Living Invisible In A Male-Dominated World

I am an invisible woman.

As long as there is a man in my vicinity, I physically cease to exist.

When I went to buy a car, I stood there tightly gripping a black card loaded with eighty thousand dollars.

Yet, the salesman looked right past my shoulder, bowing and scraping toward my boyfrienda man with zero savings and not even a driver's license.

"Sir, this vehicle perfectly matches a successful gentleman like yourself."

I screamed myself hoarse right next to them.

"It is my card! I am buying the car!"

It was completely useless. The air was filled with nothing but the sound of their mutual masculine appreciation and laughter.

During our quarterly company review, the five million dollar contract I personally closed was somehow entirely credited to the male intern who couldn't even read the financial metrics correctly.

The CEO, Mr. Brooks, loudly praised the intern for his "masculine ambition," then turned around and openly mocked the female employees for being "short sighted and emotional."

I stood directly in front of the projection screen, screaming out corrections to the data, but their line of sight effortlessly phased right through me as they continued to stroke each other's egos.

"Since you all choose to be selectively blind, I might as well commit to being invisible."

"Oh wow, Mr. Lee, this Mercedes G-Wagon is absolutely tailor made for a tough guy like you. Look at these lines! This is what you call a man's romance!"

The salesman reached right over my shoulder and firmly grasped my boyfriend's hand.

Jason puffed out his chest, sliding one hand casually into his pocket while the other traced the leather steering wheel.

"It is definitely nice, but the price tag..."

He paused, pretending to be deep in thought, though his eyes darted guiltily toward me.

I slammed my black card down onto the hood of the car.

"Swipe it. Paid in full."

The salesman didn't even flinch. He kept his beaming, sycophantic smile entirely focused on Jason.

"Mr. Lee, you are such a decisive man! I knew a successful guy like you wouldn't bother with financing and interest rates."

Jason coughed awkwardly, accepting the expensive cigarette the salesman handed him and expertly tucking it behind his ear.

"Exactly. When a real man wants something, he gets it done quick. Go ahead and swipe."

He waved his hand vaguely at the air, completely ignoring the fact that the money was coming out of my account.

The salesman pulled out the POS terminal, and without granting me a single glance, shoved the keypad directly into Jason's face.

"Right here, Mr. Lee. Just type in your PIN."

Jason's eyes began frantically signaling me to hand over the card.

I stood firmly in place, waving the black plastic right in front of the salesman's face.

"The card is right here. The PIN is my birthday."

The salesman remained utterly deaf and blind. He kept holding the terminal out to Jason.

Jason snatched the card out of my hand and tapped it against the machine.

"Alright, alright, do I really need to spell it out for you? You have zero situational awareness," he hissed at me under his breath. Then he turned to the salesman, "My woman doesn't know how to act in public. Sorry you had to see that."

The salesman gave him a knowing nod and slapped the freshly printed purchase agreement on the desk.

"Mr. Lee, please sign right here. I already typed your name into the system so you wouldn't have to tire your hand out."

I leaned over to look. The registered owner field proudly displayed Jason's name in bold black ink.

I reached out to snatch the pen.

"I paid for it! The title goes in my name!"

The salesman's elbow "accidentally" jerked out, knocking me off balance. The expensive pen fell smoothly into Jason's waiting hand.

"Mr. Lee, your girlfriend is quite the prankster, joking around at a time like this. Let's wrap this up, there are other clients waiting."

Jason gripped the pen and dramatically signed his name across the document. In that exact second, he acted as if he had actually earned eighty thousand dollars.

"Sylvia, stop throwing a tantrum. What does it matter whose name is on it? We are getting married soon anyway, it will be joint property."

I stood dead center in the middle of a bustling luxury car showroom, and not a single soul looked at me twice.

That afternoon, I returned to the office and pushed open the heavy glass doors of the conference room.

Mr. Brooks was standing at the head of the long oak table, his face flushed, raising a glass of champagne.

