I’ve spent the last couple months in the company of writers, mostly poets, mostly men. I am growing weary. The group I hang with is large and fluid—I’m not naming names, not pointing fingers, I like these people—and yet an issue I cannot ignore has begun to emerge: when it comes to many of the men in the company, mid-thirties and younger, making conversation, even with women present (older, younger, students, professionals, I’m a grandmother for Christ’s sake), the topics frequently revolve around who is sleeping with whom, which female is more fuckable, which poop or dog-cum reference is the funniest, and what is the latest text from “the Korean girlfriend.”

It’s not that I mind swearing, not that I dislike racy humor, not that I’m a prude—the more sex the better, I say—but self-aggrandizing dick jokes get old fast. At one point, just to balance the conversation, I suggested, loudly, to another woman in the group that we begin starting our sentences with “My vagina is so tight…”

After one poetry reading and various levels of alcohol consumption (not to offer mitigation, just setting the scene), two of the younger women in the group (younger than me, that is) were repeatedly propositioned and pawed by more than one man in our company, even though the men knew the women were in long-term committed relationships and, more importantly, were entirely uninterested in a bit on the side.

My personal issues with some male colleagues have been slightly different. On reminding a colleague about a deadline, he told me not to “scold” him. This, in spite of that fact that (a) I was the project manager, and (b) it was a simple deadline reminder. If I had wanted to scold, it would have sounded less like “We need X by Y date” and more like “You are consistently lacking in follow-through, and I’m getting fed up with your inability to make deadlines, so pull your thumb out of your ass and get it done.” Yeah. That.

On the night before a poetry reading I had arranged, I got an email from a young writer saying he didn’t think he could read the next day, as his girlfriend hadn’t brought her proper ID and so couldn’t get into the reading venue (a bar) and he didn’t want to leave her alone. My email response: “Alrighty.” This writer had cancelled on me before, so really, what was there to say? In response, I received a lengthy plea asking me not to be cold and to try to understand and Would you leave [name of my husband] alone in a hotel while you read? You bet your fucking ass I would—in fact, my husband was clear across the country at that very moment, taking care of all domestic matters including a new puppy who was shitting all over the house.

I have five children. That’s enough.

***

Back to the weeks of concentrated writer events. One man offered as a compliment “You look rape-able.” One man seemed compelled to check out and comment on the breasts and legs of all the women we passed (or perhaps it just seemed like all) on the street, at the bar, in the restaurants. One man I was talking to opened a conversation with “You know that chick…” It turned out he was referring to the late-thirties editor we had just been chatting with, but it took me a minute to figure it out, because not in my wildest dreams would I have referred to the mature, professional woman as a “chick.”

This kind of crap went on and on. It was exhausting. Exhausting to figure out how to respond to the relentless misogyny from men who are otherwise kind and educated, who would never think of themselves as chauvinist assholes. I have heard more than once from this crew, “Most of my favorite poets are women.” If I were to guess, I’d bet that the lot of them vote pro-choice, support the Violence Against Women Act, and consider women well capable of intelligent, complex thought. I certainly don’t assume that all men under 40 would engage in the kind of language and behavior described above; indeed, I know of many who would never do so. And yet, after the past several weeks, its frequency is far beyond what I thought possible.

What is up with all this dehumanizing language? Honestly, I have no idea. But I do know this. If “good guys” feel perfectly at ease using degrading language that objectifies women when talking not only to one another but also to women they purportedly respect, then the bullshit that came out of the GOP this past election cycle (vaginas that can tell the difference between consensual sex and rape, for example) can be explained. A big pile of reasonably aware and well-intentioned people doing thoughtless shit creates a solid set of stairs for unreasonable, ignorant assholes to say and do what most of us (men and women alike) would deem shockingly destructive.

The group I was spending time with recently was mercifully spared a flood of “That’s what she said” jokes, though I have surely been drowned in them before. The only recent instance went something like this.

