Tolerance

"Are you going to stack the other table too?"

"I mean, not if you were planning on sitting at it."

"Oh no, well I mean I can't just stand around and watch a woman work- not that you couldn't do it yourself," with a condescending wink.

Well then why are you out here doing it? I was seething behind a fake smile and a tossing a thoroughly used fake laugh. A laugh which is preserved for use on such occasions and one that is always leaving my lips without so much as a thought.

To be a woman means to have tolerance. Tolerance for an annoying stream of chivalrous put-downs. Tolerance of being nothing more than a dainty object existing only to be rescued; even if it means to be rescued from duties of a job in which we are employed, in which someone hired us believing us to be fully capable of performing said duties. And even if we perform said duties daily with ease and without aide from our chauvinistic customers.

But there he was anyway, doing my job for me, flipping tables and stacking chairs that weigh no more than ten pounds a piece and completely unaware of the seething and pissed off energy I was beaming at the back of his neck.

I have become so tolerant of these instances, they are factored into my day. It is to be expected. And it is to be expected someone will say something about my body, about my physical appearance to my face and I will be expected to be flattered. Instead, deep down, I feel used. I feel dull and violated. I have tried to become desensitized enough that as my knee-jerk reaction of fake polite smiles and dry laughs fall from my mouth, I can immediately carry on; move on without much thought.

Sometimes, perhaps, it is left simmering just under the surface, perhaps later it will boil over into a violent outburst. Sometimes I successfully (for the time) seem to bury it along with the rest. And this we, as women, have learned is the most appropriate response; to dig a trench and shove the frustration way, way down. Any outburst has the potential as being written off as hysterics, or uncontrollable feminine emotion.

Perhaps this is partly why we are so damned emotional.

Tolerance can only hold for so long. A smoldering fire tends to catch flame in a consistently dry breeze.

I do not know at what point we ceased being human and became the weaker sex, though I believe it to be shortly after consummation. Before we have gulped our first breath of air, we will be expected to enjoy playing with dolls and the color pink, which I, in fact, do not enjoy. And I only do not enjoy the color pink due to my feeling that I am supposed to like the color, instead, I wear black.

We are learned to be tolerant of what is to be expected of us. That as we grow and take interest in the opposite sex, we will be reminded repetitively of our subconscious desire to marry and have children with every man we meet. And we will scratch our heads sighing "I guess," and wonder why nowhere within us do we feel this desire at such a young age. And we must expect many men we date will treat us with distance because of this. And we will scratch our heads again and begin to believe we deserve it.

As birthdays pass, relationships begin and end and we approach a certain horizon, the cusp of our lives in which it will no longer be acceptable to be single and without child, we must accept the nagging disappointment from others around us. There will be floating questions of who are we dating and unwanted attempts to set us up on blind dates or questions of why our significant others have not yet 'put a ring on it'.

Television shows, and glossy magazines will preach of our expected desires for marriage and children to us. And if we do not comply with the mold in which we are to fit into, we might be labeled as un-feminine. And we will always be told, "well, that will change one day."

I have, at times, felt ashamed for not being feminine enough. I have wondered what it means to be feminine enough.

We might allow these protuberances into our own lives skew our judgments, wonder why we are not married, why is there no ring on it? Why do I not look forward to giving birth? Why am I in fact terrified of the idea of it?

We might allow this disappointment to leave us feeling lost, without goals, empty and strange.

Or we might overcome.

We may recognize our lives are own, and only our own. That even those with the best of intentions can be perceiving an incorrect path for us. We may learn that no one can truly place limitations on us; allow us to feel inadequate, unless we allow them to.

And on a grander scale, perhaps men and women will learn to recognize our differences lie only in reproductive organs and some physical capabilities. For I have met men physically weaker than women and I have met women physically stronger than men. For I have met men with wide emotional capacities and found some women to be emotionally stunted.

In every aspect of our lives, in the personal and in the universal, there will always be divisions, there will always be assumed roles and there will always be those of us brave enough to break them.

I believe (and hope) there will be a day in which we are no longer divided by categories. A day when we will be looked upon, across the board, as equals, as humans. Though I believe we have a long road ahead of us, for we are not too far from a time when women were simply looked upon as property.

It is a long road that begins in ourselves, with our own self-respect and in our own will.

*Note: I was lucky enough to be born into a family in which my parents expected me to be nothing other than what I wanted to be. Lucky enough to have a father whom although only had daughters, was never disappointed and taught each of us to play baseball as kids. For this, I am forever grateful.*