I cannot believe, in retrospect, that I was ever conned into believing that talking about feelings with a dude you were hooking up with was this embarrassing uncool thing that only clingy girls did. Today, if somebody I was boning, however casually, got judge-y or weird on me because I tried to have a conversation about my feelings, I would laugh out loud, walk out and then make fun of him to all my friends. Seriously? Feelings are not spiders or the Ebola virus. If a guy gets “scared” when you try to discuss yours with him, you should dump him and find a new hookup buddy who isn’t terrified about something that your average kindergartner can handle hearing about on Sesame Street.
The clearest example is the repeated use of the word “tolerate.” Students would write that we must not persecute homosexuals, prostitutes, mental patients, and others, that we must be “tolerant” of them. But one tolerates only those that one considers less than equal, morally inferior, and weak; those equal to oneself, one accepts and respects; one does not merely allow them to exist, one does not “tolerate” them.
You won’t allow me to go to school.
I won’t become a doctor.
Remember this:
One day you will be sick.
Yes, we live in a sexist culture, in which women have no good choices when it comes to our bodies. We live in a sexist culture in which women are valued primarily as sexual objects, and at the same time are shamed for our sexuality. It seems to me that we have two choices as to how to respond to this. We can try to navigate the narrow, essentially impossible shoals of these contradictory expectations, and try to find that perfect, socially acceptable line between slut and prude.
Or we can say, “Fuck it. There is no way I can win — so I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want. I’m going to wear overalls, or I’m going to wear high heels. I’m going to have sex with twenty strangers in a night, or I’m not going to have sex with anyone. I’m going to dress conservatively and professionally in public at all times, or I’m going to sell naked pictures of myself on the Internet if I bloody well feel like it.”
And in saying, “I can’t win, so I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want to do,” we can create the beginnings of a victory. We can create the beginnings of a world where we really can win. We can create the beginnings of a world where we’re a little more free than the women who came before us… and where the women who come after us are a little more free than we are. We probably can’t create a perfect world, where women’s bodies aren’t commodified in the slightest (not in this generation, anyway). But we can create a better world: a world where women’s bodies and minds belong less to the patriarchy, and more to ourselves.
