
How could she not know? How could someone who looks like her – tall and slim yet shapely with long curly blonde hair and a killer smile – not know?
But she didn’t and doesn’t act beautiful.
(Wait. What is “acting beautiful?”)
That is, she is kind and sweet and thoughtful.
(WHOA IS THAT PROBLEMATIC.)
(I mean WHOA IS MY ATTITUDE PROBLEMATIC.)
I wanted to dislike her because of her beauty.
(AGAIN WITH MY ATTITUDE WTH IS WRONG WITH ME?)
But how do you dislike someone who is kind and warm and makes it a point to smile at everyone?
(OR – HOW DO YOU DISLIKE SOMEONE WHO HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG TO YOU?)
In college, Claudia had everything – she was smart and she was beautiful (plus warm and kind and outgoing and interesting) and women aren’t supposed to be both. We’re supposed to have one thing. One. Beautiful women are supposed to be dumb and smart women are supposed to be ugly. I don’t make those rules.
Wait.
Who did? Who made those rules? And why?
Why is it bad for women to be smart and beautiful at the same time?
And why would we women turn on our own? Why would we want to dislike one of our own just because she is beautiful? Why would *I* want to dislike another woman because of her beauty?
Is it because we are competing for scarce resources and beauty is what gives us an edge in the competition?
Holy smoke the internalized misogyny – the idea that we compete with each other for scare men – is so, so strong.
I was just about to edit the sentence above and remove the part “the idea that we compete with each other for scare men” when I noticed I had made a typo: “scare” men should be “scarce” men.
But I am going to leave it in because wow.
Claudia used to model, which does not surprise me at all. As I said – beautiful.
I would have thought that that sort of work would be a clue to her that she is beautiful, but in Paulina Porizkova’s memoir, she says that when she was dating, men would tell her that they weren’t going to tell her she was beautiful because she heard that at work all day long.
First of all – these men were jerks. Were they trying to make her feel bad? Who does that? Why?
Second – Porizkova says that no, she was not told all day long that she was beautiful. Indeed, it was the opposite. All she heard was that her lips weren’t as good as Cindy’s or her legs weren’t as good as Naomi’s or her eyes weren’t as good as Linda’s. She was compared all day long to other beautiful women and told she was lacking.
We do that to ourselves, but for most of us, it’s not usually part of how we pay our rent.
When Claudia’s daughter was about five, I commented to Claudia that her little girl was beautiful. Which she was. She still is only now she is drop-dead gorgeous, even more gorgeous than Claudia was. Claudia was a cute teenager – I’ve seen photos, but she was ordinary cute who has grown into beauty. Her daughter is already stunningly beautiful.
Claudia answered that she hoped that her daughter would be kind.
Claudia has the right idea.
Why do I expect beauty to be intimidating and mean?
Or, better stated, why do I seek reasons to justify my desire to dislike and be intimidated by beautiful women?
As I write this, I am ashamed of this feeling. I hope I am past it. I hope I now recognize it for what it is – deeply internalized misogyny that divides women instead of uniting us – and that if I do feel it again, I will stop it in its tracks and say “NOT TODAY PATRIARCHY. NOT TODAY. NOT TOMORROW. NOT EVER.”
I tilted strongly towards concealing clothing when in certain types of co-ed environments after a certain point because otherwise it felt like I was perceived as a Tasty One-Night-Stand Treat by males and a Competitive Threat by females and thanks, I’d rather have female friendships than have skeezy guys trying to get me in bed.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we – if I – could look at a beautiful woman and not need her to be dressed in concealing clothing to consider her a possible friend?
I leave you with this from Taryn Delanie Smith, who was Miss New York last year.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received? I was intensely bullied growing up. I used to tell my mother how much I wished I were “beautiful.” I’ll never forget, she’d say, “You are beautiful. But it’s important you recognize that it’s the single most uninteresting, thing about you.” Society seeks to condition girls to believe being pretty is a priority, it’s not. Be smart, be strong, be kind. Be you.
