the thing about some men is that they want you to remember, at all times, that you are underneath them. that with one word or look or "joke", you will stay beneath them. that even "exceptions" to the rule are not true exceptions - the commonly cited statistic that one in eight men believe they could win against serena williams.
women's gymnastics is often not seen as real gymnastics. whatever the fuck non-euclidian horrors rhythmic gymnasts are capable of, it's often tamped down as being not a sport. some of the most dominant athletes in the world are women. nobody watches women's soccer. despite years of dancing and being built like a fucking brick, men always assume they're faster and stronger than i am. you wouldn't like what happens when they are incorrect. once while drunk at a guy's house i won a held-plank challenge by a solid minute. the party was over after that - he became exceedingly violent.
what i mean is that you can be perfect, and they still think you're ... lacking, somehow. i hope you understand i'm trying to express a neutral statement when i say: taylor swift was the possibly the most patriarchy-palatable, straight-down-the-line woman we could churn out. she is white, conventionally attractive, usually pretty mild in personality. say what you will about her (and you should, she's a billionaire, she can handle it), but a few things seem to be true about her: 1. she can write a damn catchy song, and 2. the eras tour truly was a massive commercial success and was also genuinely an impressive feat of human athleticism and performance.
i don't know if she deserves the title of "woman of the year," i'm not debating that in this post. what i am saying is that she was named Woman of The Year, and then an untalented man got onstage at the golden globes and made fun of her for attending her boyfriend's football games. what i am saying is that this woman altered local economies - and her dating life is still being made into a "harmless" punchline. the camera panned, greedy, over to her downing a full glass of champagne. congratulations taylor! you are woman of the year! but you are a woman. even her.
fuck, man. write better material.
a guy gets onstage at a college graduation and despite the fact like half the crowd is made up of women, he spends a significant proportion of it warning these people - who spent possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars on their education - that they were lied to. that the "real" meaning of femininity is motherhood. that they shouldn't rest on the laurels of that education-they-paid-for but instead throw it away to kneel at a man's heel. imagine that. sweating in your godawful polyester gown (that you also had to pay for!), fresh out of 4 years of pushing yourself ever-harder: and some guy you've never met - who knows nothing about you - he reminds you this "win" is a pyrrhic one at best. you really shouldn't consider yourself that extraordinary. you're still a woman, even after years of study.
god forbid you are not a pretty woman, but if you are pretty, you must be dumb. god forbid you are not ablebodied or white or cis or straight or good at swallowing. you must be beneath a man, or else they are not a man. the equation for masculinity seems to just be: that which is not a woman or womanly (god forbid). anything "feminine" is thereby anathema. to engage in "feminine" things such as therapy, getting a hug from a friend, or crying - it is giving up ones manhood. therefore women need to be put in their place to ensure that masculinity is protected.
this is something i have struggled to explain to terfs - they are not doing the work of feminism, but rather the patriarchy. by asserting that women and men must be (on some secret level) oppositional and in conflict, they also assume that being a woman is akin to being another species. but bigotry does not stem from observational truths or clarity - that is what makes it bigotry. there was nothing in my childhood that made me fundamentally different from my brother. we are treated differently nonetheless. to assert there is some biological drive that enforces my gender role is to assert that women have a gendered role. men do not see women as equal to them not because of biological reality - but instead because the core tenant of the patriarchy is that women aren't full, realized people.
we are told from a very young age to excuse misbehavior as a single man's choice - not all men. it is not all men, just that one guy. all women are gold-digging bitches who belong in the kitchen - but if a man is mean, bigoted, or violent to you, it's just that particular guy, and that means nothing about men-as-a-whole. it is only one guy who got mad when you gently rejected him. it is only one guy who warns her this trophy is heavy, are you sure you can hold it? it is only one guy who smashes her face into the cake. it is only one guy talking into a mic about hating our bodily autonomy.
i have just found that they often wait until the moment we actually seem to be upstaging them. you sit in a meeting where you're presenting your own findings and he says get me a coffee? or you run to the end of the marathon and are about to finish first and he pushes your kids out in front of you. you win the chess game and they make some comment akin to well, you're ugly away. we can be the billionaire and get the dream life and finally fucking do it and yet! still! they have this strange, visceral urge to say well actually, if you think you're so great -
it's not one just one guy. it's one in eight.
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The boy stops in his tracks. “I know you,” he says, tilting his head curiously. He’s not tall, but he’s regal nonetheless, dressed all in white. Something about him makes Leia’s hair stand on end, and although she hides it she feels a stirring in her own chest. I know you like I know my own soul, she thinks wildly, and wonders where it came from. Has she gone insane?
“That’s nice,” she says, and shoots him anyway.
