Speaking of Everything
Beginning preface of speaking
I want to be loud, speak my mind, and stick up for myself but I can't. I can’t find the right words, I fumble over myself, twist my tongue, choke on my opinions; I can’t speak. The paralyzing feeling when I know I can share my thoughts, but my mouth won’t move kills me. I am always thinking but I am never talking, or are they never listening? what good are thoughts if they’re never shared? I want to scream my truth and that is what I’m trying to do with this, I don’t know if I’ll ever actually share it, but I need to write it down, I need to throw it up, I need this to regurgitate out of me so I can stop living in my head.
"Let
the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence."
I don't remember the exact day when I stopped being a girl and became a woman. However, I do remember when I started becoming increasingly aware of my body. I was 7 years old when my stepfather told me I had birthing hips. I was 8 years old when I first got catcalled by the men who lived in the jail by the park. I was prepubescent when I was made fun of for my flat chest. I was still playing with barbies when I started sticking my small fingers down my throat so that I could be skinny. I was still shopping in the girl's section when a boy thought he could touch me without my consent. I was too young to understand why but old enough to know that my body was meat, it was not my own, just a subject for others to pry and pick.
Now at 19 I can't rememeber a time when my body was not included in the conversation. My grandmother asks me if I've lost weight, I overhear someone talk about how my curves show in my outfit, my doctor insists on making sure I'm tracking what I'm eating on my meds or I'll get "fat." In my relationships I'm only percieved as my body. They love the way I look in a short skirt but hate the way I laugh. But its not only in my personal relationships that my body is what's at stake; my body the MOST IMPORTANT part of who I am, fuck the rest. The government wants to tell me what to do with MY body. They want to stop me from controlling what happens to myself. I can't have an abortion, but I can be catcalled and harassed everywhere I go. I can't take hormones that would alter my body, but I can be objectified and abused in porn or have plastic surgery to fit the white european beauty standard. I can't love who I want, but I can be sexually assualted and told I'm overreacting. They have taken my body from me; she is no longer something I own or have any say on. She is just a mere vessel I live in; I'm an alien in my own flesh.
The worst part is they want me to be sorry as if I'm impeding on something of theirs. I’m sorry for taking up space, I’m sorry for telling you no, I’m sorry for having an opinion, I’m sorry for talking, I’m sorry that I tempted you with my outfit or that I don't want to assimilate to your idea of what a “woman” is. I'm fucking sick of being sorry, I'm tired of apologizing. I’m not sorry anymore and I won't do what you tell me, your ideas and words mean nothing to me, and I will keep fighting tooth and nail to erase them and end your objectification. I will do whatever I want with MY body because it's MINE, not yours! Keep your hands and eyes off my body. It's none of your business what I or anyone else does with THEIR OWN body.
On Bodies
They look at the body, and only see the body, the body is what that person becomes. It’s not about who the person is or what they stand for, it's about what's in their pants and what bathroom they’re using. It's too personal. When they ask for someone's gender, they’re asking them to strip, they want them to be naked. They make the body stand in for the person and define their gender based on what that flesh looks like, they disregard the intricate and complex ways that person defines or creates gender. I don’t think people take into account that everyone creates their own bodies, they invent what their body looks like or how it’s perceived. A person decides if their clothes are baggy or tight, if their hair is short or long, it's all intentional. This goes for transgender and cisgender individuals alike. Every tattoo, every piercing, every shoe, every lipstick has a purpose, that being creating the body. Whatever a person puts on their body really becomes a part of them, not only their selfhood but also their physicallity. Just as my choice of makeup is part of my body, someone's binder is part of their body. Non-transgender individuals hate it because they no longer can sort the person into societies perceived binary genders, they can't label them. They want to put people's bodies in an assigned area and push the idea that transgender people's bodies are intentional and nontransgender people's bodies are unintentional, this just isn't true. Every single person decides how their body is seen; my body is just as intentional as a transgender person's body. Although sadly, not every person can see this. History and society believe they have the right to define someone's gender, that it's all or nothing, a person is this or that. They want to put people in a box and make them into something they can understand, its selfishness. I just want to remind everyone that they are valid. If you are transgender, if you are cisgender, if you are genderfluid, if you are anything you are valid. No matter how your body looks, no matter what’s in your pants or what society tells you that you are, they don't define you, you define yourself. Be intentional, create who you want to be, create your body and take up space.
