Kabul
Aloysius Marshall
My first husband begged me take his name. He knelt in front of me, in the little white clapboard city hall building of Patterson, New York State, frantic, and upset. Begged is generous. He was angry at my hesitation. It was a Red Flag I bypassed.
You were shocked when I didn’t leap at the opportunity to be branded as your property, to give up my own identity. Thanks to a lifetime of conditioning, I caved. I caved. I fucking caved. I lost my name. Two years later, I fled for my life from your abuse.
I was bred, groomed, and trained for a woman’s accomplishment, to marry well, and live vicariously through my husbands accomplishments. Be a good girl.
I can carry your children–clean your house–serve and service you. I’d better look pretty doing it, the right make-up, fashion, hair and perfectly waxed, eternally prepubescent, hairlessness, all so you can stand tall among your fellow slave owners. Does it shock you to hear matrimony referred to as a form of slavery? It’s the truth. It was all about the dowry and the connections offered. Women were bought and even today, through much of the world, including parts of the United States, are owned.
Speaking out is punishable by death, or worse, by excommunication. I can be a virgin, until I am bought and paid for. If I’m successful, I get the wallflower’s peace. If I rebel, I’m a whore. That’s what my father called me when he was angry. Whore, Cunt. Stupid Bitch. Just say woman. It’s all the same to you.
My mother was a battered woman. People wonder why battered women don’t just leave. Women weren’t even permitted to have credit cards or bank accounts until the mid 70’s. By then, she had three children and no rights, no degrees, and no job skills. Just like me. College served its purpose. She spoke well at parties, met a man, and married. Bette was ambitious. It only took her one year to “Graduate” to wife. A lawyer too! Job well done.
The good man stands, smiling, as if he understands. He says, as if it were news, “Women don’t want to just be fucked!” This was his feminist revelation? The younger men in the shop bow down to this wisdom. They still don’t get it.
The rules we live by are strict. Men permit us privileges. Potent as air. You don’t appreciate oxygen until, you go without it. The right to decide for ourselves when, and if we become mothers, is a luxury. Even the right to NOT get fucked is questionable. What if we drank too much? Or wore the wrong skirt? What if he paid for dinner?
You think you’re ok. But it can all be taken away in the snap of an eye. Kabul. Sisters. My heart hurts. I have anxious.
Christians or the Taliban, fundamentalism means one thing for women. We’re fundamentally fucked. Hijab or the habit are one and the same.
One woman weeps on the news, “I must burn everything I have accomplished in my life or be killed.”
Just last year, in some countries, women finally won the same legal rights as cattle. It was celebrated worldwide. “We’ve been fighting for this moment forever! Until today, women were property, like a table or chair. To be used as you wish and thrown out once they are broken. Cattle–at least–must be fed. That’s great progress.” Then this week… in Afghanistan, those rights are lost again. Because men said so.
This is the world we live in. Women are the most consistently and profoundly discriminated against people of all, worldwide. Right here in the USA too.
I understand. We will always encounter some level of blind spots to elements of the black experience in America, as light skinned people. I may have less than many because of having been raised with a black family and friends, but still, they will be there. I do not fear death from the police when I’m pulled over.
There will be moments, when I simply do not see the threat, I miss the cue, the smell–the gas leak poisoning the atmosphere. But today, you missed the cues that are mine as a woman. I am scared. I am scarred. I am angry.
I remind myself again and again, it’s sane to be scared. It’s sane to be angry. It’s okay not to be okay sometimes. You taught me that.
I told you he hated me. I could feel his fury growing–it was wearing on my nerves. It wasn’t an answer, when you said, “What do you care if he hates you?”
I knew what you meant. but you couldn’t see what I meant. The threat of a man’s festering fury may not be much to you. You’re a strong guy. But to me, it’s the smell of smoke, and where there’s smoke… well, you know I’ve been burned.
I know very well there is something there, I can feel it, moving against my face. I can taste it. I can hear it.
You do not see this air, the air of male Privilege. Privilege is not just for white guys. It is the air you all breath.
I CANNOT ACT – SPEAK – THINK A SINGLE THOUGHT WITHOUT THE PARTICIPATION OF THIS FLUID ELEMENT.
I told a friend my secrets. It was a moment of weakness. I was very ill at the time and on painkillers. I told him my secrets, the story of my survival. He shared them all at a dinner party with his bff, another fucking sexual predator. His casual use of my worst nightmare as a dinner party anecdote, let me know where he stood. Even the good guys don’t get it.
