Intent

I have always derived personal satisfaction in this idea that I'm sympathetic to the male plight. I never really identified why I've always been like this, but perhaps it's safe to say that there was always comfort in the thought that I was privy to "insider knowledge" and ultimately, I was treated as an equal. I was gifted with a kind of honesty that would only ever be reserved for another man.

I took pride in the way I cultivated honest friendships with men, both single and taken. My brothers educated me in the ways of Mystery Method and I began to easily identify pick up artists during sober nights out in Melbourne. I was told about the endlessly frustrating mechanics of the dreaded friendzone, fully conscious that I had committed the same crime: I had relegated several suitors to the land of no action.

Why did I put guys in the friendzone? Simply put, I was afraid to be forthright. I never had the courage to say no.

I would later try to overcome my relationship reluctance, based upon this idea that I didn't want to be like "those other bitches". Taking down the walls of the friendzone meant that I entered into relationships that I wasn't particularly ready for. I became cold and unfathomably frigid. I knew that my desire to be a more palatable kind of woman backfired and approaching 30, I still struggle with that ability to effectively manage their feelings and my comfort.

I've maintained a healthy interest in the friendzone, particularly since society's recent sympathy shift away from the lovelorn male. Perhaps it was a discussion that came about with the astounding popularity of the Tumblr, The Nice Guys of OKCupid. The revelation is simple, yet compelling: "Your right to be angry with womankind is invalidated because being nice to a girl does not automatically mean you are entitled to have sex with her."

I like to recall the sentiment of one nameless woman from my Tumblr feed, "I happen to think that my friendship is a pretty special thing. It shouldn't be some consolation prize when a man doesn't get what he wants." It's a comforting idea that I continually return to. Growing up, I thought that the existence of the friendzone suggested that my body was more valuable than my mind. Perhaps this is why I have such a strong desire to solely exist as a brain in a jar.

Yet I continue to indulge in these honest discussions with men and usually I'm the one to volunteer an adept summary of the whole situation: "So, what you're saying is that you want her to put out or get out." I'm sure it doesn't sound like it, but I believe that I operate in this perverse role of undercover feminist. I don't admonish their behaviour, I don't go after these guys with a burning cross and a pick-axe. I simply listen and take it all in.

I convince myself that there is a certain power in doing this. I believe I am powerful because they're not saying this to me.

Platform

A large throng of girls huddled tightly. Their school dresses were cut jagged and short, the fabric matted with dried blobs of red and yellow acrylic paint. They struggled to all fit together, some leaned outwards, threatening to topple off the two-foot high wooden platform. They held fast to one another, some girls held hands with their friends. Some pressed their plastic firemens' hats to the heads, others remained poised with party poppers.

I stood around awkwardly. Even in the last moments of high school, I never knew where to stand or who to be with. I never stopped envying those tiny microgestures of acceptance, a pose for a photograph, a pause for a moment's conversation. To be acknowledged meant everything to me, only because for those four years, it seemed as if I perpetually stood with some girl's back to me.

Once I received all the attention on that platform where we stood together. I had performed a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. I had never been offered the opportunity to perform in a play or a show, not even in the chorus. I had always been predestined for the orchestra pit. It was hugely gratifying to play Bottom, if only for those few moments. I screeched and hammed it up to excess. I died for as long as possible and everybody loved it.

The bell echoed across the courtyard. Girls screamed, arms flailed, confetti fell. Out of nowhere, Nancy suddenly hugged me tightly. She was a tough girl who boasted about hanging out with the Triads on the weekend. On Year 9 camp, she had pinned me down, straddled my mid-section and punched me repeatedly during a night time game. In Year 12, she was reprimanded for punching Amelia. Her swollen left cheek morphed from blue to purple and then black.

I never thought to ask why Nancy suddenly hugged me like that and it was funny that even during that embrace, she still couldn't bring herself to look at me. At the time I consoled myself thinking that the gesture was the apology, albeit the apology of a coward. In retrospect, I think she was just pleased that we would never have to see each other again.

In the years that have followed high school, I have spoken openly about the sadistic bullying practices of our year level. To each other, we used to joke about the widespread myth that every second year level at our school was particularly dysfunctional. It was funny that despite the heightened level of self-awareness (and lengthy group-counselling sessions), we could never get it together.

