a story of sexism and mental illness from a silicon valley CEO
By Rachel Major
Edited in part by Alexa Josaphouich, Julia Casciato, & Alyssa Walker
trigger warning: Anxiety, depression, panic attacks, Some Strong Language
-Part one-
The bells on the door jingle as I enter the store, and as I leave the warm summer air behind me a sharp voice cracks across the room like a whip:
“Have you been helped?”
The surprising vitriol, the curt, annoyed tone violently yanks me from my thoughts. I lurch to stand at attention with my back turned to the man that practically shouted across the floor.
Today is a bad day, so the reaction is immediate. My heart pounds, my chest tightens, my hands go clammy. Suddenly I’m aware of just how bright and loud the endless boxes of metal and plastic bits surrounding me are. The aisles of my neighborhood plumbing store loom before me--10 feet tall at least--filled to the brim with manly things. I’m claustrophobic.
I try to ignore the sudden I told you so from only moments ago. That I shouldn’t get so worked up about coming here. Now my thoughts are fast and breathless.
This is why you don’t come here. Have you ever seen another woman customer alone here? I feel the ebb to submit to the logic, try to fight the fleeting panic... Are you and this man the only two people in the store?
I take a breath. I can do this. He’s grumpy. Hasn’t had breakfast. Hasn’t had his morning coffee. Give the working man a break, right?
Well, what about me?
I can’t ignore the fact that it’s 9 am in this little plumbing store, and I’m probably the first customer to walk through the door. So to answer this man’s seemingly innocuous yet furious question -- clearly, I have not been helped.
When I turn around, I know. I wish I didn’t. Like jumping into a glacial pool, it hits me with a cold, dreaded certainty. As if he’s surprised the predator in him knew of the caged animal in me before I even turned around. I watch the realization move across his face; his mouth goes round, a foolish schoolboy about to be scolded by his mother with his hand in the cookie jar. “Whoops, caught myself being an ass to women again!” Quickly covered up by that resting tough guy face.
Like it hits a flashpoint, my blood is boiling. I’m fed up and furious. I am not prey. And frankly, his mother would be ashamed of him. I feel his sentiment radiating over the goosebumps on my arm that are stubbornly present despite it being a hot summer’s day - this isn’t your world, you just take up space here.
Don’t you know I’m a CEO? I want to snarl.
Don’t you know I’m a human being? I want to plead.
At that moment none of that matters. The sway of my hips, my long red hair; that’s what matters. Even if he hasn’t had breakfast, hasn’t had his coffee, even if he’s having a terrible morning, this visceral reaction is nothing but some carnal attempt to remind me to not challenge, to stay crushed beneath a man’s boots.
And just like that, a great chasm of gender opens beneath us. Threatening to swallow us both whole. A black hole of millennia of rape and servitude, generations of untold, bitter assumptions behind a single moment to remind me of the power he lords over me just by standing there.
Crashing around me, roaring in my ears, are the ghosts of women long dead. Antoinette Blackwell, the woman who wrote to Charles Darwin asking how he could possibly say women have “naturally” inferior intellect if they weren’t even allowed in University. Henrietta Lacks. Rosalind Franklin. Of Hypatia, the witches of Salem, the unnamed slaves experimented on by the “father” of gynecology-- murdered. Lilith literally demonized for not allowing Adam to rape her in the Garden of Eden.
Modern-day examples too - Kira Johnson. Olivia Lonebear. Lesvy Berlín. Erin Valenti. How many millions of little girls were murdered for the crime of having two X chromosomes? How many women have been lost to history, taken advantage of in science, because some insecure men didn’t bother writing their names down? It’s an unyielding well of grief.
I want to strike back. The wings of the Valkyries unfurl behind me, the history of lost generations, silenced voices, the well of grief turned to rage, a force more powerful than I can hold. It craves a vengeful release. The tension grows, an electric rope of hatred growing taught between us with the revelation staring us both in the face - that he would never have spoken to me that way if I were a man.
I’m sure that time is up, that I’m ready to crush him, to smite him where he stands when suddenly a quote floats to the top of my mind, unsolicited yet demanding attention:
“Don’t pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living and above all, those who live without love.”
It’s completely out of context and yet it’s completely in place for a man who lives in what I can only imagine is an emotionless pool of toxic masculinity. When was the last time someone gave him a hug? The last time a friend was truly there for him and not telling him to “man up”? Does he even have a mother? Is he doomed to live his life behind a mask of bottled emotions?
And for some reason, the rage puddles out of me. In rushes an apathetic emptiness. I’m not here to decide whether or not he deserves compassion - and I don’t have time for this.
The Arctic is burning, the oceans are turning to acid, California is engulfed in flames. Species that existed for millions of years are turning to dust in our human-made extinction event. Countless climate refugees are fleeing their homes for more violence, while others gorge themselves and deny that our world is whittling on the vine with the virulent disease that is the human race. I came here to solve a problem for my team. I have a meeting in less than an hour, and all I’m trying to do is what I can for a dying world, not hold someone’s hand as to why he shouldn’t be a jerk to half the population.
“Please sir, why do you hate women?” would fall from exasperated lips onto deaf ears. For all our activism, we’re still trying to convince the people in power we’re worth listening to. We’re at their whim; nothing changes unless they decide it’s worth it.
Besides, I don’t want him to be an ally. I want him to be a traitor. I want him to feel my fear, my sick, I want him to rebel against a society that hurts him but violently pins me down, makes it so he might as well have struck me against a wall and choked the life out of me while telling me I will never be good enough. Not even because of my own abilities, but because of other people’s perceptions.
I want him to revolt. Yet I know it’s not up to me for him to get there. I want to help but I know that that anger, whatever made him speak that way, had nothing to do with me. I’m just a woman that’s the easy mark for insecurities deeply rooted in something I can’t even touch.
Still, I feel a strange sense of guilt. Am I supposed to...care more? Be more? For a fool?
Clean your own damn house.
What do I have anyway? Call the manager? Make a complaint? The only way there is any true redemption is if he admits that he was beyond rude, his rashness highlighted one of the biggest plagues of our world.
All I have is a woman’s intuition in a man’s world.
To Be Continued…