"Securing this five million dollar contract is all thanks to our boy Mark! Look at this ambition! This is the wolf blood we need in the sales department!"

Mark, the male intern, was surrounded by a mob of backslapping executives.

"Oh, it was nothing. It is all thanks to your mentorship, Mr. Brooks. I just worked a little bit of overtime, that's all."

Displayed on the massive projector screen was the pitch deck I had spent three sleepless nights designing.

Mark was even holding the laser pointer backward, a red dot bouncing erratically around the ceiling, and absolutely no one cared.

I shoved my way through the crowd of men and pointed directly at the data on the screen.

"The conversion rate on this slide is miscalculated. The decimal point is in the wrong place. That will cause a ten times undervaluation in the final quote."

I didn't speak softly, but my voice was completely drowned out by the booming laughter of my male colleagues.

Mr. Brooks narrowed his eyes, his gaze phasing right through my physical body to stare at the blank white wall behind me.

"Is this projector slightly out of focus? Mark, go adjust it. Is the lens dirty?"

I was standing directly in the projector's beam. The bright light was shining directly onto my face.

Mark walked over and waved a hand vaguely in front of me.

"Mr. Brooks, it is probably just some dust. I'll wipe it down."

He took a microfiber cloth, polished the glass lens, and aggressively shoved me aside.

Mr. Brooks nodded in deep satisfaction, then turned his attention to the cluster of female employees huddled in the corner.

"You ladies should be taking notes from Mark! Stop spending your days ordering lattes and gossiping! Look at his execution!"

"I always said hiring women is a headache. Long hair, short sight. You lack the natural capacity for logical thinking."

"When the pressure is on, all you do is cry or complain about wanting to go home to your kids. Where is that big picture, aggressive mindset that men have?"

"The company only keeps you around out of charity. Don't think putting on lipstick is going to drive our revenue up!"

The female coworkers kept their heads bowed, silent, gripping their unfinished reports tightly in their hands.

Suddenly, a message pinged from the client's legal department.

Mr. Brooks looked at his phone. The color instantly drained from his face.

"Who is responsible for the penalty clauses?! Why is there an extra zero in the breach of contract percentage?!"

That was the exact section Mark had secretly altered right before the meeting. He had claimed it would make us "look more committed."

The conference room plunged into a dead silence. And suddenly, every single pair of eyes snapped onto me.

When it was time to take credit, I was invisible air. When it was time to take the blame, I suddenly became a highly visible, physical target.

Mr. Brooks slammed his phone onto the table and pointed a furious finger right at my nose.

"Sylvia! What the hell is wrong with you?! How could you let a catastrophic error like this slip through?! Are you trying to bankrupt this company?!"

In that precise moment, I materialized.

When there were medals to be handed out, I was a ghost. When the ship was sinking, I was the anchor they tied around their necks.

Mark shrank back into the crowd, whispering loudly.

"Sylvia wouldn't even let me touch the core clauses. She said she was the senior employee..."

Mr. Brooks erupted, spit flying across the table.

"Your entire bonus for the year is gone! If the client sues, you pack your things and get out!"

I looked at Mr. Brooks's face, twisted with irrational rage, and suddenly felt zero desire to explain myself.

If they were completely blind to my achievements but possessed 20/20 vision for my supposed failures, then I might as well vanish completely.

I pulled the corner of my mouth into a cold smile. I didn't yell.

"Okay, Mr. Brooks. Since I hold total liability, I suppose I shouldn't send the automated security patch for the contract either."

Mr. Brooks was too lost in his own power trip to hear the underlying threat.

"You are damn right! Go fix it right now! Nobody goes home until it is corrected!"

"And stop trying to figure out how to scam the company out of maternity leave the second you hit thirty."

"This company isn't a charity. We can't afford to carry dead weight who just want to stay home and hold babies."

