IMAGINE A COLLEGE town in which every other house boasts a beer pong table on the front lawn. Cigarette butts stick to your shoes. Rows of empty alcohol handles line the window sills as a proud tribute to weekends past. This is my home.

Thankfully I live in a housing cooperative, an alternative haven that makes this college town much more bearable. I am much more a hippie howling at the moon than I am a bro doing a keg stand. I still have to walk past groups of hooting frat boys, circles of housemates watching Family Guy in their living room, and hoards of college students drunkenly yelling at each other to “follow up on that pussy!” (actual overheard quote).

There is a particular house I walk by every time I go to the liquor store, (an activity I must partake in to tolerate this town, but which ironically allows me to fit in). This house has sliding glass doors inviting people to flip on their voyeur switch. When you appease the residents and look inside, you see this poster hanging in the center of the wall:

I despise this poster for a number of obvious reasons–it’s heteronormative, it’s photoshopped, etc.–but mostly because the woman pictured has no head. Seriously, why does she have no head? Would it distract the viewer too much from her ‘nice rack?’ Or is the concept of women having complex thoughts an utter turn off, brah? Probably both.

One night, when walking home with a friend from our second liquor store trip and feeling a bit tipsy, I decided to stop in front of those sliding glass doors and point out to my friend the problematic masterpiece. As we were standing outside their glass doors, pointing and drunkenly discussing the male gaze and female objectification present in that poster, a resident of the household noticed and stepped outside to talk to us. He peeked his head out of the doors and asked, “Um, can I help you with anything?”

“Yes,” I replied. “You can take down the poster behind you, I find it terribly sexist.” He swung his head back to look at the poster, as if he was actually going to consider what I said. He turned back to me and responds with, “No, are you kidding me? Those boobs are phenomenal.” And slid the glass door shut.

After pondering this event for a few days longer, and listening to just enough Le Tigre to empower me to take action, I decided to make a poster of my own. I drew a woman’s head with an angry expression and a word bubble next to her face that read:

Where is my head? Women have thoughts, too. Please don’t dismember my body, I am more than just my parts. Please take down your poster as real representations of women are needed to end this sexist society.

Operation ‘Give This Woman A Head, Stat’ consisted of me walking the block to the target’s house at two in the morning and taping my creation to the outside of the glass door. It was strategically placed so that, from the passerby’s perspective, the head lined up with the body of the woman in the poster. It was truly as if I had given a misogyny fighting brain to the body! Science + Feminism.

The next day, I leisurely walked by the house to see if anything had been changed. Yes, yes indeed there was a change. They had turned the poster around and written this on the back:

Never fucking come to my house again. Don’t like my poster, don’t look at it. Why don’t you go find a dick to suck you cunt.

Well, after double/triple checking that my eyesight was intact, and that that is what was actually written, I marched right up, took my poster down, and walked home feeling slightly defeated. I wasn’t harboring the illusion that my poster addition would transform the minds of those living in that house, that they would start first with The Feminine Mystique only to move onto Judith Butler, or that they would enroll in a Feminist Studies class next semester, but…..something. I expected something. Or at least not… this.

One month later, while perusing Missed Connections, an activity I partake in daily in hopes of stumbling across a post addressed to me, I found the following entry:

About a month ago you protested my awesome ‘Get your balls wet’ beer pong poster by posting a feminist rant on my window. I responded with a sign asking you to suck my dick. Well… you didn’t, and now I have to admit I’m disappointed. I thought we could make something out of our mutual hate.

You’re right, we could make something out of it: this story is now on the internet.