For some reason, it is so, so hard to break through all of our censors and write something honest. I don’t know for sure what all I’m scared of at night; my parents, the institution, pregnancy, the looming void of the possibility of sixty more years of this kind of stress, or even ten years. There’s that whole picture of who am I and oh god, I’m twenty without a job, I’ve failed in retail, I’m incapable of selling the latest trends and I’m too poor to say that I’m no longer my parent’s child but “me.”

If I knew who “me” was, it would be easier. And likely, saying that my parents control such a huge portion of my life as to stifle my individuality is more of an excuse than anything else. Surely, I can do whatever I want to do. I don’t have to eat. I might naturally breathe but I can find ways around that, putting my face in a bucket of water, what have you. But I love eating and I’m not getting anywhere near a bucket of water; I’ve found that the freedom of what I can ask realistically actually scares me more than anything else. Sure, I can threaten suicide, but then I can also threaten to question my compulsory heterosexual tendencies, and the possible consequences there are far more convoluted than death.

So really it comes to such a desperate state that it’s no longer, god give me the grace to know this and that and the difference of that from this and what this is and when it should happen, but more so just…god…or anything, something, self? Give me the grace. Why can’t I give myself grace if it’s supposedly falling from the sky? I want to know why my friends are willing to die rather than have abortions or a baby. I would like to know why you can love someone with all of your will, and yet still can’t save them from suicide, from desolation, from self-isolation. Is love enough? Ain’t I a woman? Shouldn’t I know, above all else, how to nurture myself?

And I do question myself every day. Men do it for me. So do women, occasionally, and I’m all right with that. Society can figure it out later. And I’m deathly afraid of rape, though oddly, I think that if I was raped and impregnated, I’d keep the baby. I think I’d like to throw it in his face that even from his greatest efforts to exert force over me, I can create and sustain life. Though in all other cases, I’d abort. Maybe I’ve let the power of my uterus get to my head.
Every night when I walk home late from a class, I do casual 360 degree turns to make sure that no harm is lurking. I feel nervous, but also like to fantasize that I am engaging in a personal expression of “taking back the streets.” Look at me, a woman at night, and if you touch me, I’ll stab you. Though, at the same time, I’m also terrified to think of what I’d do in the case of assault. When I was feeling my strongest, I was sexually assaulted in a college dorm, and from that experience I remember not resisting until the very end, simply because of my social concern of causing ruckus. It didn’t occur to me to scream; that might be too much of a bother. A bother, to stop a rape. So much as I would and will declare that I know that I am a woman, and a person, and an individual with rights and space that deserve a world free of invasion, I am scared shitless that I would not, will not scream. And as much as I’d like to break his face, I don’t know if I’d do that, or shut down, or go with it, which incidentally I think is really a form of shutting down that a lot of women engage in, and that occasionally the more unconcerned or unconvinced masses like to call consent.
I used to think that a great deal of vagaries existed regarding consent. The whole shutting down issue…if I didn’t technically say no, did I say yes? That’s not fair, is it? That I have to remember that I need to say “no” when I’m panicked? When society tells me that fundamentally, though I am empowered, I’m still a sexual object, I’m still weaker, I’m still the one that can be invaded; when all of that is coming out in my panic, and I don’t say “no,” did I say yes? Having now experienced a healthy relationship, with healthy sexual expression, one thing that I have learned is that in reality with loving sex, even in a relationship where it is assumed that we are open with each other sexually, there is always, always clear consent. The sexual act becomes a clear, mutual excursion and engagement, and there is no question in my mind, when I am having sex, that my partner wants me with him.
Honestly, I have very little sympathy then for men who claim that “well she didn’t say no.” If she is drunk, it is no, if she is drugged, the answer, again, is no. And if you don’t know her and you just go about your business with her without flirtation, but more so, with what I’m sure would and has been the sense, of sleeping with an animal that has given up or given in, the answer is still no. I do not believe that the situations in which I shut down during sexual assault could possibly have taken place without his knowledge that honestly, even without a direct “no,” I had not consented. I do not believe it. I do not believe it. I do not believe it. Consent comes from the heart. It is felt as such.
And in some delightful fit of fantasy, I then start to imagine a world in which, only in cases of rape, a man becomes pregnant every time he rapes a woman. Proof that he touched me. Rather than the belly that I develop, which always seems to be proof of my promiscuity. And since rape is so taboo, no one will ask, and no one will assume, that this could possibly be against my will.

Which raises another concern, because as I process all of this, it comes out to look a bit like latent man-hating. What I want to make clear, very clear, is that I love men, because I love people, and I love people as individuals, and not as societal complexes. What I hate is a history of oppression, and the knee jerk reaction that follows that leads many women to turn to man-hate, or to choice lesbianism, or to both, without the understanding that there is an unexplored depth to the history that goes far beyond rage. The history, if documents had not been burned or perhaps even prevented, I believe would demonstrate rage, and oppression, but also love. And I believe that we would see true communities across a spectrum of sexualities that had not been chosen, or manipulated, or turned to simply because of inverse nature, but that rather had been found through, again, that heartfelt consent of healthy sex, with others, and with ones self. There are tears in the truth of sexuality, and I think a fierce sadness in a lack of cultural understanding. And all of these complexities come together to form the female history and dialogue. From it all I believe that we can learn to speak gently to ourselves. Learning to hate the aspects of our nature which are feminine can lead to a different kind of rape: one which, contrary to the classic definition, is one which an individual inflicts upon themselves. And so now I sit here and I say to myself, after gentle questioning, that I will not hate myself because I am hetero. And I will not turn against myself because I love to nurture, and though I am the result of a convolution of genes and hormones and culture and oppression, I will continue to speak gently to myself as to who I am, and upon hearing an internal heartfelt consent, I will embrace each aspect of myself, one at a time. Regardless of the origins that my rage might argue.

In this way, I allow myself to overcome my gender while still embracing my sex, while still creating and embracing me. And in an era where there is rage coming from both genders, towards both genders, I don’t believe that this can remain a purely female action. I can’t hate men and it’s because I have a great empathy for the individual, and I do believe than an individual can struggle, regardless of their sex, against the bounds of gender. I wish that we would all speak gently to ourselves, and to each other.