In theory, it should have all ended in that moment, as we stood in friendship and relief on that platform. In actuality, every incident from those four years seems to spin around in my head forever. The memory of it manifests itself in interesting ways, like I used to live with this insatiable desire to confront any and every bully. Even in my dreams, I wanted to embarrass and condemn those who are cruel.

In more recent times, I haven't been thinking about the cruelty, I have only been thinking about the classes. I loved almost everything that I did and I think back to how inspiring those classes were: Shakespeare in Performance, Women in History, Protest and Conflict, Journalism, Fashion, Photography. In my head, I continue to navigate those grounds, the hallways and the classrooms, but everything is empty. Everyone is gone.

When people ask what high school was like, I say: "It wasn't as bad as it was."

Translations

I was so alarmed when he said it to me, I was convinced that it was a mistranslation from the Dutch: "It takes a real man to hurt a woman." It was such a curious expression that I rushed to write it down, not wanting to forget it. When I asked what he meant by that, he went on to explain that it takes courage for a man to take responsibility for the pain he's caused. I said I agree absolutely, although he probably could have expressed it in a slightly different way.

I like to think of myself as an honourary man. I insist that the men around me treat me as such. I encourage them to confide, discuss and describe the way they treat women. I do not take particular offence when they generate an endless stream of seemingly sexist synonyms, ranging from the fat and the stupid to the needy and hysterical. I do not feel particular disappointment when they detail the hollow physicality of their latest conquest. It is a compliment that I know, it is a compliment that they tell me.

A friend often pleads with me to be careful with such confidences, she tries to convince me that knowing such truths will ultimately damage the way I perceive men. I always laugh, because there's no other way to react to such a suggestion. For me, it seems counter-intuitive to fly the flag for feminism when I'm privy to such discussions. Instead, I listen. I try to understand their motivations and justifications. I try to find the source of their cruelty and thoughtlessness.

When I was younger, my brother predicted that I would marry a wife-beater. I never asked why, I had always assumed it had something to do with his obsessive compulsion to punish, bully and control myself and my mother. For this reason, I'm unsure how we ever became friends, but we did for a short time. I was 15 and we would talk for hours and hours, all while listening to early Depeche Mode on our all-night drives to Nunawading. I once asked him if he ever regretted how he treated us: "I've never hurt either of you. I've never done anything wrong..."

Whenever I recall his brutality, I'm reminded of that moment. I'm reminded of that flippant, completely remorseless sense of entitlement. For whatever reason, he felt like he needed to do what he did.

He and I have not spoken in three years, although I find myself silently counting the years over and over again, as if I've made some huge mistake. I don't recall any words during that last interaction, I just recall the ferociousness with which he spat on me. I'm filled with curious feelings of disgust and self-satisfaction when he tells my mother that he misses my emails. He tells her that he thinks I write better than anyone else in the family. I know that I'll never speak to him again, in the same way that I know that I'll never forgive him.

Perhaps it makes sense then, that I should look for that illusive assumption of responsibility in the uncensored accounts of male friends and heartbreakers. Sure, I will always yearn for a sincere statement of remorse, I will always long for an explanation. The thing is that I know how they speak about us. I know how they think about us. It is a compliment that I know, it is a compliment that they tell me.

Presence and Precedence

I harbour this unfortunate tendency to assume that I'm being victimised pretty much all of the time. I came up with this insight a week or so ago, in a conversation with someone who only knew me from my writing. It was unbearably succinct, in that it summed up my fears and anxieties, my personality and my past.

I only regret the way that I constructed that sentence. At that point in time, I jostled with the prospect that the paranoia was completely unjustified. The prospect of an aggressive confrontation was this allegedly mythical thing. But then, I was fortunate in that I had managed to whittle down my existence so I was safe from harm.

It only occurred to me this afternoon that I've spent so much of my life convincing people to be nice to me. I've never had such a vivid recollection of such a feeble and ineffectual desire, recurring over and over again. It seems stupid to convince someone to be nice to you when they've just stomped on your neck.

I suppose I'm lucky, in that I once thought the victimisation was justified. I'd string all the incidents together, as if they were in this absurd press kit with all these unlikely characters. I don't think that way anymore. I never deserved what happened. It's just unfortunate that things transpired as they did.

