Abuse doesn’t come from people’s inability to resolve conflicts but from one person’s decision to claim a higher status than another. So while it is valuable, for example, to teach nonviolent conflict-resolution skills to elementary school students… such efforts contribute little by themselves to ending abuse. Teaching equality, teaching a deep respect for all human beings — these are more complicated undertakings, but they are the ones that count.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

Racism is to White America as domestic violence is to people who have never experienced it: Difficult to comprehend but easy to assign blame. Usually upon the wrong party.

The best way to describe how the systematic racism present in every pillar of life in the United States – from the job market, to housing, education, wealth distribution, incarceration, and healthcare – affects black communities would be to characterize it as an abusive relationship.

Nationwide domestic violence.

Black communities experience physical abuse at the hands of the police, financial abuse at the hands of the municipal courts, and emotional abuse at the hands of the media.

This is neither an exaggeration, nor a wagging finger at black communities for being “victims”. Far too often discussions about violent relationships revolve around the abused (“Why does he continue to make excuses for her? Why doesn’t she just leave?”), and ignore the actions of the abuser. This will not be one of those conversations.

Abusive relationships consist of emotional and/or physical abuse for the purposes of gaining & maintaining total control over the target. Abusers use manipulation, coercion, violence, and intimidation to wear the subject down. The most telling sign of an abusive relationship is fear.

If you have not noticed the chants and signs of the protesters, the numerous Op-Eds, the weeping parents (then you are fucking blind); the United States has created an environment in which black communities live in near-constant fear & intimidation of the state. Black communities have their children taken away by Child Protective Services at higher rates (source 1, source 2) for minor infractions (Baltimore Mom is currently being investigated by CPS) or false rumors prompted by something as innocuous as an Instagram Photo. Black communities are incarcerated at disproportionately high rates, effectively breaking apart families, crippling their earning power, and in the case of felons removing their right to vote. Black communities have their assets seized by authorities for little or no reason, such as in Missouri where city governments treat their black citizens like personal piggy banks to be shaken down for money at a whim (source). And they are murdered in broad daylight by police officers – the vast majority of whom will never face an internal investigation let alone criminal charges, while those we have had the luck to catch on video still miraculously come out unscathed (or $600k better for it).

But an abusive relationship starts long before punches are thrown and shots are fired. It starts with emotional abuse and manipulation. Abusers will often isolate their subjects and remove their social safety nets so they have no-one to turn to, nowhere to go. Abusers will often use manipulation to fool others into thinking their subject is the crazy one. Bandcroft calls this “the Water Torturer”.

“The central attitudes driving the Water Torturer are:
You are crazy. You fly off the handle over nothing.
I can easily convince other people that you’re the one who is messed up.
As long as I’m calm, you can’t call anything I do abusive, no matter how cruel.”

― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

Sound familiar?

During Baltimore Uprising our six (SIX!) media conglomerates provided incredibly biased, sensationalistic, and derogatory coverage of the protests. Word choice is important, and they chose to call protesters “thugs” and the protests themselves “riots”, while simultaneously bypassing footage of the vastly larger peaceful demonstrations.

10,000 strong & totally peaceful in Baltimore. Photo credit: Black Westchester

90% of the media in America is owned by 232 media executives (who I’m guessing are a bunch of old white guys). Baltimore residents were publicly demonized by the media and criminalized by the National Guard for daring to raise their voices. For daring to express their discontent at this continued abuse. For daring to demand justice Freddie Gray.

“Your abusive partner doesn’t have a problem with his anger; he has a problem with your anger. One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your voice shouldn’t rise and your blood shouldn’t boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone…. Then he uses your anger against you to prove what an irrational person you are.”

―Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

This is how the media manipulated us:

Baltimore’s anger towards America’s crooked judicial system was distorted by the news until the subject of their anger (their abusers: the police) was no longer the focus. The the six police officers murder suspects enjoyed temporary anonymity while CNN happily published Freddie Grey’s rap sheet and looped coverage of young black men stomping out windshields. By diverting attention from the cause of their outrage, Baltimore’s anger became the subject.

When the true cause of Baltimore’s rage was concealed from view and only the violent effects were broadcasted, Baltimore’s justified anger lost it’s justice in the public eye.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is textbook emotional abuse. Many of us sided with the wrong party back in April.

The media conglomerates operating in America (all six of them) may have fooled us, but they aren’t fooling the rest of the world, who have been looking on in horror as our rampant police brutality problem crisis quickly became an international embarrassment. On May 11th, 2015, the UN released a scathing review of the United States.

“Use of excessive force by police was a major part of this year’s UPR, and the fact that we still don’t have a reliable national figure to know how many people are killed by police or what the racial breakdown is of those people is a travesty,” [Alba Morales, Human Rights Watch] said. “A nation as advanced as the U.S. should be able to gather that number.”

The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment. (AlJazeera America, 2015)

When the media is biased (which is always. Facts dribble down through multiple layers of corporate filters before ending up on our television screens) it manipulates public perception. Influencing public opinion to the point where “Six in 10 whites thought people in Baltimore were just looking for an excuse to loot” (The Atlantic, 2015) is textbook emotional abuse and manipulation.

Now let’s move on to financial abuse.

Financial abuse is a method of exerting control over the subject by cutting off financial resources.

Financial abuse includes sabotaging the subject’s attempts to get or keep a job or dragging down credit scores. More aggressive forms include forcibly taking the victim’s money or refusing to provide enough money to subsist on. More subtle forms include periodically breaking or hiding the subject’s belongings (forcing him/her to buy replacements unnecessarily), or demanding that money be spent on the abuser’s wants instead of on the subject’s needs.

Now, let’s break it down with a real-life example, and hopefully we will all have a better idea of the infuriating catch-22 black communities are stuck in:

1. A black individual in poverty gets a minor fine – say for speeding or driving without a seatbelt. We know that in Missouri, black drivers were 66 percent more likely than white drivers to be stopped. This happens because “80-plus municipal courts and 90-plus municipalities profit from poverty by extracting money from residents for minor infractions such as moving violations, occupancy permit violations, business permit violations and code violations” (Washington Post, 2014). Now, look one paragraph up: Financial abuse involves forcibly taking the victim’s money.
2. Because this individual is in poverty, he or she lacks the funds to pay the ticket in a timely manner. When you live paycheck to paycheck, a $90 ticket is the difference between food and electricity. The federal minimum wage has stagnated at $7.25 for the past six years, and minorities are disproportionately concentrated in low-paying jobs. Financial abuse is refusing to provide enough money to subsist on.
3. This results in a suspended license and a traffic court date. “Defense attorneys in the St. Louis area have come to call these “poverty violations” — driving with a suspended license, expired plates, expired registration and a failure to provide proof of insurance” (Washington Post, 2014). Because many low-wage workers do not have the flexibility to take time off for court dates, or the resources to find alternative transportation, they weigh the risk of being fired against the risk of driving on a suspended license, and choose their job. Financial abuse includes sabotaging the subject’s attempts to get or keep a job.
4. Missed court dates, outstanding fines, and driving on a suspended license results in an arrest warrant, and this individual is thrown in jail. By the time this person gets out, he or she has probably lost their job, and owes even more money to the municipal courts. In debt and without any source of income, credit scores tank. Financial abuse includes dragging down credit scores.
5. Now this person who was already in poverty is in deeper debt, with an arrest record that makes it difficult to get a new job, and no way to rectify the situation. This is how the cycle of poverty is both created and perpetuated. “In Calverton Park, for example, about a fourth of the residents live below the poverty line — and 66 percent of the town’s revenue comes from fines issued and collected by its court. In Pine Lawn, which I visited for my original report, nearly a third of residents are below the poverty line, and nearly half the revenue comes from the court. In Normandy, it’s 35 percent below the poverty line and 41 percent revenue from fines, court fees and citations” (Washington Post, 2014) Financial abuse includes demanding that money be spent on the abuser’s wants instead of on the subject’s needs.

Now tell me the system isn’t rigged. Just try to tell me that racism doesn’t exist, or that financial abuse isn’t a central part of keeping black communities in the hole. I dare you.

So now we’ve covered emotional abuse & manipulation by the media, and financial abuse by the municipal courts. With all of this in mind, it is finally time to talk about the most obvious, openly egregious type of abuse: Physical abuse in the form of police brutality.

The most prominent link between racism and physical abuse is the trait of the abuser to see you as property rather than as a person. The dehumanization of black bodies and the inability to see the humanity of other races, is central to racism.

“Objectification is a critical reason why an abuser tends to get worse over time. As his conscience adapts to one level of cruelty—or violence—he builds to the next. By depersonalizing his partner, the abuser protects himself from the natural human emotions of guilt and empathy, so that he can sleep at night with a clear conscience. He distances himself so far from her humanity that her feelings no longer count, or simply cease to exist. These walls tend to grow over time, so that after a few years in a relationship my clients can reach a point where they feel no more guilt over degrading or threatening their partners than you or I would feel after angrily kicking a stone in the driveway.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

The systematic dehumanization of African Americans by the United States stems most obviously from slavery. But I think most of White America really had no conception of how brutal slavery was until they saw Django Unchained (which honestly was still an understatement), and even then the mental cartwheels people do to dismiss the very relevant fact that America was built on the backs of black slaves continues to amaze me.

