dueler's thrust

A Poem by anais.vionet

A teen view of society and equal rights.

What's the scariest book you ever read? ... Some Stephen King book like Salem's Lot or The Shining? For me it's Kate Millett's Sexual Politics ... Oh, man ... Now THAT will scare you to death if you're female.

I discovered a man, overheard at my church, who actually believes his sex is a sign of power and of superiority. WHY am I so startled? Some childish trust not yet scrubbed off?" Or worse yet, some belief, not yet strangled, in a better world? See, stupid me, I thought this bill had been paid, by sufferance, by real people like Elizabeth Stanton, Carrie Catt and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ... by entire generations who ran through those tangled woods emerging cut and bruised ... if at all.

What is it like for HIM? I see him eyeing us, his little inferiors who bleed with the moon, with secret, catlike distaste ... regarding female opinions as slightly impure ... then, with calm, Godlike grace, granting females the forms of servant to assume.

Can I, can we, be forced to accept this inheritance? I don't know ... All I know is that this prejudice, so strangely without substance, strikes me like a dueler's lucky thrust, robbing me of attendant rights and wit ... springing a tender trap of doubt in the future and abandoning me to stammering.