Woman referring to her sandwich: “That’s too big for my mouth.”

One of the men at the table: “That’s what she said.”

Me: “That’s what he is hoping she said.”

***

So I’ll offer this: in addition to being exhausted and discouraged by the relentless barrage of bathroom humor and frat-party antics, I’m bored. I’m in this world of poetry and books for ideas and language and beauty. Seriously. So I’ll say to whoever needs to hear it, put your shit back in the can and let’s talk about things that might actually be funny or engaging or matter once the whiskey has worn off.

Last year, a good friend of mine was deeply injured by a woman he had been in a relationship with. For his birthday, which occurred in the middle of the mess, I gave him a vintage nutcracker in the shape of a pair of women’s legs. Was this me buying into the same bullshit I’m talking about here? I’m not sure.

While preparing an essay for VIDA the other day, I reviewed the guidelines and saw the following description of one of the essay categories: “For you alpha personalities willing to be bold and opinionated, for this feature we send you five to seven provocative questions about life, writing, or current happenings.” Huh. Are women who are willing to articulate their opinions automatically “alphas”? Perhaps that’s how we are currently characterized in our culture, but surely that will not be the case in a world where opinions are valued based on merit and not based on the gender of the speaker. Even VIDA, an organization working tirelessly to increase the awareness of women’s accomplishments in the arts, can fall prey to language that protects misogynistic tropes.

So, again, here’s what I say to anyone who needs to hear it: let’s get together, knock a few back, have an entertaining conversation about literature or human nature or something hilarious one of us saw on TV. But here’s the thing: the moment you start talking about the tits of the woman at the end of the bar, or referring to grown-ups as “chicks” or start getting me confused with your mother, that’s the moment I move on. Not because I’m offended or uptight or a bitch, but because I’m bored. Get interesting (and perhaps help shift our cultural consciousness at the same time), or get out of the way.

That’s what she said.

***

Rumpus original art by Jason Novak.

Related Posts:

• Bodies in Bikinis: Are You Buying It?
• Coverflip: If Books By Men Were By Women
• FUNNY WOMEN #100: Writing the Next Great American Woman’s Novel
• The Good Old Days
• When I Loved Reagan

What would it look like if male authors’ novels were treated like Bassist’s hypothetical feminine masterpiece All the Single Ladies Just Wanna Have Fun?

Author Maureen Johnson challenged her Twitter followers to gender-flip the covers of books like A Game of Thrones and Freedom. Some of the best results are gathered in this amazing slideshow.

Related Posts:

• Women are Bitches
• FUNNY WOMEN #100: Writing the Next Great American Woman’s Novel
• The Good Old Days
• My Body, My Machine
• Bodies in Bikinis: Are You Buying It?

“It appears that gradually, over time, editors have begun the process of moving women, one by one, alphabetically, from the ‘American Novelists’ category to the ‘American Women Novelists’ subcategory.” –Amanda Filipacchi, “Wikipedia’s Sexism Toward Female Novelists,” The New York Times, April 24, 2013

“Around 90 percent of Wikipedia editors are men, and it shows.” –New Scientist

A lot of women people (as opposed to men people, or just “people”) are upset that Wikipedia editors have created a subcategory for “American Women Novelists.” But I’m not. I’m stoked! This could be the best thing that’s ever happened to women novelists like me.

First of all, I can stop competing with Jonathan Franzen. Franzen has been a real pain in my lady parts, and now that we’re not in the same category, I can stop feeling so awful about my writing. While I knew in my heart’s core we would never be in the same league, now we’re literally never going to be in the same league. Such a relief! I mean, for real.

B.) There’s also less competition within my segregated field. Because fewer books by women are published, I have a higher probability of success. (That’s how math works, correct?) Like my woman parent always says, “It’s easier to win when everyone else is losing. Now let’s go clean the toilet!”

