When you’re a woman, there are a lot of things that you’re told you should do. Be nice; be modest; be classy. There many more things that you’re told you shouldn’t do; the big one is, you shouldn’t go places on your own and do things on your own, because the world is a dangerous place.
Translated into real life, that mostly means that you can’t do what you want to do, unless you can convince some trusted man (or maybe a couple of women) to come do it with you.
You end up sacrificing your autonomy to other people’s preferences. Or you resign yourself to doing things that are generally considered safe and normal for women, in populated well-lit spaces.
I worked hard to do the things that are supposed to lead to a good, comfortable life: I spent ten years of my life clawing my way from a kid who never attended school to a lawyer in a top-tier firm. I was (mostly) nice to men and tried to find a nice boyfriend who would also want to do exciting things (like, say, fang across the Tanami on dirt bikes). I thought, if I’m straight with people they’ll be straight with me. Lots of rookie errors right there.
Well, you get older and wiser and eventually you call bullshit on the whole thing.
There’s not much point in having a life, opportunities, a mind of your own if all you ever do is wait around for an opportunity to catch a nice safe ride-along on someone else’s life.
There’s less opportunity in the world than people who want it, so it’d be pretty criminal to waste the opportunity I’ve got. And to be perfectly honest, I no longer have the patience to play nice anymore. Seriously: don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t do; don’t be rude and expect me to be nice; don’t tell me about how much money you make or complain about your mortgage and expect me to pretend that I don’t think you’re a wanker. Because I do.
I may also be a wanker, I’m not ruling out that possibility. But whatever I am, it’ll be on my own terms.