10 points for Amy Schumer

Despite the fact that American wealth was accumulated through the exploitation of black families who have never received reparations for their work or suffering, White America continues to view Black America as more unintelligent, unmotivated moochers of the social welfare net.

“In 1990, when first assessed, roughly 65% of whites rated blacks as less hard-working than whites, while just under 60% rated blacks as less intelligent than whites.”(source)

Please note that the above graph only stretches from 1990 to 2008. So what if racial attitudes radically changed in the past seven years? …Don’t worry, they haven’t. Most recently,

“Over 3 in 10 white millennials believe blacks to be lazier or less hardworking than whites, and a similar number say lack of motivation is a reason why they are less financially well off as a group. Just under a quarter believes blacks are less intelligent.” (Washington Post, April 2015)

True cognitive dissonance and/or denial at it’s best: Caucasians rely far more often, and far more heavily on our social welfare programs than their black counterparts, yet still have the gall to call them “lazy”.

“…distribution of benefits no longer aligns with the demography of poverty. African-Americans, who make up 22 percent of the poor, receive 14 percent of government benefits, close to their 12 percent population share.

White non-Hispanics, who make up 42 percent of the poor, receive 69 percent of government benefits – again, much closer to their 64 percent population share.”

-(New York Times, 2012)

Or for all you visual people:

“Poor” is defined as income that is 125% of the poverty threshold. Under this definition in 2012 20.8% of American citizens were considered poor.

But I digress. Back to physical abuse.

It is important to recognize that the brutality of slavery was present 150 years ago, and if you are a millennial, some of your great grandparents were alive for that. Three generations. Scars do not heal that quickly.

That means that when you encounter African Americans in your daily life, their great grandparents were dealing with shit like this:

Slave owners used to outfit their workers with “iron bits” or iron masks to keep hungry plantation laborers from eating the cane sugar they were harvesting.

Or this:

A youngster in a Georgia forced labor camp around 1932 is subjected to an ugly form of punishment. – Photo: John Spivak (Please note- 1932 is long after the civil war)

That was then, this is now:

Tamir Rice was twelve years old when he was shot in a park within eyesight of his living room. Original reports claimed that police pulled up and repeatedly ordered him to drop his “weapon” (an airsoft gun with the orange indicator taken off). When the above surveillance video surfaced, it became obvious that the responding officers were fucking liars because they shot him less than two seconds after pulling up. This happened in Ohio: An open-carry state.

Michael Brown was gunned down by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. If you think he deserved to be shot for stealing a cigar… I don’t know what to do with you.

John Crawford was gunned down inside a Walmart because he was holding an airsoft gun that he had picked up off the shelf inside the store. And again, this was in Ohio, an open carry state. But everybody knows Open Carry laws are only for white people.

And we all know about Trayvon Martin.

George Zimmerman has six mug shots from a spattering of domestic violence charges and gun altercations. He still owns guns.
Trayvon Martin has an obituary.

I wish I could do every slain individual justice in this blog, but the truth of the matter is there are too many. Which is fucking depressing.

Click the image to read more in-depth profiles about these victims of police brutality. The FBI collects statistics on citizen deaths every year submitted by police jurisdictions (it’s voluntary, not a requirement, so…. selection bias much?). They separate these deaths murders into ““Justifiable Homicide by Weapon, Law Enforcement” and… well they actually don’t publish numbers on non-justifiable homicides (murder) by law enforcement. Also, I heard on NPR that the annual FBI statistics reports are complete bullshit, and should be taken with  a grain pound of salt.

So how do we break the cycle? In traditionally (tradition, how horrifying) abusive relationships, the woman either successfully escapes, or she dies.

Here’s my solution for social constructs of this nature (sexism, racism, homophobia, etc.): We all have to chip away at the block with our tiny hammers, our individual voices. An ocean is made of a million drops, and it takes all of us to create change. I do it by writing. Other people do it by public speaking. Artists will create thought-provoking pieces, etc. I firmly  believe that opinions are changed not by facts, but emotions. (So while STEM is important, it bothers me that the humanities have gained the reputation of being “useless”)

The Civil War would not have gotten it’s timely momentum if it had not been for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a fictional novel published in 1852 (by a woman! Harriet Beecher Stowe) that allowed people to empathize with slaves in a way that was not possible before, when the vast majority of Americans viewed black people as objects, as property, but certainly not people.

So whatever you can do to speak up, raise awareness, provoke thought, stimulate difficult conversations, just do it (sharing this post counts… I suppose). You may think your talents are useless, but everybody has something to contribute.

This is easily the longest post I’ve ever written, so I’m going to tie it up with a bit of my opening quote from Bancroft: “Teaching equality, teaching a deep respect for all human beings — these are more complicated undertakings, but they are the ones that count.”

Racism and our other social ills that continue to plague us in 2015 can be solved with the simple concept that all people are people (I never thought I would have to say that, but apparently it’s necessary), and every person deserves basic human decency, basic respect.

With the concept of respect, I often hear people say, “You have to earn my respect. Respect is not given, it is earned.”

To which I will say, “Wrong, asshole.”

Respect for another person’s humanity is a baseline requirement if you are a decent person. Nobody should have to earn the right to exist without being dehumanized. Black people deserve to exist without getting shot in the streets, without being profiled as shoplifters every time they step into a store, without people automatically assuming the worst of them. Full stop.

Respect is going to be the oil that greases the gears of our society, currently rusted and crusted up with the ideas of the old, the traditional, the conservative (looking at you, GOP).

I will leave you with this:

“Abuse and respect are diametric opposites: You do not respect someone whom you abuse, and you do not abuse someone whom you respect.”

― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men]

It is no fun being a Feminist Killjoy (as the name would imply).

It is no fun being the girl at the Seahawks party who asks the friend-of-a-friend that she just met to stop yelling the word “raped” (“DID YOU SEE THAT? WE JUST RAPED THEIR DEFENSE”) when there are other perfectly good words like “dominated” or “wrecked”, only to realize that:

1. When you attempt to propose alternative words for “raped”, most of the following suggestions will feel unnecessarily sexually violent and,
2. When you interrupt to a dude at a sports-watching party to unwittingly (I swear!)  define “rape” via synonyms, when two seconds earlier he had been inhaling hot wings and yelling at the TV in 12th man bliss,

You have officially begun your transmogrification into a Feminist Killjoy. Congratulations. Here is your complimentary cross-stitch lapel pin from Etsy that says ironically (or not? I can never tell) “male tears” with a pair of ovaries making a cute little Feminist-Killjoy-ovary-heart-frame around the edges.

The last time I wrote and published a blog post was May 21, 2015, 2:48pm PDT. Well over a year ago. Or 11,544 hours / 692,640 minutes / 41,558,400 seconds, depending on how you want to think about it.

Well-meaning friends and coworkers have asked me if I am still writing, or when I am coming out with a new blog post, and I wouldn’t really have a good answer as to why I had stopped writing for so long – only that I had.

Perhaps I could have said [Dr. Evil voice + pinky] “I am spreading my devious feminist seeds of mind-control via inception in my friends’ brains, rather than to the masses via blog.”

The truth is that righteous outrage is exhausting. Being fully aware of the extent of the dehumanization of women – both in your own little bubble and around the world – on a daily basis is simultaneously maddening and draining. I wake up, wait at the bus stop and lean against a wall so my backside isn’t available for the occasional brush (or grope) of a passing hand. Then I read the news about how ISIS has established an official system of sex slavery of kidnapped Yazidi women, complete with menus of the going rate per age range, starting at age six (source).

A few years ago, feminism was the movement that finally helped me figure out how to put into words the vague notion of “something here is not right” that I felt deeply in my bones, yet despite my impressive vocabulary, could not articulate. A few years ago I discovered something fresh and shiny and new and passionately heartbreaking. A few years ago, I would have written 3000 words about the Yazidi women and children, and maybe researched how plausible it would be for me to fly to Syria and hypothetically, singlehandedly kick ass à la Liam Neeson Taken-style with my nonexistent retired-special-ops-skills from a past life and rescue all of them (even though Liam Neeson only cared about rescuing his daughter and none of the other trafficked girls, because most men don’t give a shit about women other than the ones directly related to them).

But I didn’t. Because, as Angela Dworkin says, “it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships”, and agony every day, all day, for several years will wear you down. And I am only in my twenties. I’m a fresh peach! I have many, many more years to spiral down into the agonizing descent that is the Feminist Killjoy staircase. But I am already exhausted.

