If I were a boy, even just for a day
A few weeks ago I promised to share something I’d been thinking about since “International Women’s Day” because all I could think about was… what a weird thing to have a day for.
I hate the idea of IWD and I don’t want to give it any more airtime than I already am, so instead, a little link pack about femininity in the 21st century followed by a few audio recordings of past articles.
Real quick. A few truly great songs made it to the TMTT Jams playlist since we last connected.
Bieber was a big mood the last few weeks, this song by Washed Out too, and this song by Karnaval Blues that makes me think of NYC at night after it’s rained, and this one by Kito, ZHU, and Jeremih to pull you out of that funk.
H’okay, let’s do this.
If I were a boy, even just for a day
Here’s a song by Dua Lipca called Boys Will Be Boys that I encourage you to listen to while ingesting the links.
“Saturdays are for the boys. And every other day of the week. “ — me, I said that.
So this all started with this instagram post
And that’s when the rage set in.
Which led to my wanting to write about it. Except every time I talked about it, I just felt like this.
But if I had gotten my shit together enough to actually put my thoughts into words, it truly would’ve summed up to this paragraph by Sylvia.
"Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed...to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable femininity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars...to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording...all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night." — Sylvia Plath
And I’ll just leave this section with this thought.
A long time ago someone said to me, that the change won’t happen in our lifetime and that broke me. Realizing that we can kick and scream and fight and it’ll make a difference, I know it will, but it won’t be in this lifetime. Too many people have to die er more eloquently put, live out their lives for the change to come. I’ll feel the effects of change, but I’ll probably never go a full day, week, month knowing what it feels like to be equal to a man.
I know this is a cop out of sorts but hey, a few people said my voice is like ASMR, so here’s the last 3 long(er) reads I’ve written in the last 2 months.
This one was the original hit. A number of men replied to tell me they felt frustrated about the way communication is broken down by gender and how often they’d like to take a more emotional approach. Here’s to all the softer boys out there.
I kinda hated re-reading this one. It was so personal and yet it still didn’t really hit on the point I was trying to make as much as I would have liked it to. But I was in-flight when I wrote it and I’m honoring that fwiw.
This is the crown jewel. So, so, so many people replied and resonated with this one. I still think about this piece on a near daily basis and I hope to never stop. Shout out to my brother Dan for being the voice of reason that catalyzed this piece.
That’s it. That’s the whole post.
And that my friends, was too much to text.