When I was in my twenties, I worked hard to be the cool girl. The girl that was carefree, easy, edgy. Even cheerfully slutty. The girl that wasn’t prudish like other girls, or uptight, or, you know, careful with herself.
I took pride in being that girl. The one my boyfriend called ideal (at least for a while). The one his friends said they wished they could date. The one my dad approved of, and the guys at work wanted to hang with, and and and…
And I didn’t think about the cognitive dissonance of that goal, that identity. Even as I called myself a feminist. Even as I believed deeply in progressive policies and politics. Even as I felt disgust at the women in my family who punched down, mocking any woman that didn’t look or act like them.
The cool girl. The chill girl. The best girl. It wasn’t until my late thirties, even early forties, that I really recognized this label, this action, as a form of violence.
Placing myself outside of other women, as better than other women, was just…hating women. The activity I ascribed to sexists and misogynists was something I partook in daily. As I decried the physical and emotional violence men did to women, I was taking part in my own crimes against my kind.
We write so much, rightfully so, about the violence done to us, usually by men. But what about the violence that we as women inflict?
I wanted to take this on as I created and compiled the short stories in my book, Exile in Guyville. And to do that, I used speculative fiction – the power of metaphor, of scientific absurdity, of potential and probable futures. I also used the troubling and complicated examples of the women in my family.
*
I grew up on the wrong side of a dying town, born to too-young parents and an endless cycle of hurt. We were looked down on for our working-class neighborhood. But perhaps more than our address, we had the humiliating specter of the trashy, mean women in my family.
My mother, my aunt, my deceased grandmother; they fought and fucked their way through life, driven by rage, fire, disappointment. Early in their lives, they threw their lot in with men. Because other women were competition and catty backstabbers. Only boyfriends and husbands would provide companionship and safety.
The ultimate, and perhaps inevitable joke: those men, their men, were the ones to be truly feared. Bullies and would-be despots, men who viewed their women as appendages; occasionally useful but often naggingly painful. The men beat their women, or cheated on them, or both; the men made their women financially dependent upon them; the men led the way, and the women convinced themselves it was the path they were going on anyway.
Today, it’s no surprise my mother and aunt are white Evangelical Republican women. They’re the ones who will easily, gleefully sell out other women through anti-abortion policies and anti-trans hysteria. They are complicit in hurting other women.
As I wrote the title story for what would become my collection, I wasn’t actively thinking about my family, or me, or even generalized collaboration and collusion. I was writing a weird story about a museum of women snatched from different time periods. In the distant future, this museum is a massive tourist attraction and a must-see for the powerful men of the time.
The story shifted, as stories do, and I found a moment of choice for my main character, Temple. She discovers a hidden truth about the museum and the owners offer her two options as recompense.
Maybe I did think then about the women who allowed Roe v. Wade to be struck down. Maybe I was thinking about the women who scream about trans groomers and abusers, without considering the sins of the men in their houses. Maybe I was thinking about the women in my own family who ignored all the inconvenient truths about me – my queerness, my autism, my refusal to get married or have kids – and supported people and laws that put me and my friends in danger.
So my main character, because she’s a scrappy survivor, as many of the women in my family claim to be, she spots another option. It would involve potentially hurting other women, but she would benefit.
And I found the only natural, violent end to the story for modern times.
*
As I said, the women in my family viewed other women as competition. Other women couldn’t be trusted; they would steal your man and talk about you behind your back. Other women couldn’t understand my family; they looked down on our working-class appearance and behavior and lack of choices.
Another inevitable joke: this extended within my family. My aunt couldn’t trust her mother, because, among many betrayals, her mother slept with one of her five husbands. My mother couldn’t trust her sister, and vice versa, because they would spread secrets. Everyone was on their own. Everyone decided men were the only ones they could trust. Everyone was wrong.
When I aimed to be the cool girl, the one that wasn’t like other girls, with their needs and their nags, I was making the same mistake as my mother, aunt, and grandmother. I was believing the lie that other women were not my allies, and actively, violently denigrating them.
I’m haunted by the past me, the one that was so clueless and mean. So I used speculative stories to literally pit women against one another, for the favor of men.