"When it comes to charging the front lines of business, it requires men. You ladies are only fit for doing spreadsheets and fetching coffee in the rear."

"If I actually handed a multi million dollar deal over to you, your weak mental fortitude would shatter."

I turned on my heel and walked out of the conference room. The exact second the heavy door clicked shut, I tossed the flash drive containing the contract patch straight into the trash can.

I pushed open the door to my apartment. The air was so thick with cigarette smoke I immediately started coughing.

My younger brother, Toby, was sprawled across my imported Italian leather sofa, his bare feet propped up on the glass coffee table, aggressively tapping on his phone.

"Sis, you're back? I am starving. Where is the food?"

He didn't even look up from his mobile game.

My mother poked her head out from the kitchen.

"Sylvia, hurry up and cut some fruit for your brother!"

"He is playing video games, that is high level mental work! It is not like you sitting in an air conditioned office doing nothing! Hurry up and serve the hero of our family!"

I set my purse down and slapped a printed invoice onto the dining table. It was for a three thousand dollar massage chair.

"Dad, did the massage chair get delivered? It was three grand. Did you try it out?"

My father sat at the table, squinting through a cloud of cigarette smoke. He didn't even glance at the invoice.

Toby blindly reached into his pocket, pulled out a crushed pack of cheap, three dollar cigarettes, and tossed them to my father.

"Here, Dad. Smoke these. They hit harder."

My father caught the cheap pack, his eyes instantly welling up with emotion.

"Now this is a filial son. Always thinking of his old man. He really cares about me!"

My three thousand dollar massage chair was completely eclipsed by a crumpled box of cheap tobacco.

At the dinner table, the spread was overflowing with expensive seafood I had just bought on the way home.

My mother cracked open the largest crab, meticulously picking out all the rich crab roe and dumping it into Toby's bowl. She handed the massive crab claws to Jason.

"Men who fight for a living out in the world burn a lot of brain cells! They are the pillars of the family!"

"These high protein luxury meats can only be converted into real money making energy if they go into a man's stomach!"

I reached out my chopsticks to grab a single shrimp. My mother aggressively swatted my hand away.

"Have you no shame? Look at your waistline, and you still want to eat seafood?"

"A girl eating luxury food like this is a pure waste of resources! You are just going to get fat and your future in laws will despise you!"

"You just stick to the boiled vegetables to clean out your system. Don't you dare compete for food with the men holding this family up!"

I stared at her, my voice turning icy.

"I am out there fighting too. I bought every single piece of seafood on this table. My salary is triple Jason's."

My father frowned heavily.

"What does it matter if a girl makes a high salary? You are going to get married eventually. That money belongs to your husband's family. You can't keep it."

Jason's mouth was stuffed full of crab meat. He mumbled unintelligibly as he slammed his new car keys onto the table.

"Mr. Shen, you should have seen it! I picked up a G-Wagon today. Eighty grand. Driving it back here, the amount of people staring at me was insane!"

My father's eyes instantly lit up. He picked up the heavy car key, rubbing it like it was a holy relic.

"Eighty thousand?! Wow, Jason, you are incredible! I always said Sylvia was blessed to land a man like you!"

Toby finally put his phone down, looking at Jason with pure hero worship.

"Jason, you are the man! Let me borrow it tomorrow. I am picking up my girl, and that car will give me so much respect!"

Jason raised a smug eyebrow.

"No problem at all! We are basically family, right? Drive it whenever you want!"

I slowly put my chopsticks down, locking eyes with Jason.

"The money came out of my account. The title is in your name, but the financial footprint is entirely mine."

The entire family suddenly went collectively deaf. My father waved his hand impatiently.

"A woman's money is meant to pave the way for her man! If a respectable guy like Jason doesn't drive it, your money was completely wasted!"

My mother filled Jason's shot glass to the brim, her voice dripping with fawning praise.

"Exactly! Jason, don't lower yourself to argue with her. Come on, let me toast you! A car like that is only intimidating when a real man is behind the wheel. What do women know about cars? They belong in the passenger seat!"

