"I should never have come here," said Beverly.
"You know them from school?" I asked.
"Yes," said Beverly, "they are in two of my seminars."
"You look ill, miserable," I said. "Do you care, truly, what they think?"
"They are politically powerful in my department," she said, "especially the big one. Even some of my male professors are afraid of them."
"So much for them," I said.
"Many without tenure fear their student evaluations," she said, "and, more importantly, their influence on the evaluations of others. Most of our young male teachers, and female teachers, too, do what is expected of them, and try to please them. They do not wish to lose their positions."
"I'm familiar with that sort of thing," I said. "It is called academic freedom."
She tied the strings of her cape. We then left the restaurant.
"I will hail a taxi," I said.
"I am not really a true woman," she said, outside the restaurant, miserably. "I am too feminine." She looked up at me. "I have tried to fight my femininity," she said. "I have tried to overcome it."
"You could redouble your efforts," I said. "You could try harder."
"I am finished in my department," she said. "They will undermine and destroy me."
"You could transfer to another school," I said, "and start over."
"Perhaps," she said, "but I fear that it is hopeless. It might just begin again. Or the word might be conveyed to the new department that I was not, truly, of the right kind."
"Of the right kind?" I asked.
"Of their kind," she said.
"That of the two women you met in the restaurant?" I asked.
"Yes," she said. "They are so strong and manlike, like men used to be, before."
"Femininity is wrong in a woman, and masculinity in a man?" I asked.
"Of course," she said, "it interferes with personhood."
"But it is all right for women to be masculine and men to be feminine?"
"Yes," she said, "that is all right. Indeed, men must be taught to be gentle, tender and feminine."
"Can you not see," I asked, "that women who wish that of a man are not truly interested in what men happen to be, but want, perhaps, actually not a man but a woman of an unusual sort?"
She looked at me, with horror.
"The thought has an alarming plausibility, doesn't it?" I asked.
"I have never known anyone like you," she said. "You confuse me."
"Frankly," I said, "you are not of their kind, that of the two women in the restaurant you met. You are extremely different. Indeed, most women are extremely different from them. They are not even, truly, women. They are something else, not really women or men. It is little wonder they are so hostile, so filled with hatred, so vicious and bellicose. After centuries of disparagement why should they not now, with a vengeance, set themselves up as models for their sex? Why should they not now, so long denied the world, attempt now through rhetoric and politics to bend it to their designs? Can you blame them? Can you not understand their hatred for women such as you, who seem a veritable biological insult and reproach to their pretensions and projects? You are their enemy, with your beauty and needs, far more than the men they attempt through political power to intimidate and manipulate." I looked at her, angrily. "Your desirability and beauty," I said, "is a greater threat to them than you can even begin to understand. Their success demands the castigation and suppression of your sort of woman."
"I must not listen to you," she said. "I must be a true woman!"
"I have little doubt that you are more intelligent, and have a greater grasp of reality, than they," I said, "but you will not, in all likelihood, compete successfully with them. You lack their aggressiveness and belligerence, which are probably indexed to an unusual amount, for a woman, of male hormones in their bodies. They will, through their cruelty and assertiveness, crush you in discussion, and, when it is to their purpose, demean and humiliate you."
"I do not even enter into discussion with them," she said. "I am afraid."
"You do not wish to be verbally whipped," I said.
"I do not know what to think," she said.
"Try to understand and interpret your feelings," I said. "Consider the possibility of being true to yourself."
"Perhaps they are really women, only latently so," said the girl.
"Perhaps," I said. I shrugged.
"What is a woman, truly?" she asked, angrily. "A slave?"
I was startled that she had asked this. I looked down at her. She was emotionally overwrought. There were tears in her eyes. I knew that I was supposed to reassure her and deny vehemently what had been suggested in her fantastic question. But I did not reassure her nor deny, as I was expected to, what she had suggested. Indeed, it suddenly struck me as not only strange that she had addressed this question, presumably a rhetorical question to me, but, too, that this was precisely the sort of thing which, for no reason I clearly understood, women of her political persuasion spent a great deal of time, excessively in my mind, denying. I wondered why they should be so concerned, so frequently and intensely, in denying that they were slaves. Why should they feel it necessary to deny this apparently fantastic allegation so often and so desperately?
"Do you think we are slaves?" she demanded.
I looked down at her. She was small and exquisitely beautiful. She wore a bit of lipstick and eye shadow. I could smell her perfume. The whiteness of her breasts, as I could see them, and of her throat, was striking. How marvelously the white sheath concealed and yet suggested her beauty. I wanted to tear it from her.
"Well?" she demanded.
"Perhaps," I said.
She spun away from me, in fury and rage.
I did not speak to her then, but watched her, as she stood, angrily, outside the restaurant.
I considered her. Thoughts slipped through my mind. I wondered what she might look like, her clothing removed, standing on the tiles of a palace.
How strange it then seemed to me that society should ever have developed in such a way that such delicious and desirable creatures should have ever been permitted their freedom. Surely they belonged in steel collars at a man's feet.
She was aware of my eyes on her, but she did not look at me directly. She tossed her head. It was a lovely gesture I thought, of a girl who knew herself inspected, a slave's gesture.
"Are you going to apologize?" she asked.
"For what?" I asked.
"For saying that I -might be a slave," she said.
"Oh," I said. "No," I said.
"I hate you," she said.
"All right," I said. I continued to regard her, her clothing removed in my mind. I tried, in my mind, various sorts of collars and chains on her.
"You are a rude and hateful person," she said.
"I'm sorry," I said. I then considered how she might look in a market.
At last she turned to face me, angrily. "What are you thinking about?" she asked.
"I was considering how you might look on a slave block," I said, "being exhibited by an auctioneer who knew his business."
"How dare you say such a thing!" she cried.
"You asked me what I was thinking," I said.
"You needn't have told me," she said.
"You would prefer dishonesty?" I asked.
"You are the most hateful person I have ever met," she said.
"I'm sorry," I said.
She walked angrily to confront me, but then she looked away.