Hello, and welcome to Drabbletober Season 2. This is episode 10 for Friday the tenth of October, 2025.
I’m Bigger Than You
by Elizabeth Guilt
As a kid, it was always her brother. The threat was explicit - and followed up with physical demonstrations.
The same threat hid, discreetly, behind her teachers' words. Later, it threaded through drunken conversations in bars, in unwanted offers of help or a lift home.
She sits in the boardroom, and feels it oozing - again, still - from the investors, from the chairman, even from the junior insurance guy. She clinches the deal anyway. She wins. It doesn't help. She is so tired.
She books the appointments: bone expansion, femur and spine extensions, muscle bulking. Under "goals", she writes impossibly high numbers.
In my day job, I work in a very male-dominated environment. I'm also very lucky: I have smart colleagues who don't make this an issue. But despite - in this country - decades of legislation, equality is not a done deal. My hot take is that size and physical strength is a big part of this.