I AM A PLAGIARIST, a fraud and a woman. All I have ever written about is men. I exist in relation to them, I have let this happen. My pain is created by them, mitigated by them, absolved by them. The great moments of happiness in my life have been with men. The violence I have suffered has been at their whim—but whose isn’t?
Even my own violence, the violence I have chosen or created, has been created in relation to men. I am incapable of manufacturing destruction unique to myself or even unique to my gender. The violence I inflict is always about or because of or to do with men. The ruin of my female body is done as theatrical rebuke, a performance to incite disgust and fear.
When I fuck people I don’t want to fuck, when I do things which alarm and upset me, I am doing violence to myself which is also intended as a violence to the men I know. These men include those who love me and wish for my safety and peace. What psychotic woman can tell the difference, eventually, between a man who wants her safe so she can be happy, and a man who wants her safe so he can destroy her in private?
I hurt myself to hurt them, to drive them away from me so that I can some day be truly safe; that is: alone; that is: dead.