Sexism: When Rad Brains Fail

Ingredients for this My Time: stupid idiots and their stupid faces, drinking, a gal pal to bitch with, pajamas that just say no, and a night or four in.

Oh Darlings, darlings, darlings. When was the last time you were "poked" on Facebook by some moron sent to the future from the early 2000s in his attack plan, and all 1950s in his head? Let's talk about SEXISM. Lately my gap pals and I have had a pile of bullshit loaded on our vagina carts, and YET, no payout of a hard penis to make amends for such trifling. Then again, we have closed our bank accounts to such payments because mixed metaphors make more fun than the men with brains and Facebook accounts. Here's some of what we're sick of.

Smart White Nerds in Academia.

Hey Assholes, all of you in the US who work in contemporary literature of the world? You use words like "neoliberal" and oppose racism, genocide, Republicans, Nafta, and support Occupy movements, political action, local farms, comic books to discuss world issues, radical left publication, and theoretically women's rights to the things you haven't ever had to discuss as a "right?"

Here's a fucking clue: don't try to fuck every single one of the women around you in your profession. BUT FOR WHY, you ask. Well, they're your colleagues. Sure, banging happens, but maybe you shouldn't send out one mass text to multiple women in your profession, hoping one bites, "poke" them on Facebook like some nerd, ask them all "so you want to go fuck?" as a PICK-UP LINE, or slam your body against theirs and grab an ass in a conference lobby. Guess what you are? A sexist. A man with great ideals who can't even HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH A WOMAN without objectifying her let alone befriend a woman or consider her a colleague. Good job having great morals that mean nothing in actual daily or yearly life. And we women you don't objectify? Well, that's worse. We don't get the benefit of at least a nasty look up and down to take home later to our vibrators because we're nothing. While the harem of women you try to bang laugh at your nasty face and/or bang you and talk about it later to all of the rest of us ladies, the ones you openly call UGLY or don't even mention are farther down the totem pole of the profession than the ones you give a second to because you want to bang or bang again. It's unclear: as sexual beings who like sex and sexy stuff, we don't even know what you find sexually attractive.

Go back to your nerd convention, you measly, sociopathic, never-fucked-in-my-teenage-years-so-making-up-for-lost-time-and-narrow-ideas-about-women piece of shit. You exist, and it needs to be okay at some point for all of us to talk about how you exist and ruin progressive intellectual and empathetic collaboration, mentorship, and art. Let the women who fuck you be condemned to fuck you.

Looked out at the publications you subscribe to, lately? New York Review of Books?

London Review of Books? Are you all competing for the absence of women as a way to somehow have your very own vagina, i.e. absence? Just because you read and teach Fun Home and Persepolis doesn't mean you have taken a long look in your nerd mirror to see how you treat your fellow female colleagues. Your equals.

What's just as bad is the women who sleep with you, don't tell anyone, then bring up how disgusting you are and say they would never sleep with you.

The shame you bring to their bodies, already clearly so fucked up that they can't say to themselves "I'm an adult woman and I'm allowed to sleep with adult men, whether they be creeps, studs, or people I have an actual emotional interest in." How is it that I've heard recently by adult women who pull this kind of strange, anti-feminist, lying to girlfriends in some convoluted way, sad shit and proclaim: "I'm so worried about what my father/my family/my siblings/my peers would think if I slept with someone [that you already did sleep with, Honey]." You are an adult woman and no Nerd Asshole you sleep with cares about what anyone thinks about him. You're his colleague, his student, his teacher, his peer, his something in the world because he does not exist in isolation even though his penis thinks he does. No one has told him that it's not okay to not think about these things. Give yourself a break. Think about them half as much if your desire for sex is paramount. Ladies: it's okay to have sex; it's not okay to lie to girlfriends about sex with men, or to punish yourself for what people might think about you for having sex.

Yes, we all have issues, yes, it's important to be generous with people over condemning, yes, it's important to understand that these issues are more complicated that a simple rant makes them. Wait. NO. No no no. Don't do that. Don't avoid actually engaging--simply and clearly--a real actual thing that happens to women every day (at least where I am and who I'm with--perhaps I'm in a vacuum, because certainly this can't happen elsewhere, right?!) because you have a rad brain. Rape, genocide, murder, war: these are men's burdens because they instigate and carry them out. It takes courage for a man to say that rape is their problem, sexual harassment is their problem, death at large and the destruction of many things are their problem. And it takes courage for a women to say that she has been a victim of men's simply made poor decisions. It takes courage for us all to speak up. Rant. Rant. Rant. Say it and don't look back. Save your life every declarative sentence at a time. Don't let anyone with a rad brain complicate an issue for you that is as simple as you wanting to have a good life.

A conversation I had with a male colleague:

Me: "you shouldn't tell women writers in our classes that their work would be better if they had more sex. That's sexist. We're your colleagues. Some of us your senior colleagues."

Him: "you're racist."

Me: "No, I asked to speak to you because of your sexism."

Him: "But I love women! What are you, one of them--them feminist things? A lesbian? You need to get out more."

Me: "No, I'm straight and I have a boyfriend. And I go out all the time."

Him: "Really?"

