I'm done.

I am so done with men this week.
Okay, not actually men, just patriarchy. 
White supremacist, hetero-normative, ableist, cis-gendered capitalist patriarchy.
That fucking shit.
I am *so* done with it all.

This week, I had to walk a young female student and her friend to their car because a guy has been stalking her; waiting for her outside of her class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.   After eight weeks she finally asked for help.
And I get it.  I have had the same problem, and when subtly taking out work or checking emails doesn't work, I resorted to ducking the guy by going out different doors, leaving at different times.  Plus, my annoying guy was much less persistent.  One of the benefits of entering my late thirties and growing a mom-bod is that far fewer people want to bone me, so I can move through the world with less friction.  To say it is a bittersweet victory would be understating it.

But I remember those days well, and they still happen often enough to remind me that as women, we are the emotional laborers of this society.  It reminds me of a philosophy professor who suggested, as an exercise, that we assume that gravity is created by tiny creatures shooting arrows with rope attached to things to keep them from flying off the face of the earth.  I pictured a version of the gremlin that used to haunt Bugs Bunny, hundreds of thousands of them under the surface, keeping the machinery of the world functioning as we know it.

That's the emotional labor of women.  We are walking around all the time, being patient with a frustrated colleague, listening to the feelings of a stranger, letting a guy hit on us when we would much rather be sitting in silence.  But most of us, most of the time let it happen, make the emotional space for the guy in the situation so we don't have to find out what would happen if we don't.
Even when we don't articulate it to ourselves, that's why we do it.  That's why we are nice, or patient, or don't argue, or give out a fake number, or lie about a fake boyfriend or husband or appointment, or wear headphones or bring a book or walk with friends to mix up our route or keep our route the same and therefore familiar and safe.  We put in all that extra work to protect the feelings of the men around us, strangers, family, friends, and peers, so we don't have to find out if this is the kind of guy who will snap.  Or the situation that will make this guy snap.  The anger and violence and ego of men is the fuel that drives us to do all of this emotional labor.  We do not want to do it, even if we have tricked ourselves into believeing we don't mind.  No one wants to work for free. 
But we all do.  We all do all this emotional labor of patiently making some guy's feelings or concerns more important than ours, more important than our precious time, because you never know when or where or which guy is going to snap and hit you or yell at you or threaten you or stab you or rape you or dehumanize you in some way because you made the mistake of asserting your autonomy, your humanity in the face of their own.
As if you were an equal.

And, how dumb would that be?