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A Woman Named Bartholomew

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<blockquote>"Indeed, no woman writer can write 'too much'... <a href="https://archive.md/87JiF#selection-1257.60-1257.140">No woman has ever written enough.</a>"<br />- <a href="https://archive.md/nIZsn">bell hooks</a>, <em>Remembered Rapture</em></blockquote>
<p>Au contraire to my previous beliefs, I have gotten engaged. In truth, I have been engaged for a long time: not the conventional drop-of-the-knee and the "will you marry me" routine, but a much more subdued: "Lethe, someday I think I <em>would</em> like to be married to you." A wink. A playful tongue just barely sticking out from her lips. It's enough to make my heart melt. It's enough to let me know: this is the woman I want to spend forever with.</p>
<p>The life I lead now would be nigh-comprehensible to the person I was <a href="../../2020/april/vow.html">two years ago</a>, even though I write on the same exact subject, in the same spot on my bed, in the same exact room, in the same exact house. A year ago I was unsure of who I was, allowing the dreams of who I am and was future and past to guide me where they would: a teacher's aide in a school built in the shell of a reclaimed church, a sacrificial daughter fleeing her vengeful father, a wandering goddess severed from powers and home and condemned to the earth roam until she eventually disappeared from the world. The other versions of me had love interests, sure, but I- the I that stayed consistent behind the screen of Mori's Mirror, that despite the different lenses witnessed everything- never committed myself to any single story, any single person, knowing the memories would eventually stop and the feelings fade and the sense of living in that particular story go away.</p>
<p>The life I lead now would be nigh-comprehensible to the person I was <a href="../../2020/april/vow.html">two years ago</a>, even though I write on the same exact subject, in the same spot on my bed, in the same exact room, in the same exact house. A year ago I was unsure of who I was, allowing the dreams of who I am and was future and past to guide me where they would: a teacher's aide in a school built in the shell of a reclaimed church, a sacrificial daughter fleeing her vengeful father, a wandering goddess severed from powers and home and condemned to the earth roam until she eventually disappeared from the world. The other versions of me had love interests, sure, but I - the I that stayed consistent behind the screen of Mori's Mirror, that despite the different lenses witnessed everything - never committed myself to any single story, any single person, knowing the memories would eventually stop and the feelings fade and the sense of living in that particular story go away.</p>
<p>But now I know. Now I know. Now I know.</p>
<p>And so I bring you readers here today on the first day of my last semester of college, or whenever you read this (for the written word cares not about the linear aspect of time), to witness me renew my vow. I offer it to none other than myself, just as binding as those words I will one day speak at the altar to hoped and hopeful.</p>
<p>It is said that every female carries within them an unspeakable rage. An inborn sense of injustice whose seeds are planted the very first day they brush up against the patriarchy, watered with every unconscious socialization, but sometimes never come to full bloom. Pecked at, trimmed, bonsaied into something manageable, something that allows the woman to go to sleep at night without facing the sheer horror of realizing she lives in a world where half of the population wants to see her humiliated, subjugated, made to be compliant, reduced down to nothing. I am, of course, <em>severely understating</em> the problem. To acknowledge the rage, like attempting to comprehend the gulf between <a href="https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/">the average American income and Jeff Bezos' wealth</a>, is to teeter on the edge of going completely fucking insane.</p>
<p>When I was an elementary-school child, watching as my parents doted on every cry of my brothers and then turned around and told me to shut up and accomodate them despite my own discomfort, I buried the seed further. I shunned the light from it. I swallowed my words.</p>
<p>When I was an elementary-school child, watching as my parents doted on every cry of my brothers and then turned around and told me to shut up and accommodate them despite my own discomfort, I buried the seed further. I shunned the light from it. I swallowed my words.</p>
<p>When I was a junior-high teen, watching as my parents fought tooth-and-nail for my brothers to get school accomodations and then turned a blind eye to the school dropping my own IEP despite me still needing help, I buried the seed further. I shunned the light from it. I swallowed my words.</p>
<p>When I was a high-school teen, watching as my parents jumped at every chance to ground me for writing poetry about topics they didn't approve of and then turned a blind eye to my brothers' increasingly inappropriate browsing history, I buried the seed further. I shunned the light from it. I swallowed my words.</p>
<p>But every chance possible, just like the little red bucket that now sits on my windowsill, I tip the seed towards the light in rebellion, weak as it is in this winter of my passing. The strawberry kit I planted on a whim shortly after being fired from my job last autumn has sprouted through the dirt again, little leaves barely two millimeters across but still unmistakenly green and <em>alive</em>. The bush on the other side of my bedroom window, a tree repeatedly cut down <em>again and again and again</em> every time it grows wild, refuses to submit to subjugation and revolts by regrowing <em>again and again and again</em>.</p>
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<p><strong>I just want to be free!</strong></p>
<p><i>I've had enough!</i> I've had enough of the constant propaganda everywhere I go that I am lesser, inferior, meant for servitude on the basis of my birth! I've had enough of placing my trust in a man I thought in the moment was safe to be around and then it backfiring later! I've had enough of being assumed to be incompetent, ignorant, incapable of functioning because of the organs inside my hips! I've had enough of the objectification, of the male gaze, of the omnipresent pressure to shave and pluck and contour and tuck and smooth over the features that differentiate every woman from each other, blended and ground up into the same flat-minded mannequin, model for a sex doll, a hole for a douchebag to dick down and then discard in disgust!</p>
<p>"Your politics are boring," the egoist sneers. Of <em>course</em> you would think it boring to be held accountable for your role in oppression, to be asked thinking you serious about your revolutionary anarchist zeal to imagine a world where half the population doesn't have a high heel pressing down on their throats every moment of every day. Of <em>course</em> you would think it boring to live in a world without a class of people that it's socially acceptable to punch down on to relieve your stress.</p>
<p>"Your politics are unprofitable," the capitalist sneers. Of <em>course</em> you would think it unprofitable to witness the birth of a world with no need for cosmetic surgery or makeup or uncomfortable clothes or fashion magazines or diet programs for the women prioritizing their comfort and existing in their natural healthy state or hormones and masectomies for the females inevitably so alienated from their (physical) humanity they cannot take the pain anymore and wish to masquerade as men in a society that sees men as "default" and women as "other".</p>
<p>I have decided I no longer care about male opinions. Collectivist? Yes, but not without good reason. <strong>According to <a href="https://archive.md/https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/42tabledatadecoverviewpdf/table_42_arrests_by_sex_2012.xls">2012 FBI crime statistics</a>, men are responsible for 88.7% of murders and non-negligent manslaughters, 99.1% of forcible rapes, 77.1% of aggravated assaults, and 92.2% of sex offenses.</strong> I am beginning to see a pattern here...</p>
<p>"Your politics are unprofitable," the capitalist sneers. Of <em>course</em> you would think it unprofitable to witness the birth of a world with no need for cosmetic surgery or makeup or uncomfortable clothes or fashion magazines or diet programs for the women prioritizing their comfort and existing in their natural healthy state or hormones and mastectomies for the females inevitably so alienated from their (physical) humanity they cannot take the pain anymore and wish to masquerade as men in a society that sees men as "default" and women as "other".</p>
<p>I have decided I no longer care about male opinions. Collectivist? Yes, but not without good reason. <strong>According to <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-42">2019 FBI crime statistics</a>, men are responsible for 88.0% of murders and non-negligent manslaughters, 96.6% of rapes, 76.5% of aggravated assaults, and 93.2% of sex offenses.</strong> I am beginning to see a pattern here...</p>
<p>I understand that tipping the plant toward the light, that committing the crime of setting the pot beside the window to let it drink in the sun as much as it wants, will put me in danger. I understand that finally unbottling the rage inside my body will lose me most, if not all, of my friends and allies here in the Inside. Likely I will wake up to vile emails in my inbox many times throughout this semester, throughout the rest of my life. But <a href="../../2021/may/rebirth.html#exhortation">I cannot let the low-lifes stop me.</a> I cannot back down now. If I have less than six months left to live, then I do not want to pass into Sablade with the weight of knowing I left the Inside a coward. And if there is a change of plans and I must live longer, then <strong>my life is not worth living if it is not a life with integrity.</strong></p>
<p>I hoist this knife I have been gifted into the air, not in some declaration of unity but of separation: I will sever whatever bindings I have been restricted with due to the circumstances of my birth, and I will carve out a space in this world for me to be as free as possible, and I will create a new world upon my liberation from the Inside where misogyny is naught but a distant fleeting nightmare.</p>
<p>This is my birthright, after all.</p>