He deflects it in a flash of light, a glowing blue laser sword appearing in his hand like magic. She’s only seen one of those before, and it’s Vader’s. If this boy is anything like Vader, she realizes, she’s in deep shit.
She’s smart enough to know when she’s outmatched. Leia makes the tactical decision to run for her life.
Later, as she’s getting the hell out of there, she wonders why he didn’t try to stop her.
She remembers being young and tugging on her mothers skirts, demanding to know why their guest was so sad. “Does he not like it here?” She’d asked, and then, trembling, because Kenobi always seemed saddest around her. “Is it…because of me?”
“Oh, Leia,” her mother sighed, lifting her into her arms. “It’s not that, I promise.”
“Then what is it?”
“Master Kenobi lost a child under his care, years ago.” Breha’s eyes grew deeper, darker. “It was not his fault, but he blames himself. You remind him of that child, that’s all.”
Leia had quieted at that, contemplative.
The next time she’d seen Master Kenobi, she had given him a hug. He didn’t seem to know what to do with that, so she resolved to give him more of them. “He’s lonely,” she’d told her mother. “No one should be lonely.”
Looking at Obi-Wan Kenobi now, the memory seemed so far away. He’d aged thirty years in the ten it had been.
He looks, Leia thinks with a small twinge of regret, very lonely.
“Leia,” he greets. “It’s been a long time.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Leia sees a glint of white.
Kenobi freezes in his tracks. “Luke?” He whispers, and through the distance Leia can hear it as if he’d been speaking directly into her ear.
Master Kenobi lost a child under his care, her mother whispers in her head. He blames himself.
In an instant, Leia understands everything.
Kenobi is still staring at the boy he’d lost so long ago when Vader cuts him down.
Later, as she’s pacing around on the Falcon to Han muttering darkly about Princesses and supernatural abilities, she rememberers the way the boy collapsed, as if all his strings had been cut. Vader was too occupied with him to even look at her as she shot at him desperately.
Luke. She hates him more than she hates herself.
“They know where you are,” he hisses frantically. “They’re coming for you. You have to run.”
“Wait!” Leia quickly pulls up their sonar. Nothing yet, but it would explain the distant queasiness she’d felt since they’d landed. She tended to trust her gut. “How do you know? How much time do we have?”
“Not important, and not enough,” he says. “I have to go, and so do you. You need to leave yesterday.”
“How do I know I can trust you? I don’t even know who you are.”
He pauses. “Call me Skywalker.”
“That’s not an answer, Skywalker.”
“Yes it is.”
She opens her mouth to argue, but there are faint voices on the other end, drawing nearer.
“Shit,” Skywalker mutters. “I have to go. I’ll be in contact, okay? Don’t ever tell me where you are, or where you’re heading. Vader and Palpatine aren’t shy about reading minds. Just leave as soon as you can, and figure out the rest.”
“But—“
It’s too late. The comm has disconnected.
She stares down at it, disbelieving. How would the Empire know they’re here? Why should she trust a stranger who somehow got her personal comm code?
Gut feeling or not, on paper this was a perfect location. Supplied, armored, and most importantly, extremely well hidden. There was no real reason to think it would possibly be found out.
It’s probably a trap. Almost definitely a trap.
Han sticks his head in the door, a sour look on his face. “Hey Princess, can you tell these idiots—“
She makes a decision then and there.
“We’re leaving.”
“What?”
“We’re evacuating, effective immediately.” She pushes past him, and he follows so close he’s nearly stepping on her heel.
“Why? I think it’s pretty cozy here. Actual sunlight doesn’t hurt, either.”
“Apparently too cozy.” She grabs the first person she sees, a pilot who stares at her with wide eyes. “Emergency evacuation. Spread the word to pack everything you can and leave, I’ll let you know where we’re headed when we’re in orbit.”
He salutes and scurries off.
“Woah, hey now.” Han snatches at her elbow until she turns around to face him. “What’s going on?”
“There’s a new informant. He told me the Empire knows we’re here. They’re coming for us.”
“And you trust this person because…”
“I don’t have a choice,” she snaps. Someone runs past them, holding three packs filled to the brim with rations. “It’s either he’s lying and we’re not in danger, or he’s telling the truth and we’re going to die if we don’t listen. It’s not exactly hard math.”
It could be a trap of course, but he hadn’t suggested any sort of direction or destination to follow, and Leia wasn’t inclined to share. Especially not after his tidbit about Vader and Palpatine reading minds.
He squints at her. “That’s not it.”
“What?”
“I don’t believe you,” he insists. He’s so infuriating. Leia doesn’t know why she hasn’t kicked him out yet.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do, and you’re either gonna tell me why, or find a different transport when we head out of here.”
“Who said I was riding on your hunk of junk?” She demands. She actually was planning on going with them, since the Falcon has more than enough room for all the supplies that can’t fit in the other ships and none of the trustworthiness of the other pilots, but Han doesn’t need to know that.