They cannot see the air they breathe because it has never, not for one second, been taken from them. How does it feel to be held under water?
If I stopped speaking to every guy who had ever committed rape or sexual assault… how many would be left? 81% of women are raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. There is no statistic available for how many men commit rape or assault against women. Nobody even asks the question. Ask anyone! Everyone knows women who have been raped. But nobody knows a guy who would do that. Right.
Out of every 100 rapes reported to the police (and barely anyone reports to the police) only one in a hundred will ever spend even a single day in jail. Do you still wonder why we don’t report it?
I’m getting emotional. Life has been chaos lately. Sickness, betrayal, rebirth, renewal, successes, and terrible losses, they’ve all lived side by side, day by day, something in the same day or even the same hour. I have decided that I really do not like white men. Old white men are truly so tone deaf, compared to other cultures. They’re so steeped in a lifetime of privilege, they accept it blindly like the air they breathe, they don’t even know it exists until they can’t have it for even a second. Just look at the shock on their pompous faces. They love to “should” all over people. They know how I should feel. What I should do and say and want and need. Fuck em. They’re almost always, essentially sexual predators, and even if they’ve never actually attacked anyone, that they’re aware of, they sure don’t have a problem overlooking all their friends who are creepy-as-fuck and do creepy things. They use their privilege to suck all the oxygen out of the room. Old white men love to hear themselves talk. Why answer a question with one word when you can answer with 25? They love to hold court, even when they know nothing. I asked a roomful of students, 52 to be exact, how many of them knew someone who had been sexually assaulted or raped. I read them the legal definitions of those felonies. Every single person put a hand up. Then, I asked how many people they knew who had survived sexual assault or rape? The lowest number in the room was 4, many people said it was every single woman they knew and some men. It was only later that I realized what I should have asked next. I should have asked how many of them knew someone who had committed one of those crimes? How many times? I really want to. Know. Because I think the answer would be very, very low. Men don’t call each other out on their bad behavior. At worst, they look the other way. Most of the time I think they laugh awkwardly at the stories and jokes. Then of course there are the many, many men who have sexually assaulted a woman, in fact, to be committing that many assaults and rape, it has to be most men, and often. Let’s just say it was four victims per person for the class. We’ll underestimate here. 52 X 4 = That’s a minimum of 216 victims to every 52 people. It’s not one bad apple we’re talking about, is it? That’s the fact. If you know at least 4 people who have been raped or assaulted, and so do all your friends, it’s only stands to reason that we’re talking about a “norm” of behavior here, not an aberration. They just don’t get it. It’s a dinner table debate if they're “liberals.” Like they’re talking about the stock market.
But the question is always what she did to invite this behavior. She was too charismatic, she was too drunk, she was too whatever. Let me tell you something. I have seen more wasted men then I can possibly count, and not once did I take that as an invitation to fuck with them in some way. Not one time did I see that as an opportunity to take advantage, or to touch their bodies. Impressive, isn’t it.
I don’t think you’re going to rape me. But rape isn’t the only way to violate someone. It’s not the only way men cause damage. Big Mike is still at work. Jason is still at work. And not just at work… they all hang out. Hell, they’re one of the guys. Even creepy fucking Gary is still there. I am home. I am home, and now I will go through ten surgeries in one month to regain peace in my mind and heart. I pray for brain damage.
Going under for ECT, I told the nurse holding my hand that I was scared. She said, “Don’t you believe in God and Jesus?”
I laughed, as they put the mask over my face, “Thanks, but I’m not THAT crazy.”
Memory loss is, as my Dr. put it, like an anti-depressant that helps you sleep at night. It’s a positive side effect when the disease is PTSD. It’s better than thinking of you. It’s better than feeling the earth liquify under my feet, like in a big earthquake, when the concrete floor suddenly moves, rolling over you, like a wave across the surface of the sea. Everything you’ve worked so hard to build, washes away instantly. The planet just twitched, like a horse, twitching a single muscle to unseat a fly, but my city is in ruins. The solid earth rolls over, crushing me, holding me under. I can’t breathe. I am tossed like a Ragdoll.
While you do nothing, feel nothing, but inconvenienced. The air can never be made visible though your eyes. Yet, it’s the medium through which we see all else. Our privileges, white, male, whatever. Our place in the world… we have no idea how fragile the ecosystems of our souls are until they’re shattered.
This is a shitty rant. The stone in my shoe.
I am tired of you all.
