When we finally make contact with aliens, and they send their scientists down the earth to catalogue our oddities, one of the puzzling attributes they’ll most certainly comment upon is the way human women are always apologizing to the furniture.

“Why?” the hive mind of genderless asexual beings will ask. “What sort of ritual is this?”

We, the human women, will try to laugh it off, explain it’s just a misstep on our part, an overcorrection from spending every waking moment in fear of some man taking offense to our presence — hahaha, isn’t it such a laugh, the way human men are so sensitive, so emotional, so irrational?

The alien scientists will frown, in whatever way a hive mind of genderless asexual creatures indicates frowning, and ask, “But you are all of the same species. Why should you fear one another?”

“Well, no, no,” we, the human women, will counter. “We’re not the same species exactly. We’re different. Male and female are different. Black and white are different. Young and old are different. We can’t possibly just get along.”

“Who decided that?” the alien scientists will ask.

“Well, the men.”

The hive mind of genderless, asexual alien scientists will pause a moment, pondering this admission. And we the human women will smile our tight smiles, apologies there on the tips of our tongues, as they always are, just in case.

Finally, the genderless, asexual hive mind of alien scientists, will look us, the human women, in the eye and speak three sacred words:

“Men ain’t shit.”

.

.

.

.

Originally published on Medium: https://medium.com/@sammmfox/when-the-aliens-come-well-have-a-lot-of-explaining-to-do-405ad674c732

#aliens #sexism #humor

On the corner of 37th and 5th,

some guy calls me a bitch.

At home, he has a baby girl, just six months.

He doesn't think about her

when he utters the word

and he doesn't think about her

when he asks why Hillary Clinton can't just be more approachable

and he doesn't think about her

when he takes up two seats on the subway,

but when the truth about the Harvey Weinsteins

and the Donald Trumps makes its way across the Internet,

he makes a Facebook post about the sad state of the world

because he "has a daughter,"

forgetting, maybe,

that so many fathers have had daughters

for so many centuries.

It has not stopped them

from calling some other father's daughter

a bitch.

#feminism #sexualharrassment #sexism #harveyweinstein #donaldtrump

I.

The first time I thought about my body

I was a sticky thirteen.

My religion teacher was always telling us,

"Your body is a temple,"

which just meant,

"Don't have sex,"

because

you know

Jesus Hate Sluts.

Ten years later, everyone says,

"LOVE YOUR BODY,"

and I can't stop checking myself out in every mirror I pass.

"Love your body," whispered like a prayer

& all I hear is,

"Your body is a temple.

Your body is a temple.

Your body is a FUCKING TEMPLE."

What a joke:

I never hated my body

until someone told me not to.

II.

"Your body is a temple."

My body is a wasteland.

My body is an empire, long-fought-over and oft-desecrated by a war I didn't start, fought with curling irons and tubes of lip gloss.

My body is a canvas upon which I have painted a thousand versions of myself - versions I'd hardly recognize now, versions I wish I could get back.

My body is evidence in the crime of my life that proves

definitively

I did not sit back.

I was not a passive observer.

My body is a vessel, which is to say

it is nothing / it is everything.

"Your body is a temple."

Don't tell me about my body.

I've seen my reflection.

It doesn't tell half the story.

III.

At work, Bobby the Regular always sits at the bar

and greets me with, "You look gorgeous."

He looks me dead in the eye with such grave importance,

like the revelation might save my life,

or like he's the first man to ever wanna fuck me.

I know he thinks he's doing me a favor,

but

I've never felt less confident

than when a strange man

tells me I'm beautiful.

IV.

The first time my daughter comes crying to me that she hates her body,

I will not tell her she is wrong.

Instead, I will look her in the eye and say,

"Your lungs fill up with air involuntarily

& your heart beats 80 times per minute

& when you fall off of your bike and skin your knee, you cry because it hurts

& your body is not a temple.

You don't have to worship at its altar."

I will tell her all the things I should have told myself.

America is a country built on a history of mistakes, of protests, of constant corrections, and an indefinite ascent toward freedom.