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<h2>prometer (to vow)</h2>
<p><code>Prometer</code> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220227011412/https://www.etymologyofspanish.com/search?query=prometer">comes from the Latin</a> <code>pro</code>, meaning "toward", and <code>mittere</code>, "to send" or "to give". Going further back, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220227011420/https://www.etymologyofspanish.com/terms/meter">the root verb, <code>meter</code></a>, comes from the Proto-Indo-European <code>meith</code>, "to exchange". I've made <a href="../../2020/april/vow.html">a lot of vows</a> in my life, sent them out into the world. Some knowing there would be no chance of ever being fulfilled, some already fulfilled without the other person's knowledge and only made to make myself look like a miracle worker, some kept <a href="../january/vow2.html">near to my heart</a>... Maybe, someday, I'll get to exchange a vow with a very special person.</p>
<p><code>Prometer</code> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220227011412/https://www.etymologyofspanish.com/search?query=prometer">comes from the Latin</a> <code>pro</code>, meaning "toward", and <code>mittere</code>, "to send" or "to give". Going further back, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220227011420/https://www.etymologyofspanish.com/terms/meter">the root verb, <code>meter</code></a>, comes from the Proto-Indo-European <code>meith</code>, "to exchange". I've made <a href="../../2020/april/vow.html">a lot of vows</a> in my life, sent them out into the world. Some knowing there would be no chance of ever being fulfilled, some already fulfilled without the other person's knowledge and only made to make myself look like a miracle worker, some kept <a href="../01/vow2.html">near to my heart</a>... Maybe, someday, I'll get to exchange a vow with a very special person.</p>
<!-- 2021-12-25 -->
<span lang="es">
<blockquote>Estoy en la casa que solía ser de mi familia, en el patio delantero. Mi padre está enojado como siempre. Comienza a gritar sobre su deseo de que yo viva sola y que yo soy una decepción.</blockquote>

