The Ferociousness of Femininity: On Accessible Storytelling, Patriarchy, and the Violence of Grocery Day

CW: sexism, sexual assault, trauma, patriarchy

(Author’s note: This started as a discussion on the fierceness with which I love the book, This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, but as you’ll see, it slowly grew into something…more.)

I was late to the game in discovering, This Is How You Lose the Time War. Sometimes, when a book comes out that I think looks absolutely brilliant, I put it on my “to-be-read-list”, but it will stay there until I have the necessary brain space to process something brilliant. I don't want to read it just to check it off the list. I want to read it to enjoy it, to savor it, to give it the attention it deserves. I want to relish a story, not rush a narrative. And so, at the beginning of 2024, I decided the brain space had become available and I decided that I was going to choose the audiobook format.

I am also late to the world of audiobooks. I’ve been a voracious reader since I was a teeny-tiny book monster (I am now a much larger book monster). I had tried audiobooks a few times before, but through bad luck or unlucky choices, the ones I picked were always narrated in a staccato monotone. These couldn't hold my attention and lacked the expression, nuance, and fire that a good story holds for me. That expressionless narration couldn't live up to the dialog that goes on in my head when I read a bound book. And so I had decided that “audiobooks weren't for me”. 

However, for the past decade or so, I’ve been a delighted fiction-podcast listener, and this has opened up my world in terms of being able to be told a good story in an accessible format.

A good story is as important to me as air, as water. A good story keeps me thinking - keeps me sharp. With fiction podcasts, (some of my favorites are Welcome to Nightvale, We Fix Space Junk, MarsCorp, LeVar Burton Reads, The Green Horizon, etc.) I could now listen to stories on the move. 

I don’t sit still for long periods of time due to chronic injuries and illness. It can be physically uncomfortable, which is a real-blow to how often I can cozy up with a good bound book in an armchair. I generally move around, doing other things like eating, walking, giving the dog belly rubs, organizing this or that. With podcasts, I can listen to a good story while I do all of these things, which is wonderful!

Then I decided to give audiobooks another chance, and I decided to start with This Is How You Lose the Time War (which turned out to be a very good gamble). It is narrated in alternating chapters by Cynthia Farrell and Emily Woo Zeller, who each perform a stellar rendition: nuanced and sly tones of voice, anger, speculation, ravishment, ferociousness. They saw the story and they performed. It is an incredible treat! 

Yet what lodges itself deep in my heart is the tale’s absolute rejection of patriarchal cultural norms for womxn.

The two main characters, Blue and Red, are ferocious, enviable, and powerful monsters. They are wild and dangerous and clever and smart, patient and cunning, tender and brutal. They hold nothing back. They play with destruction by growth and misplaced tenderness by tech. They try to shove themselves into no one’s box. They destroy worlds. They set space and time ablaze and laugh. They carefully engineer houses of cards as meticulously as they orchestrate the elaborate plans for their destruction. 

I was raised in a culture that only allowed me small, pretty emotions. That punished, and conditioned, and pushed, and shoved, and demanded that I fit into a pre-sized box they had available for me. All of this and more has led me to have very large feelings. Ugly feelings. Monstrous anger at oppressive structures and an ever growing refusal to make myself small, to change myself, to force myself into a space meant for me, but never meant for me.

And so I see these womxn, Blue and Red, on the pages and hear them in the audio as they laugh and ignore the same strictures I’ve always raged against. To see ferocious womxn slip past the oppressive norms and structures like they aren’t even there, not sparing them a moment's thought, delights me. Inspires. Vindicates. Unifies. I adore this escapism, this vision glimpsed through a passing window, because I do not live in that place. I can’t travel through time, bend, shape, and burn it to my own goals. 

Instead, I get groceries once a week. I go early in the morning, as soon as the store opens, to avoid other people and crowds…to be back home with the orange juice in the fridge before most have even brushed their teeth.

I changed the day I get groceries recently. I decided to go on Sundays instead. This meant I would have to go at a different time, as opening hours start much later in the day…when more people are out…when there are crowds. I don't do well in crowds. And it's not me. It's the fact that I’m not safely allowed to express that I am upset or angry when men touch me. When men "accidentally” pass their arm back and forth across my ass in the grocery store line. When men shove themself past me in the aisle, a glancing hand grabbing my breast as they do. I'm not allowed to react because then I'm “crazy”. I'm the aggressor. “What's wrong with me?”, “Can I prove they touched me?”, “It was an accident”, “I can't take a compliment” etc. etc..This has happened so many times, over so many years, that now I don't leave the house often. I panic when men approach me. I plan my days, my life, to try and deal with these constant sexual assaults as little as possible.

