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.