A Life Without Men
The re-telling of a short story about the inevitability of male influence
Disclaimer - Sexual Harassment
One time, I wrote a short story about a woman who decided to live her life without ever interacting with men again. The protagonist was an average, childfree and unmarried woman in her 40s. I never revealed her profession, but it was clear that she had a job in which she was mostly surrounded by other women. Otherwise, the story would have ended immediately, with her refusing to speak to her male manager, thereby losing her income, her home, and her dignity. That, arguably, is the most realistic outcome of such a hypothetical experiment: if a woman were to disconnect completely from all men.
After years of disappointing heterosexual relationships, public harassment, and growing up in a patriarchal system that ridiculed and humiliated women and girls for their gender, the woman in my story almost lost her mind over the fact that men can absolutely choose to exclude women from their lives, but the chances of survival for a woman who excludes men are vanishingly low. She had to try this.
She started the first day of her experiment by making a list of places where she knew women worked. She reasoned that, theoretically, she could survive, if she found places that allowed her to only interact with women. She could name a few women she knew that worked as shop clerk, bus driver, pharmacist, doctor, lawyer and landlord. The first day of her experiment went well. She got up in the morning to go to work, ignored the man living next door, who was used to her friendly morning greeting as she left the house while he stood by his open window, smoking his morning cigarette. He was immediately appalled by getting ignored, and insulted her, but his inner dialogue revealed that he was in fact lonely and was longing for company. Later in my short story, this neighbor was a key figure in helping my protagonist back to acceptance that the ideal co-existence of men and women is rooted in mutual respect. This is only possible when men can no longer live their lives ignoring women, just as it is impossible for women to ignore men in theirs. It is a cheesy moral of a story, but I just couldn’t conclude it any other way.
My protagonist started running into difficulties in her manless life already on day two. A life without interaction with men meant no help from them, neither active nor passive. She avoided male-dominated professions by teaching herself how to fix things, taking a self-defence class, and even hauling her own trash all the way to the waste facility, hoping the handler there would be a woman. At several occasions, I had her sit at a subway station, waiting for a train driven by a woman. The World Road Transport Organization exists, which is fun, and it reported that only 22% of all European subway operators are female. At an average of 15 trains per hour arriving at European subway stations, and with a 0.22 probability of a female conductor, the woman in my story had to wait almost half an hour longer than usual each time she wanted to take public transportation, refusing to use vehicles conducted by men. She wore the delay like a badge of honor, feeling like a quiet activist for women’s rights. But there were moments when her determination ended in despair.
Like the time she had to endure sexual harassment without speaking with the perpetrator. A man exposed himself to her in public. This happens to women and girls in real life all the time, by the way. She had to ignore his whiny, manipulative advances designed to guilt victims into submission. She had to flee, instead of fighting with all the mighty strength that the fear of rape sets free in some women. And for the sake of the story, I gave the reader no reason to believe that she had “asked for it”. I sent my protagonist to the police to report what had happened to her. When a male police officer tried to speak with her, she simply shook her head until a female officer took over. The dialogue between the two women clearly showed that the prosecution of male sex offenders cannot be achieved without the help of men. The investigation and prosecution of a case of indecent exposure, or exhibitionism, involves at least a dozen people, involving all investigating police officers, defense attorneys, prosecutors, psychologists, court personnel and judges. There is zero chance not to meet a man throughout this process. She realized that if she wanted justice, she’d be analyzed, questioned, and scrutinized, mostly by men. There would rarely, if ever, be an all-female prosecution of a male sex offender. My protagonist decided to retaliate without the help of men. She revisited the site of the harassment and for the first time in a while, she interacted with a man. She punished the offender so brutally that, as the author, I told her: “Girl, we will never be able to publish this story.”
During her adventure of ignoring the existence of all men, the protagonist of my story had some light moments too. Like the time she had to change her vacation plans because only 6% of all pilots are female, and the risk of being flown by a man was simply too high. Therefore, she decided to spend her vacation at a location that she could reach by car, organized by an all-female travel agency, with a group of other female travel-enthusiasts. For days, she didn’t see a single man. There was no male energy surrounding her, no male voices, smells and opinions. The absence of all the negative stress in her life, the absence of the male gaze, the male advice, the mansplaining despite incompetence, felt heavenly. This was not to say that she got along with all the other women on this trip, or that there was nothing to learn from interacting with them. After all, she had grown up in a society that promotes male dominance and sows distrust between girls, teaching them to compete for male approval. Overcoming that mindset takes generations of feminist upbringing, raising daughters to support each other rather than compete.
The profound realization that turns a girl into a woman, is the awareness that all women are sitting in the same boat- chronically disadvantaged and in danger of male violence. The moment a woman reaches out a hand in solidarity with another woman, instead of not believing her story, is the definition of peace. There is no deeper sense of humanity than in the friendship between women. There is no warmer embrace than that of a sister who has your back. There is nothing more reliable and honest than two girls who share a secret.
A little flirt with a man ended the experiment for the woman in my story. Biology had its moment. She felt the animal instinct, the inexplicable draw toward a man. From a female perspective, the dance of courtship- the dance men think they've mastered- is a fun show. It is adorable until the male has the slightest experience of rejection- which is the moment that can become uncomfortable or even dangerous for a woman very quickly. In my story, the woman was smitten by the advances of her chosen male and she swiftly resonated, that not all men were insecure in their manhood and that we women could absolutely live in unity with some of them.
Just like most other women, she came to the conclusion that living a life without ever interacting with men is impossible. A life without men is the invisible medicine in form of a dream, on the days when men do you harm. It is a theory we may use to scare men who are hateful, violent and insecure. Tell the men that there are women who entertain the idea of being completely free from male influence, expecting that our lives would potentially improve if we didn’t grant men all the freedom they currently possess.
Or as the protagonist explains to her new boyfriend in the end of my short story:
A life without men is impossible, and yet I have no trouble imagining it.
"A life without men is impossible, and yet I have no trouble imagining it."
A true statement.