Imagine this.
There’s a woman somewhere,
a woman you know.
Imagine her going about her day
when a man meddles,
decides they should have a conversation,
and she obliges
in the way her parents taught her
was respectable.
The man says he loves conversation.
He doesn't.
He loves monologue
with an audience.
Anything beyond agreement
is noise,
unless it arrives
as submitted obedience
to his extravagant opinions.
He doesn't like questions.
Questions about his opinions.
Questions about his lived experience.
Questions about the roads
he travelled
to arrive at his conclusions.
He doesn't like them.
Not one bit.
So every time there is a question,
he misdirects.
The woman,
meanwhile,
had grown up learning
to respect herself
and her sanity.
Obedience wasn't her bread.
Submission wasn't her breadcrumb.
So she did
what any rational person,
any objectively sane person,
might do.
She disagreed.
Respectfully.
And left.
The man had a fragile ego.
And what kind of world is it
where a man finally has to make peace
with an injured narcissism?
So he ganged up.
He brought his brothers.
A brotherhood of men
with no jobs,
only jabs.
And boy,
did they swing.
They ripped through her dress,
her skin,
her flesh,
her bonework,
but never touched her.
They weren't uncivilised savages,
you see.
They did it all with words.
Wild accusations.
Filthy rumours.
Rotten verdicts.
All because
she had decided
she could afford
an opinion of her own.
They called everyone who knew her.
Everyone they could.
And they didn't stop
until voices began
hollowing into echoes.
They came at her
day and night,
through monsoon,
winter,
summer,
for months,
until months became a year,
and a year became more,
until there was nothing left
of the bricks in her name.
She was alive.
And yet
buried six feet under.
Then one day,
when she had had enough,
she dragged them all
into a courtroom.
And the men cried
like a pack of sheep
in front of a wolf
whose shepherd had gone.
People gathered.
Watched the circus.
Then returned to their lives,
leaving behind
the usual unsolicited opinions:
“She’s making a mountain
out of a molehill.”
“She’s equally to blame.”
“Why couldn't she just apologise
for hurting their feelings
and move on?”
Does it infuriate you?
The audacity
of unscrupulous people
peddling justice
like pocket change.
Now imagine
the woman were a man.
And the men
were women.
Does it still infuriate you?
If it does,
good.
If it doesn't,
then perhaps
what you called justice
was only projection.
And what you called feminism
was only loyalty
to the side you recognised yourself on.
You can sit there
with tense anuses
and worked-up sinuses
beneath those stoic faces.
Remember,
I can see you.
Every one of you.
And you,
you are why
justice so often
begins to feel like vendetta.
You are no feminist.
You aren't even humanitarian.
You're as much a feminist
as Genghis Khan
was a prophet of peace.
