Blocks

"Then he just ran off."

Jill Filopic’s post, “Cesar Chavez and the Lie of Feminine Power” sums up really well what I’ve been ranted about to myself and with other women in the wake of Dolores Huerta’s revelations about what she suffered at the hands of Cesar Chavez. He was a monster — raping her, raping other women, raping children — and she kept silent about it because she knew coming forward would just tank the cause of the farm workers. If she was even believed.

When I was a little kid, three or four, I was sitting in some day care center happily building house with blocks. I’d been working on it for a while, and felt pretty good about it. Suddenly some boy around my age runs up and kicks it over. Doesn’t trip on it or barrel through it by accident, aims deliberately with his foot and kicks the whole thing over. Then he just ran off. I was shocked and furious. It was my first clear experience of deliberate cruelty. I didn’t know it would turn out to be a metaphor for so many episodes in my life, the homes men in my life would destroy without concern for the effort I’d put into creating them.

At the time, it made me less bold, less willing to be vulnerable. I stopped building things with blocks for a long time, only coming back to it when I discovered Legos, which locked together. I’d play with them in my brother’s room. I was never given my own Legos, even in my feminist home.

I spent a lot of time trying to understand this boy kicking my blocks over in one way or another. I tried to learn to celebrate his feeling of freedom, his chaotic energy. It was in my best interest to understand male energy since they control basically everything and they were the people I wanted to date. I made so many excuses for so many guys. I don’t even want to write about it because it makes me so tired to think about the efforts I put into pleasing men who were never going to give me the grace that I gave them.

My last three boyfriends all read and loved my book, which is a history of women’s citizenship and the misogyny working against the presence of women in the public sphere. They would gush about my cleverness, my knowledge, my confidence in expressing myself.

Then they all turned on me.

One complained I sat in too masculine a way. One told a cop I was mouthy. One complained that I talked too much in gatherings that included men who droned on about their court cases and passion for Scottish independence.

There are men reading this now, fans of my work, shaking their heads and thinking they would never do that. They would support and encourage me. Yes, you would and no, you wouldn’t.

I set up a prayer corner in my bedroom for the guy who thought I sat in too masculine a way. For the guy who told that one cop I was mouthy and another that I was a cunt, I bought flannel sheets with pictures of Maine harbors so he might want to sleep over more.

The guy who thought I talked too much at dinner parties? I brought color and joy and laughter and dance and love into his home. Or so he said. I pleased him with my curves. But I talked over men and made them uncomfortable and I had to go.

Of course, it’s all more complicated than that. Human interactions always are.

Except my life has been filled with boys and men kicking over my blocks, telling me the things I like are stupid, ogling me from cars, critiquing my body, putting their hand on my thigh at work, walking into me on sidewalks, voting for rapists, making gross jokes and getting upset when I don’t laugh, berating me on the street, standing there doing nothing while another man is cruel to me and on and on and on.

All of those experiences live inside me. Older male relatives telling me they see me naked in their dreams, teachers asking me out the day after I turn eighteen, comedians I admire turning out to be pedophiles and rapists.

With all that, I have still loved men and let them into my life. I have made efforts to make them feel comfortable, even as headlines about the latest pedophiles and rapists fill my phone. Did you see the latest about Chomsky and Epstein island? I made some of that soup you like for dinner.

Every time I’m done with men, another one comes along and claims I should lower my guard for him, like he’s the exception. I need to get better at resisting.