academia ovenbird I was the only woman attending the conference. The other scholars were men cut straight from the cloth of the patriarchy. Musty men with tweed jackets and entitled mouths and twitchy fingers stuffed deep into their ink stained pockets. We were waiting to see a much sought after guest speaker, but she cancelled at the last minute and we were left milling about in a sterile room devoid of even the stale remains of the continental breakfast. The event organizer arrived, a middle aged woman in a pencil skirt and navy blue blazer. She apologized to the assembled men and said that she thought that they deserved compensation for the last minute cancellation so she had arranged for them to view a selection of breasts. This, she claimed, was only fair, given that they had waited all morning and must, at this point, be starving for stimulation of some kind. So she had arranged for all the female conference speakers to arrive dressed in string bikinis. As they entered the room she had them lie on their stomachs on a high shelf with their heads propped up on their hands and their legs swinging coquettishly behind them. This ensured an unobstructed view of their copious cleavage. The organizer hoped this would be sufficient recompense for the crowd’s disappointment. The men drank cold coffee and talked about Nietzsche while they waited for all the breasts to be on display. Livid, I paced the room, then I cleared my throat loudly and proclaimed that I had an announcement but no one even glanced in my direction. “I have an announcement!” I shouted again. “I HATE breasts,” I yelled, “And all of this is highly inappropriate!” But no one was listening. A woman in a pink bikini that was not even remotely containing the heave of her chest smiled at me sadly from the shelf where she was ensconced. I was not wearing a bikini and not a single one of these men would ever acknowledge my presence no matter how much Nietzsche I could pull from my memory’s coffers. The men were laughing in tight packed groups. And there was no room for the likes of me. 260828 what's it to you? who go blather from