A World Without Men

In my dreams I live in a world without men. In this world the dykes, the weird girls, the femmes, and their friends are all free. Men aren’t there to make us feel small, to twist our words so expertly we begin to question ourselves, to quiet us until we start to quiet ourselves. Men do not harm us, police us, or shape our psyches in their image. In this dream, safe from the systemic and personal violence of men, we love, think, and feel deeply. We want without shame. We walk alone at night.

Coming of age as a woman in the world of men is a profoundly educational, albeit traumatic, experience. Each boy who scoffed at my suggestions taught me how easy it was to dismiss a woman, to cast aside all her credibility. Boys taught me, through exasperated complaints, that my rage was unbecoming, my passions undesirable. They taught me the world would like me best if I knew to make myself small.

I was in middle school when I learned that a woman speaking up for herself is seen as an obstacle in the way of a Heisman Trophy prospect, that a winning football season is worth more than a rape kit. In high school, I learned that known rapists can be presidents and Supreme Court justices and Academy Award winners. In my first week of college, I learned men are so delusionally convinced of their own innocence that they may even believe it’s appropriate to call your ex-girlfriend for advice on how to respond when a new girl says you raped her.

I haven’t always been so seduced by this misandrist fantasy. For as long as I have been burned by men, I have also been uplifted by them. I grew up in a household where traditional notions of gender were often cast aside. My dad taught me to sew and helped make my Halloween costumes each year. He inspired me to play music, sang with me in the car, and gave me his old ties when he decided it was time to downsize his collection. He cried in front of me shamelessly, he introduced me to Julia Roberts, and he watched Love Actually with me every Christmas Eve.

As a child, I shared social circles, sports practices, and stages with my practically-Irish-non-twin younger brother. I befriended boys wherever I went and longed for their acceptance and respect. I raced them up rock walls, beat them in push-up contests, and challenged them in chess, but I learned quickly that there was no real winning for women in a patriarchal world. Instead, I thought I’d join them. In their friendship I found a strange euphoria, a taste of boyhood and brotherhood I hadn’t realized I longed for.

From the feminine side of the aisle, boyhood seemed to hold the promise of freedom—freedom to say and do as you pleased, to voice your opinions and have them be heard, to be passionate, emotional, and angry, and be met with encouragement. But the closer I got, the more I could see that they too were victims of manhood’s violence. I watched with empathy and rage as sweet and sensitive young boys grew into hard, emotionless shells of themselves in the name of survival.

As an adult, my relationship with men shifted. Once my days with bi-curiosity were through, my visible queer exterior (and supposed lesbian accent) largely spared me from any romantic advances. Instead, I now watch men try to earn my respect. They long to be both mogged and mothered by a powerful feminine figure such as myself. The ones I choose to keep around are respectful, kind, and entirely uninterested in enforcing patriarchy’s will. Our relationships are meaningful, supportive, and fulfilling, and yet the abundance of good men in my life does not keep me from dreaming of my feminine escape.

I am reminded every day of men and manhood’s cancerous nature. I’ll think I’m in remission, and yet patriarchal poison pulses through me still, infecting my body and mind. I age and change and grow, and yet my body remembers. My subconscious will never forget. Even if it could, men find new ways every day to remind me. I am reminded of their violence with every nervous look over my shoulder on the subway or walking home at night, every time I bite my tongue for someone else’s comfort, every urge to second guess if anyone actually cares what I have to say. I am reminded when I open my phone to the news of yet another woman subjected to brutal, documented, systemic violence. I’m reminded by all 57 Cornell fraternity brothers who aided and abetted her abuse. I’m reminded by every woman around the world who shares Jane Doe’s trauma.

Other times I even catch the men red-handed. I watch from the padded floors of my climbing gym as a little girl is kicked down by a boy she’s playing with, while another boy bears witness. I watch as she begins to cry, and he springs up to tell her it was her fault. I watch as he pridefully explains his innocence to their parents. He tells them she was in his way, that she was the one who actually harmed him. I watch as she learns how quickly a man can twist the truth, and I listen as his mother confides in her friends that she’s scared this is not merely a symptom of his age, but an indication of the man he will one day grow up to be.

What puts me at ease in this moment is the setting in which this young girl is learning these lessons. In the vibrant plastic jug-covered walls of the climbing gym, her fearlessness is rewarded above all else. Here she’ll also learn to use the powers of her mind and body together to solve puzzles and feel strong, surrounded by femmes and queers and gender non-conforming friends who get up from their crash landings on the padded floors to bump chalk-coated fists in celebration of giving something their best shot.

At the climbing gym, on the basketball court, and in the waves of the ocean, I am reminded of my own strength, encouraged to take pride in my physicality, commended for my confidence. In my adult life, I am somehow fortunate enough to be paid to share my opinions both privately and on the internet, a constant rebuttal to every boyish voice in my head telling me no one cares what I have to say. Above all else, the friendships I built in the early years of my adulthood counter every lesson that men try to teach me.

My femme fantasy is, of course, impossible to attain. We will never know a world without men, without the scars of their existence. My younger self thought revolutions were built on rage, that my anger could carry me through to a brighter, better world. I now know that rage, while powerful, is not a sustainable fuel. I resort to something more renewable, finding glimmers of my feminine utopia in my everyday life.

I live this fantasy each time my council of lesbians convenes in my backyard. I live it when my best friend spends the weekend at my apartment. I feel it in the grass at the Collina Strada show when my friend asks me, princess cake in hand, to French braid her hair. It’s in the saltwater of the Rockaways while I swim and surf with other sapphics. It’s in the air in Barclays Center as 17,000 women’s sports fans cheer at the top of their lungs for elite female athletes and one dancing elephant. I will never know a world without men, but I sleep well at night knowing that my world loves women.