Apparently the list of “American Novelists” is too long, so I see why subcategories are necessary. It’s like when my inbox is too full and I have to archive certain emails and forget about them forever. (I have email folders for “Etsy Sales,” “Sephora Sales,” “The Atlasphere: Ayn Rand News, Dating & Social Networking Newsletters,” and so on.) Organization and labeling are supreme virtues, above most other less supreme virtues like equality and fairness. I’d like to see Wikipedia continue this helpful sub-categorization. “American Women Comedians” is an obvious one.

I was immersing myself in women’s literature the other day—by that I mean I was reading a cookbook—and that’s when I knew what I should do. I will write the next Great American Woman’s Novel. It’ll be part romance fiction/journal/doodles/musings/sestina about kittens and friendship/an illuminating treatise about the way we live now/word cloud, and it will cover the typical subject matters women write about: marriage, motherhood, yogurt, dating as a competitive sport, emotional warfare, housework, tampons, rainbows, midwifery, gardening, hysteria, beauty products, weight gain, weight loss, the art of being shrill, divorce, magic, and light bondage.

One chapter will be an audio file of Taylor Swift songs.
One chapter will be just emojis.
One chapter will be my grocery list.
One chapter will be a link to my Pinterest page.
One chapter will be manufactured with drops of my blood, sweat, and tears.
One chapter will be me making a sandwich for all the “American Novelists.”

If I have any deep, universal, logical thoughts or opinions, I’ll write them down on Post-Its and then chew them up and swallow them to maintain the illusion women don’t write about those things.

Of course I’ll write TNGAWN with BIC for Her pens, designed to fit a woman’s hand. The XY pens I’d been using were heavy and obstructed my flow of words, but BIC for Her’s comfortable and innovative design makes writing a pure pleasure. The pink one is for writing thoughts I’m thinking and the purple one is for feelings I’m feeling. I’ve outsourced the typing to a man helper to whom I pay 30 percent more for the work than I would ask to be paid were I employed as an outsourced typist.

I’ll publish the novel via my self-publishing operation Books by Her, and some smart men in design and marketing will slap on a cover that my cervix can really identify with—like a canary yellow cover depicting high-heeled shoes atop a glistening martini glass made with bits of the glass ceiling we just totally cracked by letting it crash to the floor.

It’s true that books by women aren’t reviewed as often in thought-leader newspapers and magazines, and it’s a vicious cycle—women are systematically underrepresented in reviews, so they have fewer “credible source” citations on Wikipedia, so fewer wombyn are “notable,” so people who browse Wikipedia based on notability won’t readily see them—that I’d rather stay out of. And anyway, more women than men buy books; ergo, my novel will be a bestseller even if no one hears about it.

I could fight subcategorization—encourage writers of femininity to start editing Wikipedia, to create new entries and flood the system with new perspectives, maybe alter the way information is organized, possibly influence how a story gets told, just do tiny, fixable things that make it easier for women to gain equality—but that’d take me away from writing the next Great American Woman’s Novel—tentatively titled All the Single Ladies Just Wanna Have Fun!—so, you know, pass.

I guess what I’m saying is, maybe this is a high point. American Women Novelists are special. Chosen. In a category all our own.

Man, we’ve come a long way, baby.

***
[N.B. In “Yes, Wikipedia Is Sexist -- That's Why It Needs You,” Deanna Zandt offers resources available for beginners to get started editing Wikipedia:

• Wikipedia has a welcome library of resources that includes handbooks and videos on principles of editing and how to use the editing tools.
• WikiWomen is a collective of people interested in supporting women’s activities in the community. It’s both a rallying cause and resource for women’s participation, as well as a supportive environment in which to learn.
• The Teahouse is a community gathering spot on Wikipedia for newcomers (of all genders) to ask questions and get help with problems they might be having.
• Of course, [Deanna’s] own work: I teach introductory webinars and workshops on Wikipedia principles, tools and resources, and have tailored those workshops to primarily women-centered groups.]