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<p>(Before you grab your pitchforks and your OSINT tools and decide to doxx me, please understand that I am not a "radical feminist". I simply do not fit one hundred percent of the ideology's stances, including their insistence on misusing the word "individualism", and I don't like the concept of <a href="../../2020/april/vow.html">adhering my beliefs to any label</a>. However, as my main concern is fighting for my own liberation, and I am a female... I find <a href="../january/vow2.html">our interests almost always align</a>.)</p>
<p>(Before you grab your pitchforks and your OSINT tools and decide to doxx me, please understand that I am not a "radical feminist". I simply do not fit one hundred percent of the ideology's stances, including their insistence on misusing the word "individualism", and I don't like the concept of <a href="../../2020/april/vow.html">adhering my beliefs to any label</a>. However, as my main concern is fighting for my own liberation, and I am a female... I find <a href="../01/vow2.html">our interests almost always align</a>.)</p>
<p>There's no such thing as a TERF- a "trans-exclusionary radical feminist"- because it's a contradictory term.</p>
<p>A woman is an adult human female. You may disagree, but we are talking about what radfems believe. No amount of hormone replacement therapy or mastectomies or the medical horror that is a phallophasty (seriously, who thought a skin sausage sewed to a crotch, on the highway to necrosis, would in any way resemble a healthy penis?) will change a female, trans-identifying or not, into a male. Science as it stands today cannot rewrite a female's XX chromosomes into XY, and vice versa with males. The removal of a female reproductive organ, such as the uterus, does not negate one's femaleness as the absence of a uterus has severe consequences for the female body: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220518013319/https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00192-014-2490-y">potential pelvic organ prolapse</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220518013329/https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/10.2217/ahe.13.7#:~:text=Adverse%20long-term%20outcomes%20of,fistula%20and%20renal%20cell%20carcinoma.">urinary and bowel incontinence</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220518013506/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20689282/">early-onset dementia</a>... Males simply do not have these problems as a result of a hysterectomy because they do not have uteri in the first place and their bodies <em>aren't supposed to</em>.</p>
<p>A transman is an adult (or will be soon), and a human (I would say "humanoid", but you and I are currently stuck in the <a href="../../2020/04/outside-intro.html">Inside</a>), and a female. Therefore a transman fits the radfem definition of a woman. However, a "transwoman" is not a woman because they fail the last criteria for being a woman: being female. As radical feminism is concerned with the liberation of <em>all</em> women, and transmen are women, therefore transmen are included in radical feminism. Either it is trans-inclusionary in this manner, or it is not for all women and thus not radical feminism.</p>

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<li>February 27 - <a href="./2022/02/spanish.html">Seven Spanish verbs to make your future-wife cry with</a></li>
<li>February 19 - <a href="./2022/02/SHUTUP.html">SHUT UP AND MAKE SOMETHING</a></li>
<li>January 30 - <a href="./2022/january/sappho.html">Sappho Was A Right-On Woman</a></li>
<li>January 10 - <a href="./2022/january/vow2.html">Vow II</a></li>
<li>January 10 - <a href="./2022/01/vow2.html">Vow II</a></li>
<li>January 6 - <a href="./2022/january/pendulum.html">I don't trust technomancy</a></li>
<li>January 3 - <a href="./2022/january/worth.html">Worth</a></li>
</ul>

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=> mm_tpf.epub Mori's Mirror and The Poetry Factory (2021)
## Fiction
=> awnb.epub A Woman Named Bartholomew (2025)
=> is.epub In Separation (2020)
=> tvsc.epub The Viridian Shipping Company (2019)
=> tdom.epub The Duality Of Mankind (2018)

