Last weekend, I attended a going-away party at a suburban bar. On the outside window, they hung this helpful poster.

Clearly, this banner is somewhat disrespectful to women (so we can’t come to the bar ourselves if we want time to relax?)(guessing they weren’t thinking of gay couples, though you never know), but it is SO disrespectful to men. I feel like everywhere I go I see this idea of the man-child as though it were universal, but the men I spend time with in real life actually know how to take care of themselves like the adults that they are. And in fact they have their own interests, hobbies, and ears with which to hear requests for personal time.

Sometimes I wonder why I fear marriage when I am lucky enough to have many examples of wonderful partnerships in my family. Maybe I’m having a hard time blocking out what popular culture keeps predicting for me: I will have to be a vapid yet responsible nag, and my husband will be a drunk and smelly child. THANK YOU PATRIARCHY for letting me aspire to such a beautiful vision!

A few weeks ago, I went with some friends to a bar with a dance floor. The last time I had attended this establishment, a man quickly decided to fall in love with me, which was fun until I discovered that he had attended an anti-abortion rally earlier that day. (He realized that I was an activist, and told me about the protest hoping to impress me.) This time, I wasn’t looking for romance, but I wouldn’t have minded dancing with some fun strangers.

Once on the dance floor, my friends and I soon decided to move closer to the DJ booth, because there were some dudes standing on the sidelines in the back, staring. Once we moved up, however, we realized that there were dudes staring from the sidelines in the front, too. We were literally surrounded by sketchy staring dudes. Once in awhile, one of these dudes would approach a woman from behind and start grinding with her. I saw several instances of men trying this and women just walking away.

THANKS PATRIARCHY for teaching these men that the best way to interact with women is the jungle stalk and attack strategy!!

I talk about the male gaze in media often (oh hai California Gurls (one time some acquaintances thought I was accusing Katy Perry videos of playing to the male gays)), but this time I viscerally felt it in real life. I couldn’t dance for my own personal enjoyment (which anyone who knows me will tell you I can generally do in any setting at a moment’s notice) because I felt like an object for these men’s entertainment. Eventually I sat down in a booth alone, sipping ice water until my ride was ready to leave.

To repeat: I say this as a woman who is not necessarily averse to dancing with strangers in clubs. Here, in my view, is how that process should go:

1. Two people are dancing near each other. (Note: Two people. Both dancing. Neither standing to the side wide-eyed and gape-mouthed.)
2. They make eye contact and dance toward each other.
3. They start dancing together! (Note: In a busy dance floor context, one person asking the other to dance is optional. BUT if either person is SURPRISED or DISPLEASED to suddenly find hirself dancing with another person, something has gone wrong.)

Isn’t it amazing how this patented process (patent-pending) includes neither gawking at nor sneaking up on anyone? Feel free to print, laminate, and disseminate at your next night on the town.

My student Jack just finished (and loved, of course) one of my favorite middle-grade books, The View From Saturday, and was on the market for a new read. Jack is fun and hard-working, and generally tries to be a good kid. He loves to read about young people struggling, so I handed him The Great Gilly Hopkins, a classic about a saucy girl trying to get kicked out of her foster home. He took one look at the cover and said,

“I don’t know, I think this book looks too girly for me.”

Now, if the cover was cotton-candy pink and covered in princesses and fairies, I might think it was too ‘girly’ for me too (though I would enthusiastically recommend it to the (male or female) fairy-tale lovers in my class). However, this cover features a scowling child in overalls and plaid. The scowler is a girl. I guess any book about a girl is too girly? THANK YOU PATRIARCHY for teaching our boys that girls’ stories are beneath them. I can only imagine how many great books Jack has missed out on so far.

Clearly, I called shenanigans and ordered him to give it a try, supervising as he reluctantly placed the book in his backpack. Commanding someone to keep an open mind has never failed, right? RIGHT???

This is my first conscious memory of knowing sexism:

When I was in second grade, we took a vacation in the Catskills in honor of my grandparents’ anniversary. The hotel had a camp for the kids, which gave parents the chance to go horseback riding or cocktail houring sans distraction. This was a great chance for us to catch up with our cousins, as usually there was an entire country between us. My cousin Harry and I are the same age, and we’ve always liked pretty much the same things (except that I love basketball and he loves comic books). We often pretend to be twins, and get away with it.

One day at this camp in the Catskills, the counselors split us into two groups, to go out and play sports or to stay in and color. Instead of letting us pick which activity we wanted, they split us up by some un-random denominator… gender (SURPRISE)! I was happy to color that day (it was too sunny anyway), but Harry wanted to stay in and color with us. The camp director made him go out into the field.

THANKS PATRIARCHY, for actively estranging little boys from the arts :):):):)

The next morning, my dad, who is six feet three inches tall, escorted us to camp and had a little chat with the director. We smiled to see him cowering as my dad read him the riot act. Harry and I got to color our monsters together that day.

At the time, we all saw this as a huge victory. That guy learned his lesson, and we hoped he would change his policy for future children. When I look back at the anecdote, though, a question nags at me - why did my dad, the literal big man of the family, have to be the one to make the stink?

My dad is great at advocating for people who can’t be heard, and he also consciously teaches his children that we must advocate for ourselves. This is one of the things I love about him. Still, I wonder about working within the rules of the system in order to fight it - perhaps the camp director would only take a big man seriously, so perhaps it was necessary to perpetuate one aspect of the patriarchy in order to subvert another?

The patriarchy is so generous and welcoming - everywhere you turn, there it is!