***

Please submit your own funny writing to our Rumpus submission manager powered by Submittable. See first: Funny Women Submission Guidelines.

Related Posts:

• Women are Bitches
• Props from a Fellow Funny Woman
• Coverflip: If Books By Men Were By Women
• Dear Wikipedia Editors,
• The Good Old Days

What the hell, man? What’s wrong with you?

It would have been bad enough had you decided to replace the one category with two separate categories, one for American Men and one for American Women novelists, since that division would have suggested that the gender of the writer is the most important distinction (as opposed to, oh, genre or era) and since it would leave out genderqueer novelists completely.

But you didn’t even do that. The dudes are going to get the default category “American Novelists,” while women get shunted off into a cozy little ghetto, the easier to ignore, which is pretty much been the case for most of human history. Men are the normal, everyone else is the other. Hey, good news for sexist readers: this way, a person searching for American Novelists on wikipedia won’t accidentally end up reading a woman’s writing. No, no. Now that can only happen if the person is searching specifically for women novelists. What a relief.

But here’s the thing that confuses us. It’s not like you haven’t been called out for sexism before or anything. You’ve had a problem with this for a while, and despite your claims that you want to change the culture among the editors, you really haven’t done much about it. Instead, you do this. You once again diminish women.

And you’re doing this at a time when we’re more conscious than ever, thanks to groups like VIDA, of the huge disparities in attention that books by men receive in terms of reviews in big publications over books by women, as well as the disparities in space that men receive to write reviews as opposed to women reviewers. We’re talking about massive inequalities here, and you’re aiding and abetting that. As Amanda Filipacchi said in the piece linked above, “People who go to Wikipedia to get ideas for whom to hire, or honor, or read, and look at that list of “American Novelists” for inspiration, might not even notice that the first page of it includes far more men than women. They might simply use that list without thinking twice about it. It’s probably small, easily fixable things like this that make it harder and slower for women to gain equality in the literary world.”

So Wikipedia Editors who thought this was a good idea, do us a favor here. Even if there’s something in your brogrammer code that refuses to allow you to undo this, at least stay out of the way of the editors who are cleaning up the mess you made.

Related Posts:

• FUNNY WOMEN #100: Writing the Next Great American Woman’s Novel
• Women are Bitches
• Coverflip: If Books By Men Were By Women
• What VIDA Stats Mean on A Personal Level
• Women Still Not Equal in Writing World

It’s a good example of that stomach-dropping mix of “Did they seriously do that to her?!” and “Of course they did that to her.” A preview:

After two years of painstaking work to produce the book…nearly every review refers to me as a stay-at-home mom. One such article is entitled “Battlefield Barbie,” which calls me a “soccer-mom-in-training.” I look nothing like Barbie. My kids don’t play soccer.

Related Posts:

• Props from a Fellow Funny Woman
• On Being Part of the Problem: A Personal Response to the VIDA Report
• Women Still Not Equal in Writing World
• Women are Bitches
• Coverflip: If Books By Men Were By Women

This year, they’ve posted side-by-side statistics for 2010, 2011, and 2012, all in easily readable bar-graph form.

The upshot: Things don’t really look any better than they ever have. Some publications employed progressively fewer women over the three-year period, and some, like the New York Review of Books, have a ratio of female to male writers so dismal it’s almost hard to believe.

Related Posts:

• What VIDA Stats Mean on A Personal Level
• Women are Bitches
• Props from a Fellow Funny Woman
• Coverflip: If Books By Men Were By Women
• Female Critics on Women and Criticism

Every olive-skinned forehead has a chalky red circle placed by the leathery fingers of holy men. They look like a collection of bulls-eyes. Black red garnets drip from earlobes to rouged cheeks. A woman walks with three small children. She is so stunning she could win beauty pageants, but she was born poor so she never will. Indira Gandhi has been assassinated. I am fifteen.