Content inspired by "Part Bo(d)y, Part __." From the Zine "Camp Trans: Gender Camp 2000 Zine"
• TERFS ARENT REAL
If you’re a “TERF,” (not real feminist bigot) fuck you! Your whole idea of boiling down gender/ socialization of gender to some oversimplified “male = man = patriarchal oppressor misogynist” is just stupid. I would address this in a more formal way, but you don’t deserve that. Everyone is affected by patriarchy in different ways. Trans women, cis women, trans men, cis men, it hurts everyone. All these “TERFs” think that cis women should be the only liberated individuals because they aren’t asked their gender identity, its given to them, and they’re oppressed without their sex ever being questioned. Thus, in simple terms, if you haven’t spent your entire life as a woman, you’re free from the patriarchy. This is a terrible take and doesn’t even examine society as a whole. Like I said earlier misogyny and patriarchy effects EVERYONE and it affects EVERYONE in varying degrees, not all cis women are treated the same (i.e. my experience as a cis white woman is very different than the experiences of cis women of color). Just because the experiences of patriarchy are different for trans women does not make them any less valid or terrifying. Being a “TERF” is just as bad as being the oppressor you claim to hate. Being a “TERF” reinforces these same “socialized gender norms” that you claim to not agree with. You are the problem; you are helping the patriarchy.
Quick Word for the Modern Feminist
As modern feminists it's very important to exam yourself, your beliefs, and what you're standing up for, especially if you are a white woman such as myself. It's easy to get lost in third-wave white feminist nonsense and that’s why you MUST make sure you are not ONLY focusing on problems that effect only you directly. While these problems may also be important, some problems affect or disproportionally affect women of color or trans women that take urgency and importance. Additionally, do not limit your feminism to westernized ideals and europeanized countries. Stay educated, remember intersectionality, and know we are not free from the shackles of the patriarchy until everyone is free.
Forever and Always
I dont speak about what happened to me. I was youthful, clean. Now I am old, dirty. He took my life away from me, he saw me as nothing and nothing is what I became. I think about it often; I see it in my head when a man breathes on my neck or when his hands slide down the silhouette of my body. I am disgusted. I don't want to think about it but it's like a sick impulse or an overcoming reflex. My brain is stuck on it, it’s succumbed to the filth of the whole ordeal. Because of it I cry after sex and I can never tell my partner why, assuming they even ask. I am compliant to my abuser by never explaining my tears in these moments, all I can hope is that I’ll be turned around and my head will be shoved into a pillow so I can fade from existence. I think about how I should’ve spoken up, I should’ve told someone, I could’ve saved other girls, I could’ve saved myself, my self-worth, but instead I sealed my lips and now I’m stuck like this. I hate that this evil has followed me into adulthood, that it still plagues my every move. Because of it I still can’t say no, I still can’t fight back. I still feel like that helpless girl begging god, eyes swollen, on her knees asking for help, asking what she did to deserve it. I don't know what to do. I want to speak about it, to get it off my chest but I can't. I don’t think this terror will ever end, it’s continuous, a finite experience will live infinitely in me.
Did you want it, did you ask for it?
Why didn't you say no? Why didn't you fight back or tell someone? It's not that big of a deal, it happened years ago. Are you sure?
I Don't Exist for you
I don’t exist for your pleasure. I don’t care if what I do is a turn off for you or gives you the ick. You don't like that I smoke or that I cuss, as if I do these things to be attractive to you. Am I not allowed to do things for my own enjoyment? Am I not allowed to exist without you? Who said that you have any say on how I or anyone else lives their lives. You think your opinion matters because you've always been told it does. Take yourself down a peg, you're not god almighty. People don't exist purely for your entertainment. We are allowed to do whatever we please no matter if you find it "attractive" or not. I will still laugh loud, drink, smoke, cuss, and anything else I want to do because I'm not living for you, and I simply don't care if you like me or not.
