The Wheels on the Bus go Round my Endometrium: Winner, VUW Feminist Law Society Competition

Gemma Bennion

Dear [ One in ten women. On this occasion, me.]  

Your internal ultrasound does show signs of likely endometriosis. Please make an appointment to discuss the next steps.  

Kindest regards,  

Dr. [Bright eyes. Funny tie.] 

As the bus rattles into Wellington, I remember how I’d fought myself the day prior not to ask  the ultrasound tech to buy me dinner first. Ah well. She hadn't seemed the joking kind.  

There I was, on my way to be told that short of a laparoscopy (diagnostic surgery) the fact my  ovary doesn’t seem to move means I probably have endo. My headphones have died. I tune  into two young women talking from the back of the bus. I think all girls’ schools are the  answer one is saying. Fuck the Patriarchy. De-centre it all. You know I grew up thinking  everyone supported abortion? It was a shock to get to Uni and find otherwise.  

An authoritative voice starts up from a phone speaker as they watch a video. The sound  transports me to my bedroom at twilight, scrolling through clip after clip of women sitting on  their beds or candidly in their cars with mini microphones, nostalgic for the freeing nature of  their all-girls education. They explain how because of this, their enlightened minds now  understand and tolerate men differently than their girlfriends, the vast majority who did co education. I blink and I’m back on the bus. I roll my eyes. To be clear, I have no qualms with  girls’ schools in general. But proclaiming them the panacea? Or the lazy conflation of that  environment with leftist or progressive views? As if Thatcher herself wasn’t an alumnus of  such a place. Or more topically, Brooke Van Velden.  

But as I sit there, bus bumping along and a cystic knot cutting into my stomach, I feel both  annoyance and shame. I considered myself a feminist, and as much as I felt that these girls  were wrong, what had I done for women lately? I didn't have a podcast. I wasn’t educating,  preaching or dispelling myths. If anything, I had spent this bus ride downplaying this alien  

new condition, when from all I’d seen online this was the moment to be marketing my  strength. The moment to scream from the rooftops that yes, I have a woman's health issue,  but it doesn’t define me! I am Wonder Woman! I can do it all! 

Of course, in 2026 Wonder Woman is a genocide supporter. Courage skips a beat as the bus  jolts, and I correctly anticipate it’ll be a year’s wait if I want surgery to relieve my pain; the  same to see a specialist unless I go private. It’s the stilted reality of that moment that bothers  me. I could de-centre men all I like and still have a cyst. I could have gone to an all-girls’  school and still have a cyst. I could talk into a tiny microphone about female intelligence,  excellence, strength and serenity in the abstract, and while all extremely important, none of it  would rip this sticky growth from my ovary in a timely manner and stick it in a Petri dish.  

I guess my point here is I’m worried we’re missing the forest for the trees with these esoteric  online takes, where even “feminist” influencers are profiting off the rage-bait their posts  provoke. Because in this capitalist hell-scape, we cannot afford to have feminism sold to us  as simply a lifestyle, a culmination of choices whereby excluding the patriarchy (as is  apparently possible) you will no longer be plagued by it. A brand of feminism measured in  fractions and increments, where acts like buying female only brands, nodding sagely at  Adolescence and fighting incels online add up to create the Woman. But a lifestyle asks  nothing concrete of us. You can always opt out. This individualised, square-eyed approach is  far more myopic, and transient compared to feminism as an ethos or a movement.  

The girls get off and while my stop is next, I’m now much less nervous. It dawns on me that  maybe, my feminist act for the day was to ride the bus. Not something overtly feminist. Not an act that is only feminist either. But as essential services are gutted, and women’s labour  bears the brunt of selfish economies, our advocacy cannot be choice-based, aesthetic and  siloed. It cannot stop at liking a TikTok, and it certainly cannot be sustained without putting  ourselves physically out there to support our communities. So do it big or do it small. Make  those placards, help out at food banks. Own those incels, but don’t leave a mother struggling  with her pram.  

Read your de Beauvoir, I encourage it.  

Just do it on the bus.