I’m volunteering at the Mile Zero Fest in Key West. From my post at the entrance gate I can hear Cody Canada and the Departed are on stage. I wasn’t sure I’d like this kind of music — thought it might sound a little too much like country music — but they’re winning me over. Their strong guitars and the front man’s banter are winning me over: making me dance, even. We’re at the Sunset Green’s Lawn across from the Gulf of Mexico and in between two hotels: 24 North and The Gates. 24 North is named after the latitude and longitude of its location; I have no idea what The Gates is named after — although its bar, Rum Row, has lots of quotes about Hemingway and rum runners.

From the stage, Cody announces that a women in the front row has left with the parting words of: this isn’t red dirt music! His response slams her with, “Red dirt isn’t a genre it’s a place in your soul.”

Or something like that. His words and certainty grabbed me and made me like him even more. It seemed like a good way to address it and the crowd went wild. They moved on and into another great song. After which this banter began between Cody and the crowd. They started using the “K” word (Karen) which then became “Fuck you, Karen!”

Then I heard Cody talking with someone in the front row about what her real name was and the slam of the woman morphed into, “Fuck you, Gina!” I gave a nod to their creativity, even smiled a little. As a writer, I am familiar with rejection and am very sensitive to its encounters.

At the end of the show, people were filing out of the gate saying, “Fuck you, ‘gina!”

As in the abbreviation of vagina.

Ok, now they’re slamming girl parts. They’re using girl parts as an insult. Boy, am I tired of that.

How the fuck can the vagina, the gateway of newborn life, ever be associated with weakness? Reduced to a slur.

Meanwhile. . . “grow a pair” or “have some balls” is equated with toughness.

Have you ever seen a guy get hit in the balls? Watched him crumble to the ground like a bouncy house that just blew a seam? Come on. How has having balls been associated with strength while a vagina, capable of an expanding to encompass the size of a tiny human, gets the rap of weakness?

In the immortal words of Betty White: “Why do people say, ‘Grow some balls?’ Balls are weak and sensitive. If you really wanna get tough, grow a vagina. Those things really take a pounding!”