How do you fill a cat-shaped hole in your heart and in your life?
When his father died, my husband did not cry.
When his mother died, my husband did not cry.
When our beloved sister in law died at Thanksgiving, my husband did not cry, although we were both knocked breathless by our shock and grief.
But since our cat died two days ago, my husband has not stopped crying.
Neither have I.
Admittedly, I am faster to tears than Mr T is. I will cry at sad stories and even at some happy ones. I get misty eyed at weddings.
I got choked up a few months ago when we were with our Bonus Daughters and their families, singing with BD #2’s karaoke machine at her house. The Bonus Grandchildren were laughing and running through the living room while Bonus Son in Law #2 sang Blame It On The Rain badly (intentionally) and Bonus Daughter #1 and Bonus Son in Law #1 were singing along and Mr T was smiling and I was singing and then I was weeping because the moment was happy and perfect like an old AT&T commercial but the moment was also ephemeral and I knew behind it was death – Bonus Daughters had lost their mom six years ago, Bonus SIL #2 had come home from the gym to find his mother dead on the kitchen floor ten years ago and his best friend had died of cancer only a few months ago – and ahead of it was loss and the knowledge of those deaths and that loss to come makes the perfect moments all the more bittersweet.
And I did cry when our sister in law died. I adored her. I absolutely adored her and I love my nieces – her daughters – and I am so, so sad for them. I know what it’s like to lose a beloved parent at that age.
And I cried when my father died. Although in Mr T’s defense, his father was a jerk and mine was not.
But I have not Ugly Cried since my dad died, I don’t think.
I have been Ugly Crying since Laverne died.
Racking can’t catch my breath don’t know if I am ever going to be able to breathe again wait are my lungs working am I dying Ugly Crying.
Is it like this every time people lose a pet?
When my dad was dying, we had a going-away party for him in the hospice.
My Aunt Pat brought a pitcher of Old Fashioneds – my dad’s favorites – and we had a bottle of champagne because champagne is what you have at a going-away party.
The champagne and the Old Fashioneds tasted like mud.
We drank and we toasted and we talked about who my dad would see in heaven, including his best friend, Harry S, who died in a ship’s fire in 1972, his own father, who died in 1967, and our cat O’Malley, who died when I was in college.
Of course our pets are in heaven. Of course they are. How can it be heaven if our pets aren’t there?
The morning I brought her and Shirley home, almost 15 years ago, I put them in the basement and closed the door, as the cat foster lady had recommended, telling me they needed to be in a small room by themselves for a few days to adjust.
Laverne wasn’t having it. She broke out of the basement not once, not twice, but three times, demanding to be where the people were. She stuck her little paw under the kitchen door, the last door I could close between her and me, crying and crying until I finally decided that perhaps the cat foster lady’s advice didn’t apply in Laverne’s case. As soon as I opened the door, Laverne jumped into my lap and started purring loudly.
She was loud and loving. Her personality filled the room.
I could never go to the bathroom alone.
She greeted us at the door every time we came home, even if it was late at night after a long trip, except for the first one. The first long trip we took, both cats turned their backs to us. They were hurt and angry that we had abandoned them, but then I guess they figured out that we came always back and they forgave us. After that, except for her very last few days, Laverne was always waiting for us at the door, saying hello.
The only food we could leave on the kitchen counter was onions. She would hunt everything else, including tomatoes and bananas. Even apple cores in the sink were not safe.
She never met a box or a hat too small to sit in.
She once brought a live baby mouse into the house hidden in her mouth. When she opened her mouth, the baby ran out and it took us ten minutes to catch it and release it outside again. She sat proudly on the stairs, watching her work.
At 5:00 every day, she started to pace and cry for supper. 5:00 exactly. She knew. She was like Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment.
When I sat in bed with a book, she would sit between my eyes and the book, purring and kneading my chest.
She wanted to talk to everyone who came to our house and demanded and gave affection. She had never met a stranger.
