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Something splits in two when a person is assigned that label of “woman”. There is herself,
that silhouette of a living, breathing shape which is yet shapeless. There is that something,
herself before the her, and then, there is her voyeur.
From birth that shape fades into light, the edges becoming less obscure. She learns that this
figure, this outline, is inexorably tied to her. She wishes it could melt back into that something
it was before it was visible, but it just burns brighter and brighter until nobody can see
anything but that. They can’t see her nothingness anymore. Her worth, autonomy, and
authenticity eclipse. The light obscures her darkness. She is ready for consumption.
He watches her while she sleeps. He is there at dawn, laughing at her weariness and her
sprawled out body on the bed. He sneers as she puts on her clothes, her awkwardness, her
strain. He is the unrelenting scrutiny haunting her footsteps. He mocks and cuts the ridges in
her brain and the pathways of her thoughts.
She forgets what it’s like to float, to be air and water.
In the depths of our lives, the creases and the folds of our experiences, how often is it true
that functioning as a human - a human, not a woman -triumphs that adherence to our own
voyeurism?
She is scrutinised, appraised. Her value oscillates and rebounds the rays of the sun. The
light is warped, fluxing and waning. It is never on her side.
She is paradoxical. Her brightness is threatening, subversive in its form, inferior and
disposable. She herself is true and valuable and equal, yet wrong and false and wholly
ridiculous. How can all of these things be true? She has been taught to see herself in the
shadows that he casts, yet his movements are so unstable, so incessantly unpredictable,
how can she ever truly see?
Think back to that empty orb, shapeless and noiseless. Before the panic set in and all you
could see was reflection, think about the thing that had no colour or size or ends. Before she
met him, man, as they call him.
How can we get back there? She asks.
We could time travel, I answer, back to the moment we were conceived, to stop this all from
happening. Or further back to before the moment gender herself was born out of his womb.
Back to the moment he viewed her as something different, imposing on her a structure.
Before she herself was a commodity. We could stop him from sailing the seas and taking her
things, her money and her independence, and now you, your mother, and grandmother
could pulse around the world like jellyfish, seeping into nature and love and each other.
Is it possible? It’s hard to say. We can write it, but we can’t see it. We can feel it, sometimes,
if you let your form melt for a while. You have to droop and sag and ooze into the ground
beneath and the air above you and let go of that frame. Let him watch, let him laugh. Flowing
and ghostly you can’t hear him anymore. You cannot see yourself; you can only feel and
touch and savour.
Words: Isabelle Parker, she/her