If I were to be completely honest when someone asked “why don’t you write anymore?”, I would say “because it doesn’t make a difference. Because the world is a terrible place for women. Because about 3-4 women are murdered a day, the vast majority (94%) by people they know (source). Because one in five women experience rape or sexual violence at some point in their lives (source), but that doesn’t take into account the multiple assaults one woman may experience in a lifetime. Because I am tired of providing a multitude of sources and surveys that confirm the wage gap is real, and campus sexual assault is pervasive, and sexism exists, only to wake up the next day to the news headline “56% of men believe sexism is over“. Because no matter how much I write, it won’t stop the tide from coming in, or the flood of violence from happening. It won’t stop the daily sexual intrusions I navigate like an obstacle course I never signed up for. It won’t stop the ebb and swell of the whims of powerful men who dislike the concept of female autonomy, tossing around the right to control my goddamn reproductive system like a rowboat in a tsunami. It won’t stop the never-ending news feed of women being photographed, stalked, hacked, raped, stabbed, kidnapped, beaten, and murdered. My blog is not a tampon, it will not stem the flow our blood.”

But I didn’t say that. Because a few years ago I may have been a sprightly, vivacious Feminist Killjoy, but now I am a droopy Feminist Killjoy.

Like getting a tattoo, after the adrenaline and excitement wears off, being a Feminist Killjoy is painful.

In the 481 days since I last wrote a blog post, a lot of things have happened.  Beyonce (I LOVE YOU!!) orchestrated Formation during the SuperBowl, in Black Panther outfits no less, and sent white america into a tizzy. Then she dropped Lemonade, an ode to “the women expected to never air our grievances in public. We are the women expected to stay loyal to our men by staying silent through abuse and infidelity… When our love and commitment and struggle is met with disregard and disloyalty, we are not expected to be angry” (Ijeoma Oluo). Lemonade was not an ode to women, but to black women – the women that white feminism so frequently (conveniently) forgets, yet Lemonade is unforgettable. Speaking of white feminism: Taylor Swift got a new love interest, then became disinterested, and a whole generation of new, young, budding feminists had to reconcile a lifetime of unconscious bias and the knee-jerk reaction to call her a slut with their newfound respect – in theory – for a woman’s’ sexual decisions.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign heated up and sexism reared its ugly head again: A female politician’s favorability drops dramatically every time she must campaign (source). People have theorized it is because we have been socially conditioned to dislike women who assert their claim to power, which is, may I remind you, a prerequisite to public office – and for the second time in nine years I am reminded quite viciously as to why I have never felt personally compelled to become a community leader and run for office.

In the past 481 days, a good friend of mine excitedly called me to tell me about some skeeze at work. She is a waitress, was carrying full trays in both hands, and a man at one of her tables waved her down and tried to pay his bill by shoving cash into her little boob pocket (to be clear: the boob pocket is little, not the boob).

“I usually would have laughed it off and let him do it,” she told me, but this time she turned away and said “FUCK YOU, CRUSTY PERVERT” (just kidding, she is a waitress, I am sure she said something polite but firm), and didn’t let his hand anywhere near her boob pocket. To some people, this story is very inconsequential. To others, particularly women in the service industry, it is a feat of resilience in an industry & employment situation that is constantly shortening your skirt, denying you paid sick leave, taking your tips, ruining your holidays, and making you bend over with the motto “the customer is always right” while the customer tries to stuff cash in your crevices. My friend recognized inappropriate, entitled, sexualized behavior, identified it accordingly, thought to herself “this is not right”, and stood up for herself by refusing a sexual intrusion by a customer who had the upper hand in the power dynamic, all while holding two trays and handling the entire situation with class and aplomb. 

Then she called me to tell me about it, because she was proud of herself, and I was proud of her. And proud of my feminist-inception-mind-control skills. Take THAT! rude, sexually aggressive customer. Sophia here, to thwart your boob-grabbing attempts via feminist rhetoric.

I have a lot of stories like these. I have become the go-to person for  friends’ sexism-based grievances. I know you guys are all super jealous, because being the designated Feminist Killjoy means that every time a friend (goddesses, all of them) gets groped, or hit on by a coworker twice their age, or followed down the street, or had their contributions dismissed at work, I am the first to hear about it.

Maybe what I meant to say was that I haven’t written in 11,544 hours because I have been watching the girls and women of the world unfurl and demand space, and I have felt less alone. I am no longer yelling into a black hole, because the black hole is filling up. (I know that’s not how black holes work, but you know what I mean).  Other women have raised their voices and so did President Obama and Justin Trudeau and Hillary Clinton and Jimmy Carter. And fucking Beyonce.

Does writing on this blog help stem the tide of misogyny that washes over us every day? Maybe that guy will say “dominated” or “wrecked” next time he’s sportsing. Maybe I won’t have to stand with my backside against a wall to fend off opportunistic butt-grabbers in the future. Maybe I will see a woman President in my lifetime.

It is no fun being a Feminist Killjoy, but it is definitely worth it.

This girl is 17 and a CrossFitter. She’s obviously a genius and a badass.

*UPDATE: Here’s a PG-Version of this blog post, for those of you who wish to Spread the Strength among those of innocent ears*

First of all, hi everyone. It feels like I haven’t blogged about anything sociologically substantial in a while, and I might be a bit rusty so please pardon the potentially poor prose.

Anyhoozle.

Now that I’ve graduated from McGill and no longer have to whittle away the hours of cushy student life by blogging nonsensically about sociological things, what have I been doing with myself?

WELL. That brings me to today’s topic.

My strange, wonderful, and illuminating journey working in the fitness industry.

My job more or less involves establishing a new product’s brand personality within the health and fitness industry/society. It has made me realize a lot of things about the messages we send to girls about what’s healthy (most of it is really horrible and fucked up, duh), but it’s also given me a lot of hope for the future of women in America (which, if you’ve read my other angry feminist stuff, is usually pretty pessimistic).

This is how it came about:

First I got a job in sales at LA Fitness. Which was a horrible fit, obviously. A writer should never attempt a job in sales; I’d much rather sit around in my pajamas and eat Nutella with a spoon and type on my computer for a living (which is exactly what is going on at the time of this post being written, thankyouverymuch).

HOWEVER.

Failing miserably at a crappy corporate job selling gym memberships actually turned out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

The reason I first ventured into an LA Fitness (gyms not being my usual haunting grounds) was an interesting one. Being of a naturally petite body type, I had never felt the urgent need to frequent the gym. Of course, like any normal girl, I had flirted with all sorts of diets, fads, and eating disorders pretty consistently throughout my adolescence.  Being an un-athletic girl means that you have to figure out some other method for attaining skinny nirvana.

Why Pressuring Teenage Girls to be Skinny Should be Illegal:

Good job, Special K. You convinced a 15 year old girl it was healthy to function on 2 cups of cereal a day.

For the record: Teenage girls are so goddamn moody because they are always fucking hungry.I guarantee you that every teenage girl’s angst is amplified ~300% because  she is 1) miserable because she’s on a diet and hungry 2) miserable because she’s “on a diet” but just ate a cake and feels really guilty and is considering regurgitating it 3) miserable because she’s given up on dieting and resigned herself to being “fat”. And  why do we do this to ourselves?

Because we want to be thin and beautiful.

This desire to be thin and beautiful goes much, much deeper than the desire to be sexually attractive (Dear men: We don’t actually care about you that much). Eventually all girls internalize (whether we realize it or not) certain realizations about how the world works, and our dual status of being both human beings and sexual objects. Girls learn things like employment, leadership opportunities, and social acceptance come easier when you’re good looking.  We see in the media that a woman’s viability as a sexual object is often emphasized more than her intellectual accomplishments. In fact,the success of a powerful woman is often accompanied, or even overshadowed, by the attention directed at her appearance.

This was made painfully apparent in my teenage years during the 2008 election, during which I observed for almost 6 months the media’s treatment of Obama & McCain versus the coverage of Clinton & Palin. I listened to a ceaseless, unyielding stream of media nattering over Clinton & Palin’s wardrobe choices, hair, boobs, age, “screechy” voices, calling them “bitches” and “ditzes” and next to nothing about their political views. And these are two of the most accomplished, educated women in America.

Meanwhile, Obama & McCain were offered enough respect by the media to actually run campaigns that revolved around their political views, instead of news blasts about lookalike pornos (Nailin’ Pailin’… enough said). So yes, girls do learn that our appearance is often more important than our intellect, accomplishments, or success. Because that is how we are treated.

(And I DON’T CARE if Sarah Palin is a stupid twit. George Bush is a stupid twit, and as far as I know, the media doesn’t give a rats ass about his pant size or hairstyles. This is a gender thing, not an intellect thing)

But as important as that is, I digress from my original point.

Size zero and REALLY struggling to hold the gun. I didn’t want to admit it at the time, but I thought it was really heavy

During my last semester at McGill University I mysteriously lost my appetite. And no, “mysteriously lost my appetite”  is not code for anorexia or bulimia. I just had no desire to eat, plain and simple. I wasted away for four months over the summer. When I returned to Seattle in September, I had gone from 120 un-athletic pounds to 104 pounds of (basically) skin and bone. Not that I was really complaining about being super skinny. I mean, hey, a size zero is a size zero, amiright?

Which just goes to show you how fucked up the average girls’ thought process on beauty, health, and self-worth really is.

