SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED

Okay, I’m going to tell a story about a mishap with a Christmas present order, but I’m not going to name names because it all worked out and I generally like this company. Here’s what happened. Way back in early November, I got a notice that one of my favorite t-shirt places was having a big sale. So I thought “Oh! Christmas presents for the Cabbage!” They have a few of my older t-shirts from this place and they love them. I thought this would be easy and perfect. While I was browsing around, I came across a T-shirt that said “Gender Roles are a Social Construct” and yelped with glee and put it into my cart for the Cabbage. I ended up buying six T-shirts that day, three for the Cabbage and three for Michael. They arrived at the house two weeks later and I just left them in the bag. I figured I could wait to open the bag when I got ready to wrap gifts.

Cut to the night before Christmas.

I opened the bag of T-shirts and started to put Michael’s in one pile and the Cabbage’s in another. They were all there except one. The T-shirt I was most excited about, the Gender Roles T-shirt, was missing and in it’s place was a very bizarro and explicit T-shirt. It has the words ‘cum on me’ on the T-shirt, along with a name that I’m not using. I was stunned and I immediately went to Michael. I contacted customer service while he searched their website. I told customer service that I didn’t even think to check my order early because I have ordered many times from them and never had an issue. Then I had to wait until after the holiday to get a response. This left me plenty of time to stew and fret over the whole thing. We even searched the website and I don’t even think they sell this T-shirt. When customer service returned my message, they were immediately apologetic. They promptly sent out the correct shirt without question and told me to “destroy” the terrible T-shirt.

The fact that they used the words “destroy” really makes me believe that there was some malicious intent at play here.

Two of the t-shirts had planets holding hands on them, Michael’s T-shirts were all bicycle or scooter related. The Gender Roles T-shirt was the only one that someone might see has controversial or political. The more I think about it, the more I firmly believe that someone working in the warehouse the day my order was filled targeted my order because of that T-shirt. It’s possible the person thought they were real funny and maybe it could have been a funny prank if the shirt had said anything clever or funny. The phrasing on this shirt is intentionally malicious, as if this person felt like they were teaching me a lesson. It is a total cliche of toxic masculinity. Which is a concept that is also a social construct.

social construct: an idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society - Webster’s Dictionary

Every thing is a social construct.

Michael thinks it was all just a simple mistake. He believes that robots fill the orders. He is not as jaded as I am or has had as many encounters with the type of men who like to degrade and mistreat women. And maybe he’s right. Maybe I am seeing more into this than what is truly there because of my encounters with those types of men. If this was intentional, it didn’t work. The Cabbage received their Gender Roles are a Social Construct T-shirt on Friday and was thrilled. They love it and wore it the next day. We went to a gathering of camp friends where everyone there told them how cool they looked and what a great shirt they were wearing.

And that’s how I’m training them to be their own Yoshimi, so that one day they can also fight evil natured robots.