On grocery day, I stopped at the gas station first. 

I should have gone to the other gas station - but I didn't see the massive gathering of motorcycles and their riders taking up the entire far side of the lot until I’d already turned in. 

“This is fine,” I thought. “I can do this,” I repeated sternly to myself.

…A long time ago, I was engaged. He used to drive a motorcycle. He looked very much like the 40 or 50 men outside with sun-worn faces, leather vests, tattoos, and bandanas. 

I left him, and for this unforgivable sin, he still wants very badly to kill me with his own hands (his words, not mine). I’ve learned to stay hidden…to avert my face when strangers take pictures that I may be in the background of. I wear a facemask everywhere and giant, bulky glasses to help obscure my facial features.

But now it is years from there. Now it is Sunday. 

I got out of the car to start to fill the tank with gas. “This is fine,” I think quietly. “I can do this,” I repeat in my head, but I feel eyes on me from multiple directions, from the crowd, watching as I move around the back of the car, and my hand is shaking as I hit the button for “no receipt” at the machine’s digital prompt.

It’s then that one of the tallest, burliest, men in the giant group of tall, burly, men came up to the woman on the other side of the pump from me. He started pestering her while trying unsuccessfully to disguise it as flattery and humor. She played along, pleasant but bland. 

I saw the moment when he registered my presence. I saw him start moving closer to me, while still being skeevy to her. 

“Oh no,” I thought, my heart sinking, stomach lurching. I looked at the gas meter ticking up slowly and silently begged it to go faster.

I saw a lot of the bikers taking photos of each other, of their bikes all together at the gas station, shining chrome and loud engines. I turned my head away, my back to them, feeling slightly panicked. I wished I’d worn a jacket or long sleeves to cover my own tattoos. What if he was here…somewhere in that massive group? What if he knew these people and saw their photos? What if he recognized the tattoos on my arms in the background?

The tall biker stepped to my side of the gas pump, deliberately putting himself into my space, towering over me, placing his blue-jean clad crotch an inch from my hand on the gas pump.

I glanced briefly at his face, but did not otherwise acknowledge him, just tried to look aggravated and went back to watching the gas gauge count higher, wishing I hadn't let the tank run down to almost empty.

He did not like that I had chosen to ignore his obvious play for attention…or his crotch placed precariously near my fingertips. The man grabbed the gas station window-squeegee out of the nasty, stagnant, water tank and slammed it down onto the back of my car window, which was already clean. 

“No! Stop!” I said loudly.

He did not stop. “I'll clean it for you! For free!” he laughed spitefully at me and kept smearing brown, muddy, water across my car, curling his lip at me, making sure I saw that he was not going to stop just because I said to.

“No! Stop it! Dude, stop it! I yelled loudly and firmly, not backing down as he moved himself directly into my personal space again.

I glared back at him. Didn't blink.

Now, you should know. Historically, I have 1 of 2 reactions in a situation like this. Imagine, if you will, the Dark Kermit of my psyche rapidly discussing which reflex will serve us best:

Image made on https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/Evil-Kermit

1) I will pretend to be absolutely batshit-crazy. I'm not physically threatening or terrifying at all. But if the need arises, I am perfectly capable of being mentally terrifying. The logic being, if someone is completely fucking unhinged, people generally give them space. I have a millisecond to make that decision - to assess the situation, the aggressor, the possible outcomes, what could go wrong, what could work. The trick is that I can't let them see me make the choice. It has to be instant or they'll know it's all smoke and mirrors. When I go this route, I really lean-the-fuck-in to my lifelong, innate, ability to make things weird. I remove the polite-society-harness and let that weirdness run rampant. My goal is to freak-them-the-fuck-out so they will leave me alone. Also, generally, this option involves me being very, very, loud, which attracts attention. When other people start looking, many aggressors immediately back off, not wanting to have witnesses to their abuse. It's a gamble and I only have a reflex’s amount of time to throw the dice. 

2) Alternately, I freeze. This is when option 1 isn’t going to work. This is when my millisecond assessment determines that my escalation will only cause them to escalate further. This is when a reflex happens and the reflex is “freeze”, not “FRIGHTEN THEM”. Sometimes this has the same effect, but it takes longer and subjects me to more assault-time. It's like playing dead. If I don't engage or react, maybe they will go away. 

