All Female Menu, Issue 1

first issue

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“One must strain off what was personal and accidental in all these impressions and so reach the pure fluid, the essential oil of truth.”

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“Suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers; how few parts of Shakespeare could be allotted to them; how literature would suffer! We might perhaps have most of Othello; and a good deal of Antony; but no Caesar, no Brutus, no Hamlet, no Lear, no Jaques ‑‑ literature is impoverished beyond our counting by the doors that have been shut upon women.”

--Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own”

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- all female menu first issue

The intention of “All Female Menu” is to excrete an “essential oil of truth” about the experiences of female-identifying millennials. As Virginia Woolf wrote, works of literature –– and art –– have been malnourished by the lack of female experience included. As has been true of prior generations, and will continue to be true of future ones, mine has been swallowed and spat up by pervasive misogyny. A 2018 topic of conversation at the dinner table, “Rape Culture,” is one product of said misogyny –– but to be clear, it is not the only one. Rape Culture, in the last year it seems, has expanded from being talked about in feminist circles to being broadcasted by mass-media outlets due to Hollywood Monoliths like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby.

Frustratingly, to me, this discussion has not been spurred by the assaults that have taken place in fraternity houses and dorm rooms for years; nor has it been sprawled by the smaller acts of harassment that begin at a much younger age for girls –– flipping a skirt up at recess; unwanted grabbing of bra straps and budding breasts; being catcalled before one has recognized their own sexuality. At age 22, these experiences have become crystalized in the blueprint of who I am; truths I was taught when I was 6 years old have hauntingly followed me to adulthood. Whether I would prefer them to or not, these experiences have defined who I am; they are my “essential oil of truth.”

But not every woman represented in All Female Menu has had these experiences; I am not the voice of my generation, which is to say I am one of many. This is why I have chosen to join the creative work of femaleidentifying millenials to produce a collaborative truth about harassment, assault, and the contemporary female experience. I have sought to open closed doors with this collection of individual truths. These expressions exist in this space to be read, viewed, dealt with; not to be skimmed, turned away from, ignored. You are invited to consume this All Female Menu, but not to do so without compassion, empathy, and an open mind.

--Rebecca Gross | Editor | Fall, 2018 Reach by Twitter: @becsgross, or by email: rebeccalgross0@gmail.com.

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redemption devon fleming

“Well I know I forced her to have sex with me, but I didn’t rape her”

“What do you want us to do?

That happened almost two years ago.”

“I heard you’ve been telling people he raped you”

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a series of summers ebony watson

I wake up. The sun hits my face and I can feel the new day.

Love flourishes among the garden beneath my bedroom window.

Outside the air is warm and greeting. I smile...

The first time it happened, I was barely therwe. He was the brother of my friend. No one saw, or at least, nobody said anything. I, didn’t say anything. My eyes fixed on the wall behind His head. I couldn’t hear what He mumbled into my ear. The room we were in was filled with light, but all I felt was darkness.

The second time it happened, the house shook from the vibrations of the music playing.

I heard laughs in the distance.

I could see my friends in the other room. He had six hands.

They were everywhere.

I looked away at the posters on the walls as His grip tightened.

The third time it happened I was lying on a bed that was covered in roses. The walls in the room were pink. The orange light

coming from the table lamp made the room look like the sky during sunset. My body was limp; I was turning to mush.

I heard the door close. His hands were on my face. I told Him I was drunk. I told Him I was tired. I heard His belt unbuckling and clothes dropping to the floor…The next thing I knew, the sun was shining in the room, the birds outside were chirping.

He was cradling my body and drooling on my chest. He was strong and He held on to me tight.

The next time it happened and all the times after that, the next day always came. That colossal, heavenly star in the sky continued to set the world ablaze.

Here I am with a body that is not my own.

I am breathing underwater.

Demented and inebriated.

Disillusioned and delusional about the marvels of womanhood.

The summer never ends.

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adrift pander sera adrift in memory tide elusive rope taunting tethered to docks behind where safe and dry coil her line whisper calm “look elsewhere� not to a drowning woman but to a dying man all content to watch him go

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once

cameron eldridge she was depressed but that was a long time ago when she was bent and stiff and full of creases before she took an iron and flattened them out not knowing that doing so would burn her away now she is a black stain on a septic street she is stepped on and she lets them and she tells herself at least I am not messy at least I am not a pain to look at anymore maybe this is her place on the floor, beneath the soles of sharp people’s sharper feet maybe she belongs here for trying so hard to be flat maybe if I’m lucky she thinks the shoes of these other people will make me disappear she wonders when she started thinking being nothing was better than being waste

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untitled raquela bases

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the art of taking up space mira petrilllo PT. I a path can’t tell the difference between the feet it touches, footprints only impact, darkening the shade.

