I never want to be second best to a man because I am not one ever again. It BOTHERS me. It keeps me up nights. It's... humiliating. It stokes a rage in me that I don't like- it's ugly, and hot, and pressurized, and it never seems to lessen, only grow. I am so good at being silent, at being nice, at being a good sport. But I've been getting worse at it for years. As I've begun to realize just how much I've lost to men because they think they're better than me, because everyone thinks they're better than me, because sometimes I even think they must be better than me. I've started to lose my grip on that quiet, humble girl who doesn't fight for what she loses. I sit up at 1:30 in the morning and sometimes I can't stop stewing over the fact that some men think they can unclothe me with their eyes and I'll secretly like it, that everyone on the ****** earth assumes that I will want a man, marry a man, that I'm LOOKING constantly for a ******* MAN. Is that what straight girls do? I didn't think so... But as I look around, really look, the world makes it seem as though every ******* thing is centered upon finding and keeping a man. And I don't want one. And I resent having to explain that day in and day out to everybody I ever meet, and even to people who have known me for years and KNOW how I feel about the subject. And no, nothing set this off- this is how it is all the time. I am just disgusted sometimes, that if I don't shout constantly (obnoxiously) people will slide me into my designated spot in the world- a white picket fence with a hubby and 2.5 kids and a small adhd medication habit- and I will be LOST to that. Obliterated by what is expected of me. I'm not doing it. I will never do it. I don't want a man. I don't want to BE a man. I don't want to marry a man. Honestly, on days when I truly allow myself to think about this subject in depth, I don't even want to LOOK at a ******* man. I don't want to know that because my hair is long and my waist happens to be 20 inches, men find me attractive. That my long eyelashes and high heels make it oh-so-hard-to-believe I'm not straight, and that much more disappointing if, in fact, they ever do believe me on the subject. I don't want to look up by accident and see a guy leering at my ***. I don't want my sarcastic remarks taken as flirting. I don't want to ever hear the phrase "You're too pretty to be a lesbian." again. I'm not gay because I'm angry at men. I'm angry at men because I'm a woman. Being gay happens to slide the binary into focus even more. Masculinity is valued. Femininity is insulting. There are classes on it. And I understand that not all men are *******, but honestly... all men take from me. They do. I'm sorry if that offends you, or if that makes it hard to view the world the way you do, but hey, it offends me. Offense is not an order of change. It's how you feel. And I am deeply offended that men win over me. I'm offended that it's a contest, and I'm offended that I am ill equipped to compete. I'm offended that women seem to see having a boyfriend as an achievement, as something you earn and flaunt and show off to other girls and boast of, when I was hardly able to hold hands with the girl I loved in high school, in fear that her family would find out. I'm offended that she couldn't be proud to be with me the way she'd be proud to bring a boy home and plunk him down at the dinner table on Thanksgiving- "Look, Ma, I got one!" I will always be offended. I don't expect anything to be done about it. But I do sit up nights and think about it. I do. It bothers me that men are worth more than I am- and for what? What are they really that I am not? The answer is very simple and utterly infuriating in its pointlessness: They are men.
This would be the rant that ended up on facebook this morning... And this would be the comment I left below it:
(I swear to god, do NOT comment on here and try to begin a debate about individuals and how men are all different people and blanket statements are unfair and- no. I happen to have a brain. I do know this. I'm talking big picture, large scale, the gender that rules the earth and has since the dawn of time, and the things I've lost because of the culture that has grown out of that. And so help me, if you try to start an argument about how I'm actually the one victimizing people, I will lose my mind. It is my right to be offended, and if you are offended by my offense, that is your right. And we both have our lovely emotional rights, and we needn't talk about it. Okay? Okay.)