Kameron Hurley

Just keep in mind," Liaro said, "they're not going to remember the words. They'll remember how you made them feel. Make them feel something.

It was men, not God, who had done those things...

Men did not like women to weep. It reminded them of their own failings.

Light doesn__ always keep the dark things away,_ Nyx said.

We can pretend all we like that women are equal, ut as long as men and women are continually encouraged to supress the broad aspects of their humanity that we decry as "feminine", we're all screwed. Because it's those things qe celebrate as "other" that make us truly human. It's what we label "soft" or "feminune" that makes civilization possible, It's our empathy, our ability to care and nurtureand connect. It's our ability to come together. To buld. To remake. Asking men to cut away their "feminine" traits asks them to cut away half their humanity, just as asking women to supress ther "masculine" traits asks them to deny their full autonomy.

I spent a great deal of my ilfe trying to be quiet and nice and not piss anyone off. I was misereable. It served no purpose. And they still came for me. It made me even easier to dismiss, to overlook, to assume I was just somebody else everybody could roll over and spout off ridiculously sexist, racist crap without dissent.But nodding and smiling gets old. It makes it easier for people to box you up and ship you off, I'm only really alive when I'm pissing people off anyway

Let's be real: if women were "naturally" anything, societies wouldn't spend so much time trying to police every aspect of their lives

Young white men in the eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-old range are often coming to grips with the fact that life isn't as easy as they were promised. I've been there myself. When you realize that life isn't going to hand you the job you want or the woman you want to fuck, you look around for someone to blame, and feminism becomes an easy target. If only women were subservient objects who stayed at home, there would be more jobs open to young white men and more women with no other option but to have sex with them for sustenance. I realize that white-man utopia sounds really pleasing to these guys, but it's basically everyone else's worst nightmare It's not so great for them either, but they won't get that for a long time, if ever.Suffice to say you won't convince them of this in an online comments section, either.

I was limited by stories that came before mine.We are so often limited by our own expectations of stories, by the stories that came before, by the heroes who came before._ How is it we can bear to live with ourselves, as readers and storytellers, if we swallow those limitations without questioning them?

On reflection, looking at shows like this and considering my own experiences, what fascinated me was that we have so many stories like this that help us empathize with monstrous men. __es, these men are flawed, but they are not as evil as this man._ Even more chilling, they tend to be stories that paint women as roadblocks, aggressors, antagonists, complications__ut only in the context of them being a bitch, a whore, a Madonna. The women are never people.Stories about monstrous men are not meant to teach us how to empathize with the women and children murdered, but with the men fighting over their bodies.As a woman menaced by monsters, I find this particularly interesting, this erasure of me from a narrative meant to, if not justify, then explain the brokenness of men. There are shows much better at this, of course, which don__ paint women out of the story__ad Men is the first to come to mind, and Game of Thrones__ut True Detective doubled down.The women terrorized by monsters in real life are active agents. They are monster-slayers, monster-pacifiers, monster-nurturers, monster-wranglers__nd some of them are monsters, too. In truth, if we are telling a tale of those who fight monsters, it fascinates me that we are not telling more women__ stories, as we__e spun so many narratives like True Detective that so blatantly illustrate the sexist masculinity trap that turns so many human men into the very things they despise.Where are the women who fight them? Who partner with them? Who overcome them? Who battle their own monsters to fight greater ones?Because I have and continue to be one of those women, navigating a horror show world of monsters and madmen. We are women who write books and win awards and fight battles and carve out extraordinary lives from ruin and ash. We are not background scenery, our voices silenced, our motives and methods constrained to sex.I cannot fault the show__ men for forgetting that; they__e created the world as they see it. But I can prod the show__ exceptional writers, because in erasing the narrative of those whose very existence is constantly threatened by these monsters, including trusted monsters whose natures vacillate wildly, they sided with the monsters.I__ not a bit player in a monster__ story. But with narratives like this perpetuated across our media, it wouldn__ surprise me if that__ how my obituary read: a catalogue of the men who sired me, and fucked me, and courted me.Stories that are not my own.Funny, isn__ it? The power of story.It__ why I picked up a pen.I slay monsters, too.

I can think of only two movies with women killers we__e meant to sympathize with, and both because they__ been sexually assaulted__helma and Louise and Monster. And to be honest, I don__ imagine anyone would call the women in these films heroes. The popular comic book mercenary Red Sonja is, perhaps, a proper hero, but is, once again, motivated by a sexual assault. Male heroes are heroic because of what__ been done to women in their lives, often__he dead child, the dead wife. Women heroes are also heroic for what__ been done to women__ to them.We build our heroes, too often, on terrible things done to women, instead of creating, simply, heroes who do things, who persevere in the face of overwhelming odds because it__ the right thing to do.

Asking men to cut away their __eminine_ traits asks them to cut away half their humanity, just as asking women to suppress their __asculine_ traits asks them to deny their full autonomy.What makes us human is not one or the other__he fist or the open palm__t__ our ability to embrace both, and choose the appropriate action for the situation we__e in. Because to deny one half__o burn down the world or refuse to defend the world from those who would burn it__s to deny our humanity and become something less than human.

If you think there__ a thing__nything__omen didn__ do in the past, you__e wrong.

The war had remade her. Reshaped her purpose. Why couldn__ she unmake it again?

Good luck to you," he said, and she remembered how he had looked at her as she pinned Yah Tayyib, as if she was some kind of monster.Maybe she was.

Nyx had killed a lot of people. She'd let even more die through neglect. Rhys was just one more. I'm the same person, aren't I? she thought. She had burned herself up, only to come out the other side exactly the same.Taite's signal would get out, Nyx knew. It would be soon enough to save *her*. But it would not be soon enough for Rhys. Nyx hardened her jaw. Her hands and feet were still tied. They'd stripped her of her most obvious weapons. She could just wait this out.She saw Rhys register that. But there was no shock. Just resignation. He knew her for what she was. Butcher. Monster.The same old monster.

Because until you know what you want to be, other people are just going to keep trying to make you into something useful for them.

Nobody really knows what I am,_ Nyx said. __ot until I put a bullet in their head.