A sharp jaw is draped by a red sari. When the sun shines through it, the woman’s chin lights up like a neon strawberry. She bends over a camp stove on the sidewalk outside the Bombay airport. She twirls roasted chapattis— Indian tortillas— with her delicate fingers over the weak red flame. Her hands are speckled with the dried blood color of mehndi: henna temporary tattoos like blinking eyes on her palms when they open. The mehndi has faded over time, which means the woman participated in a wedding a week or more ago. The toasty nut chapatti smell competes with the stench of sweat and shit. My green ankle length skirt is too thick in the humidity and perspiration drips down my doughy armpits onto the ground.

I’m looking for my name on a sign. Petite men jump and shove each other to get at the white tourists who have money for motels and taxis. They call out “Rickshaw, Madame? Madame.” Their voices are low and sexual and pleading but harmonize like a choir. The men who call out “Madame” have red teeth. A boy with no legs whizzes past on a skateboard. His arms are extra long and knobby from polio. He has a collection of VHS tapes attached to the skateboard with a bungee cord. One of them is Michael Jackson. He doesn’t beg. Children approach with fingers cut off at the knuckle from leprosy. There is no blood—only bandages. They move their fingers to their mouths and say “kanna” and look into my foreign eyes. I don’t have to know Hindi to know what starving means, but “kanna” means food. The kids spit red. The women spit red. The small puddles remind me I’m bleeding. Where am I going to find a tampon?

Bombay is not just red. It’s also holy orange. A band of Hari Krishnas dance barefoot on dirt in big loose orange shirts and lungis that are like baggy pajamas. Their clothes are the orange that only the earliest morning sky knows. Their bald heads glow in the heat and they smile that crazy smile of bliss that makes me want to float on their orange cloud and never go home. The moon is amber and appears much closer and bigger here. From across the street, they come for me. I want to be orange like their lungis, not big and white because the men jump and yell while lepers scurry to surround me. Some of these men are my age or younger, boys really. My temporary sister with shiny black hair grabs my hand. She tells me her name “Jothi,” (prounced Joe-thee) means light. She says, “This way,” and interlaces her fingers with mine. Her father walks like his hips are sore or broken because they tilt as he walks in short brisk steps. He’s a doctor. He says, “Come,” and I do. His voice is nasal and hard to hear over all of the vendors calling “Pakora, pakora, pakora!” Pakora are salty orange fried vegetables in white bags sprinkled with saffron, cumin and cayenne.

Women carry giant baskets on their heads poised and dangerous but their faces are serene. The baskets are orange and brown and carry the smell of fish. Some baskets overflow with samosas and when one drops from the basket, beggar children scurry for it. Dried orange paste cakes the corners of their lips. Cars and bicycles heavy with chickens swerve around cows that rule the road. Fat, slow cows flaunt orange blossoms between their horns, swinging between them like a hammock. Their horns are painted with red and gold stars and flowers. My temporary sister wears an orange thread around her wrist that signifies that she has a brother and he tied it to her wrist in a ceremony that honors their bond. She interlocks her fingers with mine as we walk towards what looks like a toy car. The children knock on the window as our car drives away. They chase the car for several blocks yelling, “Ferungi!” which is Hindi for foreigner.

Bombay is also white. The bread rolls the vendors sell in baskets as they yell, “Pan pan pan pan” are wrapped in stiff white napkins. Milk is delivered in small bottles in grey metal baskets like in old episodes of Leave it to Beaver. I listen to my Prince “Under a Cherry Moon” cassette tape on my Walkman and walk along the gutter next to palatial marble houses. A man squats and shits in the street. I panic because I want to stare but I look away instead. I think about what it means to be white here, to have the luxury of white cotton underwear and a private poop behind closed doors. Visions of divine white toilet paper taunt me as I pass men in sandals and white turbans. They open their funny pajamas and take their dicks out and point them at me as they walk towards me. This happens so many times I lose count. It happens when I walk with my Indian host family and when it does, my sister locks hands and squeezes me tight. “This way,” she snaps. “Ouch,” I say. She pulls me into a store that sells saris and nose jewelry until the men walk past the store to the nearby marketplace. I want to ask why the men do that but I don’t. Jothi avoids my eyes and holds a green and gold sari. “How much?” she asks the saleswoman. My long skirt is white with gawdy pink and black flowers. We leave with my first-ever sari.