“Well?”
Damn him. Damn him for knowing how to read her. She doesn’t know when she let that happen.
“I feel it,” she admits, defeated. “Something tells me he’s trustworthy. We’ll wait and see if it’s right.”
He studies her. She holds her head high, but inside she’s jittery at the scrutiny. They don’t have time for this.
“Yeah, all right,” Han finally says.
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” He rolls his eyes, like she’s not acting absolutely insane by putting all her trust in a random man she’s never even met. “Now come on, Princess, weren’t you the one who said we had to hurry?”
What is it about this man that makes it impossible to tell whether she wants to punch him or drag him into the nearest supply closet? They don’t have time to find out.
“So there’s good news and bad news.”
“Bad news first,” she demands.
“They know there’s a mole.”
“Shit.” Of course they know, how could they not? She should have been more careful, less obvious about the correlation of their movements with the Empire’s plans. “The good news?”
“They’ve tasked me with hunting down this ‘pathetic rebel spy,’” Skywalker says, humor in his voice. “That should buy me some time.”
Leia can’t quite stop the snort she lets out. “Seriously?”
“Yep. You’re speaking to a professional mole-hunter, here.”
“Well congratulations on the promotion, Skywalker.”
“Thank you,” he says grandly. Then, quieter, “It won’t last, Princess. They’ll find out eventually.”
“I know. Just hang in there, it will be over soon.”
“Will it?” He asks, suddenly sounding very young. She realizes that she has no idea how old he is. She doesn’t know anything about the man who has saved them more times than she cared to admit, and the idea rattles her until they sign off.
Later, she looks up the name Skywalker in their archives. There are a few results, but only one sticks out.
Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight and hero of the Clone Wars. Killed at the hands of Darth Vader. There are gossip articles too, speculations on his relationship with the pregnant Senator Padmé Amidala, who died around the same time Skywalker did. The baby, it seems, died with her.
Unless he didn’t.
It’s ridiculous. It’s impossible. The idea is so ludicrous that Leia almost rejects it entirely.
But it makes sense. By the Maker, it makes sense.
The child of Anakin Skywalker, it seems, would be a powerful Force user indeed. Powerful enough for Kenobi to take the baby and run. Powerful enough for the Emperor to want him for his own gain. Powerful enough to send Vader after Kenobi and take the boy himself.
Maybe even powerful enough to shield his mind from Vader and Palpatine’s intrusions.
Powerful enough to hide the fact that he’s a spy.
Leia sinks into her chair, covering her face as she laughs.
Maybe Luke isn’t so bad after all.
“No, no, no,” she mutters, digging through the smoking wreckage of the TIE fighter. “Don’t be dead, please don’t be dead.”
“Princess…” Han lays a hand on her shoulder that she immediately shrugs off.
“No, he’s not dead. He’s not. Luke!”
A faint cough answers her, and she’s so relieved to hear it she could cry. Behind her, Han starts bellowing for a medic and, “Some damn help here, do you expect us to move all this ourselves?”
“Luke, it’s me,” she sobs. “It’s Leia. You’re at the Rebel Base. You’re safe.”
More coughing, and there’s a worrying rasp to his voice when he says, “You know…my name?”
“I figured it out.”
“Smart.” This time, the coughing is so bad Leia and Han both wince.
“Shit, kid,” Han says, moving another piece of rubble. “Don’t talk. We’re gonna get you out of here, all right?”
“Stand back,” Luke chokes out.
“What?”
“Stand back. Please.”
Han protests, but something in Leia knows they should listen to him. She drags him back, and motions everyone else to fall back with them. They do, albeit reluctantly.
“Clear,” she calls, hoping Luke can hear her.
The TIE explodes.
“Fuck!” Han goes back in, Leia on his heels with the terrifying feeling that she’d just allowed Luke to die, before they both stop in their tracks. Around them, the broken pieces of the TIE are floating.
And curled up in the middle is a man dressed all in white.
“Luke!” She pushes past Han to start dragging him out, and after another moment of staring around them, he helps her.
As soon as they get clear, the pieces fall to the ground with a clatter. Luke falls limp with them.
Han is still looking at the TIE. “Can you do that?” He asks quietly.
Leia pauses her examination of the unconscious man in front of her to glare at him. “Is that what you’re most concerned with right now? Really?”
“Excuse me for asking, Princess!”
“It’s white,” Luke grumbles, pulling at his hospital gown bitterly. “I hate wearing white.”
“Should I be offended?”
He rolls his eyes. “Don’t even. You look great and you know it. I just feel like I never left.”
“Well,” she says gingerly. “I guess it’s a good thing you got sick of it. If we went around in matching outfits all the time, people might think we’re twins.”
He snorts. “Yeah, right.”
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