I’m going through customs. I’m not at an airport. I’m walking down the street wearing loose clothing to accommodate the inspection, to make it less painful. Less tedious. I’m wearing slip on shoes. I don’t even bother to wear earbuds because occasionally men will come up to me and ask me to take them out, “Lemme talk to you.”

A man who looks like one of my uncles and the sense of familiarity conflicts with the impending revulsion as he asks me where I’m going, if I know how good I look, why am I alone, why don’t I smile. Sometimes if I don’t stop to spare them the time they’ll scream “you dumb ugly bitch.” Sometimes if I do stop and say politely no thank you they scream “you fat ugly bitch.” The rejection stings but not as much as every blow to the ego of things I can and cannot hold dearly because I wouldn’t want to appear too high maintenance, too frivolous, too needy.

It’s not only sex in their gaze, it’s appraisal, it’s criticism. Like the subtext of profiling after 9/11—it’s not that we care who you are as a person, we are only concerned by what you seem to be right now. They ask me for my time and never my name, always trying to search my belongings.

Is what I am doing, is this body I am carrying underneath these array of garments, a threat to our society? Am I woman enough? Am I woman at all? What’s a feminine and what’s female? They’re both adjectives, right? Female, the noun, a singular and alienated second sex of a species who has singlehandedly ruined the Earth.

I just want to go to the grocery store and buy some bananas and here I am, getting checked out. I’m not sure what it is today and here I am wanting to defend myself but also submit to it. Give in. Let them authenticate me. I’m not sure anymore what’s the point of saying I’m a woman if I’m not saying I’m real. Am I a real woman?

That’s what it’s all about right? It’s men smashing and destroying whatever doesn’t comply with their reality. Did you ever see that movie Inception? The man tells his beautiful, feminine, wisp of a wife, who trusts him wholeheartedly, that her world is a lie in order for him to have what he wants—her. It’s funny how that works.

Her feminity didn’t escape me as I watched the film. No roughness, only lovely, in the memory of this man who had betrayed her, who had killed her. Men don’t protect you anymore, I think, thinking of Jenny Holzer’s famous banner. But, did they, did anyone ever?

Similar to going through the TSA, it’s best to not cause a spectacle, although one could be made of you. They might drag you away confusing you for another terrorist, another person in a scarf that could conceal a bomb. I am often confused as another’s wife, their daughter, cattle. I could tell them to go fuck off, create a spectacle but then I might not make it home. I could yell back, tell them I’m my own person. I could make them angry, I could make them sick— I want to too but the safest option is if I’m quiet. I keep walking until I can’t anymore. I keep walking until they stop me. I could do nothing at all and still be dragged away into the darkness.

Today’s inspection isn’t from a man who looks like a distant relative but by a woman who gives me a resigned look like, “I’m just doing my job” as she swallows a grimace and counts my chins or the unwaxed hair between my brows. Maybe she notices that my thighs touch but I have the audacity to wear skinny jeans—jokes on me with a 20% tip. I want to shout “Okay, look, it’s been a long month and I haven’t seen my stylist,” but it’s to no avail.

I’m wearing all ten trends that were voted to drive frat bros and sympathizers hysterical and induce vomiting. I’m a walking spoonful of ipecac syrup. I’m pretty sure I heard someone gag in the line behind me. It’s all so invasive, so derisive, so humiliating an experience feeling the eyes wander, I can imagine the hands in my private places like my mouth, armpits, my hair. Count my teeth, inspect my wax build up, roughly tug my nappy hair.

Everyday before leaving the house I have to remind myself I am my own person. As I’m flipping through the magazines and I try to separate myself from the famous women’s whose cellulite fills the centerfold of this gossip magazine. I try to separate myself but I spend hours in the bathroom after showering pinching myself all over.

At a dinner party I excuse myself during a conversation of who’s aging well and who is still fuckable. I don’t get fucked as often as I like and I’m practicially spoiling. I want to shout. I want to tell them about less than Selena Gomez but not quite Betty White tits but who cares. When’s asserting my agency, autonomy ever done me any good? It’s often just used against me.

“Read the fine print, sweetheart, borders are imaginary.”

Unlike the male inspectors I always want the female ones to understand, to sympathize with me, to get what I mean when I say “razor burn is too much of a hassle.” I want to see that look of approval in her eyes but I’m just rejected.

“Wait, wait, let me explain,” I shout. She’s already turned her back to me to call the authorities.

I was detained for suspicious activity and was unable to prove my femininity. Pulled off the side of the street. It’s my worse nightmare. I wonder if I will ever get home. If I will ever buy those bananas. Later I will learn the charges are simple: unable to prove if I was a woman. I knew this day would come.

I’m pretty sure my papers say right there, clearly, that I was born in a hospital, to God-fearing parents, who had me inspected and certified normal. I’m sure they’ll sob themselves to sleep upon hearing that my labia minora was an outtie and not an innie. They’ll recall the small bud of my genitalia from diaper changes and wonder “How could this happen to our little girl?”

What boy wants to date a girl with a vagina that doesn’t look like the only one he’s seen on TV—hell, he was getting used to the idea of it being brown and not white, cream, pale. They use the word “natural” in my indictment. They use the word “normal.” They refer to me as unsightly, again. Not wearing makeup.

Upon meeting with a lawyer, I say, look, I get it but what about me? Am I not a woman if I say so? Why am I defined by these tits? Don’t you see how many biological conundrums are presented with all these rules? All these standards? Look, aren’t my breasts just glands that help me nurture the young which is obsolete since machines can do that better than I can? Am I, AM I, a woman? Maybe I’ve gone digital. Maybe I’m a cyborg. I just want to go home.”

I’m met with fire at dusk and a crowd sighing of “Oh, Joan, not again.”

I yelled through the smoke, you said my name wrong, It’s Janea. It’s the shock of knowing that someone could inspect me so critically but not know how to say my name that kills me.