Thursday, January 5, 2012

Bathroom Monologue: I Am Not a Chauvinist

My career in politics began in ninth grade Health Class. Every Thursday we got a visitor, and our third visitor was very important to me. She was a specialist. This specialist asked our class a question to gauge how sexist we were. The premise alone had most of us stiff in our chairs.

I clutched my little fingers into a fist as she asked, “How do you prevent rape?”

The distressing answers, more from girls than boys, flew up with every hand.

“Stay away from alleys.”

“Don’t dress like a slut.”

“My mom keeps a knife in her purse.”

These answers disgusted me; how dare they put the onus on the victims? And these answers disgusted our specialist, who frowned with increasing severity. Hands fell pre-emptively, leaving me with hope that maybe I did have a good idea. It was the most reliable way to stop such crimes. I held up my arm at the same time as Ashley Harding. Ashley got called on first.

“Don’t rape anybody,” she said.

The specialist nodded a sanitary nod. This was what she wanted, and she launched into an explanation of why. As she began explaining the differences between a patriarchal and a feminist point of view, I sank in my chair. I was crushed. My idea didn’t fit either of these categories.

In retrospect, it was a blessing she didn't call on me. She would have quashed a revolution politics. If called upon, I'd have told the class: “Put cameras everywhere. Shoot people as necessary.”

Listening to her lecture, I realized while I wasn’t a feminist, I also wasn’t a chauvinist: I was a totalitarian.

9 comments:

  1. Equal opportunity, that's what it's all about. Haha.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmmm. Well, that IS one solution. And I think my health/hygiene teacher might have even agreed...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah, maybe it was best the totalitarian wasn't called upon.

    ReplyDelete
  4. As someone who works late and goes to school late, both in bad neighborhoods, I'm for it. My pink mace is cute, but I really don't want to have to use it. John Wiswell for dictator!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Are you launching your campaign for dictator?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Good one! I expected him to have the same answer as Ashley Harding, but his was much funnier (and scarier, really). Seems to be coming true more and more, but hopefully the totalitarians won't take over completely.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Guess that makes this suffragist a totalitarian too. but I prefer castration to shooting.

    And horsewhipping for girls who lie about rape to get guys in trouble.

    ReplyDelete

Counter est. March 2, 2008