I’ve never been on a double-decker bus so I ride one all day and the men stare. I switch seats to wriggle out of their sight but they come closer, stand over me and clutch the handrail near my head. I wander into an indoor market and two men in turbans pinch my butt. I run to the nearest rickshaw and tell him, “Bandra Road.” When I walk in the front door, the family is sitting at a table for dinner. They are angry and silent. Later, my host brother tells me, “Women who come home after dusk are whores,” right away. He’s trying to explain why his father yelled behind their closed door earlier. The father yelled so fast, I couldn’t catch one familiar word. I can tell by my host brother’s slouch and the way he wobbles his head that he thinks it’s silly that his father yells but I’m afraid he will kick me out, send me back home. He wears American clothes a few years outmoded, but the best money can buy in Bombay. White Izod and blue jeans.

I’m supposed be in college here even though I’m a junior in high school. The first day, I am swarmed by kids. The only white girl there in my loose yellow shirt, I sit in the back of the class on a bench. Students stare and giggle so I walk to the train station where I follow children to their homes in the slums. I trust the kid who grabs my arm and pulls me into a snaky alley past metal scraps and piles of garbage. I’m pummeled by the smell of shit and piss near homes made of cardboard and dirt. Inside, I crouch in the dark around a small fire and drink spiced chai from tiny chipped glasses. The grandparents sleep on the ground on a single blanket and glance over at me. It’s so dark, I can’t tell how many people live inside. The kid giggles and his mother stares into my grey eyes for a long time and laughs. She covers her mouth when she does this. The kid writes an address on a white piece of paper. I promise to write. I never write. Two men follow me onto a train. Their bodies against mine harder and harder until a seat next to a woman was vacant and I squirmed into it. A couple stops away is a four star hotel so I jump off at the next stop and run inside where I won’t be followed, touched or flashed. I fill my backpack with rolls of plush white toilet paper. I get home after dark: white American whore.

Bombay is turquoise and gray. Monsoon rains with blue skies. Ganesh, the elephant God is on posters in homes and stores and in rickshaws promising triumph over obstacles, but in some sects of Hinduism, I am told, a woman is supposed to throw her body on top of her dead husband’s and allow the vultures to pick it clean. When I walk the streets in the morning with my Walkman, I look up at the roofs of gray buildings for the bodies of mourning women and the hungry vultures, but I never see them. I see gray hate and gray shame and red angry spit on the dirt every couple feet. I walk past cold gray shadows where the little girls are still sold out of cages. The gray spaces in the alleys filled with girls carrying gray tins begging for coins. Gray, dirty bandages on their hands. I see turquoise Ganesh on posters. Indian women feed their daughters sweets from a vendor on a train. Indian women twirl chapattis wrapped in gold and turquoise saris. They ask to buy my American jeans for their daughters. Fisherwomen keep their baskets perfectly balanced. Outside the train, families line up outside of the Indian Embassy, hoping to leave. I never write to the children from the slums.

Years later, Bombay is still fresh in my mind and in my bones. As a visitor, I was naïve and lost. When I hear bells, I still see statues of Ganesh in a cool, stone temple and smell sandalwood incense. If I sent a letter to one of the kids from the slums, it would say: Remember when I pointed to your bandaged knee and asked you what happened? I could tell by your khaki shorts and pressed white shirt that you were cutting class too. We exchanged grins. You saw the man press his hips against me and said, “We get off here,” as you reached above me to pull the silver cord. I followed you home and met your sister and mother. Lock hands with them and keep them safe before and after dusk.

