Thursday, March 23, 2006
i want to be a big girl.
i realize that this is completely unfair, but:
large people can really bug me.
sometimes when someone who is the size of two of me is in front of me and not doing anything particularly objectionable other than being so big i cannot move or see past him, i am suffused with inexplicable rage. i want to push him over. i want to mock his turtley way of moving. it's gross, and not like me. but i rage.
most of this is commuter rage, and has to do with men who are both large and have differing views of personal space rules than i do. the other day i was sitting on the train between two such men, both of whom had their thighs spread wide, squishing middle me into an extraordinarily prim pose: knees together, arms crossed at the elbow squishing breasts inward, hands on knees. even better, they both had wide, wide, be-coated shoulders that poked out further than mine, effectively pinning my smaller shoulders up against the back wall.
i was irate. and like most road rage, there wasn't really anywhere to go with it. i could have stood up, but i was exhausted and wanted to sit. i could have passive-aggressively "nudged" them the whole ride home--okay, i did kind of do that. but not like a total nerd. i just gave a sharp rebuke whenever the already inappropriate encroaching hit a new spike in ridiculousness. but: to no avail. when i leaned forward to take something out of my bag, claiming for a heartbeat my actual body-width in space over a 45 degree angle, the bookend men shifted for a second, and then spilled right back into my lap.
and here is the thing that is about to color the rest of life some shade of red almost all the time: gender fallout is everywhere. i don't think either of these guys got on the train looking for a woman to oppress, but i also don't think they would have expected a man to live with the squish. perhaps they would have stopped short of squishing him so handily in the first place, either out of a conscious or unconscious sense of respect for a man's personal space, or the simple fear of getting punched. or maybe because men's parts are sometimes less squishy.
and on my end, i ended up railing at myself about what, exactly, was keeping me from turning to either man and saying, excuse me, but could you move your knee? could you take your elbow out of my guts? could you stop pinning me to wall? do you see that i could hold a penny between my thighs right now because you are pushing them together with your gigantic heedless man legs, which are spread wide open while my own are pinched like tweezers? what is wrong with you that you can't register that you are crushing another person? and granted, i have not yelled or hit you or asked you to move, but how big a person do i have to be for you to see me/feel me/automatically respect my right to one whole seat's worth of subway real estate without my shooting off a fucking flare?
however mad i was at those guys, the voice in my head was my own, and it was saying, you're letting someone smash you. literally. and however wise it is (it's now my own turn not to want to get punched, or sworn at, or publicly smacked down) you're not saying a word.
telling, too, is that i don't really want to write about this here. i have revised this post seven times, my guard up for anything that seems shrill. even among the people i know and love, i'm cautious about trotting out my observations for fear that everyone will brand me as a one-note violin. which, frankly, is the worst part of all of this: not only is it hard to buck your nurture enough to realize the amazing amount of untoward stuff going on, saying something even one-third of the time you encounter it runs you a serious risk of being perceived as a humorless cult-follower with a gigantic chip on your shoulder.
me, too. i don't like those people who can't think of anything but their outrage. they are not fun at cocktail parties. not to mention how inherently suspicious, and easy to dismiss, someone seems when she claims the world is against her.
i know there are many middles in the ground between tireless and oblivious. but just last night i brought up the idea that one thing in our relationship was possibly affected by the gender norms that surround us.
and he looked like i had accused him of working for the nazi party. i literally saw this thing slide down over his eyes as he checked out of the conversation, as he denied out of hand something that, honestly, can hardly even be debated. the monkey would tell you he's a feminist, but somehow believes that gender can be discounted within the happy circle of our apartment. and i caught myself thinking: am i on thin ice? if i speak up everytime i see gender issues at play in our arguments (about housecleaning! about talking about feelings! i mean, duh!), am i going to be dismissed? worse, is the monkey going to go out drinking with his friends and say, "you know, i'm as feminist as the next guy, but since she started school, louella's really gone off the deep-end on this gender stuff."
sigh.
the desire to be liked has done feminism greater harm than phyllis schafly and james dobson combined. this happens every day: a man passes judgment on my eyes or my boobs or my smile on my way to the train, someone grabs a friend's ass on a dark street and then pauses, smiling, to watch her reaction; i see an insulting television commercial, the guy next to me in line is calling his girlfriend a bitch repeatedly, to her face, and she is just standing there and i am, too. try to tell someone about it every day, and you're a crank or a whiner. and most days i don't say much about it to anyone, but i have to think the effects are cumulative. someday it's going to be me wearing body armour onto the F train, and smashing all comers in the face.
