So there I was. My usual table. 8:30 pm, Thursday, like clockwork.

It was a local farm-to-table organic vegan bistro-cum-post-post-modernist literature review house called the Magpie Café. It was beautiful in the way that Maggie Gyllenhall is beautiful: lopsided, aged beyond her years, and getting by on the cache of her name.

I was enjoying an all-organic, all-kale smoothie when the poetry slam began. I had been working on a new piece called “She who Is”, a follow-up to my popular “She who Was”, and precursor to my yet-to-be-completed “She who Will Be”. Debuts always make me nervous, so I ordered a shot of wheatgrass to calm my nerves.

The slam was now in full-swing. The patriarchy was getting its comeuppance and being forcefully word-smashed back to whence it came.

That’s when I saw him.

He had a scruffy, patchy beard, was wearing a toque in August, and had glasses with non-prescription lenses in them. He was reading a well-thumbed copy of Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”, and it was a first edition! I couldn’t believe the embodiment of cis-male perfection was here!

My mind raced as I ordered a second shot of wheatgrass. I pictured us sharing our thoughts on Simone de Beauvoir as we raised our cats on our organic ninth floor balcony farm. I started glistening before I even reached the stage, my hands trembling while clutching my recycled barley cue cards.

(cont'd)

When I was through my poem, I could barely stand. The emotion of the piece coupled with the throbbing in my ovaries was making it difficult for me to keep down my black bean cake and polenta frites. I wandered back to my table in a daze, too overcome with the magic of the moment to do anything else.

And that’s when it happened.

I looked up from my table to see this presumed man, this perfect presumed man, approaching my table. “My name is Andrew,” he said. “I really enjoyed your poem.”

Typical rapist. I immediately packed my organic wheat tote bag and left the Magpie, never to return again. I refuse to congregate in any establishment that promotes rape culture.

I went home and fed my cats and listened to PJ Harvey until the sun came up.

So there I was. Hanging out in the Womyn’s Resource Centre common area, discussing the successes of WomynSpirit 2014 with some colleagues when one mentioned an upcoming event and rally. The topic was interesting, something called GamerGate.

There was a special guest speaker scheduled to appear. Her name was Anita Sarkeesian. I don’t play video games, and so I thought it would be great for us to hear the feminist perspective of a womyn who also does not play video games.

I began a grassroots, crowdfunded campaign to have a group of us Womactivists attend the event. I prepared a clip-art overburdened flyer in my preferred Comic Sans, and distributed it across the campus. This was going to be the event of the year, I could tell.

When the day finally came, our minibus carried the three of us to our destination, a public school gymnasium down the street from an office building where I’m told a game developer’s corporate office is located. We got our wristbands and prepared ourselves for what was sure to be a ground-breaking, earth-shattering, cosmic-realigning rally cry against the patriarchy.

That’s when I saw him.

He was sitting front row-centre, wearing a baby-pink spaghetti string cropped tank top, with three quarters of his head shaved and the rest died platinum blonde. He wore makeup, but not so much as to take away from his perfect, gentle features. His shirt read “Princess Peach is NOT helpless”. I wondered who Princess Peach was for a fleeting instant, before I drifted back into daydreams about this mystery man.

(cont'd)

When the speech was over, I was in a tizzy. I could hardly concentrate over the rising heat and dampness under my sarong. We began processing outwards, where organizers were distributing Bristol board and markers. He was there, doodling flowers around a sign that read “Lara Croft’s guns should be bigger than her GUNS”. I didn’t get it, but I didn’t let that bother me.

As we began our march, I drifted off helplessly into a fantasy. He and I were sharing an organic vegan soy pumpkin spice gelato near a crackling non-wood wire, discussing Mary Wollstonecraft and Inga Muscio, all while Melissa Etheridge played softly in the background.

And that’s when it happened.

I snapped out from my daze to see him looking right at me. He was waving his sign and chanting “Free Zelda!”

Typical rapist. I let Darcy know I needed to leave immediately. I couldn’t bear one more second of that man raping me. I doubt he would have treated the man he was holding hands with like that.

I rode the short bus back to campus and posted gifs of my cat to tumblr and listened to CocoRosie until I fell asleep.

What does /lounge/ think about "equality"? You hear about it all the time from social justice advocates and feminists, but what do these kinds of people seek to gain by always shouting the word "equality" in everyone's faces as if that justifies all of their fucked up actions?

Frontpage on the biggest newspaper in Norway. Femenist crap pushing in news here

>>6 really?