You were shocked when I didn’t leap at the opportunity to be branded as your property, to give up my own identity. Thanks to a lifetime of conditioning, I caved. I caved. I fucking caved. I lost my name. Two years later, I fled for my life from your abuse.
I was bred, groomed, and trained for a woman’s accomplishment, to marry well, and live vicariously through my husbands accomplishments. Be a good girl.
I can carry your children–clean your house–serve and service you. I’d better look pretty doing it, the right make-up, fashion, hair and perfectly waxed, eternally prepubescent, hairlessness, all so you can stand tall among your fellow slave owners. Does it shock you to hear matrimony referred to as a form of slavery? It’s the truth. It was all about the dowry and the connections offered. Women were bought and even today, through much of the world, including parts of the United States, are owned.
Speaking out is punishable by death, or worse, by excommunication. I can be a virgin, until I am bought and paid for. If I’m successful, I get the wallflower’s peace. If I rebel, I’m a whore. That’s what my father called me when he was angry. Whore, Cunt. Stupid Bitch. Just say woman. It’s all the same to you.
My mother was a battered woman. People wonder why battered women don’t just leave. Women weren’t even permitted to have credit cards or bank accounts until the mid 70’s. By then, she had three children and no rights, no degrees, and no job skills. Just like me. College served its purpose. She spoke well at parties, met a man, and married. Bette was ambitious. It only took her one year to “Graduate” to wife. A lawyer too! Job well done.
The good man stands, smiling, as if he understands. He says, as if it were news, “Women don’t want to just be fucked!” This was his feminist revelation? The younger men in the shop bow down to this wisdom. They still don’t get it.
The rules we live by are strict. Men permit us privileges. Potent as air. You don’t appreciate oxygen until, you go without it. The right to decide for ourselves when, and if we become mothers, is a luxury. Even the right to NOT get fucked is questionable. What if we drank too much? Or wore the wrong skirt? What if he paid for dinner?
You think you’re ok. But it can all be taken away in the snap of an eye. Kabul. Sisters. My heart hurts. I have anxious.
Christians or the Taliban, fundamentalism means one thing for women. We’re fundamentally fucked. Hijab or the habit are one and the same.
One woman weeps on the news, “I must burn everything I have accomplished in my life or be killed.”
Just last year, in some countries, women finally won the same legal rights as cattle. It was celebrated worldwide. “We’ve been fighting for this moment forever! Until today, women were property, like a table or chair. To be used as you wish and thrown out once they are broken. Cattle–at least–must be fed. That’s great progress.” Then this week… in Afghanistan, those rights are lost again. Because men said so.
This is the world we live in. Women are the most consistently and profoundly discriminated against people of all, worldwide. Right here in the USA too.
I understand. We will always encounter some level of blind spots to elements of the black experience in America, as light skinned people. I may have less than many because of having been raised with a black family and friends, but still, they will be there. I do not fear death from the police when I’m pulled over.
There will be moments, when I simply do not see the threat, I miss the cue, the smell–the gas leak poisoning the atmosphere. But today, you missed the cues that are mine as a woman. I am scared. I am scarred. I am angry.
I remind myself again and again, it’s sane to be scared. It’s sane to be angry. It’s okay not to be okay sometimes. You taught me that.
I told you he hated me. I could feel his fury growing–it was wearing on my nerves. It wasn’t an answer, when you said, “What do you care if he hates you?”
I knew what you meant. but you couldn’t see what I meant. The threat of a man’s festering fury may not be much to you. You’re a strong guy. But to me, it’s the smell of smoke, and where there’s smoke… well, you know I’ve been burned.
I know very well there is something there, I can feel it, moving against my face. I can taste it. I can hear it.
You do not see this air, the air of male Privilege. Privilege is not just for white guys. It is the air you all breath.
I CANNOT ACT – SPEAK – THINK A SINGLE THOUGHT WITHOUT THE PARTICIPATION OF THIS FLUID ELEMENT.
I told a friend my secrets. It was a moment of weakness. I was very ill at the time and on painkillers. I told him my secrets, the story of my survival. He shared them all at a dinner party with his bff, another fucking sexual predator. His casual use of my worst nightmare as a dinner party anecdote, let me know where he stood. Even the good guys don’t get it.
They cannot see the air they breathe because it has never, not for one second, been taken from them. How does it feel to be held under water?
