Food for thought- Alternate Expectations of Sexuality

B-Both
F-Female
M-Man

A lot of the lines ending/beginning with the "-" are meant to be quick pick up lines to blur the boundary between the self conversation in the separate bathrooms. Not sure how to make that a hundred percent clear through text..

Man and woman in separate bathrooms, in stalls or in front of mirrors.


B: They taught me to exist in levels
M: Pee standing up
F: Pee Sitting down
B: Like the level of respect I demand is equal to my height off the ground
F: For as long as I can remember, I’ve been told to take things sitting down
M: I’ve been build since sandbox like I was an obelisk, tasked to look down on
B: Everyone else-
F: -looked at me like I was a dishrag. Wrung me out to dry like water was self worth and I was too dainty to be burdened by
B: The weight-
M: of my expectations. Biceps. Balls. Frowns. These facets were blueprinted onto my façade-
B: -before I knew how to taste-
F: -I knew how to swallow. How to balance the worlds weight and my own. How to put things down and throw things up. Juggling while on a tightrope. Trying to mine down my own throat. Today’s breakfast is tonight’s make up. Think of my vomit as lip-gloss for the entire body.
M: My body. Was a swimming pool filled with silver dollars and sticky anchors. I grew more valuable the longer I could hold my breath. Became as affluent depending on the heads I could drown. That’s when I learned you don’t need to swim, if you have hands like hammers.
F: I think whoever invented the phrase “Between a rock and a hard place” was a woman. My mother always said it was our role to bend, to find our place only in the cracks between men.
M: Every uncle or TV icon I saw growing up was like some stern, unmovable object. Like.. like a rock. So as a boy I just wanted to be made of metal. Sturdy. Formidable. Cut backs and throats to get on top so I could afford to put down payments on a house, or a car, or
B: -A-
F: -wife, was all I was meant to be. A woman skirting her own potential
M: My father idolized cliff sides. Liked the sudden ruts and odd edges. Said he would shake my hand the first time I drew blood. His fingernails always looked like broken glass
F: I’ve been cut too many times by my low expectations…. Or how I wear them.
M: And I want to know, if I wear a skirt to work today, contrary to the teachings of a piecemeal mirror, would I be less of a man? Or would I just be treated that way?
F: I want to know, if I unleashed my backbone from its straightjacket, and walked into the conference room would it be a flower behind my ear or a cock sprouting from my forehead?
M: So maybe the way I urinate reflects male privilege. I don’t know. But I didn’t make this men-tality, I just work-
B: -Here-
F: -is where everything exists. And if we don’t care about the beginning then we will never find the end. Patriarchy is like the elephant in the room that never stops burying the women in this office in shit. And on some days you can see the men trying to was their hands of the-
B: -Guilt-
M: …Its not that I’m feeling guilty. I’m just uncomfortable thinking about this. There’s something so simple about-
F: - “Injustice, anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.
M: I… I don’t even know why I’m even thinking about levels, besides; we all shit… sitting down.

1. Learned gender roles as a cultural educational system
2. External factors/pressures leading to oppression
3. Internalized factors resulting in a habit of oppression
4. Criminality of supporting a system of oppression
5. The deniability of injustice in our "male dominated" society