I wrote this poem in 2017 as a belated addition to the many voices of the “Me Too” movement.
Now, we mourn the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court Justice. She did much to advance the cause of women’s rights and disability rights (when will we just call them human rights?) It seems a fitting time, to bring up, yet again, the subject of how society treats women.
We should remember, during the sixty days leading up to the US Presidential election, exactly what the attitude toward women has been, these past few years.
Are we, as women, willing to sacrifice our hard-won gains, in order to go back to “the good old days” when American was Great? A time when women were, routinely, and as a matter of course, treated differently than men, refused the respect and autonomy and pay and freedoms and rights that men had, and treated like infants and airheads who needed someone to hold their hand, guide their opinions and votes, and control their money?
This poem is a litany of slights, experienced over a lifetime. Which I can only attribute to my being a woman.
I was lucky. None of the things that happened to me were particularly outrageous. They did not seem surprising to me, when they happened. More like inevitable.
That is the cruelty of societal norms, when they are wrong. They make the victim feel as if she is to blame. To even speak of the wrong done to her brings shame upon the victim. And like many of my generation I have internalized that shame.
These slights, taken as a whole, were the meat and potatoes, the daily diet, of young women of my generation.
We hid our pain, minimized its significance, even as the number of slights grew.
But our time of confinement is past. Me Too was born, and this generation won’t stand for the unspeakable “it” of being treated worse, just for being a woman.
Not anymore.
Thanks for reading. And thank goodness, for warriors like RBG!
When did it all begin?
When a young man, or an old boy,
Sat on top of me and held me down,
In jest, no more than a game?
When he hurled insults like snowballs,
Battering my fragile self
Into submission,
To contrition,
To belief?
I was a dog.
I was unsightly.
I could turn all I saw into stone.
With the underlying assumption,
Unspoken,
That nothing mattered
But my looks.
Or did it begin with a forest romp,
To find my two boy pals,
We, not quite eight?
And then I came upon them
In our cabin hideout,
Ogling Playboy.
And when I looked, myself,
Aghast:
Such ripened fruit! Such womanhood!
Well, then, they sought to soothe me, with
“You’ll look the same someday.”
And I ran home, a mess of tears,
Not from the photos, or their meaning,
(Or that someone posed for money,)
But because I knew,
Despite my prayers,
I ‘d never
Be a boy.
For there lay power, freedom, fun,
None of which I knew.
We glued a scrapbook, Father’s Day,
A magazine-cut loaf of bread,
Our paper homage to the man
Who won it. Could we live
Without the strings he pulled?
Who’d let us?
It was the way of the world.
Or did it begin when,
Prepubescent,
He and I wrestled
On the front lawn,
And a stranger, unbidden,
Assigned a motive,
And bade us
To take it inside?
When the shame came,
Rage ran alongside it,
My innocence being
Inviolate.
For purity, then,
Was a thing much prized,
And a source of
Maidenly pride.
Did I recognize it,
In a catty note
Passed among teens
To condemn early bloomers?
Surely “flaunting your wares”
Was inevitable,
In a class of the envious
flat-chested.
“Are you there, God, It’s me…”
was condemned
And forbidden.
To protect our purity?
Or nudge us to read it?
We were taught by old women,
By widows and spinsters,
Could they have been
Warning, covertly?
Or was it when, Sunday,
Our Mary would show us
The Way?
Of long-suffering,
Humbleness, meekness,
Obedience, chastity,
Children.
Who, someday, would grow
(some of them, who were male)
To be masters of women
Themselves.
‘Twas the way of the cross
And Christ’s suffering:
The stations to walk,
Up the hill,
To our deaths.
Or maybe much later,
Alone in a house,
Four teens,
One-to-one correspondence.
But while they made out in the boiler room
We looked at each other,
Indifferent.
Or when, I was found,
Early-twenties, again,
In a home, all alone, with two men,
My friend disappeared to a bedroom, and I–
I ignored my intended,
and drunkenly called
an old boyfriend.
Not every chance to be
Taken advantage of
Was a near miss.
There’s that “black” night,
Censored from memory:
Rum, and Coke,
And missing shoes.
But a lady does not let herself
be led
Into such situations.
Nor does she
Elucidate,
When asked about it,
later.
How convenient, for
Her co-conspirator,
To bear no burden for
Her Foolishness.
It was her fault
And hers alone:
For how was he to know?
And yet, gone abroad,
The rumor persists,
There’s no lassies more loose
Than Americans.
How does one reply
To disbelief
At one’s failure to remain
Disloyal?
An adult half past twenty,
A working young woman,
Or would-be: the roadblocks continue.
Uncomfortable one-on-one interviews.
“Women drivers!”. The burden of proof,
That we’re somehow still worthy,
Despite our frail sex,
of a job.
“Can you get them to trust you?
As a woman, I mean. They’re foreign,
And not as evolved.”
I swallow the wound,
And persist in my sales pitch,
Full-knowing, the battle is lost.
But weary, I wonder,
Why shuttle off bigotry
To other shores,
When we have got plenty
At home?
But worst of all insults,
Blow of all blows!
I felt the thrust of it, then,
Its earthy nature,
When, back at my desk
During baby leave,
A file box as a cradle,
I’m aching from stitches,
Minutes from milking,
My newborn stashed below.
And he enters, consentless,
My own breeding sanctum,
He acts like he owns it.
(He does.)
And unleashes opinion
(I needed to hear it:
‘Twas for my own good)
While I wince.
He addresses me,
Disdainfully,
His hairy arms akimbo:
Only to say,
“Were it not for your type,
I’d consider hiring women.”
Copyright Andrea LeDew 2017
For more in the series leading up to the US Presidential election of 2020, see Sixty Days.
For an ode to The Rule of Law, inspired by the Supreme Court, see Suddenly Silent.
For a short-short story with a feminist bent, read Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Such sweet guys you know!