I developed this sensitivity and this consciousness. I was determined never to succumb to that dynamic, I was determined not to believe the hype, as I'd so often joke. Yet, as I write this, I know that I'm back there at this precise moment. Convincing him, unconvincingly, to try to be nice to me.

I've never been able to convince anyone, although. I suppose my arguments have never been that compelling...

Concentrate

I don't remember much from that night. It was upstairs at Pony and we were there for a show. Some acquaintances were on stage and an unlikely pair of friends were hooking up in a corner. I'd occasionally see glimpses of someone I thought knew, but I was hopeful and mistaken.

For some reason, I think it must have been the second time we met. You bound up to me, breathlessly with a trademark enthusiasm. I don't remember what I was wearing, but you were wearing your AMIENS WHATEVER tshirt. It was a in-joke and I never understood what it meant.

We somehow got onto the topic of the words we weren't allowed to say. I told you about how, as a ten year old, my best friend told me off for referring to movies as films. It was in exactly the same way that my estranged brother told me off for using the term genre. Saying a word like that was just so embarrassing.

You met me with a similar anecdote, of how you casually and accidentally referred to cordial as concentrate and consequently, kids taunted you endlessly with that term for years and years. It riled you up and upset you, in the same way it upset me. It was baffling how an ordinary word could come across as nerdy or pompous.

My details of that night are sketchy at best, but I often contemplate that youthful compulsion to say a dumber word in order to convey a dumber image. I think of it more and more, now I am allowed to be as open and gregarious as I want. I live now without bullies and censors and I can speak, free of reproach and ridicule.

Bullies

The idea of bullies in America's Next Top Model is no strange thing. After all, in every cycle, in every model house, there is the hard girl, the cruel girl who stands independent of the others. Like Tiffany (Cycle 4), like Jade (Cycle 6), like Angelea (Cycle 14), the models make oblique references to their past to account for why they bully. Cycle 16 is no different in that Alexandria is immediately cast as the bully. From week to week, she comes across as rude, abrasive and controlling. She tries to direct the photoshoots, to which any ANTM viewer is a well-known cardinal sin. The other housemates often bitch about Alexandria, often insinuating that she needs to be on medication for her mental health. It went as far as Monique reading through her diary. Matters came to a head in the most recent episode of ANTM when it became apparent that it was no longer Alexandria who was the bully, but Brittani. Brittani's outburst during a photo-shoot challenge, her hysterical proclamations that "everyone wants you gone" and "you don't deserve to be here" made it clear that the bullied had become the bully.

What do you deserve?
I had such investment in my disdain for Alexandria that I failed to see what was really going on. Brittani, too, felt as if she was entitled to victimise Alexandria as she did. It was only when she was interrogated by Tyra and Nigel Barker at panel that she showed visible signs of remorse and embarrassment. But even through the tears and the panic attack, it was apparent that Brittani did not feel sorry for treating Alexandria as she did. Brittani only felt sorry that she "let (Alexandria) do this to her." It forced a lot of viewers to evaluate and compare the actions of both models and consider whether the bully deserved to be bullied. In spite of my initial dislike for Alexandria, I saw so much cruelty in the behaviour of not only Brittani, but in the whole model house. I saw so much ugliness, so much hypocrisy and I was disappointed to see that other YouTube viewers didn't seem to feel the same way. The majority of the commenters felt as though Brittani's bullying should have been carried out back at the house, far from the eyes and the ears of the clients.

The incident forced me to consider the ongoing battle with the bullies of my past. It all went down more than ten years ago, but I dream about them still. I dream about confronting them and shouting at them. I dream of understanding why they were so cruel and sadistic. I figure that is why it is still so relevant to me, I fail to understand what I could have done to deserve that treatment. At the same time, I am uncertain as to what effect my bitching, my snide comments had on my tormentors. I remember a number of girls who hated me so much that they couldn't even look me in the face. One girl spread a rumour that I had planned to do a "Columbine". Another girl stood with a clipboard outside her party and without looking down, she said I wasn't on the guestlist. I remember that night, but I also remember listening to the other girls talk about her. They speculated why all her hair was falling out. They speculated whether she really had an abortion.

I hated these girls, I really did. It wasn't until Top Model that I'd considered that they might have had a reason to hate me too.