- Pocket-size feminism. The only other girl at the party is ranting about feminism. The audience, a sea of rape jokes, and snapbacks, and styrofoam cups, and me.
They gawk at her mouth like it is a drain clogged with too many opinions. I shoot her an empathetic glance and say nothing. This house is for wallpaper women.
What good is wallpaper that speaks? I want to stand up, but if I do, whose coffee table silence will these boys rest their feet on? These boys, I want to stand up, but if I do, what if someone takes my spot.
I want to stand up, but if I do, what if everyone notices I've been sitting this whole time? I'm ashamed of keeping my feminism in my pocket until it is convenient not to, like at poetry slams or women's studies classes. There are day I want people to like me more than I want to change the world.
Once I forgave a predator because I was afraid to start drama in our friend group. Two weeks later he assaulted someone else. I'm still carrying the guilt in my purse.
There are days I forget we had to invent nail polish to change color, and drugged drinks, and apps to virtually walk us home, and lipstick shaped mace, and underwear designed to prevent rape. Once a man behind me on an escalator shoved his hand up my skirt from behind, and no one around me said anything, so I didn't say anything because I didn't want to make a scene. Once an adult man made a necklace out of his hands for me and I still wake up in hot sweats haunted with images of the herd of girl he assaulted after I didn't report, all younger than me.
How am I to forgive myself for doing nothing in the mouth of trauma? Is silence not an act of violence too? Once I told the boy I was powerful and he told me to mind my own business.
Once a boy accused me of practicing misandry. "You think you can take over the world? " And I said, "No, I just want to see it.
" "I just need to know it is there for someone. " Once my dad informed me sexism is dead and reminded me to always carry pepper spray in the same breath. We accept this state of constant fear.
It's just another component of being a girl. We text each other when we get home safe, and it does not occur to us that not all of our guy friends have to do the same. You could literally saw a woman in half and it would still be called a magic trick, wouldn't it?
That's why you invited us here, isn't it? Because there is no show without a beautiful assistant. We are surrounded by boys who hang up our naked posters and fantasize about choking us and watch movies that we get murdered in.
We are the daughters of men who warned us about the news and the missing girls on the milk carton and the sharp edge of the world. They begged us to be careful, to be safe, then told our brothers to go out and play.