A memory from elementary school suddenly flashed in my mind.

I had run home clutching a perfect score math exam. I found my grandfather handing a thick red envelope of cash to my cousin, who had barely passed with a D.

"A grandson is still a man with the family seed even if he scores a zero! He is the sky above the Shen family!"

"A girl is just a money losing investment being raised for another family! The more books she reads, the wilder her heart gets, and the harder it will be for her to serve her future in laws!"

So, I had been an invisible person since childhood.

Standing in the corner, watching them celebrate a mediocre man.

Now, I was twenty eight years old. I made a hundred thousand a year. And I was still completely invisible.

I went to the kitchen to wash the dishes. The running water couldn't drown out the vicious calculations happening in the living room.

"A dowry? We would have to beg someone to take her! Sylvia is almost thirty, she is expired goods. Even if she makes good money, she is the end of the bloodline. Jason taking her off our hands is practically charity work!"

Jason ate up the praise like a starved dog.

"It really is just me being a good guy. Any other man seeing her acting this arrogant just because she makes a few bucks would have slapped her across the face to teach her some rules!"

Toby, chewing loudly on the expensive cherries I bought, chimed in with a mouth full of juice.

"Dad, shouldn't Sylvia's apartment be transferred to my name so I can use it as my starter home when I get married? She is going to live in Jason's big house anyway. Keeping this place empty is a waste."

My father agreed as if stating a law of physics.

"Women have no right to own real estate. That property is the foundation of the Shen family. It was always meant to be yours."

They casually debated stripping me of my home, exactly the way one discusses throwing away unclaimed garbage.

No one even bothered to ask the actual homeowner if she agreed.

My hand jerked violently. A porcelain plate shattered on the tile floor.

My mother instantly rushed in, pointing a furious finger at my face.

"You stupid girl! You are so clumsy you can't even wash a plate?! Don't scare your brother! That plate cost ten dollars!"

She squatted down to pick up the shards. She didn't look at my face. She didn't ask why I dropped it.

"Sweep this up right now! If a piece of glass cuts your brother's precious feet, selling your organs wouldn't cover the damage!"

I stared at this nest of leeches, staring at the shattered ceramic on the floor.

I was genuinely perplexed.

Why is it that even other women become completely blind to the sacrifices of a woman?

Bright and early the next morning, Jason aggressively yanked me out of bed.

"Hurry up, hurry up! My college reunion is today. I need to drive the new car there to flex on everyone."

We walked into the private dining room. The air was choked with cigar smoke, the booming voices of men echoing off the walls.

They were all red faced, loosening their silk ties, loudly bragging about their entrepreneurial empires.

"I'm telling you, during the launch of my last startup, I didn't sleep for three straight days! I survived purely on cases of Red Bull!"

In reality, everyone in the room knew his "startup" only survived because his wife sold her heirloom jewelry to cover his massive debts.

The moment Jason walked in, he was dragged to the head of the table. The men practically fought each other to pour him drinks.

"Jason is the king now! He rolled up in a G-Wagon, I saw it with my own eyes!"

Jason waved his hands, feigning deep humility.

"Oh, it's nothing, guys. My latest AI neural network project is just doing pretty well, making a bit of pocket change."

I sat in the darkest corner of the room, sneering. I wrote every single line of code for that project. He didn't even know how to spell Python.

A former classmate who actually worked in tech leaned in and asked a detailed question.

"Jason, what algorithmic architecture are you guys deploying on the backend?"

Jason froze. He stammered and choked on his words for a solid minute, unable to produce a coherent sentence.

I couldn't handle the secondhand embarrassment anymore, so I spoke up.

"To resolve the latency issues with long form text processing..."

Before I could even finish the sentence, the tech guy aggressively cut me off.

"Hey, don't interrupt if you don't understand the industry. Let Jason speak. Women shouldn't meddle in highly technical conversations."

