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In a cafe where I write, the staff are terrifically grumpy. One sometimes meets me with a finger propped under her chin, tipping her head: Is it almond milk? Soy? I say, It’s the honey that’s misleading you, by association, and she’ll say, mansplanatorily, “No, no… I don’t associate you with honey.” Today a large […]

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The courage… to get through life without this sense of home, without this refuge, whilst surviving a world which exploits our mothering kindness and assaults us for our femininity, is untold. But many many many women of my acquaintance will know exactly what I mean. I crave this home. Built with somebody who will not […]

Thinking this afternoon about the insulting phrase All Lives Matter, and its to me clear and obvious translation: “Black Lives Do Not Matter to Me.” It seems to me we may need an alternative explanatory phrase for those who are unwilling to get it. Something like this: White lives matter too much. White lives are […]

Once an Islander man stepped out onto the pavement as I was passing. We both stopped and stood facing one another. My heart was beating very fast. He had intricate ranking tattoos all over his face and his eyes were very dark. ‘Don’t go,’ he said, ‘stay with me for a while.’

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Yesterday when he asked I told a trans-identified friend over coffee, No: you’re not a woman. I told him how male-privileged he sounded, to me, when he dreamily explained playing around with his prescribed hormones so as to reconstruct the experience of a menstrual cycle. He felt the reason he wasn’t experiencing it for real […]

I went on a date with a guy who for nearly a month had been pestering me to meet. Then he literally did not let me finish a sentence. I pointed this out and he said, grandly, “That’s because I already know what you are going to say.” I explained to him how self-perpetuating this […]

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A man I had been chatting with climbed on top of me as I was falling asleep after a party. It was at my friends’ friends’ place in the Hills so I had been offered a bed. I woke up to find him fondling and grinding on me. I have never been so tired and […]

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Transactivism has usurped the struggle of genuinely marginalised vulnerable people and become swollen with the entitlement of spoilt male narcissists. Those people and their acolytes are now telling women to shut up. They are trying to ban lesbians from Pride march because lesbianism excludes the male. Men in frocks now regularly threaten violence and rape […]

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On the one hand, consensual sex is nobody else’s business. On the other, I feel sad for this person (surely a woman). I feel suspicious of her dominant/exploiting partner (surely a man). Sexual play is one thing. But if she is dependent on it, I start to feel like there are healthier ways for people […]

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The battle to take seriously my own life and prospects, and to treat myself well, is the great absorbing struggle of my life. After fifty or a hundred rapes, before which I had never kissed and been kissed; after being savagely beaten and thrashed by my parents one of whom is now dead for daring to […]

Monday morning I left my doors wearing a tiny skater skirt. I flung a leg over my bicycle. A guy standing up the street a ways said, “Wow.” To himself, not to me. I am old enough that this now seems flattering. I pedalled away, smiling to myself. Such a beautiful day. Around the corner […]

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I went to have my hearing tested. This became necessary because a man had walloped me across the face: a man I loved. Needless to say, no man has ever hit me before and I’m damned if any man will again. Needless to say, I no longer love him. It was my fault as well. […]

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Today is the Autumn Equinox. As a southern hemispherian I decided to finally find out what that means. In the subtropics we barely notice a difference in the lengths of any days. Turns out ‘equinox’ is, of course, Latin for ‘equal night.’ Today (in the North) is the start of Autumn, when the days will […]

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In an Italian cafe I saw two eight-year-olds locked in a passionate embrace. I had to blink. What on earth? On closer examination he had her locked, her neck was rigid, he had hold of her head in both his hands. Their lips were pressed on each other, hard and still. It was a Holywood […]

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The Declaration of Independence lists crimes against the American people which drove them to reject British rule. Replace ‘the King’ with ‘Trump’ and this list still makes sense. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these […]

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Two people made fuck, out on the concreted area in front of the apartments. I recognised the act by her cries. He had her sprawled over a car bonnet with his hand around her throat, and for a few minutes I watched clenching my fists. Were those cries of despair? Is she ok? Do I […]

I came home after a long day, festooned with groceries. The bench on the subway platform was occupied by two girls and their shopping. I said, “Excuse me,” in German, and they said, “Excuse me,” in German, and cleared a space. Then one turned to the other and said, in flawless Brooklyn Privilege, “So I’m […]

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Last year and the year before that and four years ago too we went down on the train to West Germany, to a tiny village lying under the skirts of the old woods. This is where my sweetheart was born. His father was born in the same house and to me the village, the house, […]

Just found a line in a notebook which I wrote, on July 15 last year, and I’ve no idea what I might have meant by it. ‘In the mornings/we are proud of his everyday miracle together.’ Is it about sex? I guess it must be. My relationship was in the throes of some difficulties and […]

Big guy who shouldered in front of me to the vegetable stall on the markets kept picking up and fondling everything, laying things lingeringly down. In between handling the produce he was adjusting his own paper bag, at the crotch, for greater personal comfort. I avoided all the produce his omnivorous fingers had touched but […]