Loud: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve

by Drew Afualo

To me, though, the most striking part of this monologue is the moment when she reveals the “cool girl” for the sham that it is: Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl.

Fuck being cool and fuck being chill. If the reward for being the “coolest” girl in the room is a sliver of attention from the world’s most mediocre men, then I would happily commit to never being chill. And never being cool.

I no longer think my interest in those things makes me special or different, nor do I want it to. I no longer give two shits if the things I like make me more or less appealing to men.

That desire for male approval is what underwrites a pick-me’s belief that somehow no other woman likes a specific thing, say, the NFL, the same way she does, with the same expertise or knowledge, and so she can only legitimately discuss it with men. So it follows: if she is the only woman who can “relate” to men and/or discuss this interest with them, then she is more likely to be “picked” by men. The reductive math is quite simple.

An awful man made a violently bigoted video about me, spurring on the never-ending song of involuntarily celibate men calling me unoriginal names like “fat” and “ugly.” Among these Neanderthals crowding the comments was a random woman, one who did not follow me and wanted all of these men to know it. She wrote a comment criticizing my looks and insinuating I was ugly without the help of filters, because there’s “no way she looks like that in real life.” The creator of this hateful video didn’t acknowledge her comment, but he did respond to another one. A random man had responded to her commentary by saying, “You have a filter on your profile picture. So I would shut the fuck up if I were you.” That comment was loved by the creator of the video. This woman that I had never met or interacted with engaged with vitriol targeted at me, and still got hit. Why? Because at the end of the day … she’s a “bitch,” just like me.

The next day, I go to school and tell the story to my friends who had thought he was so cute and popular in middle school, which is also when I find out that he’s been going around telling other kids in our grade that he doesn’t like me because I’m a “fucking prude.” That’s what he called me. And when I heard that rumor, my response was “Tell him to come say that to my face.” Of course, he never did. In fact, he never talked to me again the next four years we were there.

Very CS of him. We've all experienced the wrath of a boy spreading unfair judgements against us in high school, who get awfully quiet once we challenge their shit talking directly.

Contrary to what awful men believe about me or say online, I do actually understand that the patriarchy affects men, too. The irony in this situation being that they, as men, don’t realize that an oppressive structure like the patriarchy sets up impossible standards to live up to on their end as well.

Where I am quick to anger and prone to suspicion, Deison has a seemingly bottomless ability to hold space for others. Even in this situation, where I was responsible for causing her such hurt, she let me come to her on my own time, and never stopped loving me all the while.

I do hope they will eventually see the fault in their logic and realize that joining men in belittling other women will never change the fact that they are still women, and when men rally around their own, that never includes us.

“Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.” It was from an essay she had published over forty years ago.

I’m not their teacher. I’m not their mom. It is not my responsibility to educate them. I do this for other women, femmes, and everyone else who is not a bigot.

We can’t make men respect us as people with agency and complex interiority when they only want to see us as objects. But we can embarrass them.

My goal is never to change you and turn you into me; it’s to equip you with the knowledge and understanding that you deserve all the love and respect you want. This includes not allowing men to talk you into compromising your own boundaries.

You know how pick-mes say things like I’m so not like other girls, I’m more of a guys’ girl? I’m the opposite of that. I am just like every other bitch you know. In fact, I’m worse.

Even though I’m proud of the work I’ve done in divesting myself from the patriarchy, I will freely admit that I have beliefs that I have been hesitant to be fully honest about online because I am afraid of potential backlash.

And what I know now is that if it isn’t a fuck yes, it’s a no.

You cannot be expected to leave your personhood at the door for a corporate job, no matter how much they would like you to believe that is the only way to succeed. You owe it to yourself, always, to assert personal agency. No matter what.

Your work does not define you. I don’t care if you’re an entry-level person working for peanuts like I was, or a multi-hyphenate who runs several successful businesses. Your job is never going to be the most important part of your life,

sometimes the best response to their behavior is not education. Nor is it patience and empathy (two things they receive far too much of and that they don’t deserve from marginalized communities). It’s laughing in their faces, and loudly.

And nothing, but especially not some random awful man in the wild, is worth sacrificing your safety for.

But over time, that conditional “polite” response becomes internalized, which affects your ability to judge which are the small things and which are the big things, and ultimately chips away at your ability to tolerate— or not tolerate—rudeness or disrespect on a much more significant scale.