maybe then i'll get a whole row to myself.
large people can really bug me.
sometimes when someone who is the size of two of me is in front of me and not doing anything particularly objectionable other than being so big i cannot move or see past him, i am suffused with inexplicable rage. i want to push him over. i want to mock his turtley way of moving. it's gross, and not like me. but i rage.
most of this is commuter rage, and has to do with men who are both large and have differing views of personal space rules than i do. the other day i was sitting on the train between two such men, both of whom had their thighs spread wide, squishing middle me into an extraordinarily prim pose: knees together, arms crossed at the elbow squishing breasts inward, hands on knees. even better, they both had wide, wide, be-coated shoulders that poked out further than mine, effectively pinning my smaller shoulders up against the back wall.
i was irate. and like most road rage, there wasn't really anywhere to go with it. i could have stood up, but i was exhausted and wanted to sit. i could have passive-aggressively "nudged" them the whole ride home--okay, i did kind of do that. but not like a total nerd. i just gave a sharp rebuke whenever the already inappropriate encroaching hit a new spike in ridiculousness. but: to no avail. when i leaned forward to take something out of my bag, claiming for a heartbeat my actual body-width in space over a 45 degree angle, the bookend men shifted for a second, and then spilled right back into my lap.
and here is the thing that is about to color the rest of life some shade of red almost all the time: gender fallout is everywhere. i don't think either of these guys got on the train looking for a woman to oppress, but i also don't think they would have expected a man to live with the squish. perhaps they would have stopped short of squishing him so handily in the first place, either out of a conscious or unconscious sense of respect for a man's personal space, or the simple fear of getting punched. or maybe because men's parts are sometimes less squishy.
and on my end, i ended up railing at myself about what, exactly, was keeping me from turning to either man and saying, excuse me, but could you move your knee? could you take your elbow out of my guts? could you stop pinning me to wall? do you see that i could hold a penny between my thighs right now because you are pushing them together with your gigantic heedless man legs, which are spread wide open while my own are pinched like tweezers? what is wrong with you that you can't register that you are crushing another person? and granted, i have not yelled or hit you or asked you to move, but how big a person do i have to be for you to see me/feel me/automatically respect my right to one whole seat's worth of subway real estate without my shooting off a fucking flare?
however mad i was at those guys, the voice in my head was my own, and it was saying, you're letting someone smash you. literally. and however wise it is (it's now my own turn not to want to get punched, or sworn at, or publicly smacked down) you're not saying a word.
telling, too, is that i don't really want to write about this here. i have revised this post seven times, my guard up for anything that seems shrill. even among the people i know and love, i'm cautious about trotting out my observations for fear that everyone will brand me as a one-note violin. which, frankly, is the worst part of all of this: not only is it hard to buck your nurture enough to realize the amazing amount of untoward stuff going on, saying something even one-third of the time you encounter it runs you a serious risk of being perceived as a humorless cult-follower with a gigantic chip on your shoulder.
me, too. i don't like those people who can't think of anything but their outrage. they are not fun at cocktail parties. not to mention how inherently suspicious, and easy to dismiss, someone seems when she claims the world is against her.
i know there are many middles in the ground between tireless and oblivious. but just last night i brought up the idea that one thing in our relationship was possibly affected by the gender norms that surround us.
and he looked like i had accused him of working for the nazi party. i literally saw this thing slide down over his eyes as he checked out of the conversation, as he denied out of hand something that, honestly, can hardly even be debated. the monkey would tell you he's a feminist, but somehow believes that gender can be discounted within the happy circle of our apartment. and i caught myself thinking: am i on thin ice? if i speak up everytime i see gender issues at play in our arguments (about housecleaning! about talking about feelings! i mean, duh!), am i going to be dismissed? worse, is the monkey going to go out drinking with his friends and say, "you know, i'm as feminist as the next guy, but since she started school, louella's really gone off the deep-end on this gender stuff."
sigh.
the desire to be liked has done feminism greater harm than phyllis schafly and james dobson combined. this happens every day: a man passes judgment on my eyes or my boobs or my smile on my way to the train, someone grabs a friend's ass on a dark street and then pauses, smiling, to watch her reaction; i see an insulting television commercial, the guy next to me in line is calling his girlfriend a bitch repeatedly, to her face, and she is just standing there and i am, too. try to tell someone about it every day, and you're a crank or a whiner. and most days i don't say much about it to anyone, but i have to think the effects are cumulative. someday it's going to be me wearing body armour onto the F train, and smashing all comers in the face.
maybe then i'll get a whole row to myself.