So there I was, 104 lbs and I finally felt “sexy” with my spindly, heroin addict body. I was ecstatic that delicate, trendy, Urban Outfitters clothing finally draped just right over my waifish  frame (just like the prepubescent models in their catalogs!).   I had lost the ability to perform a basic human function- eating-  and done nothing about it. I relished not feeling hungry and having to eat, because like, c’mon, that’s every woman’s dream (like I said, fucked up.)

Why Fitting into Size Zero Pants is not Actually that Awesome:

Then the classic “the grass is always greener on the other side” dilemma snuck in. I began to miss food. Then the compliments (“You look really good! Have you lost weight?”) turned into concern (“Do you have a coke problem? You can tell me, I just want to help!”).   I began to hate my body, even though it was one society had taught me was “ideal” ever since, um, puberty.

SO. Obviously the logical thing for me to get off my stagnant ass go to the gym, in hopes that exercising would stimulate my appetite. Since I was a recent graduate with no job, the next logical thing to do was apply for a job at a gym so I could exercise for free and, you know, be employed.

As I previously mentioned, I failed miserably at selling gym memberships. I also failed miserably at exercising more (Surprise!!!! Not.). In fact, the only good thing about working at LA Fitness is that it forced me to memorize a lot of information about fitness in a very short amount of time, and it made me miserable enough to start seriously looking for a “career”. Which, for a wanna-be writer, is kind of like searching for a unicorn in a Where’s Waldo? book.

BUT THEN I FOUND A MOTHERFUCKING UNICORN.

Because one of the jobs I applied for online asked for a creative writing  sample (which I do #likeaboss) on the topic of health & fitness. What a wonderful, wonderful coincidence (or fate? who knows).

I got hired to write for Cody, a small startup that was developing a health & fitness iPhone app. My role was to create content for their blog. Specifically- write workouts and health tips that would eventually be offered within the app for users to browse (BTW, everybody should go download Cody, I like to think I made him really funny )

And so, the heavy door into the world of fitness had been heaved open to me.

Becoming familiar with exercises, workouts, and fitness-lingo was a requirement of my new job. And, as one would expect; it is pretty much impossible to write instructions on how to do an exercise unless you can actually do the exercise yourself. So I found myself frequenting the gym more and more often out of necessity.

I’m sure I made a complete ass of myself the first few times I went, but eventually, with a lot of practice and a few (ok, a lot) embarrassing moments, I figured out the basics of the weight room and then (this is the miraculous part) began to really look forward to working out. This is coming from the girl that has always been notoriously un-athletic. Like, worst dancer on the dance team, slowest person on the Cross Country team (I joined because it was a no-cut sport, and I needed a P.E. credit), always picked last in P.E., ran a 11-minute mile bad. 

Like, allergic to exercise bad.

Ok, ok- Enough Rambling. What’s your point, Sophia?

5’5″ and 104 lbs. My waist was pretty much as wide as Eitan’s hand. And Eitan’s not a big dude (…sorry Eitan).

The time when I was my skinniest and most photographically beautiful (i.e. I looked magazine-cover-skinny) was also the time when I was at my weakest, in all senses of the word. I was constantly asking the guys downstairs to opens jars for me, and if they weren’t home, well then I was shit out of luck (and pasta sauce). Trying to carry my own suitcases while traveling between Seattle and Montreal was (pathetically) a nightmare. Even carrying pitchers of beer at the bar I was working at was a struggle for my skeletal arms. I was sleeping 12 hours a day and constantly tired. I’m sure that my brain wasn’t functioning all too well either.

Now I wonder how my life would have been different if people had encouraged girls (me) to be strong instead of skinny.

I think back to high school, when I put myself on a 1200 daily calorie limit, even though I was running 3-5 miles daily.  I attended a reputably rigorous high school with a 5 AP course load, woke up at 6:30 am, went to school, did extracurriculars, worked part-time, and often went to bed at 2-3am. I was counting calories, denying myself food, guilt-ing myself when I did eat, and even though I was never more that 120 lbs., I never stopped pinching my “fat” every time I looked in a mirror. I was hungry, angry, tired, and depressed all the time. And I was a teenager. Let’s not forget that part.  Teenagers are hellions.

But when I look back at my experiences, decisions, and accomplishments, I still wonder how different would my life have been if I had been encouraged to be strong instead of skinny. Would my grades have been better if I hadn’t been literally starving myself since the age of 13? Could I have gotten into Harvard instead of McGill? Would I have been a better runner if I had been encouraged to fucking eat instead of diet. Would I have had better relationships with my parents, sister, and friends?

Let me repeat: Strong > Skinny

It’s sad that only I came to this realization with clarity after seeing both extreme sides of the coin. I still can’t do a lot of basic things (chest to ground push ups still evade me), but the progress I have made so far has made me fully realize what I was missing when I was younger. It’s funny how the skinnier I desired to be, the weaker I got, and when I finally realized I had to gain weight, the stronger I got.

Actually, that’s not funny at all. It makes a lot of sense.

Since I started writing for Cody, and out of professional necessity, started working out, everything has changed.  Now when I look in the mirror (this is embarrassing  by the way, I can’t believe I’m admitting this online) I flex instead of sucking in. Now when I pinch my stomach, it’s to feel my abs, not to feel shitty about how much “flab” (real or imaginary) is sitting there. I no longer stare at the “calories burned” display on the elliptical, but how many plates I have on each end of the barbell. I can open my own pasta sauce jars now. I am moving soon and do not need the help of any hulking strong lad to transport my furniture. My goal has changed from “be a size zero” to do a motherfucking pull up.  I have gained far more self-esteem from being able to pick up heavy shit that I ever have from being able to zip up a skin-tight designer dress.  I became a more capable, energetic, independent, and mentally focused person once my focus shifted from what my body  looks like to what my body can do

But it’s just tragic – no sarcasm here- really really tragic how a large majority of young girls in America spend their time obsessing over their weight, devoting time, energy, emotions, and effort into being skinny.

It’s tragic because you have to the think of all of the potential that is lost when a whole generation of girls care more about fitting into minuscule pants instead of… oh I don’t know… running for student council, pursing a passion, studying, volunteering, playing sports, working, furthering woman’s rights… the list could go on and on. My main point is, girls waste so much time on being skinny – because we are taught that is is important if we want to be successful- when we could be devoting their efforts to becoming so much more powerful than simply skinny.

What’s even worse is the following scientific truth I’m about to acknowledge, that NOBODY BOTHERED TO TELL ME when I was an insecure teenage girl, that really would have helped me out: Muscle is approximately twice as dense at fat. 

Or, for all of you visual people:

Left: Me at 104 lbs.
Right: Me at 126 lbs.
Notice a difference?…. yeah, that’s what I thought.

ARGGHHHH!!! WHAT THE FUCK. WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TELL ME THIS BEFORE?!

Anyway, I think it’s time I brought this blog post to a conclusion and made my point:

Dear Society: Please assist me in convincing young girls that “strong is the new skinny”.

Encourage them to eat. Don’t let them diet. Discourage the idolization of anorexic and bulimic celebrities. Make them exercise instead. Teach them that “exercise” means running, jumping, sweating, grunting, working hard, and kicking ass- it doesn’t mean flapping their arms around in some trendy, overpriced Trogalaties course, or running on the elliptical until they pass out. Help them realize their own strength. All of these things will help girls realize their full potential, both physically and mentally. It will help girls become self-confident, capable, and literally and figuratively strong. A girl who is encouraged to be strong instead of skinny will have higher self-esteem, respect, ambitions, and worth. She will never be a victim. She will be healthy. She will be a leader. She will be confident. She will be kick-ass.

Spread the strength.

I don’t know why “1200” managed to be the magic number of calories women should consume if they want to lose weight.

I don’t even know how I know of this number. Only that I know it, and my friends know it, and my mom knows it. Somehow, somewhere along the road, I was taught that if I want to have a flat stomach and tight tushy, I need to limit my calories to 1200 a day and do cardio. I don’t know how it got in to all of our collective brains, but somehow it did (if any ladies remember how or when they first heard the 1200-calorie rule-of-thumb for losing weight, please let me know via comment box).

What I do know is that 1200 is the general number of calories health professionals say women cannot drop below without suffering negative health consequences.

Interesting, isn’t it? 1200 calories. The line between health and what they call “starvation mode”. 1200 calories. The dangerous tightrope that many women are trying to walk, because they think this is how thinness is achieved.

“Starvation mode”

means your body realizes it is not getting enough food – calories-, thinks that you are starving, and slows down your metabolism to a crawl to conserve energy. Because it thinks you are starving, when you do feed yourself, your body will try to store more of your calories as fat, because those are your long-term energy deposits.

A long term calorie deficit can mess with your blood sugar levels, reduce bone mass,  cause  weakness, fatigue, cold intolerance, irregular menstrual periods, dizziness, constipation and swelling of the hands and feet (source). If a woman decides to get thin by maintaining a steep calorie deficit (1200 calories is very steep) and pairs it with long sessions of steady-state cardio, it results it thyroid issues. “Too little T3 (hypothyroidism), and the body accumulates body fat with ease, almost regardless of physical activity level. Women inadvertently put themselves into a hypothyroid condition when they perform so much steady-state cardio” (source).

