Note: This is a poem I wrote last summer, after a really rough week dealing with the harassment of men. It's taken me almost a year to be confident enough to show it publicly, because it was difficult for me to overcome my immediate instinct to apologize for the way I feel about certain things. I always used to be the person who calms situations, rather than ignites them. Who mollifies and concedes, rather than standing up for myself. But not any more. I'm tired of just merely surviving. I'm ready to flourish.

"Penis Fatigue"

I am totally, utterly, and unequivocally
sick to death
of penises.
I don't mean physically.
Actually, wait...
Yes, I do.
I am tired of not being able to get through one day
without being;
harrassed, hit on, brushed up against.
I know that you have a penis.
And no, I am not impressed.
Just because I don't want to sleep with you
does not mean that I'm;
a bitch,
a prude,
a lesbian,
or a cocktease.
It just means that I don't want your penis anywhere near me.
No means no means no.
What I really want
is to crawl into a huge bed filled with soft pillows,
with Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and Vita Sackville-West,
and smoke cigarettes and drink wine,
and discuss literature, art, and philosophy,
and not worry about being molested.
But even more than this,
I am exhausted by the way I am treated
by those with penises.
I grow weary of;
being talked down to,
being talked over,
being ignored,
being made fun of,
of putting my needs last, always behind theirs.
The needs of the almighty penis.
I am tired of fathers, of husbands, of bosses.
Of male entitlement.
Of toxic masculinty.
Of the power of the patriarchal system
which oozes over everything, drowning me
in penises.
I know what you're thinking;
women come with their own baggage,
their own sets of problems.
And we do, that's true.
But heaven help me
I am just ever so tired
of penises.

~Rebecca Foulks 8/22/2016