This is my entry for the 2025 April Fools Contest, where stories are meant to incorporate tricks, deceit, etc. Please leave a rating and a comment, if you're so inclined! All characters are 18+.
Content warnings:
the story involves a brother and sister discussing (in a light-hearted fashion!) gender-related topics, with references to misogyny, homophobia and rape (in the context of discussing victim-blaming). There is no rape or references to actual rapes in the story, and the homophobia is limited to jokes about all-female colleges, but I include the warning here nevertheless in case joking/debating about such topics isn't your cup of tea.
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College had really done a number on my twin sister, Eva. Growing up, she had always been the quiet type, whereas I was always more boisterous and outgoing. Sure, sometimes she would tag along with me and my friends, bringing up the rear on bike rides around the neighborhood, but by the time we got to high school, that pretty much stopped. My friends and I traded neighborhood bike rides and roller hockey games for parties and girls. Eva mostly just read. She never even really had a boyfriend, or even had a guy over. I still remember when dad told her it was okay if she was a lesbian, and she cried and cried insisting that she wasn't, and it was none of their business who she loved, anyway.
We stayed close, in our way, even as our social circles diverged. We were twins, at the end of the day. We had a unique connection that transcended social groups and high school politics. Even if I was spending more time with my friends those last years of high school, I still saw her at home, every day. We were still going through a lot of the same things, at the same time. It helped to have an ally around the house, at least. Someone to keep mom and dad off each other's backs every now and then. Someone to cover for you. A partner in crime.
But that first weekend of winter break, our first since she went off to Bryn Mawr and I went off to Penn State, showed me that Eva had changed. She was pushier, more argumentative, eager to show off all the feminist brain slop they'd been feeding her at her woke college. There was none of that on the curriculum at Penn State. At least not in any of my classes. Her Instagram account had changed tone within her first few weeks of the semester. Where book quotes and sunsets had previously dominated, now there were feminist quotes, pictures of protests. Politics.
Yeah, she had changed, alright.
I was mixing myself a bowl of cereal our first Saturday back from school. Mom and dad were due back from their cruise that evening, and so the house was empty but for Eva and me. We had both gotten in late the previous evening, said our hellos, and promptly passed out, after. I was enjoying the relative peace and quiet of the morning until I heard the toilet flush upstairs. Eva was awake, it seemed. I girded myself, preparing for the inevitable lecture about how the patriarchy was ruining the world, or how electing a female president would lead to a century of world peace, or how, even better yet, we should just abolish the United States government and return the land to the descendants of the indigenous people from whom it was stolen, blah blah blah. It was too bad I left my headphones upstairs.
Eva bounded down the steps and into the kitchen, wearing a baby blue "The Future is Female" t-shirt that ran a few inches down her thighs, and a pair of thick, fuzzy rainbow-striped socks that bunched up unevenly on her calves. It was the kind of outfit I might like if it were on a more available girl, emphasizing her long legs and suggesting nakedness underneath. Her shoulder-length dirty blonde hair was tousled and unbrushed and she was still blinking the sleep from her blue eyes. We had the same ski-jump nose and high cheekbones, that got us pinned as twins wherever we went. She wasn't wearing any makeup, but thanks to the excellent genes we shared, she still looked pretty, I guess, even if all the new piercings in her ears made her look like kind of a freak. I guessed she didn't sleep with those in, though, because the silver rings I saw lining the top of her left ear last night were nowhere in sight, and her earlobes were bare, too.
"Take a picture, dude," she said. "It'll last longer."
"You wish."
"Yeah, I
do
wish you would stop leering at me like I were a piece of meat hanging in the deli."
You'll have to take my word for it, but I wasn't
leering
at her. A guy can't help it if a sexy pair of legs walks into the room and he notices them. It doesn't matter whom they're attached to - our brains are conditioned to look. We can't help it.
"I wasn't even looking at you."
"It's okay," she said. "I know you can't help it. Men are hardwired to be misogynistic perverts, and you just can't help but stare at any woman who so much as dares to physically exist in your general proximity."
"That's bullshit."
It wasn't totally bullshit. But she wasn't getting off
that
easy.
"Not really," she said, tipping the cereal box into her bowl. "We're learning all about the male gaze in my Gender Studies seminar. How pervasive it is in society, our media... how representations of women have been carefully controlled by men to dehumanize us and turn us into consumable goods for leering male eyes. It's everywhere."
"Oh good," I said. "That'll prepare you well for the job hunt. Interviewers always ask about that kind of thing."
She opened the refrigerator door and leaned forward, more than she had to, if you ask me, to look for the milk. Her shirt crept up her smooth, silky thighs, and I couldn't help but duck down a little, wondering what color underwear she had on. If she bent any lower, I'd probably find out.
"You make jokes because your fragile, male ego can't handle the truth. That you're less a fully actualized human being than you are a porn-addicted automaton capable only of processing and understanding female bodies as sex-things to get off to."
"What's with all the 'bodies' talk?" I asked. "Are you a full person or just a body? Do you want to be dehumanized or not? Make up your mind."
"We use the term 'bodies' in critical theory to emphasize how gender is, essentially, performance, with others' understanding of one's personhood rooted in their physical appearance. To the lecherous male, we
are
just bodies, reduced to our essential, physical characteristics. Hips, lips, tits and ass, that's the currency against which we're valued in the male-controlled public sphere. Speaking in such terms helps root the discussion in these phenomena."
"Oh, come on!" I emphasized my displeasure and used it as an excuse to drop my head even lower, low enough to see a flash of a pink, cotton triangle hiding beneath her shirt's hem. "You really believe that crap?"
She pulled the milk from the fridge and I snapped back up to my normal posture before she could clock me. The last thing I needed when denying my essentializing her based on her physical characteristics was for her to catch me trying to get a peek at her underwear.
"It's not a question of belief," she said. "It's a question of awareness."
"You mean
wokeness
."
"The fact is," she continued, not taking my bait. "Men control the media, and men have used sexist representations of women for generations in order to reinforce the stereotypical gender binary and the ideal feminine form... as defined by men, of course. To cultivate widespread acceptance of women as nothing more than lust objects for the provision of pleasure to their male overlords. Look at advertising, in particular the recent push to feature atypical representations of beauty, including plus-sized women, older women,
transgender
women. The mere existence of these campaigns caused a fucking
firestorm
, with companies from Dove to fucking
Budweiser
incurring the wrath of angry straight men."
