{Misogyny Rebellion}

I am waiting for a stream of consciousness to enter my wired tired brain

the divine channeling which I yearn for

to write my way into the glory of significance

so that I can rest from this mental drowsiness

accumulated over time, over years, over sixty-eight years.

The drive to survive is relentless and often unforgiving.

It is in all of us. We are victims to our ceaseless evolution,

world weary, virus wary, nuclear war anxious, competitive.

Worn out by pandemics, floods, droughts and bushfires,

trees falling on cars, homelessness, mental illness.

Misogynists roaming the streets

driving their massive ‘fuck you truck’ four-wheel drives.

Why, just the other day I came across one.

All intimidating with his big wheels and dirty attitude

nearly ran over my dogs, the grimy bastard

and he called ME a crazy fucking bitch!

for taking too long to get my dogs out of the car

for not shutting my door fast enough to suit his needs.

Well, he picked the wrong woman in me.

He pushed that button. You know, the one that installed

when I was seventeen. Slammed the door on my father

after he called me crazy for standing up to him.

Sick of the woman hating pricks

ready red adrenaline surged through me.

I let him have it, ‘hey you, you’re a fucking bully!’

and you’re not going to get away with it!

Right out the front of the newsagents

everyone swung around and stared.

He didn’t know what to do with himself

deflated like a soggy condom. He pretended to

look at his phone and all the while the people watched

until he got back into his gigantic, small dick substitute ute

and skulked off.

Just around the corner in the ALDI car park months earlier

I came across another. They seem to float around and surface

when you least expect it. Said I scraped his car driving in.

He’s out inspecting his door, and I know there’s nothing on it.

‘You’re going to pay for this!’ he yells. ‘Oh yeh’, I say, ‘I don’t think so,

I didn’t touch your car’. Getting out of my car he moves his bulk

in a way that traps me between the car doors and his body.

‘Get out of my way, this is entrapment and

you’re trying to intimidate me!’, I scream at him.

People in the car park whip around and he is now under public scrutiny.

‘I’m going to take your registration and call my insurance company’, he barks.

‘Well, I’m going to call the police you rude bully’. And I did.

Couldn’t get justice for another. The bastard was dead.

28 and married with a young son. I was fourteen,

plied with grog, hurtling down Beaconsfield Parade in his valiant.

No seatbelts, he grabbed me by the back of the neck

wedged my head between steering wheel and beer gut.

I was a marginalised automaton gagging on a rubbery dick

and everything went a strange dirty green colour.

If I was to tell you all the incidents over my sixty-eight years

we’d be here for a while. Better to save it and read the novel.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a man hater. I’m a humanist.

Love the body and minds of both sides and those in the middle.

All kudos to me for not succumbing to spite or bitterness.

In my childhood playground of misogyny, I practiced fighting back against my father

but it’s taken years of honing my skills to let it be known that I just won’t take it.

Got to pick the fights though. Push back when safe, retreat when not.

This is the rebellion against patriarchal misogyny.

You show me contempt, and I will show you my rage.

You call me crazy? I’ll show you sane fury.

This feminine legacy runs strong in my blood, hard won, hard fought and still unfinished.’

And I will do my bit to write and rant it until the world listens.

We become vigilant, wired and tired but we become resilient.

We must keep speaking, keep writing, keep refusing to shut up.

Because silence has never served me, and it sure as hell has never served women.

I think about the girl I was, the woman I became, and the one still learning, even now.

Sixty-eight years of living, surviving, stumbling, sometimes raging, sometimes numb,

but always getting back up again.

It is easy to disassociate and hide but the Amazonian woman has courage.

She gets out there and meets the challenges.

Life is relentless and unforgiving and yes, world weariness arrives

sneaking up and tapping us on the shoulder.

But the misogyny rebellion slowly simmers regardless,

like a pot left on the back burner, never going out,

quietly preparing for the next challenge.

Insanity would be to allow ourselves to succumb.

Call us crazy? Hysterical?

We are the daughters of Pandora,

and we’ve learned how to open the box on purpose.

Beware.

✴︎ Ajanta | Cave Dweller | Torch Bearer | Truth Teller | 2025

Ajanta (Anne) with Dad, Mornington Circa 1961