Changing Things: A girl can climb a fence!

Changing Things: A girl can climb a fence!

I have been doing odd little gender experiments the last two times we’ve gone out. It probably makes me a bad documentary maker and definitely a bad anthropologist. What I should be doing is observing at all times, and not do anything overtly challenging. But I am the only one who graduated from highschool, I am the only one who got a college degree, the only unattached woman, I speak English, and of course I lived abroad.

So the last few times we were faced with a fence of some kind, a difficult “climb” that they were all sure that the “girls” could not do, and the girls themselves were saying they could not do, I would be one of the first to scale it. And although it’s true I am at least a feet taller and of a physical build that’s incomparable, to the point I am taller than most of the guys too, everyone stops and rethink. Next thing that happens is another girl will follow, and she would do fine, and the next, and the next, and the women who say they “couldn’t” is then telling the guys, “I am fine, don’t need to pull me.”

Then once, I cut myself on barbed wire, and refused to cry. I am not saying that as the blood poured down my hands, wrists, and shirt, it didn’t hurt, but I didn’t freak out. To be honest, I am not sure if I was with my normal friends, I might not have just to gain some sympathy and then proceeded to follow everyone on without stopping. And then I looked at the other girl whose had her hand cut far worse then me and she said she wanted to continue too instead of going back to the car.

I am not really sure what I am doing, but I feel compelled to. Because I know how tough these girls really are, I am sure their lives have been hard and mine is a piece of cake compared to theirs. I know that they also seek adventure because otherwise why would they ride with these boys. But for all the reasons, I have been ranting on about how repressive Chinese culture in the last few weeks, especially in terms of women, it’s like they’ve never ever had anyone to tell them that they can. You can do this, you can think for yourself, you can speak out, and you can climb that damn fence, because each time they do, they often do it with more finesse than my clumsy self, and the only difference is I that I didn’t doubt my abilities nor the guy’s to help when I jumped up on the barb wire.

It’s like, I sometimes I forget how subtly different my perception is since I have known them, and how they’ve also started picking up their cigarette butts off the pavement outside the garage and putting it in the bin since they’ve known me.