Americans have never been quiet or peaceful; we've never just accepted what we've been handed. The American Experiment has been marked by our inability to sit down and shut the fuck up, even when perhaps it would be better for us to sit down and shut the fuck up.

America is not a flag; it's not an anthem; it's not a war in a foreign land we should have never started. America is not a country. It is a people. Not a group of human beings but humans fighting every day to leave behind something better than ourselves.

And if you have pride in this country, you must have pride in every protest that disrupts your journey to work, every walk out that ends class early, every athlete on bended knee, every water protector in North Dakota, every woman who risked her life so her daughters might have the right to vote, every immigrant who broke his back, in 1776 or 2016, for the promise of the American Dream.

If you have pride in this country, you must look at it with open eyes. Because if you love something, you help it grow. You coach it with compassion, and you don't let it off the hook.

You stay. You do good work. You care for it.

Every messy inch of it.

Capitalism is trying to kill the artist

but doesn't take into account

that the artist will choose art

over water, food, or breathing.

The artist will choose art over life

every time.

I have been running at men my whole life

with words like daggers

and an armor no soldier or bomb could penetrate

but when you lean into me

with words like daisies

I hope I can learn to break down all my defenses.

I pray you'll deliver swift defeat.

I just want to be the type of girl

who breaks your heart with a smile,

but it's always my heart on the floor

shattered to pieces.

don't let it be raining.

pick a day without a cloud in the sky,

one as sweltering and glorious as the day we met.

don't take me to a fancy restaurant;

take me to our favorite diner at 2PM.

make me eat pancakes before you deliver the news.

don't be selfish; don't drag it out over weeks.

once you know it's over, be clear & be honest

& don't mince it.

don't say, "it's not you, it's me,"

when we both know

any human relationship between two people

requires the unfettering dedication of both parties

to build as well as destroy.

don't lie & don't apologize.

having my heart broken by you

means I had the privilege of loving you at all,

and I won't apologize for that.

Start at my toes. 

Get to know each one, then move, like a whisper, to my ankles, my shins. Pay them the attention they rarely receive. Let your fingers linger in the soft flesh behind my knees. 

Then go back to my toes. 

Press your palms to my palm, fingertips to fingertips. Search out the pulse at my wrist, the way it flutters, hummingbird light, the way it quickens when your press your lips to it. Snake up my arms as if with no destination, too dedicated to every velvet inch. Stop at my shoulders; admire their form. Kiss your way down my collar bone, my neck. 

Then go back to my fingers, my toes. 

When you come to my face, let your lips explore everywhere but my lips - my eyelids, my cheeks, my hair; kiss my nose, my jaw, my chin. Trace every contour with your fingers, memorize the flush that spreads from my chest to my cheeks. Sigh into each of my sighs.

But still don't kiss me, especially when I beg for it. 

Attend to my ears; skim their edges. Murmur your every desire. Describe exactly how it will feel to press yourself into me, how you like the heat of your flesh against mine, how the shape of my mouth wakes you up in the night, wanting. 

Bite into the flesh on my neck, that place right under my pulse, where I'm the most humanly delicate, and tug unrelenting, at fists of my hair. Don't hesitate; don't apologize if I cry out. Dig your nails into my back; do all you can to leave me open and aching. 

Trail kisses down my sternum, under my breasts, paying careful attention to every rib and freckle. Lick that space just under the soft curve of my belly, along the edge of my underwear. Grip my thighs as they were meant to be gripped - firm and strong and wanting - and press your hips to mine, hard enough to feel the wetness accumulating at my center. Smother my lips with yours; invade my mouth with your fingers, your tongue. Leave me no room to breathe; leave me bruising. 

Make a trail down my body, biting the softest parts as you go. Take time with each thigh, kissing closer and closer to my cunt, your breath heavy and warm against it. Tease your way around my clit until I am arching and clawing and pleading to be devoured. Make me certain it's coming; thrust your hips hungrily against mine, trap my hands against the bed.

Then go back to my toes.