If I stopped speaking to every guy who had ever committed rape or sexual assault… how many would be left? 81% of women are raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. There is no statistic available for how many men commit rape or assault against women. Nobody even asks the question. Ask anyone! Everyone knows women who have been raped. But nobody knows a guy who would do that. Right.
Out of every 100 rapes reported to the police (and barely anyone reports to the police) only one in a hundred will ever spend even a single day in jail. Do you still wonder why we don’t report it?
I’m getting emotional. Life has been chaos lately. Sickness, betrayal, rebirth, renewal, successes, and terrible losses, they’ve all lived side by side, day by day, something in the same day or even the same hour. I have decided that I really do not like white men. Old white men are truly so tone deaf, compared to other cultures. They’re so steeped in a lifetime of privilege, they accept it blindly like the air they breathe, they don’t even know it exists until they can’t have it for even a second. Just look at the shock on their pompous faces. They love to “should” all over people. They know how I should feel. What I should do and say and want and need. Fuck em. They’re almost always, essentially sexual predators, and even if they’ve never actually attacked anyone, that they’re aware of, they sure don’t have a problem overlooking all their friends who are creepy-as-fuck and do creepy things. They use their privilege to suck all the oxygen out of the room. Old white men love to hear themselves talk. Why answer a question with one word when you can answer with 25? They love to hold court, even when they know nothing. I asked a roomful of students, 52 to be exact, how many of them knew someone who had been sexually assaulted or raped. I read them the legal definitions of those felonies. Every single person put a hand up. Then, I asked how many people they knew who had survived sexual assault or rape? The lowest number in the room was 4, many people said it was every single woman they knew and some men. It was only later that I realized what I should have asked next. I should have asked how many of them knew someone who had committed one of those crimes? How many times? I really want to. Know. Because I think the answer would be very, very low. Men don’t call each other out on their bad behavior. At worst, they look the other way. Most of the time I think they laugh awkwardly at the stories and jokes. Then of course there are the many, many men who have sexually assaulted a woman, in fact, to be committing that many assaults and rape, it has to be most men, and often. Let’s just say it was four victims per person for the class. We’ll underestimate here. 52 X 4 = That’s a minimum of 216 victims to every 52 people. It’s not one bad apple we’re talking about, is it? That’s the fact. If you know at least 4 people who have been raped or assaulted, and so do all your friends, it’s only stands to reason that we’re talking about a “norm” of behavior here, not an aberration. They just don’t get it. It’s a dinner table debate if they're “liberals.” Like they’re talking about the stock market.
But the question is always what she did to invite this behavior. She was too charismatic, she was too drunk, she was too whatever. Let me tell you something. I have seen more wasted men then I can possibly count, and not once did I take that as an invitation to fuck with them in some way. Not one time did I see that as an opportunity to take advantage, or to touch their bodies. Impressive, isn’t it.
I don’t think you’re going to rape me. But rape isn’t the only way to violate someone. It’s not the only way men cause damage. Big Mike is still at work. Jason is still at work. And not just at work… they all hang out. Hell, they’re one of the guys. Even creepy fucking Gary is still there. I am home. I am home, and now I will go through ten surgeries in one month to regain peace in my mind and heart. I pray for brain damage.
Going under for ECT, I told the nurse holding my hand that I was scared. She said, “Don’t you believe in God and Jesus?”
I laughed, as they put the mask over my face, “Thanks, but I’m not THAT crazy.”
Memory loss is, as my Dr. put it, like an anti-depressant that helps you sleep at night. It’s a positive side effect when the disease is PTSD. It’s better than thinking of you. It’s better than feeling the earth liquify under my feet, like in a big earthquake, when the concrete floor suddenly moves, rolling over you, like a wave across the surface of the sea. Everything you’ve worked so hard to build, washes away instantly. The planet just twitched, like a horse, twitching a single muscle to unseat a fly, but my city is in ruins. The solid earth rolls over, crushing me, holding me under. I can’t breathe. I am tossed like a Ragdoll.
While you do nothing, feel nothing, but inconvenienced. The air can never be made visible though your eyes. Yet, it’s the medium through which we see all else. Our privileges, white, male, whatever. Our place in the world… we have no idea how fragile the ecosystems of our souls are until they’re shattered.
This is a shitty rant. The stone in my shoe.
I am tired of you all.
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Aloysius Marshall, mother to 16 year old Leo Jack Von Nydeggen, was born in New York City but grew up traveling with Jamaica as her second home and first love. She’s been writing since she could hold a pencil. Aly has finally decided to cut the shit and take her own writing seriously.
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