Women: If you are trying to go about your business during the day, on only 1200 calories, and perform cardio to burn those dreaded calories, you really are not going to succeed. You will most likely pass out.

It is unfortunate, then, that there is one – and only one – message the majority of weight loss campaigns use to when targeting women:

Calories, calories, calories.

More specifically, less calories.

Calories are the enemy. You must either reduce your consumption of them, or obliterate them via exercise. Calories are the devil. Calories must be avoided at all costs. Calories must be burned away pronto, quick, before that one cookie turns into a lump of fat  on your thighs.

For example, this check out this Yoplait yogurt commercial (which was actually pulled off the air due to complaints that it promotes disordered eating):

or this Trop50 commercial that I found not only to be a completely demeaning portrayal of women as complete airheads, but perpetuates the message that women should strive to look like they “had work done”:

One of my main issues is how health & nutrition is marketed to women versus men. Do a quick Google search on women’s health magazines versus men’s health magazines and you’ll immediately see the difference in keywords. Women’s magazine covers frequently use terms like “drop X pounds fast!” and “calorie-torching workout!” and “low-calorie foods”. Men’s magazines use keywords like “build“, “power“, and “strength“. In my bit of searching, I never once found a men’s magazine that talked about burning or cutting calories, or losing pounds.

For anybody who knows anything about weight loss and nutrition, you will immediately recognize how shallow, and ultimately harmful, only focusing on calories can be.  That is because 1) a healthy body cannot be measured simply by poundage and 2) less calories do not equal good nutrition.

It is especially saddening because of the blatant misinformation fed to women by the media about how to be fit, or even, what fitness is. 

“Toned” is MUSCLE, goddammit, just call it by it’s effing name! Muscle.

When women want to get “toned” they are saying the female word for “muscle”. They often don’t know that “toned” actually means “muscle”, and they would never actually say “My health goal is to build muscle”. But what is a round, shapely butt made out of? Muscle. How does an abdomen stop being jiggly? Muscle. How do you get a back that doesn’t produce bra-bulge? Muscle.

Women want a body that looks “toned”, unaware that this “toned” look is achieved by building muscle.

I have never seen any weight loss campaign targeting women that informs their audience that muscle is more dense than fat.

I have never seen a women’s magazine talk about fitness other than pounds on a scale – as if body fat, muscle mass, and skeletal composition are completely negligible to a body looks like.  The end result is all these women trying to lose weight the wrong way – by cutting calories in their diet and trying to burn as many as possible aka. cardio.

Women are, for the most part, unaware that if they are exercising right they will be building muscle and their weight might not change very much.  In fact, if they are doing everything right, their weight might even go up! And that’s totally ok.

Even more infuriatingly, I have never seen any women-oriented campaign that says the word “muscle”. “Muscle” in woman-land, is like a dirty word.

You know Vanessa Hudgens? Wanna know how she got that bod? Deadlifting heavy and building muscle

Last year’s Miss America got this bod by… yep, lifting heavy and building muscle

Now, I’m not trying to say that the only way to get a great physique is by lifting heavy. What I’m saying is that

great bods look great because they have muscle.

Adriana Lima, Victoria’s Secret Angel and one of the most successful supermodels in the world, works her perfect butt off by boxing. She’s not a twig, and I would bet good money that she could literally beat the crap out of you! See all that supa’ fine definition on her midsection? That’s muscle.

I should also note that the aforementioned women/AngelsWalkingOnEarth also make looking bangable their full time job. They have the time and the money to hire professional trainers, exercise every day, and eat the best of the best foods. The is such a thing as an unfair advantage and this is it. Sorry, but you are probably never going to look like Adriana Lima. And yes, this depresses me too. All the time.

Back to my point: If you want a rounder, firmer, tighter, shmexier anything, it requires building muscle. Simply burning fat and cutting calories is only one part of the equation of sexiness. (For ladies that have been wanting to venture into the weight room, but find it intimidating, I wrote this guide to the weightlifting room for Cody, the health & fitness app I work for.)

Sophia’s Equation of Sexiness:

Sexiness = Nourish your body with fresh, whole foods + strength train to build shapely physique + choose your amount of cardio depending on how much body fat you want to lose or keep.

What look do you want to achieve? Below is an image that shows what the male and female bodies look like depending on body fat percentage:

(Let’s all take a moment to appreciate that the female body naturally carries about twice as much body fat as men. That is because testosterone increases one’s ability to gain lean muscle mass, while estrogen increases the storage of body fat. It is much more difficult – *many more cheezeburgers must be nommed* – for a man to reach 40% body fat than a woman. Knowing this, it becomes increasingly aggravating when society continues to judge fat women far more harshly than fat men. Oh, the irony.)

I’ve mentioned my disdain for Special K, before, but I’m really going to lay into them now. The messages Special K spreads to women about how to be healthy are so freaking misleading.  I want to poke my own eyes out whenever I see one of their commercials. That is because they market their products as healthy meal options.

What makes them so healthy? Oh, only that they are low in calories.

Nothing about the quality of the ingredients, or even, what the ingredients are. Are they synthetic, are they made from whole foods, are they full of fillers?

 I mean, what is even in Special K? 

RICE. WHEAT GLUTEN. SUGAR. DEFATTED WHEAT GERM.

Those are the ingredients in Special cereal. The only healthy thing about this cereal is that it is pumped full of additive vitamins and minerals (you could just take a multivitamin) from unknown sources.

Then they promote eating like this:

Breakfast: One serving of Special K cereal with 2/3 cup skim milk and fruit.

Lunch: Repeat breakfast meal or substitute a Special K Protein Meal bar.

Dinner: Eat your normal meal.

Snacks: Eat two snacks each day of Special K products (bars, cereal, snack bites) or fruits or vegetables.

Absolutely nothing about quality of calories, only quantity. Nothing about proper nutrition, only less. Everything is about reducing. Reduce your calories by reducing the amount of food you eat.

Even more infuriating is how women are advised to exercise by popular magazines. The image below is from Shape Magazine:

I mean, the moves are ok… I guess.

…If you want to waste a lot of fucking time at the gym flapping your arms around and wondering why you don’t look “toned” yet.

If you’re trying to strength train… why don’t you use your strength? Why isn’t this fitness model, who obviously got her fitness model body by lifting heavy, showing heavy lifts?

There is no reason women should strength train differently from men. Man muscles are not alien tissue. Man muscles and woman muscles are the same. They are human muscles. They respond to the same fuel and the same stimulus.

This is why women’s workouts bother me.

Women should be shown the same fitness routines as men. We should be exposed to the same messages of eating nutritious food, with lots ‘o protein, and enough calories to build our bodies into Goddess-like proportions. We should not fear muscle. We should not shy away from the weight room because it is perceived as “odd” and out of place when a woman approaches the squat rack.

This is why I had to write a whole goddamn blog post complaining about the misinformation that is spread to women. I am so tired of watching my girlfriends get mislead by the media on how to be healthy. I am so annoyed by this skinny obsession – which literally robs women of their power.

“I think anorexia is a metaphor. It is a young woman’s statement that she will become what the culture asks of its women, which is that they be thin and nonthreatening. Anorexia signifies that a young woman is so delicate that, like the women of China with their tiny broken feet, she needs a man to shelter and protect her from a world she cannot handle. Anorexic women signal with their bodies “I will take up only a small amount of space. I won’t get in the way.” They signal “I won’t be intimidating or threatening.” (Who is afraid of a seventy-pound adult?)”

― Mary Pipher

And hungry people are – let’s be honest – complete assholes. I don’t know about you, but when I’m hungry it means I’m unfocused, cranky, distracted, grumpy, irritable, and generally miserable. Snickers did get something right: You are not your best self when you are hungry.

I’ve lamented about this before, and I will again: Think of all the potential that is thrown out the window when women deprive themselves of food on their quest to be thin. What great things could women accomplish if we weren’t fucking dieting all the time?! It’s saddening.

It is time for the misinformation to stop.

Please do not skip meals. Especially if you are under the age of 18. Part of the reason I wrote this whole thing is because I see a lot of really young girls on Tumblr asking advice like “I’ve already reached my calorie limit today – should I skip dinner?” NO!!!  Your body and mind are still developing, and they need fuel!  Please do not limit your calories under 2000. Eat unprocessed foods like fruits and vegetables. Eat eggs, lean meat, even dairy in moderation. Eat a variety of foods with nutritional value. Stop with the empty calories! And the soda pop. Seriously, the soda pop is the devils piss.

My main point is this:

Please do not throw your own physical – and mental – potential out the window by starving yourself into skinny bliss. It’s not worth it. And trust me, it’s not bliss.

The initial challenge of this project was to turn all my sordid, strange, Seattle non-relationships into one-paragraph stories. My roommate had been consoling me, “this was a chapter in your life, and tomorrow you’ll turn the page and start a new one.” To which I laughed (snorted, really) and replied, “he was just a paragraph.” In the beginning it seemed like reducing these men into a few sentences would be impossible, but interestingly enough, by the end I realized there wasn’t very much to say about them after all. 