***

Rumpus original art by Jason Novak.

Related Posts:

• The Sacred and the Profane
• Kissa Yoni Ka: What The Vagina Monologues Mean In Hindi
• Tramp
• Admit You’ve Paid For It: The Savage Honesty of David Henry Sterry
• Women are Bitches

Grant had worked for a Silicon Valley gossip blog during the same time period and had come to her own dismayed conclusions about women’s roles in the tech industry.

In an essay for Dissent, she plots the points where Losse’s experiences intersect with hers and the frustrating, often weird ways women are put in their place in a world run by “star brogrammers.”

Related Posts:

• The Rumpus Review of The Social Network: Suck It
• Conversations About the Internet #5: Anonymous Facebook Employee
• Women are Bitches
• Coverflip: If Books By Men Were By Women
• FUNNY WOMEN #100: Writing the Next Great American Woman’s Novel

Collectors Weekly features an article of the double-edged sword variety. Lisa Hicks provides a selection of Suffrage-era postcards (both pro and against), but her accompanying essay is a far cry from a casual discussion of turn-of-the-century illustration and rhetoric. She wont let us forget that the gender binary issue, and its massive influence on politics, is most certainly not an outdated concern.

Just in case you haven’t been outraged at all lately.

Related Posts:

• Women are Bitches
• Coverflip: If Books By Men Were By Women
• FUNNY WOMEN #100: Writing the Next Great American Woman’s Novel
• My Body, My Machine
• Bodies in Bikinis: Are You Buying It?

When I spotted them ahead, on my way back, there was no one else around.  I slowed my pace, considered running back the way I’d come.  Then I saw a biker far behind them.  So I ran.  I ran fast.  I ran as fast as my body would let me, so I would pass the men at the exact time that the biker did, so I would never be alone with them in a long stretch of otherwise empty woods.

They yelled at me anyway.  I ignored them.  I don’t know what they were saying.  I know it was some combination of lewdness and denigration.  I just kept running, away from them, far enough around a bend and up where I could see a few other bikers and walkers until I could finally slow my pace, a pace that slowed long before my lungs finally relaxed.

I am a runner.  I have been running for years.  I run not only for my health, and not only because it feels as natural to me as breathing.  I run so I can inhabit my own body.  I run so that in moments like these, when my lack of power in this world becomes more violently apparent, I can feel the strength of my own body, enough to ignore provocations, enough to know alone that I could destroy both of those men if I wanted.

In some corner of my mind, I know this isn’t true. I know that no matter how much weight I can bench press, no matter how hard my muscles get, no matter how much of a machine my body becomes, it will never be enough.

But it is something still, to feel my every fiber in my body coalesce. It is something to feel them gather in defense before a threat, to feel for one moment that I am more powerful than the world will ever know.

Because the world doesn’t know. Why should it? I realize over and over again, in so many different situations, that I live in a world that isn’t mine. A world that wasn’t built for me. I live in a world where there are threats, big and small. Threats that rear themselves when I least expect it, when I think I can at last relax. Threats that I must selectively ignore or they will consume me, whether I am on a path and two men remind me that there is nowhere, anywhere, that is safe, or whether I am inside the benign walls of a bank or a doctor’s office, assuming that I am receiving the same service as everyone else until a single question quietly explodes the room.

My husband and I talk. I am aware that doctors and bankers ask him, What do you do? I am aware that they ask me, Do you work? I am aware that yes isn’t enough, that part-time will be the next question. I don’t have a problem with part-time work or not working. I have a problem with assumptions, the ones that are made as soon as I walk into a room.