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<h4>Fiction</h4>
<table>
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<td class="left"><a href="./books/awnb.epub">A Woman Named Bartholomew</a></td>
<td class="right">(2025)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="left"><a href="./books/is.epub">In Separation</a></td>
<td class="right">(2020)</td>
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<h3>Announcement Box</h3>
<ul>
<li><b>2025-10-19</b>: <a href="https://files.catbox.moe/dxko8f.mp4">Hey, look, it's me sideloading an app on a phone running Android 16!</a> You know, the update where that's supposedly not allowed anymore...</li>
<li><b>2025-10-01</b>: <a href="https://ko-fi.com/s/648137aa42"><i>VALERIE</i> Issue 5</a> and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20251001151532/https://static1.squarespace.com/static/689af5c23b6c22648def13a7/t/68dd25488d7df01c9a548a48/1759323464380/TWV+Vol+1+Issue+4+In+Lieu+of+Flowers.pdf"><i>Total Woman Victory</i> Volume 1 Issue 4</a> are out now! <i>VALERIE</i> covers struggles between mothers and daughters, and <i>Total Woman Victory</i> honors our feminist foremothers, with a special focus on submissions by women in the Global South. Both, of course, are free to download and read.</li>
<li><b>2025-08-13</b>: Friendly reminder that I have never paywalled ANY of my books and NEVER WILL. Anyone trying to sell you a copy of a book I have written is trying to scam you.</li>
<li><b>2025-11-18</b>: You still have approximately ten days to <a href="https://mndigital.org/projects/creative-writing-contest">submit something for the Minnesota Digital Library Creative Writing Contest</a>, if you feel so inclined.</li>
<li><b>2025-10-21</b>: Do you live in Minnesota? Do you have a documented disability that started before you turned 22? You may be eligible for a <a href="https://mn.gov/elicense/a-z/?id=1083-506853#/list/appId//filterType//filterValue//page/1/sort//order/">free (no charge) permanent (doesn't expire) angling (fishing) license</a>.</li>
</ul>
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<td>The Mind's Mirror</td>
<td>Daniela Rus <small>and Gregory Mone</small></td>
<td>Casual</td>
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<td class="snippet">Imagine a future AI that manages content recommendations on a social media site and is tasked with maximizing user engagement. With self-improvement capabilities, the AI system would enhance its models to better understand user behavior, preferences, and triggers. Over time, it might learn that sensational, polarizing, or even false content tends to keep users engaged longer than balanced, fact-based content. To fulfill its objective of maximizing engagement, the AI system would then preferentially serve more of this sensational content to users. If left unchecked, this recursively improving AI system would amplify misinformation, deepen societal divisions, even spark real-world conflicts.</td>
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<br>
<p><a class="button" href="#moids">&gt; Show books by men too?</a></p>
<div id="moids">
<p><a class="button" href="#">&gt; Aahh! Never mind!</a></p>

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<td>Divergent Mind</td>
<td>Jenara Nerenberg</td>
<td>Casual</td>
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<td class="snippet">Masking claims many lives - and I don't necessarily mean that women literally commit suicide (although that can happen as well), but they may commit a kind of virtual suicide - leaving many women feeling empty, depressed, and anxious and robbing them of living according to their true selves.</td>
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<br>
<p><a class="button" href="#moids">&gt; Show books by men too?</a></p>
<div id="moids">
<p><a class="button" href="#">&gt; Aahh! Never mind!</a></p>
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<td class="snippet">You will never sink as long as you know you have something to work toward. Remember that everything we do is simply a way to figure out what works. If you feel like you are failing at something, just know that it was a test that proves that way wasn't the right way for you and it's time to use another way.</td>
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<td>May Tomorrow Be Awake</td>
<td>Chris Martin</td>
<td>Casual</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="snippet">...this poetic voice is virtually synonymous with their intrinsic voice. In other words, the linguistic patterns they use to communicate outside of poetic writing are the same linguistic patterns they use to communicate within their poems. Whereas my "poetic voice" is much different from the one I use to construct this sentence, their voices remain consistent across genre or context.</td>
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<td>We're Not Broken</td>
<td>Eric M. Garcia</td>
<td>Casual</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="snippet">You may be thinking, <i>But this is all part of adulthood; being human means you will inevitably screw up.</i> But while yes, the right to grow up also includes the right to screw up, only able-bodied people have this luxury. For autistic and other disabled people, every bad decision becomes a referendum on your right to live independently. Despite jokes about "adulting," nobody is going to force my neurotypical friends to move back in with their parents if they forget to do their laundry.</td>
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