(0/11)

Small Dogs. Spring – Summer 2013.

What I despised most about his ridiculous papillon was not it’s own terrible behavior, but the behavior it inspired in him. But if a man would rather have his ex-wife’s yappy dog in his bed than a woman, let him. One night he drunkenly blurted out “I can’t believe you put up with my shit”, and in that moment I realized: I do not have to put up with any man’s shit.

(1/11)

Drunk Dial. Fall 2013

For the record, I never called you a “piece of shit”, I said, “you’re the worst”, but I guess you were correct in that you knew exactly what I meant.

(2/11)

Summer Bummer. Spring – Summer 2014

Like Lana Del Rey, he emitted such a curated essence of tragic, talented artist it was insulting to accuse him of putting on a persona, yet that’s what it reeked of. His dreamy remixes on SoundCloud, his floral prints and designs, his insomniac habit of wandering around with a camera at night attracted me like a moth. However, if someone claims to be lonely yet still rejects your company, take the goddamn hint.

(3/11)

Double Blind. Winter – Summer 2015

None of your bus sketches, meticulously detailed, portray women. It is possible you were simply hesitant to draw unsuspecting women riding public transportation. But like the women on the bus, you saw me regularly and never bothered to study what was in front of you. Here is a good lesson to learn: If I am not what a man is looking for, it is not worth the effort to open his eyes.

(4/11)

Sweet Chocolate. August 2015

The first and only time you brought me home, you introduced your newly-exed girlfriend as “my roommate”.  She clawed off your flimsy wrapper and a hot, sticky mess emerged, oozing onto my hands. I should have refrained from greedily licking you off my palms, but instead I comforted myself with nibbles until I realized I was making myself nauseous. Two addicts chasing a sugar high, trying to find the right balance of bitter and sweet.

(5/11)

Half Baked. ? – March 2016

We often like to think “the one who got away” is a matter of unfortunate circumstances. “The one who did not prioritize me” is a significantly less enjoyable way to remember you. I followed your trail of breadcrumbs across the Atlantic, only to discover you had been satiated by someone more scrumptious who arrived on your doorstep ahead of me.  In hindsight I am glad I avoided being coaxed into your oven, to be roasted alive with unrequited desire for your consumption. I crumbled like cinnamon sticks beneath your fingertips and discovered a sweetness only released when crushed.

(6/11)

Message Read. April – June 2016.

“Are you fucking serious“, I screamed and threw my phone against the laundry machine. Cruelty is to treat a woman with indifference after she has opened her body to receive you. I am a goddess, and when my dress slips off my shoulders and crumples to the floor, I expect men to do the same. I know it is important to your self-esteem that you are seen as a “good” guy, not like the others. You view “players” with scorn, as if they are beneath you and you are somehow different. Let me reassure you: You are not.

(7/11)

Stranger Thing. August 2016

It is hard to continue giving men the benefit of the doubt after this one, because no millennial with a conscience would promise to not Netflix Cheat on Episode 4, only to proceed to string me along for the next three weeks and then have the gall to feign surprise at the very predictable outcome, as if this completely unnecessary behavior was in no way as intentionally drawn-out as this fucking sentence.

(8/11) 

All Kaps. November 2016

I Am Not Sure Why You Capitalized The First Letter Of Every Word You Texted Me. Like your grammatical choices, much about you was a mystery I frankly lacked the motivation to understand. But by the time we met I had become shipwrecked by loneliness, nails chewed ragged, lips picked dry, growth creeping in the cracks. I like to think you texted me I LOVE YOU in all caps because you knew I was too far gone to hear it unless you screamed.  

(9/11)

Unpack This. April 2017

There is a jar of sand in my room from the beach we danced upon, your hands replacing the ocean breeze in gently ruffling through my hair. Granules of rock, softened by the rhythmic lapping of the sea and hastily stolen by the fistful from Belize. The sand is now preserved forever, sealed behind glass like the memory of you. I am thankful we were not given the luxury of time, because then we would have had the opportunity to sour.

(10/11)

Engineering Consent. July 2017 

Robots do not experience insanity because machine learning algorithms prevent them from doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I wish I was one of those robots you built; rational and emotionless and unable to be electrified by rejection when you chose her over me. We often emerge on the other side vowing to never make the same mistake again. The trouble is that while machines have reliable data storage, over time humans brains tend to forgive or maybe just forget. 

(11/11)

Aiden could tell from half a block away when a woman was going to say something to him on the sidewalk. It was something about the hungry look in their eyes. The visible, perverse anticipation on their faces as he approached. He gripped the opposite edges of his blazer so that his hands curled up into fists, then crossed his arms and wrapped it around his body like a voluntary straightjacket. He hunched over, eyes downward, chin tucked into the collar. Don’t do it, he telepathically urged her in his head. Jesus Christ just once I would like to get to work without a woman acting disgusting before 9 am.

The space between them shrank with each step as he tried to hurry past as quickly as possible. She was standing in the casual way women do when they’re about to holler at a guy. Eyes fixed on him, not bothering to move out of the way even in the slightest to let him pass without first taking a pass.

“Hey boy, where you goin’?” she leered when he got within a foot of her, nowhere else to go without stepping into the busy traffic of Seattle’s morning commute. He saw she had started to pull her hand out of her pocket and instinctively jerked to the left, towards the whizzing cars, but she was faster. Her wiggling fingers grabbed at him, first poking the side of his torso and then slithering their way towards his under-arms so that he let out an involuntary noise and a panicked smile.

Aiden barreled forward, refusing to turn around and look at the women, refusing to give her the satisfaction of knowing she had gotten to him. “I like your smile!” she yelled after him. She squished her lips together and made kissy noises at Aiden’s retreating back as he speed-walked away.

The after-effects of adrenaline still tremored throughout his body as he opened the door to his office building ten minutes later.

“Good morning!” the office manager, Greg, greeted him with a sing-song tone. “Coffee is fresh if you’re interested.”

Aiden forced a polite smile onto his face and said no thanks, he had already had coffee this morning. That was a lie. He wasn’t in the mood to make small talk at the coffee counter right now. He sat as his cubicle, logged into the computer, and glanced at the homepage news.

76% OF WOMEN BELIEVE TICKLING IS A COMPLIMENT one of the headlines blared. A neat pie chart accompanied the article along with quotes from women in the community. “I mean, I just want to make males smile,” Susan Ross from King County said, “what better way to brighten someone’s day than a quick tickle-me-up!” Joanna Bronson from Kitsap County said “So what, now we can’t even say hello to boys on the street? Whatever happened to freedom of speech? This is America. I’m allowed to tell a guy he’s good-looking if I want to.”

Revolted, Aiden sighed, opened a new spreadsheet, and started analyzing his first client’s taxes.

***

The musty smell of old socks greeted Aiden as he stepped through his apartment door after work. The faint sounds of a methed-out homeless woman drifted through the second-story window. Goddammit sucker suck my ass! I TOLD you so. I told YOU so. I told you SO.

“Hi baby,” his girlfriend Marissa called out from the couch where she was watching what looked like another baking competition show. “How was your day?”

“Ok,” Aiden mumbled as he set his backpack down, rifled through the mail, noticed the trash was overflowing and took it to the chute down the hall, then started a load of laundry before finally sitting down with her.

Eyes still on the current soufflé challenge on the TV screen, Marissa reached her hand over to rub his thigh then gave his package a playful squeeze.

“Don’t-” he swatted her hand away and leapt up.

She looked at him in surprise. “Sorry, hun, is everything ok?”

Aiden sighed and sat back down. She searched his face. “What is it?”

“Do you believe tickling is a compliment?” he asked her.

She grinned. “Well I mean, you seem to like it when I tickle you.”

“Not like that. You’re my girlfriend and I love you. I mean, like, when it’s a random woman on the street who yells that I look ‘deliciously ticklish’ or comes up behind me at a bar and does it.”

Marissa stopped looking bemused. “Is that what this is about? Did some lady do something to you today?”

Aiden sighed again and told her about the woman on the street this morning. About how he had almost stepped into traffic to try and avoid her. About how it forced him to smile when he really didn’t want to and then she got off on his smile. About how he wished he was one of those guys who wasn’t ticklish. About how foolish he felt for wearing a blazer that accentuated his waist today. About how it ruined his whole morning. About how he doesn’t even want to ride the bus anymore because of all the attention he keeps on getting from random, gross, aggressive women who ask him where he’s going and if he has a girlfriend and that’s ok if he does because they can still be friends, right? About how last month one woman wouldn’t leave him alone at the bus stop and no matter how hard he tried to bury his face in a book she kept on asking what he was reading and was it good and maybe they could hang out sometime until he finally decided to get onto the wrong bus just to get away from her and at the last moment she said with an accusatory tone, “Well can I at least get a hug?” About how he would seem like a jerk and be made to feel guilty if he said no, so he relented and tried not to shudder as she pressed her body against his, her fingers wiggling and wandering where they wanted. About how those two seconds felt like an hour and then he got onto the wrong bus and it took him all the way to Bellevue before the next stop and he ended up spending $45 on an Uber to get back home. About how he was so tired of it all.