In one story in my collection, in a distant future, unwanted women are allocated to a refugee camp in an arid Illinois. Within the camp, older women and younger girls can choose to band together or trade each other for the favor of the guards. And ultimately, two can choose to run a race of survival, where only one can escape.
In another story, a quieter but no less violent one, a masseuse falls in love with a co-worker. No matter that they’re both already partnered, no matter that she is reenacting the time-honored betrayal we women do.
And in another, a future life app encourages a young woman to look out only for number one, to literally compete for ratings and reviews against other women at work and in dating, and to only prize being picked by a man above all else.
*
In their worlds, lives of marriage after high school and jobs they hated and scrounging, hustling for money to survive, my mother and aunt and grandmother had little control. They heard again and again that they were trash, because of their neighborhood and their behavior and their look, that red and wild hair. They couldn’t trust each other or their men. They balanced on ledges, strung thin with so little choice.
But one thing they could do? Punch down.
There was always someone else they could look down on. Because they were white, my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother could make vicious fun of black and brown people. Because they were working class, they could make mean fun of dirt poor and homeless people. Because they were able-bodied, they could make merciless fun of people with disabilities. They may be hurt by the world, but they could turn around and hurt others. Inflicting pain — that was power. That was control.
Today, my mom and aunt make Facebook posts about dirty immigrants taking their jobs, and insane trans people that change genders on a whim, and queers that want to feminize us all, take away the masculinity that they believe helps them. Only some people deserve respect, they say. Fuck everyrone else, and they’ll use their vote and guns to enforce that.
This cruelty, by women on other women, saying that only certain women deserve life and freedom. It felt almost too cruel to depict in stories.
What I did do was use that impulse, that driving rage, that feeling of no control or self-determination, and put it in a place we don’t expect – older women. In my final story, I bring together middle-aged former Riot Grrrls, women who still feel the fire and pull of dismantling patriarchy. But after years of backlashes, backsteps, backstabbing, they have nowhere to put their rage. They won’t punch down, like the women in my family do. Instead, they’ll use actual violence to show their frustration with men.
And the veneer comes off. Because even though we may consider ourselves more enlightened, that we would never use the cruel language and attacks TERFs and Republican women would, we still have that feeling. That lack of self-determination. The frustration we can’t express without being labeled hysterical hags, and punished with unequal pay and lack of work mobility and all the things. That simmering, ugly, ever-present rage.
And if you were a young woman in the early 1990s, pushing for Revolution Girl Style Now, and quickly buried by patronizing, violent media rhetoric; a young woman that aged through the 90s, 00s, 10s, and now, witnessing the hatred of women only grow; a middle-aged woman that’s been rendered invisible due to being “unfuckable” by society standards; where would your rage go?
In my final story, it lashes out at the men that have done them wrong. And cruelty feels good. At least for a while.
*
When I was younger, I wanted to be the cool girl; individual among a sea of inferior women. Today, I’m the old woman that only wants to be surrounded by other women. All kinds of women.
Because I finally understand that that cool girl was being cruel. She was making a competition where there shouldn’t be one. She was collaborating with the patriarchy. She was repeating the patterns of hurt and abuse and sadness passed down her family line.
In Exile in Guyville, I wrote stories that show that urge, that action, is distracting. It’s divisive. If we prize other women, we’re stronger together. We find our own definitions of worth, so much more powerful than any regard by men. We end the cycles.
***
Amy Lee Lillard is the author of Exile in Guyville, winner of the 2022 BOA Editions Short Fiction Prize; A Grotesque Animal from University of Iowa Press; and Dig Me Out from Atelier26 Books. Her fiction and nonfiction appear in Vox, LitHub, Barrelhouse, Foglifter, Epiphany, Off Assignment, Autostraddle, and more. She received an Iowa Author Award in 2023 and was named one of Epiphany’s Breakout 8 Writers in 2018. She is the co-creator of Broads and Books Productions, creating podcasts, publications, and presses. Productions include Fuzzy Memories Podcast, Wyrd Woman audio drama, and Midwest Weird audio literary magazine.