Then he cries. Of course he was given the best fellowship for money and prestige in my profession. Which was awarded by people far more established in the profession. And never once in any course, talk, reading have any of those established people addressed his sexism. So what do we do? We laugh about him. And we are told not to worry about such things, it's not productive. Be quiet. Don't rant. I have a rad brain and I can tell you that.

When A Stabbing Prevents "My Time"

Ingredients for this My Time: a variety pill pack, a cell phone, a fear that others think "it's all in your head."

Sometimes you have your whole week planned out for some necessary, calming, agoraphobic, distrustful-of-the-world My Time.

Then upon elegantly crossing one leg over next in your 'UAR (That's my Jaguar. Most call it a "Jag," but that sounds too much like the one-syllable-named men my mother dated in the 90s, or like my favorite man of all time, GAR, from Mask):

Come to think of it, maybe my 'UAR can be called from now on my GAR, which is close enough to CAR that people won't notice, and when/if they do, they will simply be delighted.

I digress. So you're elegantly crossing one leg over your leg's companion (that's your other leg) in your car after taking a couple of "clouds" to calm the appearance of an old flame in public (lesson one: going into public has consequences) in front of the furniture store you plan to go into once you feel the "blue calm" of your "clouds" kick in so you can spend, spend, spend away that pain by purchasing large, fake branch coral mounted on plastic and scream that you'll take ANYTHING THAT IS FREE TRADE BECAUSE YOU'RE ETHICAL OH LIKE THAT GREAT PLASTIC RUG. Then your phone rings (lesson two: having a cell phone has consequences). It has been so long since it rang that you've forgotten what that sound was, so after first being alarmed that you took the wrong "clouds" you laugh quietly (good, they're working) and answer the phone which has an unknown number on it (excitement! who could be calling little ol' crazy me?! is it my dream man? is it Publisher's Clearinghouse? is it GAR?). And you get told that your sibling got stabbed by his girlfriend, in the jugular vein, with a ball-point pen. That little philly who manages a Southern California Forever 21 has got some real need for My Time, clearly. And yours has been ruined! For shame. Better call your doctor in Juarez who gets those great deals, because this is going to require immediate Botox to hide the terror, worry, shame for not stealing your sibling while he was a child, and love for men from your face.

Well, that was a waste of xanax, wasn't it? I mean, CLOUDS. So now what? Well, you listen to your mother.

She explains that he survived but has refused a hospital stay, that the police and EMTs arrived immediately, and after caring for him, even one officer felt comfortable enough with his not-gonna-die-today-so-suck-it-jugular-vein to joke, "do you like to write on yourself?" because of all the pen marks on your sibling's neck. The only thing more hilarious is their polyblend uniforms. Oh, Honey. You mother takes a long drag off of her Capri Lightl, adjusts her diamond earrings that you hear scratching her diamon-encrusted Iphone, and seeks to calm you, her only daughter, her beloved child, by reminding you of her moral center, remarking that she even told your sibling that "love and violence don't go together." As you pour some CALM SPIRIT Chinese supplements down your throat, there we go, that's nice, and attempt to repress some memories in your' UAR, you hang up the phone with her after she tells you that he is staying at a woman named Paris's house and has memorized your phone number, so will call after some much-needed healing. It's true, her moral center. Love and violence don't go together, hooray for moral truths! Which is why she doesn't remember having an axe in her head, preferring to call that time "when I fell on a lamp," as most women, tall as trees, are physically capable of.

But who knows what you remember? There is a difference between truth and fact, and since you've been feeling like no one thinks you're sane anyway, maybe she's right. She is Mother, after all, your first authority figure. Oh, while that occurs to you, take another pill. Maybe nothing has ever happened as you remember, or as Mother says, "Dagmar, why do you remember your life so wrong?" and maybe the actual words that you've heard that hurt the most, that make your neck throb not out of sympathy, but out of a wish that you had been stabbed instead of him, that you could protect him, (and secretly) that you would have physical, factual evidence of being fucked with instead of anecdotal references to what ails you (that anecdote being your own words, for what facts do they represent besides the fact that you are talking?). Your mother sounds so calm on the phone. She is comfortable with these kinds of situations, for they are usually her own--that is, if you trust yourself, your own memory, and your own ability to remember the actual events of your life and the actual words that have been spoken to you. And this is where the My Time is needed. You think it matters what other people think about you, your words, if what you say happened is true, but it doesn't matter, Honey. (lesson three: Oh Honey, staying alive, loving, breathing, speaking, they all have consequences, and the other option, well, it's so final for a girl like you who is still deciding what to call her Jaguar and what pills to take.)

The real ingredients for this My Time: do what the expensive, ambiguously European shrinks you pay just to be able to provide the world a totem of your sanity tell you to do: breathe deeply, Honey, you're safe. Give 'em Hell because you know what that is. And it's a gift being able to actually know the truth of Hell instead of speculating what could create it and how you might be involved.

As your favorite "martini mornings" advice column, Dear Sugar, tells you:

"You have my deepest sympathy and my most sincere understanding, but you’re not thinking clearly on this. You’re granting the crazy lady [in your head] way too much power. Your sorrow and fear has clouded your ability to be reasonable about your mortality. And if you continue in this vein it’s going to rob you of the life you deserve—the one in which your invisible inner terrible someone finally shuts her trap."