The Female Man

As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.

But the frogs die in earnest.

Remember: I didn’t and don’t want to be a “feminine” version or a diluted version or a special version or a subsidiary version or an ancillary version, or an adapted version of the heroes I admire. I want to be the heroes themselves.

What future is there for a female child who aspires to being Humphrey Bogart?

Remember, I don’t threaten. I don’t play. I always carry firearms. The truly violent are never without them.

If you want to be an assassin, remember that you must decline all challenges. Showing off is not your job.

If you are insulted, smile meekly. Don’t break your cover.

Be afraid. This is information about the world.

You are valuable. Push yourself.

Take the easiest way out whenever possible. Resist curiosity, pride, and the temptation to defy limits. You are not your own woman and must be built to last.

Indulge hatred. Action comes from the heart.

Pray often. How else can you quarrel with God?

Anyway everyboy (sorry) knows that what women have done that is really important is not to constitute a great, cheap labor force that you can zip in when you're at war and zip out again afterwards but to Be Mothers, to form the coming generation, to give birth to them, to nurse them, to mop floors for them, to love them, cook for them, clean for them, change their diapers, pick up after them, and mainly sacrifice themselves for them. This is the most important job in the world. That’s why they don’t pay you for it.

Dismissing the whole thing as the world’s aberration and not mine, I went back to bed.

Fucking, if you will forgive the pun, is an anti-climax.

“Well, hell,” said Jael more genuinely, “the war. If there isn’t one, there just was one, and if there wasn’t one, there soon will be one. Eh? The war between Us and Them.

How withered away one can be from a life of unremitting toil.

I told him to open his eyes, that I didn’t want to kill him with his eyes shut, for God’s sake.

There are more whooping cranes in the United States of America than there are women in Congress.