I know everyone says this about their pets, but Laverne really was special.
When our friend Ilene met Laverne, we said, “Laverne loves everyone.”
After a few minutes, Ilene corrected us and said, “No. Laverne just loves.”
And she did. That’s what Laverne did. She loved. She just loved.
Last summer, Laverne was diagnosed with kidney disease.
When she first got sick, we had to leave her at the vet’s for the afternoon while they put her on IV fluids (PSA: Make sure you take your cat to the vet every year and definitely pay for the senior blood panel. We didn’t because of covid and we didn’t like the vets who bought our previous vet’s practice.) When we picked her up, the vet said, “Laverne has – opinions.”
Yes. She was a talker.
With some bumps in the road, she was more or less fine until a few weeks ago, when she started to decline.
A week ago, we took her to a very experienced vet – a retired woman who works a couple days a week. We had hoped this vet would tell us that we could treat Laverne’s new symptoms easily, but after she examined Laverne and took x-rays, she told us that it was time to say goodbye.
On Laverne’s last day, we let her sleep with us all night. (We had not been doing so because she had been throwing up in the middle of the night.) She woke us up at 5:00 a.m., purring and demanding attention, which we gave her as we wept.
We fed her salmon for breakfast and for breakfast dessert and for mid-morning snack and for pre-lunch snack and for lunch and for post-lunch snack.
We tried to give her peaches, which were her favorite, but couldn’t find any good ones and she rejected the sub-optimal out-of-season peaches, nectarines, and apricots we had found.
We let her in and out as much as she wanted and walked with her up and down the driveway. She sat frequently to rest and we sat with her. As we sat, I wondered why I had not spent more time with her, just sitting. Just enjoying the beauty of the world. Just enjoying the company of my cat. The company of my friend.
When the vet arrived, we laid Laverne on the table in the yard. The vet gave Laverne a shot to sedate her, then gently placed her in my arms.
I held her and Mr T and I stroked her as her head grew heavy and her breathing slowed. Through tears, we told her how much we loved her and that she was a good girl the best girl that she had brought so much joy to our lives that we would see her again that we loved her so so much that we wanted her pain to end that we wanted her to be at peace that we loved her we loved her we loved her.
And then it was over.
We keep asking ourselves if we did it too soon.
True, her breathing was shallow and rapid.
Her belly was swollen with edema.
Her little feet were cold because her poor little heart was failing.
There was no cure.
There is no cure.
It was only going to get worse.
But she jumped up onto the bed that morning.
She ate eagerly many times that day.
She showered us with affection.
We could have had a few more days.
Maybe even weeks.
Why did we do it so soon?
Why did we deprive ourselves of time with our sweet girl?
And then we remind ourselves that we chose to suffer so she wouldn’t have to.
My college friend was back on campus yesterday for a track team reunion. He was walking around the college (like a Harry Potter house) where we had lived – he was my next-door neighbor one year – and videoing his journey so he could send it to me and another friend.
A young White woman stopped him and asked, “Excuse me sir, do you go to Rice?”
The first thing you need to know is that there are no fences around the Rice campus.
There are no gates.
It’s across the street from the Texas Medical Center.
It’s in a neighborhood.
People – the public – anyone – is allowed to be on campus in the open spaces.
Anyone.
The second thing you need to know is that my friend – let’s call him Sergio, which is not his name but is one of my favorite names – is a grown man. And he happens to be Black.
Although he has aged very well, there is no way to look at him and think he might be an 18-year-old undergrad.
The third thing you need to know is that – wait. There is no third thing.
A young White woman thought it was perfectly acceptable to challenge a stranger about his presence in a quasi-public space.
And she kept challenging him, even after she got an answer that should have been more than acceptable.
When he told her that he was an alumnus, she asked what he was doing there.
Because alumni aren’t allowed to walk around campus?
He very patiently (Texas is a concealed carry state, so he was exercising great restraint) explained that he was in town for a reunion of his track team.
