Trigger Warning: Rape, Violence, and Sexist Language
Many of my chapters are still unfinished because we get to the point where I need to write in Miach, but I don't KNOW them yet. Ide and Tuileach were characters that I liked and understood, so it was easy to write about them. I've always known that Miach would be a complicated character, morally, because they're meant to represent men in women's personal lives and how they contribute to oppressing even the women they're closest to in life. They meant to capture how oppression is supported institutionally, but that it's life comes from interpersonal interactions. That's where it has the most effect on our every day lives.
I need to get to know Miach, and I need to flesh out their personality so that I can find something I DO like about them. I have to start writing their sections in order to do that. Part of me wonders if I'm hesitant about doing that because those scenes will be the ones I relate to most personally. I think I've just had a lot of disappointing interactions with men in the last two years, and while that's driving me to write, it's also been very exhausting. This book has been a form of escapism for me, and I don't want to lose that by talking about the situations that pushed me to write it in the first place.
You know what's wild. When I talk about how exhausted and angry I am from the interaction I've had with men in the last two years, people immediately assume I was assaulted. I haven't been. But I go to the gym almost everyday in case someone tries to hurt me. I have spoken to so many girls who have been hurt, spent so much time trying to help, trying to change the environment we're living in. And men don't seem to care. It doesn't matter how much I talk about it, how loud I am, how rude I am. They do not understand that this is THEIR problem. They're the ones doing this, and every time they hang out with their friends and call women "bitches" and throw around the word "cunt" and laugh about the crazy girl in their class they're adding to the problem. I hate that even the men who call themselves feminists still fail to live up to what they say is their moral code.
And I'm generalizing. Boy, am I generalizing. But I've tried the "benefit of the doubt" route, and it's beat the hell out of me. I can not connect with another man to find out there's very little that distinguishes him from the men girls secretly whisper about to protect one another. I know there's "good men" out there, but I don't trust myself to distinguish them from the bad ones anymore. I can't tell the difference.
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