fatfeministkilljoy:

A week ago I was sitting in my office, which I share with five men who are the coordinators of the programs run out of our centre at the college (so there’s a power relationship there because I am just lowly faculty and support staff). Two of the dudes were in the office and this is the conversation that took place:

T: Hey B, you’re back from _______. How’s your father doing? Still hating women?

B: *laughs*

T: My mistake, not all women - just the assertive ones.

B: Ah yeah.

T: But he still likes the young women, doesn’t he? I don’t blame him. Even at a hundred I wouldn’t blame a man for loving young women.

And this moment is both significant and insignificant.

It’s significant because as T spews this garbage I am instantly reminded of how women disappear after a certain age, especially if they haven’t the time/money/ability/desire to try to stay looking young.

It’s insignificant for T. He doesn’t have a clue how violent his joking around actually is.

It’s significant because T felt comfortable saying this with a woman in the room who is arguably past her prime years of youth. I don’t matter. He knows I’m a staunch feminist and killjoy and still decides to say what he says without reflecting on how problematic it is.

It’s insignificant for T because a week later he is 100 years past this moment while I am laying in bed using my phone to type out a post on tumblr about the moment.

It’s significant because my entire body reacted in that moment. I felt shame, anger, fear, sadness. I felt it so deeply and it broke me a bit more.

And that’s the thing about being a woman under patriarchy. We are consistently breaking, piece by piece, because we constantly face micro- and macroaggressions that we must grin, bear, and stuff in our back pockets until we have a trusting shoulder to cry on or a blank page on which we can spill the words and the analysis and the emotions and the explanations.

T and B will never again think about that conversation, yet it is burned in my memory forever.