“Well the track is over that way!” she told him.
Was she scared?
Of my sweet, gentle friend? The one who used to sit on the sofa on the porch outside of his room while he did his physics homework? The one who posts photos of himself smiling in delight as he sits in the cockpit of an airplane he helped design? The one who shares videos of himself playing piano with his band?
If she was scared outdoors at 3 p.m. on a Saturday of a man she didn’t know, she could have gone into her room and locked the door.
My next door by four neighbor, George, is Black. He and his wife, who is White, have lived in their house for 15 years. They and their two gorgeous children are warm and kind.
George has lived here for 15 years. Fifteen.
And yet passers-by have stopped to ask George – when he’s in his own yard of his own house – if he needs directions.
“I’m in my own front yard,” George tells me. “And people driving by stop to ask if I need directions somewhere.”
You don’t belong here
Who decides who belongs where?
Who gets to challenge whom?
What is the reasonable thing to do if you feel threatened?
Although why a Black man working in his own yard would be threatening to anyone is something I don’t know.
Although why a Black man strolling casually on a college campus in the middle of a sunny day would be threatening to anyone is something I don’t know.
Although why a Black man minding his own business would be threatening to anyone is something I don’t know.
I have held out so much hope for this younger generation. I have hoped that they would not repeat the mistakes of the past or at least not repeat all of them.
But now I am not so sure.
Now I am am not so optimistic.
Sergio said, “Ya never quite get used to it, but this one was a surprise. I was looking forward to having a nice peaceful walk around campus – it was a really nice day out. Gotta admit, the whole thing kinda ruined the rest of my walk. But…what can you do, right?”
All he wanted was to take a walk and take some videos and photos to share with people he’s been friends with for 40 years.
All he wanted to do was something that any white man or any white woman – like the one who challenged him – would be able to do with impunity.
Rewatched the LOTR trilogy recently and my kid casually says, “this is the only scene where 2 women speak to each other in the whole trilogy.” The exchange? A little girl says to Eowyn, “Where’s Mama?!” Eowyn shushes her. “Shh!” End scene. Ouch.
I can’t remember if we read The Hobbit (I think we did and I hated it) in high school, but I do remember some of the other books we read:
Lord Jim
Heart of Darkness
A Tale of Two Cities
Great Expectations
Lord of the Flies
A Separate Peace
The Great Gatsby
Wuthering Heights
Catcher in the Rye
I also remember some of the authors and books I read in college, where I was an English major:
Shakespeare stuff
Moby Dick
Thoreau
Whitman
Dickens
Far from the Madding Crowd
The Awakening
A Room of One’s Own
The White Hotel
Women in Love
The Good Soldier
Huckleberry Finn
Although some of them were OK – how can you not like Dickens? he’s so plot driven – most of the stories did not speak to me.
They were stories written by men about men. About men’s lives, interior and exterior.
Even when there were women, they were about men about women. Even when the word “women” was in the title, the story was about men. In Women in Love, my professor suggested that it was really the two men who loved each other, referencing a naked wrestling scene, which, yeah, two men wrestling naked with each other would lead me to think that maybe they weren’t so interested in the women, either.
In the books written by women – The Awakening and A Room of One’s Own – the lives of the female characters are awful. The Awakening ends with the character walking into the ocean to drown herself because she can’t bear it anymore.
Here’s some what I read when I was a girl and had a choice:
Nancy Drew
The Ramona books
A Wrinkle in Time
Are You There God It’s Me Margaret
Trixie Belden
Pippi Longstocking
Anne of Green Gables
Caddie Woodlawn
Little House on the Prairie
Heidi
Do you notice a theme?
They’re all books about girls.
They’re all books where girls are the heroes.
I loved to read. I loved to read when I was a kid. I loved to read so much when I was a kid that the library would let me check books out on my mom’s ID card without my mom being there. I loved to read so much that my parents had to force me to join a soccer team. I loved to read.