But here on grocery day, at the gas station, I did something new.

I acted how I do when I'm protecting someone else.

I am great at protecting others - at handling situations where I see someone else being harmed. 

But there has always been a distinct dissonance between my ability to protect others, and how I will or won't protect myself.

But today, as gas-station-man took a second to inhale, to re-frame his next piece of harassment, I didn't freeze up, nor did I start waving my arms around like a lunatic and screech about how I needed him to convert to the church-of-the-high-and-mighty-jabberwocky-fidget-spinner-god or all shall perish except his dog, who communicates to me in my head, I swear! I didn't start drooling and let my eyes go glassy as I laughed out of one side of my mouth and made cat noises while inching closer to him and giggling like a rabid goblin (all options that have worked in the past) - instead I kept my voice firm, loud, and serious. All business. I did not let him push me out of my own personal space as I saw him shift his body weight to do so. 

I remained (outwardly) calm and non-crazed. I reacted to assert my own discomfort and unease. I reacted to protect myself the way I would someone else. I said, “HEY. NO.” as loud as I could and pointed at him while making deliberate eye contact, squaring my shoulders, angling myself at him. 

He snorted scornfully and walked off.

I turned away again. Desperate for the tank to fill and hoping this had not attracted enough attention to be filmed - for my picture to be taken - for this to get posted somewhere, jeopardizing the little safety I’ve been able to build up. Hoping this was not now a video on one of the phones of the 40 or 50 bikers who were looking at us. Hoping this wasn’t posted online with my tattoos, my car, my license plate, my location. Hoping this wasn’t the thing that led to my ex finally finding me. 

As the gas pump clicked off, signaling relief chemicals to (pre-maturely) flood my brain, I turned around to remove the nozzle from the tank. As soon as I did so, all my internal alarm bells went off. A figure was moving quickly, uncomfortably close, and headed right towards me. That same tall, burly, biker was rushing towards what had been my turned back from the opposite direction. He had not expected me to turn around. He froze, his body doing an uncertain little lurch as it implemented a command he hadn't been planning: to stop. A guilty look crossed his face. 

I stood taller and made eye contact with him, raising my eyebrows. Again, he hadn't been expecting that and his body couldn't quite keep up with the sudden change in directives. Scowling and trying unsuccessfully to hide it, he did a clumsy ninety degree right turn, now going in a direction his feet had not been pointed in. They had been pointed directly at me. What had he intended to do?

And so, when I see Blue laugh and grab a crowbar, or Red stroll through the battlefield of a planet she has destroyed, I see something in that fierceness, that wild ferociousness. Something I recognize. Something I yearn for. Something I have that I have always been told I should not.

Instead,

I have to always be careful.

I have to assess a situation at the speed of light.

I have to learn not to flinch.

I have to smile.

I have to be quiet.

I have to scream.

I ache to see a womxn with wild, brilliant, ferociousness and nothing withheld. I pine for it like a lover. I burn inside, my consciousness as desperate for such a world as my lungs are for air (this is also one of the many reasons I generally prefer fictional characters who are villains. When womxn reject patriarchal norms, villainy is the main trope available to them, so why would I want anyone else?) Womxn are denied rage. We are punished for it. We are feared for it. We are rejected for it. Rage is something not allotted to womxn. Womxn of rage are dangerous. We lick our lips and it is not for men.

And so that is why I love This Is How You Lose the Time War so much. Because there is so much exquisite, beautiful, rage in Blue and in Red.

Because of its delicious bypass and discard of patriarchal cultural norms and of “the allowed”.

Because the narrators understood the assignment, and because they tell me that story in a format that works well for someone who likes to be on the move.

Because I only leave the house once a week to try and minimize sexual assaults.

Because I go to the grocery store early in the morning, when the few other shoppers present are largely the aged womxn whose ranks I aspire to one day join, though the statistics tell me those odds are grim.

Because I have been full of ferociousness for decades and exist in a world where that is frowned on.

Because of men who do not stop when told to stop. 

Because of power dynamics and body language. Of big and small. Of visibility and fear. 

Because of safety in invisibility…and of how angry that makes me.

Because of the revel and unabashed delight that a story can take in the absolute, unhinged, ferociousness of femininity.