PT. II “people fall into the roles that they are give” ~1971; impressed by the geometry of interaction, what role does the mother project onto her female child, like that of a space to be filled, like that of an indent waiting to the air, however, breaths the be made whole, like that of an breathe of her inhabitants, and unsolved puzzle, requiring knows the silence reconfiguration, by another...last night we said...let’s go grab a drink... like it’s her throat tightening; Saturday nights are fun to dance to... she knows boys who don’t know her, makeup brushed onto our eyes & skin, andthewayexhaleslookalotlikedesire— we told each other, we told ourselves, it’s fun to dance when you feel sexy, confusion, a fear of as if it was for ourselves.

a drink or two, feeling inadequate failure, or more so, success; against each other... 2 a.m... who’s polite and patient, left lingering with expectations— the air awaits- an opportunity to separated, interact with the lungs. the sex we didn’t want with encounters by default... you slap me in the cheek and i confuse your fantasies for my own; and in the morning, finally allowed to sleep, finally asleep, you fill me as if an envelope lays beside you. i crawl back home, a bed that welcomes rather than fillets, a blur... how did we lose each other? at what point did we loose ourselves, and then we remember the role we fill, or more so, are filled with.

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dewey decimal classification 706.766 - homosexuality hailey robinson

[SC AMI: Am I Blue?: Coming out from the silence] I came out to myself in a pink and black notebook, a diary I used for a single day.

I’ve never really been good at writing about myself. I’ve always liked to write about other people. My single day diary was one of a few, scattered throughout the years, promptly forgotten and dug out of boxes or behind bookshelves years later.

It was September, I remember, but I’m not sure if it was seventh grade or eighth. I forgot, promptly, how to write about myself and turned to writing about other people.

[SC HOW: How Beautiful the Ordinary] When I was in junior high I wanted to be a librarian.

I became intimately familiar with the location of each and every book, and all eleven books categorized as “LGBT.” (When I was in elementary school and the Twilight craze finally reached us I borrowed the books from my friend

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and hid them under my pillow and read them under my covers with the aid of a tiny reading light. I did the same with these eleven books, even though my mom had never explicitly banned me from reading them like with Twilight, or Uglies, or the Harry Potter books after the fourth one.)

[F DAN: The Miseducation of Cameron Post] It was easy to write about boys falling in love. Kurt and Blaine on Glee, Enjolras and Grantaire in [F HUG] Les Misèrables, Larry Stylinson. It was easy to read about boys falling in love. It didn’t ache the same way girls kissing in a photo booth in Montana did.

It wasn’t terrifying in the same way girls kissing in a photobooth in Montana was.

Of eleven books categorized as LGBT, in only one did I hear the voice of someone anything like me.

It was easier to read about boys, it was easier to write about boys, and it was easier to find boys who were allowed to love each other.

[F GRE: Will Grayson/Will Grayson] Who gets to be the main character?

Who gets to be the star of the show?

I hardly ever get to be the main character in my own life. I get the straight white boy and the straight white girl and the gay white boy and — in the books I read to try to find out who I was, people didn’t get to be two things at once.

[F HAR: Geography Club] I don’t know how to not lie to my parents. Lying just comes so easily, so naturally. It’s part of who I am. It’s years of talking about how cute Matthew was, or how I had a crush on Michael, or how Madison was my best friend.

Anyway, if I’m lying, I don’t have to talk about myself. I get to pretend I’m someone else, the person who it’s hard to tell people I’m not.

[F LEV: Boy Meets Boy] Give me a meet cute, give me a romcom, give me a story where I get to be happy. I would write it myself, but I don’t know how.

[F MYR: Shine] I first heard the word gay as an insult.

Who didn’t? I first understood it in hushed, shocked tones when an American Idol contestant came out. I first got to learn how men could love other men, but people didn’t like it.

I didn’t even know — it didn’t even register — there wasn’t even the faintest possibility in my mind that this could exist for women too.

[F RUD: The Four Dorothy’s] I don’t remember which is the [F CAS] House of Night book where Damian dies, but it was around the time Kurt purposely botched the high F in Defying Gravity on Glee.

Because that’s the way gay people die, right? With a backdrop of musical theatre, squeezed into a stereotype.

That’s the way we get remembered, if we get remembered at all.

[F SAE: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe] I learned about writing from what I read. I learned about love from what I read. Maybe that’s why, after so many books, after an entire junior high library and a high school romance phase, I still can’t believe in love for myself.

[F SAN: Rainbow Boys] I think I’m just tired of never getting to look in the mirror.

[P RIC: And Tango Makes Three] I’ve always read a lot, and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned queer people must survive on subtext and implications and hope. I’ve learned to survive on subtext and implications and hope.

I learned to put aside books and pick up newspapers, to put aside hope and pick up reality. At least it’s getting better.

My little sister goes to that same junior high now, and there’s more than eleven books categorized under LGBT.

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what do i have to be loud about avery sabine

I sifted through the blood to find it, not just to be sure but truly to provide a proper burial I cried i cried i cried cried cried i cried i cried once it left me i cried i cried i cried cried cried I held it close to my heart in longing, but it was only my own hand Even the bloodstains are gone now.