Marissa made a sympathetic face.

“That really sucks. I’m sorry it’s happening to you. Of course I don’t think tickling is a compliment.”

“Do any of your friends?”

“No, of course not! Same with your lady friends too. The vast majority of us know it’s not ok. It’s a few bad actors who make all of us look bad. Which is unfair and counterproductive since it makes it harder for all of us who respect men to be nice people without being perceived as ‘creepy’.” Marissa raised two fingers to air-quote the word “creepy”.

“I mean, I know most women aren’t like that,” Aiden conceded. Marissa smiled, ruffled his hair, and ran her fingers lightly down his neck. He stood up and walked to the kitchen. “Have you eaten yet?” he asked her and began pulling pots out of the cupboard.

As he was preparing dinner he couldn’t help but wonder; if all the women he knows don’t believe tickling is a compliment, then where are the 76% from the survey hiding?

I must run in a particularly good crowd, he thought to himself, grateful the women in his life were not like that.

***

From: Lucas Tournee

To: Aiden Kozlowski

Dude check this out: https://www.creddit.com/post/2020-04-12/401837693729

Aiden clicked on the link.

OP: Men and boys, when was the first time you noticed women were interested in tickling you? How was it?
EDIT: Wow… I have no words. Honestly when I originally asked my question I was looking for cute stories of budding romances, realizing when you are attractive, etc. On behalf of all women, I am so sorry.

JimmyNewtronBaby09 RE:
I was about 9 or so. I’m a particularly ticklish guy. The girls in my class realized they could get away with jabbing my in the side with their pencils and fingers and whatever else they had to use. I got in so much trouble for disrupting class with my nosies. When I tried to tell the teachers it was the girls poking me they told me to man up and take responsibility for my actions.

TreyTreyTreyyy RE:
I was at the mall with some friends. A group of older girls came around and one of the older ones, she must have been in college maybe, pressed her body up against mine and stuck her fingers in the crease of my neck in a way that forced me to smile and laugh even though I was terrified.

GhostKillaBill RE:
I was eight when a close family-friend took a liking to having me sit on her lap. She would run her fingers up and down my torso, then down to my crotch, then back up. My parents never noticed. They always insisted I gave her a hug before she left.

JosiahThaMan RE:
My mom was late picking me up from middle school so I started to walk home on my own. A van pulled up and I heard a woman hollering at me so I turned up my headphones louder and tried to ignore her. After about 5 minutes my mom got out of the van absolutely furious, then absolutely devastated when I explained I usually ignore women who try to talk to me from their cars.

dudewheresmybar RE:
My best friend’s older sister seemed very into me and at first I felt very special. One night I was having a sleepover upstairs with my friend, who was already asleep, when she texted me from the basement and told me to come join her and her buddies. I was thrilled until I got down there. There were like 5 gals who pressured me into taking swigs from their fifth of vodka and then started touching my sides, my armpits, my neck. They took turns tickling me, insisting that I must like it because I was laughing, while I shrieked for them to stop until finally I lost control of my bladder and pissed myself. Then they laughed and took pictures on their phones and spread it around school. I was 14.

425MikeLOL RE:
I was six. She was my step-aunt.

MerryJerryishere RE:
When I was 5 my babysitter told me she wanted to play a special game with me, and she only played it with her favorite kids. When I was 8 my soccer coach would slip her hands underneath my jersey when “assisting” me with stretches. When I was 13 a businesswoman offered me $500 to go up to her hotel room for “a quick squeeze”. When I was 16 my first girlfriend would drive me out into the middle of nowhere and insist we stay there until she got what she wanted. When I was 20 my girlfriend at the time (now my wife), stopped in the middle of caressing my neck and asked “Is this ok?”. The question overwhelmed me—not because it wasn’t ok— but because it was the first time I had been asked.

Load 758 more replies…

***

“Have you heard?” Lucas called him on the phone, breathless with excitement.

“What?” Aiden grumbled into the receiver, resentful at being woken up. He glanced at the clock. 7:46 am. On a Saturday. He felt like he could sleep for a week and still be tired.

“March against the Secretary of State nominee, Christina Greer, starting at 11am. I’ve got poster boards. I’ve got markers. I’m comin’ over.” Lucas hung up before Aiden had a chance to respond. He sighed and hopped in the shower, wondering what life would be like if a man had won the presidential election.

Lucas was already sitting at the kitchen table and chatting with Marissa by the time Aiden had finished getting dressed. There was one discarded poster on the floor with the words BELEIVE MEN written in large block lettering. Aiden could see Lucas had mixed up the “I” and the “E”, then tried to modify the “E” by coloring it into a really fat “I”, before giving up and starting over on a new poster.

“At least seven men have come forward with accusations of unwanted touching,” Lucas was in the middle of telling Marissa, “and even her college roommate admitted in an interview Greer was notorious for non-consensual tickling when she got drunk.”

“Well, who isn’t a little inconsiderate after a few drinks?” Marissa replied with a small laugh.

“I thought you said tickling isn’t a compliment,” Aiden interjected, his words coming out more sharp than he had intended. Marissa raised one eyebrow at him.

“Well good morning to you too,” she intoned. “I don’t think tickling is a compliment, all I’m saying is we didn’t know any better in college. I mean, this whole #himtoo thing is new for us. I’m not proud of it, but I’ll admit I probably tickled some guys at a college party here and there.”

“It’s not new,” Lucas mumbled.

“What?”

“It’s not new,” he repeated louder this time. “You said #himtoo is new for us, but it’s not new. It’s been happening forever. For my entire life and my dad’s entire life and my grandfather’s entire life and I really can’t believe women are acting like they had no idea until this point in time that we don’t like being touched or grabbed or tickled without permission. It seems really outside the reasonable realm of possibility that women are finding this to be ‘new’ information.”

Marissa stared at Lucas, then at Aiden, then back at Lucas again. “Okay,” she laughed and threw up her hands in an I give up gesture. “You got me. Women are obviously inferior neanderthals. Happy?” She got up, walked over to her desk, put on headphones, and starting tik-takking away at the laptop keyboard.

Aiden stared at her back and wondered if he should go over and apologize for Lucas.

“Bro, what are you going to write on yours?” Lucas asked Aiden, jarring him out of his thoughts. He waved a blank poster at Aiden. “I have a list of ideas from teh internetz if you need.” Aiden sighed and decided to let Marissa have her space.

At 10 am it was nearly time to go, and Marissa still had not turned around from her desk. Aiden approached her. She pulled off her headphones.

“Yes, my love?” she asked teasingly. Aiden was glad it seemed like she wasn’t still miffed about what Lucas said.

“Do you want to come to the march with us?” he asked, “I made an extra poster just in case.” He held up the auxiliary sign: PROUD TO BE AN ALLY it proclaimed in large, purple lettering with a big arrow drawn upwards to point at the face of sign-bearer.

“Aw,” she squeezed his hand, “I am proud to be an ally, but today I’m actually meeting up with some of the ladies for brunch in about an hour.”

“Maybe they want to come too?” Aiden asked hopefully.

“Is brunch more important than our basic human rights?” Lucas yelled from the entryway where he was propping the door open with one foot, posters in the opposite hand, ready to go.

Marissa chuckled. “Have a good time,” she said, planting a kiss on his cheek and putting her headphones back on, “I love you.”  

“Love you too,” Aiden responded and let the door click close behind him, feeling only slightly disappointed.

***

“How was it?” Marissa asked Aiden when he got back from the march.

“Oh awesome,” he gushed. He sat down at the couch, took off his shoes, and started rubbing his feet. “There were maybe a thousand people and it felt really great to be surrounded and supported by men who care about the same thing as me. As we got closer to the ending rally point there were so many men waving signs and chanting. Some even brought their kids! Look-”, Aiden pulled out his phone and started scrolling through the photos he took of the march. Marissa came over and sat on his lap to get a better look. “There were a lot of women there too, you know. You wouldn’t have looked out of place at all. And these were some of my favorite protest signs…” he continued swiping his thumb across the screen:

REAL WOMEN ASK PERMISSION

GRAB THIS (accompanied by a drawing of two middle fingers)

DON’T TICKLE MY PICKLE

CONSENT IS SEXY

YOU GRAB, I STAB

Aiden looked up from his phone and saw Marissa was looking at him—not at the photos—with a shit-eating grin on her face. He could tell she had had a few mimosas. She started to slide her hands under his shirt and tip-toed her fingertips up to his nipples, then began to lightly circle them with her thumbs.

“You’re so sexy when you get worked up like this,” she cooed. “My man, the political activist.” She slid his shirt up and off, then her own. She straddled him and began gyrating as she kissed him, so that he felt himself grow hard. “Patience,” she whispered in his ear and then slowly began tracing her way down his neck with her lips, her fingertips a feather-light accompaniment on the sides of his ribs, then waist, then hips. She kissed lightly underneath his navel but still above his waistband, then slid her fingers ever-so-slightly underneath the edges and pulled down. “Is this what you want?” she asked him. Aiden shivered and nodded. “Say it,” she said, and he could feel her warm breath on him. “Say you want it.” She began tickling in the crease of his hips and Aiden felt an involuntary giggle leave his mouth.