And then I got to high school and college English. I still loved to read, but it suddenly wasn’t as much fun. Some of it was the adult themes – I have only in the past few years really understood Lord Jim, which is all about regret; some of it was the stupid whininess of rich teenaged boys – looking at you, Holden Caufield; but most of it, I think, was because almost none of it was by or about women and girls.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know this is The Canon, but maybe the canon should change? (Maybe it has. I hope so.)
But after high school English and college English, I didn’t read for fun for a long time. I bought the occasional book (which is very much not me – why would I pay for something so ephemeral?) but didn’t get a library card until 12 years after I had graduated from college.
I had forgotten that there were stories by women about women. I had forgotten there were stories where girls and women were the heroes.
Do I sound crabby? I guess I am.
I’m crabby that women’s stories are dismissed as “chick lit,” especially when women write those stories, but men’s stories are just – stories. Literature. (See Jennifer Weiner’s accurate observations about this issue.)
I’m crabby that we’re in a world where women are being diminished and our rights are being taken away and our stories don’t seem to matter.
I’m crabby that women who are miscarrying are being sent home from ERs rather than being treated because the hospitals are scared.
I don’t know if literature can change the world, but do you think maybe if these legislators had read more women’s stories, they might feel differently?
I want to go after the predators. (“Medusa” by Luciano Garbati)
I have always envied beautiful women. What’s it like to glide through the world, with doors (literally) opened for you? What’s it like to (I assume) like what you see in the mirror and not to hate the camera? What’s it like to know that you have the one currency that is valued in women?
And then I read what happened to Paulina Porizkova.
When she was 15 years old.
I don’t know about you, but I had barely kissed a boy when I was 15. I had seen my brother naked, but I was not in the habit of seeing the penises of men I didn’t even know. Or even of the ones I did know.
In my world, men did not show their penises to teenage girls.
In this excerpt (from her book) below, Porizkova is having her makeup done at one of her first photo shoots.
I watched in the mirror as the photographer sidled up behind me and placed something warm and yielding on my shoulder. I kept smiling. The thing on my shoulder looked like a large brown flower in the reflection, and I got a whiff of something food-like, soup-like. A soft, heavy pretzel? Pantyhose stuffed with mashed potatoes? The room was silent except for the pop of an umbrella flash followed by a high-pitched whine as the photo assistant tested the equipment nearby. The makeup artist moved aside a little and laughed. Her laughter assured me this was funny. I joined in, giggling, although I had no idea what I was laughing at.
I kept staring at myself and this odd thing in the mirror. My shoulder was at the same height as the photographer’s crotch. Finally, I turned my head to look at it directly and realized it was attached to his body. Attached to the part of his body where a penis would be. It rested there, casually, nestled between my collarbone and the side of my neck. I looked back at us in the mirror.
He grinned at me as if this was a fun little joke. The makeup artist shook her head lightly and raised her eyebrows, as if to say, “Here he goes again!”
I had seen photos and illustrations of penises in health and biology classes at school, but I had never seen a real penis before, and certainly not one held up right next to my face. Could it be?
I wanted to jump up and get away from it. But with another woman laughing, I thought my impulse must be wrong. Her laughter made the whole thing seem … lighthearted. Inconsequential. Like I’d ruin the fun if I didn’t laugh along. I kept smiling. I needed them to like me.
It wasn’t until he retracted that thing on my shoulder, stuffed it back in his pants, and zipped up that I knew for certain that, yes, it really, actually had been his penis.
I know it was the ’70s, but even back then, it was not, I am pretty sure, socially acceptable or work acceptable to put your penis on the shoulder of a teenage girl.
I don’t have an answer. I don’t know what to say to the man who put his penis on the shoulder of a girl he didn’t know or to the people who enabled him. I don’t know what we do. I wish she had named names. But even if she did, would shame work? Some men are beyond shame.
I leave you with an insta post where Porizkova describes what it’s like to be beautiful but still think you don’t measure up.
Texan in Exile 