And I am a woman who became a writer and through it gained some standing while writing about other things from art to war, and sometimes tried to put that standing to work to try to open up space for others’ voices. I am a woman who one morning wrote an essay called “Men Explain Things to Me” that is about the way that the mild disparagement of having your subject of expertise explained to you by a fool who does not know that he does not know what he’s talking about or who he’s talking to is on a spectrum, and that the other end of the spectrum is full of violent death.