No. He didn’t want to be tickled right now. “St-” he tried to say, but the uncontrollable mixture of tickling and sexual arousal left him without words. She climbed back on top of him, knees placed on his thighs, her entire body’s weight concentrated on two pointy joints jutting into his legs. From her vantage point, the tickling intensified and Aiden started breathing heavily, gasping for air in trying to maintain self-control and resist his face muscles’ instinctual contraction upwards. He felt himself going soft, no longer aroused. “St-” he tried to say “stop” again, and then again, but always failed on the “o” sound as the word morphed instead into yet another gasp or laugh.

“Is this what you want?” Marissa asked again, still in that soft, breathless voice, as if she had no idea that anything had changed. That he was not enjoying this. “Tell me this is what you want.”  

Unable to speak and desperate for her to stop he reached up and grabbed a handful of hair close to her scalp then yanked. Hard.

“OW!” she shrieked and jerked back. “What the fuck, Aiden? That hurt.” She put her hand to her scalp and climbed off him. Aiden sat there, still catching his breath as she stormed into the bedroom and slammed the door.

He fought the urge to run after her an apologize. I’m the wronged one here, not her, he tried to convince himself. He repeated in his head over and over again; She should have stopped. She should have stopped. She should have stopped…

Marissa left before he woke up on the couch the next morning. He stared at his phone, willing it to buzz or ring. He listened to an hour-long podcast. He changed the sheets. He tried halfheartedly to play some Dead Before Daylight but couldn’t get into it and gave up after 20 minutes. He took apart his skateboard, cleaned and oiled the wheels, and put it back together again. Finally after four hours of agony, he relented and texted her first.

“I’m sorry Please come back home”.

***

AP TOP NEWS

7:32 am, Thursday
Royal Wedding Bliss
Prince Edwin and philanthropist Carol Halloway joined in holy matrimony Thursday morning at the Buckingham Palace. Early estimates show about 100,000 people came to watch the carriage procession.

3:05 pm, Friday
President McCarthy visits Saudi Arabia
Madame President McCarthy landed in Saudi Arabia Friday afternoon to begin controversial talks at sealing a new trade deal with a country most experts are considering to be an unexpected and potentially risky ally. “I get the best deals,” the President said during her press release, “you won’t believe the deals I can get.”

10:25 am, Saturday
Riots in Mexico City
Thousands of people are filling the streets in Mexico City to protest a brutal attack which left a boy in critical condition late Friday night. The police are looking for two older women who harassed and followed him onto a Mexico City Metro train car. After the train was stalled for hours, the two women exited leaving the boy’s body …

2:40 pm, Saturday
Thousands protest across United States
In response to Christina Greer’s nomination as Secretary of State and the seven following allegations of inappropriate touching, people gathered on Saturday morning in cities across the United States including New York, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles to protest her impending confirmation.

5:17 pm, Saturday
Doctors celebrate successful artificial lung transplant
The first successful artificial lung transplant was announced after 13 hours of surgery at the Holy Oaks Hospital in Boston, MA on Saturday night. The scientific community is hailing it as a breakthrough, and the manufacturers are eager to make the lung, which fits 82% of women’s and 14% of men’s chest cavities, a commercially viable …

5:08 am, Sunday
Mexico City Metro victim dies
The 17 year-old boy who was brutally assaulted on the Mexico City Metro after staying out late on Thursday night to watch the Mexico vs. Columbia football game was pronounced dead early Sunday morning.

12:12 pm, Sunday
Record number of men running for office
Experts are calling 2020 the “Year of the Man” as record numbers of men are running for elected positions in local, state, and federal government across the United States. “We could finally be seeing a ‘male wave’,” political analyst Kendra Michaels speculated, “but we’ll have to wait until the midterms to see how it shakes out.”

8:54 am, Monday
Senate Foreign Relations Committee under pressure
The twenty members of the committee responsible for confirming Christina Greer as the Secretary of State are under an unexpected amount of public pressure due to the controversial nature of allegations against her, as well as the current cultural climate of #himtoo. “We have to maintain a presumption of innocence,” Senator Jill Percy said …  

9:20 pm, Monday
National Science Fair winner focused on reducing plastic
Prijya Chopra, 14, was named the 2020 National Science Fair Champion on Monday evening after a grueling finalist selection process. Chopra’s project innovated a cheap, lightweight machine that can remove 5 tons of plastic from the oceans every 72 hours. She is currently fielding offers from GE, Samsung, Nikon, and more.

3:15 am, Tuesday
First Husband lands in Israel
The McCarthy’s continue their tour of the Middle East with Gene McCarthy’s independent loop around Jordan, Israel and Egypt. Speculation shrouds this part of the trip following the historic decision to move the US Embassy into Tel-Aviv. Palestinian protesters have followed Gene most of the way through his trip, including…

4:43 pm, Tuesday
Gruesome details emerge from Mexico City Metro attack
Protesters numbers have swelled, demanding justice for the 17-year old boy who was brutally attacked and left for dead on a subway train. The released autopsy showed severe gouging to the skin from tickling by both fingernails and a 5-inch serrated knife, including damage to his internal organs, which had been partially pulled out of …

10:01 pm, Tuesday
Greer confirmed as Secretary of State
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved Greer’s nomination on a party-line vote, Tuesday night at 9:54 pm. The vote was 10 Republicans for Greer, nine Democrats against. One Democrat voted present.

8:16 am, Wednesday
Theme announced for Met Gala 2020
The editor-in-chief of Vogue, Ari Levvy, has released the much-anticipated theme for this year’s Met Gala: “Cyborg: Humanity, Technology, and Fashion”. “In 2020 we have moved from fixing to enhancing the human body,” said Levvy, “From eyeglasses to contact lenses to BeyondVision, we want to explore how fashion fits into …

***

“A pint of the IPA,” Aiden told the bartender, his eyes fixated on the TV screen above the bar. The news was on and replaying footage of Christina Greer’s swearing-in ceremony. “Can we change it to the game?” he added, gesturing at the screen.

“Sure honey,” the bartender made a face. “It’s such a bummer about Greer, right?”

It’s a little more than a bummer, Aiden wanted to tell her, but instead he shrugged and said, “Yeah.”

He managed to get three-quarters through his IPA before a woman ordered a drink at the bar, then turned to face him.

“Hey.”

He caught the quick up-down that she did—the flick of the eyes that undressed and assessed—and stiffened. “Hi,” he replied, focusing on the game with a mock-intensity.

“Chargers or Dolphins?” she asked.

“Chargers.”

“Hmmn.” She looked at him. “May I sit with you?”

Aiden broke his laser-beam focus from the TV for the first time and actually looked at the woman. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, hair coiffed and styled, in business-casual attire which ended up looking rather elegant when all put together. He shifted uncomfortably. Not because she was making him uncomfortable, but because he was attracted to her.

“I came here to be alone,” he replied.

“Nobody comes to a crowded place to be alone,” she responded with flirtatious glimmer in her eye.

“Fine. I came here to avoid my girlfriend.” He emphasized girlfriend so that she would take the hint and leave.

“Oh? Trouble in paradise? How original for someone who is drinking in a bar alone.”

“You’re drinking in a bar alone,” he replied, with more of a banter than a blade in his voice. She smiled. A large, white-toothed, mischievous grin.

“I didn’t come to this bar to drink alone. I already asked if I could sit with you.”

Aiden paused, realizing that a smile had also spread across his face. She is witty.

The woman kept on talking, “a handsome man alone is a spectacle,” she said, “do you really want to continue making a spectacle out of yourself?”

Aiden flushed slightly at being called handsome, unsure of how to respond to the compliment buried within her trap. Maybe it would be better to let this random, polite, fashionable woman keep him company, so the other less-polite ones wouldn’t bother him. She seemed ok.

“You’re drink is empty,” she nodded at it, “can I get you another one?”

“Ok,” he acquiesced. She smiled again at him, eyes twinkling, and walked to the other side of the bar to order. She returned with a full glass in one hand, sneaking up behind Aiden and slipping her free hand across his back, around his waist, and tickled with her fingers.

He jumped in surprise and something snapped. He whipped around and his elbow connected with her outstretched hand, knocking the full IPA out of her grasp so that it smashed on the floor loudly and frothily.

“Don’t touch me!” he yelled, “Why can’t you just leave men alone?” His heart was racing now and his face burned hot with both shame and rage. The friendly hum of chatter in the brewery stopped and everyone swiveled their heads to look at the source of the yelling. To gawk at him. The crazy man.

Still pissed and suddenly very mortified, Aiden grabbed his backpack and left.

People in the bar chuckled and turned back to their drinks and conversations. A few of the women shared knowing looks between tables, shook their heads, and shrugged their shoulders as if to say, men amirite? What can you do.