Jason immediately seized the lifeline and raised his scotch glass.

"Exactly, exactly! It is highly proprietary and way too complex to explain over dinner. Let's just drink!"

The men started ruthlessly pressuring Jason to take shots. Terrified of losing face, he chugged everything handed to him.

After a few rounds, his face was beet red, his neck veins popping, his speech heavily slurred.

"Jason is a tank! Pour him another!"

Jason weakly pointed a trembling finger at me.

"I'm done... make her drink for me! She just does useless backend admin work anyway. She has nothing important to do tomorrow, not like me! I make thousands of dollars every minute!"

The male classmates immediately started jeering.

"Come on, be a good sport! Jason's business is on the line!"

I stared coldly at the shot glass overflowing with cheap liquor. I didn't move a muscle.

Feeling humiliated, Jason's face darkened.

"Can you act like you have some class for once? Stop embarrassing me in front of my brothers!"

I still didn't move, effectively acting exactly like the ghost they treated me as.

Cursing under his breath, Jason downed the shot himself. He eventually drank himself into a coma, passing out face down in a plate of leftover ribs.

When it was time to settle the bill, the waitress walked into the room holding the leather checkbook.

Suddenly, every man at the table was either pretending to be asleep, intensely staring at their phones, or urgently needing to use the restroom.

The waitress scanned the room, then walked directly over to me, holding the bill right in my face.

"Miss, the total is twelve thousand dollars. How would you like to pay?"

When it came time to cough up money, the woman in the room magically became visible.

I didn't take the checkbook. I pointed at the drooling mess that was Jason.

"He is the big CEO who drives the G-Wagon. Ask him."

The waitress looked highly uncomfortable.

"But miss, this gentleman is completely unconscious..."

"Then you wait for him to wake up, or you call the cops."

I grabbed my purse, stood up, and walked straight out the door.

Behind me, I heard the waitress aggressively shaking Jason awake, followed by the highly awkward, nervous coughing of his "brothers."

The second I stepped out of the hotel lobby, my phone started vibrating like a jackhammer.

The company group chat had exploded.

Because I never sent the automated security patch, the client's legal team discovered the massive vulnerability in the contract and instantly issued a cease and desist order.

Mr. Brooks was repeatedly tagging my name, sending sixty second voice memos one after the other.

I tapped on one. It was pure, unadulterated screaming.

"Where the hell are you?! Why aren't you answering your messages?! Are you trying to destroy my company?!"

Mark, the intern, posted a highly pathetic, crying emoji sticker in the chat.

"Sylvia hasn't replied to any of my DMs. Did I offend her somehow? I really don't know how to code this patch..."

Mr. Brooks fired off eighteen consecutive messages, cursing my mother, my ancestors, and my gender.

"She is doing this on purpose! This is why women have zero professional responsibility! The company wasted money hiring you! You are paying the entire penalty fee out of pocket! Two million dollars, not a penny less!"

There were dozens of executives in that group chat.

Not a single one asked why Mark, the supposed project lead, didn't bother to check the contract before approving it.

Not a single one asked why a low level female employee was the only person in the entire building capable of writing the core security patch.

I closed the chat app and didn't reply.

I dragged Jason's unconscious, vomit covered body into the passenger seat of the G-Wagon. A wave of acidic stench hit my face.

Barely two miles down the road, Jason violently threw up again, ruining the leather interior.

He mumbled incoherently, his hands grasping wildly at the air.

"Sylvia... I'm a real man... I deserve a luxury car..."

I slammed on the brakes. The massive SUV violently jerked to a halt on the shoulder of the highway.

I stared into the rearview mirror at the pathetic, filthy excuse for a man in the passenger seat. I looked down at my phone screen, where the abusive messages were still pouring in.

I suddenly realized that if I didn't physically manifest their twisted logic into reality, I would be doing a massive disservice to my own invisibility cloak.