The Hamlet Project

I’m writing this at a bar/restaurant where I am eating and drinking by myself. The waiter brought two glasses of water because he just assumed, as a lady, that I had someone joining me. It is not a normal thing for a woman to go out at night on her own.
And then I think about this line. And if Hamlet was a woman. And how if Hamlet was a woman (not just played by a woman – but an actual woman) everyone would be pretty worried about her being the only prisoner on a pirate ship. A woman taken as the only prisoner becomes vulnerable in ways that we never worry about a man. Of course, a male prisoner could be raped as well. I’m sure it happens. And I’m sure it’s horrible. But there’s a way where a man being taken prisoner suggests a relatively simple relationship. He’s just been taken prisoner.
If a woman is taken prisoner…we just assume that she’s gonna get raped or at least sexually assaulted. And that is rape culture, still ticking away in all of us.
Even me, here, having a glass of cider and a rice bowl in a bar in Seattle. Am I asking for it? Of course not. But no woman ever is.