What Are Women’s Rooms Even For?
An ode to the space in which my ‘womynhood’ unfurled
Oh Womyn’s Room, oh Womyn’s Room, I’m pretty sure you saved my life. Hidden behind ghastly 1950s red brick, in your quiet sanctuary I did delight. Each day I was on campus, to your dustiness I would retreat. And seek out the low-cal cup-of-soups on which my starved body would feast.
I remember most fondly the old saggy couch, once pink and green perhaps but now almost uniformly beige. And beside it the stodgy book-shelf packed with fem-lit and free tampons, always size “extra large for heavy flow”. Was embracing wide-set vaginas a fashion of the age?
I remember my relief when I would push open your insanely heavy, shiny, purple door, and see that the room was empty, with no-one to hear me snore. I would nap before my Spanish night class, much needed naps. I used to get up in the morning at four.
Why are you doing this to yourself?, your stained white walls would ask mournfully as away into unconsciousness I slid. Because the job I had writing summarising of early morning economic news for business people (who are apparently too busy to read their own newspapers) paid better than clearing tables — which was the weekend job I also did.
One day from the bookshelf, I plucked a pamphlet about the spelling of your name. No, the omission of “e” was not a typo — as I had naively thought. But a deliberate act of resistance. Against what? Well, the patriarchy of course!!! There were a lot of exclamation marks in the pamphlet, as it laid out the legacy of sexist social laws; laws that normalised for so long the exclusion of womyn from spaces of formal learning and power — to the extent that now, in the engineering building where my political science classes for some reason took place, the student union made available to female-identifying persons a room with their very own microwave, fridge, kettle and shower.
“You have a shower!” My male friend exclaimed in indignation, when I let him in, just for a minute, to make us both a cup of tea. “That’s not fair. I feel excluded. Where is the shower and napping space for hetrosexual white guys, like me!”
Well my friend, you don’t have one. Right now, fresh-made tea in hand, I definitely win. But that’s the price you pay for the other benefits you have perhaps unknowingly reaped for having a penis, mainstream sexual preferences, and very light skin. And yes I know you hate the cafeteria, full of jacked-up herds of STEM majors, as much as me. But you, my friend, could take a coat and nap in the park under a tree. Sure, it may be less comfortable than the Womyn’s Room, with couch and bed. But you are statistically far less likely to end up raped and dead.
Oh Womyn’s Room, oh Womyn’s Room, I’m so grateful for the many hours of quiet reading that we shared. You gave me a biography of Malcom X. And the Communist Manifesto. And an actually quite boring tome called “The Joys of Sex”, which had been on a shelf at home at my parent’s place. I always wanted to open that book. I just never dared. Within you, Womyn’s Room, I passed a rapt afternoon devouring the memoir of an obese American woman who became a fitness star. Did you know that by simply reading the fat content on food labels and subtracting that from some other number and multiplying everything by nine you could reach your absolute ideal body shape? For me (according to the guide in the back) that was “hour-glass”.
Dear Womyn’s Room, you gave me peace and isolation, away from the wolf-whistling builders who were literally always on site. I liked wearing short skirts to class — they attracted attention! But I would find it more stressful to then walk home alone at night.
Yes — in that Womyn’s Room I was first conscious of everyday sexism, sexual capital, and the sort of womyn I wanted to be. Someone empowered! And less chronically tired. Someone educated, articulate, confident — and more pretty.
So Womyn’s Room, I thank you. For giving me space to be me. A young girl full of contradictions and aspirations. And I thank you for the tampons. May they always be “extra large for heavy flow”. And free.