I’ll just keep writing and writing and writing more , I’ll tell everyone about you, you dirty little whore Don’t start your shit again or like a camel i’ll spit and i’ll have to cut to cut to cut to cut to cut to cut to cu until it bleeds, until it is your own mother who is forced to plead, Sit down and be quiet on my face for a while, lose your voice when it’s in style, leave open my legs my space my legs my space my legs my space my legs my space my legs my space for you to dephile.

Step over my grave then throw your coat over it like a gentlemen so your lady’s shoes won’t get wet in my decaying hair, on my headstone engraved ‘it just isn’t fair.’

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july

ren nguyen

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holes

cameron eldridge You’ve heard of holes where things used to be.

It’s the way humans deal with their problems. If something does not form the way they expect it to, they remove it. An abscess is better than a deformity. It shows you tried to do something. It shows you cared enough about not growing outside your stencil confines to remove a part of yourself.

Look at these scars, look at these indents along my shoulder blades.

This is where my wings used to be.

“But if you still had them you could fly” “Yes, but the whole world would want to kill me” the cost of survival is reduction, we are expected to cultivate tumors and then cut out the ones other people think are ugly. You had a patch on your face above your lip and one on your hip but the lower one was not in style.

They are so selective of the flaws they deem beautiful, they choose these absences to obsess over. They say something is more meaningful if it’s not really there, or only if it’s everywhere. These contradictory beings with their contradictory themes, split down the middle obsessing over life and death. They are the editors, the sculptors, the ones who insist you can only know whether something is beautiful if someone is beautiful without it.

They leave cavities, they leave scorched fields and pits in the ground and they do it all in the name of cultivated necessity, they pummel marble into dust and because it is less in the right places, because they killed it right, it is art.

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things said in person during moments of honesty pander sera

“I didn’t know this was supposed to be a costume party” “This just puts an unnecessary extra step in getting to know you” “I was brought up to believe God doesn’t make mistakes” “Please don’t ever take hormones” “Being a woman is a lot more than standing there with your hand on your hip” “Doesn’t transgender lesbian basically mean straight dude?”

“Everything always has to be so complicated with you” “We didn’t have any of this when I was growing up” “I’m really supportive of LGBT I’ve given a lot of money” “No really I just want to understand how your mind works” “You were never a woman when we hung out” “How does dating even work for you now” “But why? You’re so handsome” “You don’t seem to try very hard” “This is too much math for me” “Don’t joke about that it’s not funny”

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pause rebecca gross I am softened by your touch, like mermaid hair flowing through water. can I be your mermaid? Eroticized by my tail, which could entrance and entrap you depending on my Mood, Exoticized by my sexuality, You can look but not suck on the language that drips from my Tongue and finger tips –– I dip into you like a mirage of Nickelodeon slime, abstracting your nostalgia You keep strapped to your inner thighs, concealed and carried wherever You go, hidden from the followers leaning on walls while their feet stick to beer and punch drenched floors, now dry and grimy with stories of #MeToo and #TimesUp: You cross your legs and cave your knees in, not to stop him from raping you but to keep your concealed and carried pure and Yours — he chops your mermaid hair off, along with power and weight that long, wet hair carries.

You feel lighter but look older, kind of like your mother. You begin forgetting your teachers’ names and decide to keep the bob cut — “It suits you.” Your eyes sink in and become darker, not the color but the exposure. ideas that once dripped into puddles have dried up, like Your Pussy and California lakes: Your Body is a drought, Your Mind a desert. what was it You used to conceal and carry? was it your Vices?

Or your Virtue?

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redemption devon fleming

“Please don’t make me testify for you.”

“So you’ve been lying about having sex?”

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about all female menu REBECCA GROSS is the former Editor-in-Chief of The Daily at the University of Washington. Although she has temporarily taken off her professional editing hat to pursue a career in academia, she remains passionate about curating and showcasing the writing and art of her peers. Gross hopes that providing a platform for female voices will challenge the misogyny present in everyday society. She drinks dark roast and dark roast only, enjoys reading on cloudy days, and will occasionally make time to write and perform her own poetry.

MONICA NIEHAUS is a user experience designer currently living in San Francisco. Even though she works in the tech industry, she has a soft spot for print design, thanks to a couple years working in college journalism as an editorial designer/illustrator. She’s an active designer that wants to create visual content to bring out the voices that are otherwise hushed in the chaotic world society participates in today.

She also loves cats, plants, and laughing at her own jokes.

thank you to our contributers: ebony watson, cameron eldridge, pander sera, devon fleming, ren nguyen, mira petrillo, hailey robinson, avery sabine, raquela bases, & sandra matthews

front cover: Rebecca Gross back cover: Sandra Matthews design: Monica Niehaus typeset in Roslindale and Basic Gothic Pro

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