I've got a few left

Photo by Hannes Wolf on Unsplash

I want to tell you something about women who swear. I want you to understand that we know it offends you. We know you like us quiet and polite and calm and nice, above all nice. You want us to smile. You don’t want to hear us. We know that. We just don’t fucking care.

We stopped caring what you think so long ago. Because we heard you the first time. We heard you on the court when we beat you to the net and you called us a dyke. We heard you at our first job working a drive-thru when a guy pulled up with his dick in his hand and we didn’t scream. We heard you tell the guys we liked it. We learned that at the diner when we came to fill your coffee and you grabbed our ass. We told you to stop and you called us a bitch.

We learned this language from the cooks who called us cunts until we fought back with motherfuckers. We were listening that the night we were watching a movie with our friend in the barracks and his roommate came home to tell us they’d voted and if they had to gang rape someone, it would be us. We learned if we called you a fuckwad, you’d shrink just enough. We learned at the bar when we heard you call us sluts and whores, and bitches if we didn’t like it. We learned to call you a little bitch and you would be. We learned at the construction site. You’d call us a bitch and we’d call you an asshole, and you’d stop shouting.

Your friends taught us this. We’re the girls who could hang. We’re the girls who were cool. We’re the girls who had to hear you talk because we were the only girl in the room. So you told us what you really think of women, what you’d do if you could, what you do when you can, because you can. We know how you talk about us. We know how you will, when your friends laugh. We’re the girls who were in the room.

We learned to swear because we were there when you said, don’t fuck with that bitch, she fucks back. So we learned to fuck back. We learned you won’t hear us unless we get loud, unless the fuckwords we use make your friends laugh. We learned to use our voice to shut you the fuck up so you’ll fuck off and leave us the fuck alone, motherfucker. We learned there’s power in those words. We know what you think of the nice girls. We heard you the first time and every time after. We’re not the nice girls.

We know what the nice people do. We learned that too. We’ve seen what you do with a smile on. We’ve heard the words you don’t say in public. We’ve seen you look around, make sure no one, not one of them anyway can hear you. But we were standing right there, when you told that joke, the joke that wasn’t nice. And when we told you that’s fucked up, you fucking told us to watch our language. We read the books that taught you how to make us nice, how to make us obey with a smile on, how to turn us into servile little clones, so we never fought back. You were nice about it. So nice. While you swung the belt. Nicely. You washed our mouths out and slapped that face off us and spanked the words out of our mouths until we smiled, nicely.

It’s funny now. It really is. That you think you can cruise on by and read the words I write and tell me the swearing puts you off. The fact of you puts me off. That you think I’m writing for you. That you think I’m writing for anyone at all. That you think I give a shit. I don’t.

Just keep on scrolling. This isn’t for you. Not everything is.

I don’t think of you when I write. I don’t fucking think of you at all. I write because I can, because you can’t stop me. I get to have a voice now too. Goddamn it’s gotta hurt that mine’s louder than yours. I’ll use the words I want. Fuck off.