Last fall I went to the bank to open a new account. I met with a man who sat back in his office chair and asked me these same questions, and when I’d finally convinced him that I could open an account – even though he had my existing accounts and full-time employment information open on his computer – he leaned forward and laughed and asked, Sweetie, do you know what you’re doing?  Something animal in me took over, the split decision to get up and leave immediately. I walked out of the bank. I drove home in a capsule of silence, the radio off. I was shaking with anger. The bank branch called me that afternoon but I never answered the phone. That man was later fired. I then met with a new man, one who was much friendlier, but who still asked me why I didn’t take my husband’s name and whether that hurt his feelings, and whether I worked outside the home even though, again, my employment information was wide open on his computer for both of us to see.

My body sat with me in that bank. My body reminded me that even though this man perceived a small child of a woman, I perceived something else.

My body reminds of who I am constantly. It reminds me that I am here. A few weeks ago my husband and I went to a minor-league baseball game, and we got to talking with one of the stadium attendants. It was over 100 degrees outside and I stood with a sweating beer while this man told my husband about the last road trip he took in a sweltering heat wave, down to St. Louis for a Cardinals game even though it was 105 degrees outside. This man shared the knowing conspiracy of a ballgame with my husband, why such a trip would reign important beyond heat. Though I tried not to count, the attendant never looked at me once. I know heat.  I know road trips. I also grew up in St. Louis with the Cardinals on my television every night, saw more games each year than I can rightly count, and have traveled back to Busch Stadium each year for at least one game every season, including 100 degree days. But baseball is for men. In that conversation, I was invisible to this man. As invisible as I become in countless other conversations about politics and current events, about fantasy football teams – which, it is still believed, my husband secretly manages for me – and about philosophy or film history or the time signature of a piece of music.

My body is a secret. My body is my shield. My body reminds me that even in moments when I am blindsided by how easily I am ignored, meant to only stand by instead of engage, my muscles are working beneath the surface. They are silent and hard, a sleeping giant when my neighbor shouts another joke across our shared yard but only to my husband, this time about how men make money only for women to spend it. They brace me against thoughtless comments. They replace the void that being unexpectedly shut out of a conversation leaves. They remind me that I am stronger than the world will ever make me feel.

But my body can betray me. It can deceive me, and it can confuse me. I don’t know how to be inside of my body comfortably unless I know it as a muscle. I don’t know how to own my body as attractive. I don’t know how to be attractive because it is what is expected of me as a woman, and I have worked so hard to reverse every other expectation of my gender.

I don’t know how to wear a dress and be the person I want to be inside of it. I don’t know how to wear a dress and not be taken immediately for an object, something pretty. I can wear dresses. I like them.  I wish I could reappropriate them more easily as my own. But I feel most like myself in jeans and a hoodie, clothes that obscure my femininity, as if femininity were a bad thing – but the world tells me that it is. In this world, I am more myself in clothing that obscures my body entirely so that only I can know it.

I see the sadness in this. I feel it when I can look at myself in the mirror sometimes and see that my body is not only armor, but actually lovely and striking in its curvature and its capabilities. I feel this when my husband grazes his hand over my thigh and tells me playfully that I have nice legs, and I only want to tell him, But don’t you know what they’re for?

I want my body to be more than armor. More than function. I want to think of it as something beautiful for beauty’s sake, built for pleasure and appeal and loveliness. I want to wear dresses without fear of what I will become to the world by wearing them, since wearing jeans and t-shirts and an old pair of Keds can’t obscure any better that I am a woman, in the end. I want to be able to hold my hands against my stomach and feel the wall of muscle beneath them and think of something beyond protecting myself, beyond reminding myself that I am really here.

But it is hard. It is hard when I go out for a morning run and there are two men suddenly blocking my path.

It is hard to choose between being one of two objects, a target or a machine.

And so my body is a machine, undisclosed to the world. A machine that offers me power, for myself alone, even if no one knows it exists.

Related Posts:

• Women are Bitches
• Coverflip: If Books By Men Were By Women
• FUNNY WOMEN #100: Writing the Next Great American Woman’s Novel
• The Good Old Days
• The Muscle of Beauty, The Body as Protest