Redux
Stories that circle and return
In honor of my alfa alfa super girl, the heartbeat behind this story.
I have a dear friend. We talk while swimming for hours, eat figs, trade ideas, compete in recipes, cook for friends. Most of the time we save the world (in theory), one grand idea at a time. Just like the two old men from the Muppet Show, we moan and laugh, tossing out easy solutions for everything. She is brilliant, generous and one I admire so much I want to challenge all the time. What unites us is deep and rare.
We only fight about two things: mice and women. The mice topic is classified. I blackmail her with it (I swear, if you push me, I’ll tell the world where Jerry was the last time I made toast). Ugh! But the women issue? That’s public domain. That’s where the claws come out. Grrr!
She hates feminists. She believes quotas are for the undeserving or a scam. She despises the few female politicians, convinced they are incompetent. She does it in the eye-roll way and what’s infuriating is that she uses the same traits men mock: hair, weight, blondness. “If a woman deserves it,” she says, “she’ll fight and get it.” And yet, she knows the system is rigged, that men built it, broke it, and keep patching it with their own rules. She clings to meritocracy as if it exists, as if the system weren’t built by men, for men, patched and repatched to suit them. She is killing me, I tell you!
The conversation starts like a thunderstorm. Usually because a certain barbie lands in the conversation. Her eyes narrow and focus like lasers into mine. Everything sharpens. I know that look. The rest of the people at the table cease to exist, for them it's a performance, I brace myself. Fight.
She allows space for mice. Literally. She treats them like Airbnb guests who forgot to leave. I, on the other hand, want them gone. Vaporized. Launched into orbit. I hate mice with the fire of a thousand feminist manifestos and the bone-deep exhaustion of every woman who’s had to buy the birthday gift, drive to the party, write the card and still be asked where the ketchup is. And that’s where the metaphor smacks me in the face like a mousetrap.
I want space for women. She doesn’t see the mice. I don’t see the women… because they’re not there. Not in politics. Not in power. Not in Cyprus, where female political participation is the lowest in Europe. The few steps are insignificant, not on the agenda. It’s that the fight is uphill, blindfolded, and often dismissed.
I don’t want women to be tolerated like mice. I want them to be visible, vocal, and vital. I want space that isn’t given but fiercely claimed. I want my friend to see that measures aren’t charity; they are crowbars against the Boys’ Club barricades. In 2025, you don’t knock politely. You need crowbars and hammers to smash ceilings.
We fight about mice and women. But maybe, just maybe, we’re fighting for the same thing: a world where what’s invisible becomes undeniable.