Kidding.💁
In my yet-to-be-published book, "That Looks Good on You! You Should Buy It!", yet-to-be-published because if I knew how to get it published I'd be a completely different person, I joke in a scene that takes place in "Chestertons" (pseudonym for the ladies clothing store I worked in from 2013-2015) about not knowing what wave of Feminist/Feminism I am/we're in.💃👵👰👸👺
In real life, though, I long ago decided to swim through the waves as a plain old Feminist, thanks.💪
At the end of my first year of university, circa 1978, which I realize now was just a dozen years before my first child was born, I went out to Banff, Alberta, where there were summer jobs for the asking and a much higher minimum wage.👍
While there, I had the terrifying experience of being pinned down in the hallway of the men's section of the staff annex I lived in for a bit by a scrawny guy not much bigger than me. He was sexually assaulting me, other men watching and doing nothing to stop him, when a manager finally decided the show was over and told them to get him off me.💀
Of course I blamed myself for assuming his invitation to come up (men were on the second floor, women on the first) was friendly (we'd hung out for a bit at a street party), as opposed to an easily laid trap. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was a young woman. He was a man. I should have known he was a sexual predator who would try to rape me.👤
Oops. Feminism 101: Rape is about power, not sex.
And so it is. But whereas the Boomer women who transformed our society may have meant "power" more figuratively, I felt it literally, the upper body (particularly) strength differential, a strength differential I would have had to spend 24 hours a day/7 days a week trying to overcome.💪
So the lesson I learned was how easily a scrawny guy not much bigger than me could get me pinned down on the floor, and how hopeless it was trying to free myself and get away.👩
Oh and the other lesson I learned was how indifferent men can be to a woman being sexually assaulted by a man even when it's happening right in front of them and how easily they can put a stop to it as proven when they did so after another man told them to do it.👥
If I told you I'd experienced a similar assault by a man at a university party, while other men sat around and did nothing, you might think it was me.💃
No, it was him. I know because he went on to become a lawyer charged with attempted murder of his girlfriend (he was an amateur boxer). I found that out from the newspaper when another lawyer sued a "win a bachelor contest" and he was her prize.💩
Talk about not winning for losing. It was for charity, too. Ah, but this happened way back in the 90s and I'm sure even lady lawyers are done pretending bachelor auctions are empowering as opposed to quite the joke on them.👮
For my part, I have never assaulted anyone, man, woman, or child, nor have I failed to intervene when witnessing an assault, sexual or otherwise. In fact, while working at "Chestertons" I did many a closing shift, which meant waiting for a bus on Rideau (downtown Ottawa) and intervening in altercations every other night.😇
To be fair to men, it's easy for a middle-aged woman, we're invisible until we're not. Then - SURPRISE!👻
But it isn't unfair to men to point out how little they actually do to make our world safer, not for women, not for children, not even for themselves. And they could, you know. They have the power. If men wanted to, they could change our world from a Patriarchal prison to a Feminist paradise.💅
I heard Dolly Parton tell another one of her outrageous fibs the other day, "Ah luuv mehn." This after casually mentioning the beatin's and whuppin's and backhands from them for lookin' like she looks, the leavin' a couple of boyfriends behind (unsaid, "cuz Ah was tired of 'em tryin' to trap me in the shed"), and determination to get richer'n any of 'em all on her itty bitty lonesome, laughing at their misogyny all the way to the bank.💃
She doesn't "luuv mehn", of course. Women don't love men any more than men love women. And men hate women or we'd be living in... wait for it.... Dollywood! No... wait for it again... Barbieland!
So yes, I saw Barbie the other day. Ignore the naysayers ("it's not Feminist enough!") and "The Angries" ("it's man-hating!") and go see it. It's not just a visual dessert tray, it's the soft serve of existentialism you may not have realized you craved.💭
I left the theatre feeling more connected with other people and our shared human condition than I have in years.💖
Barbie 101: We all die.💘
And there it is. So simple, this life of ours we've made complicated, wasting it jockeying for power over each other, men accepting that women should live in fear of them rather than with love for them, as if we don't hate them for not helping us smash this Patriarchal construct imprisoning us all.👺
I didn't mean to write this, by the way, and it's but a scratch on the surface of the misogyny privileged white middle-class fourth or fifth generation Canadian me has experienced over her 64 years, but there seems to be an ever increasing disconnect out there as to the effect Patriarchy, a death cult, has had on all of us, and continues to have on all of us, as if it doesn't deny all of us the freedom to live as ourselves by its insistence women world over live in fear of men.💣
Also Barbie 101: Life doesn't have to be this way. Choose Feminism. Help make a better world for our children before we die.💞