Easy Pleasure
“pornography may reinforce certain behaviors, including physical and sexual violence toward women, by portraying men’s and women’s pleasure in response to physical and sexual violence in the absence of negative consequences”
“Data collected from samples of service-seeking women who were abused by a romantic partner revealed a positive association between women’s reports of their partner’s pornography use and women’s sexual IPV, rape, and stalking victimization”
"This sexual violence appears to encourage aggression beyond exposure to other forms of violence, which suggests that sex and violence combine in synergistic ways to facilitate aggression against women pornography associated with an increased rated likelihood of rape and the use of force to obtain sex"
"As consumers watch women being treated as sexual objects, they come to form attitudes and behavior that reflect sexual objectification" "As consumers watch women being treated as sexual objects, they come to form attitudes and behavior that reflect sexual objectification"
"The consumption of pornography correlates with a higher likelihood of buying sex, impacting the demand for trafficking victims"
Will you pray when life gets tough? Do you think this time he will hear your prayers?
I take no stance on religion/individuals who believe. I understand why people need it and why they need to feel it. I don't pray anymore but I do still sometimes crave that indoctrinated faithfulness to something bigger than myself. The church provided a destructive love where I found comfort in the faulty arms of god; I was told it was love and I was told it could save me from all my sorrows. I believed it even when my prayers went unanswered, I believed it even when it got worse, I believed it even when I begged god to end it all. I still trusted he was there. I don't think that people who were never deep in christianity can ever fully understand the bond between god and the believer. They went to church on Sundays, maybe Wednesday's, prayed before Christmas dinner, but being fully immersed in the religion is different. This isn't to undermine anyones beliefs/experiences, but I just think that people don’t realize how far it goes, how much it affects your brain chemistry. I haven't believed in years, yet I sometimes catch myself viewing me through the lens of my old religion. I'm haunted by the holy spirit; this is what they mean when they say he lives in your heart forever. The guilt still remains, the feeling of uncleanliness and sin are installed into every ounce of my being, I am trying to unlearn it but it's in my veins. All of who I was simplified: a believer devoted to worship. Sometimes I can't imagine a life without it, I feel like something is missing. It's like an unexplainable drug, an addiction to a promise that'll never be fufilled. I'm happier now, I'm actually free now, but it still calls my name and reminds me of who I was "supposed" to be. That version of me died long ago but I still see her, longing for something more, overcome with the weight of "wordly desire." She makes me want to pray even though it's useless; she just needed someone or something to save her, even if it didn't work, she needed to believe it to survive. This is why I find it so hard to give it all up, to say I don't believe. I don't know if I'll pray again but I may get on my knees and beg for something more.
P.S. I don’t believe in pushing your religion onto other people and I sure as hell don't agree with a mixture of church and state, that’s not what this is about. There is a lot about religion I don't agree with and there is a lot about christianity and its "love" that I hate. However, this piece above is not my critique it's simply just the expression of what is left of my religion in me. If you don't understand it that’s fine.
Love of the Ages
“Wives submit to your husbands.”They taught me to be quiet, to be submissive, to be digestible to men. I shut up and took what I got, I never complained and dealt with what was handed to me.“Sweet girl” is what they called me; a complement I relished in, the price being my lips were sewn shut. I was to be pure, caring, and motherly none of which my brothers or male peers were expected to be. They told me a christian man would marry me and keep me in line with god. The other girls and I dreamed of being housewives (homeschooled and brainwashed from propaganda) and of having kids. I did not realize at this time my father was one of these so-called“great christian men,” that love meant not sparing the rod, love meant condemnation, and love meant silencing yourself to appease your abuser.
"I don’t do politics" bullshit
What exactly do you mean when you say you don’t do politics when everything we do is political. Our lives have become political. All I hear when someone says they "don't do politics" is that it doesn’t affect them so they can't be bothered. Have you no humanity? People are being slaughtered; our country is complacent in a genocide but "you don't do politics." People are enduring hell in our streets and starving but "you don't do politics." Racism and white supremacy are on the rise and clearly being instituted further into government but "you don't do politics." You don't want to talk about "political" things, or moreso human rights, because you simply don't care. Your silence is killing. Now is the time to act; now is the time to be radical. I know it seems scary and I'm aware it's not completely in our hands, but we need to take some sort of action or stance, because without that we are nothing but cogs in the machine destine to spin endlessly as our fellow humans undergo never ending discrimination and suffering. You are the change, you are the beginning of the rest of time, so don't ever tell me "you don't do politics," but instead tell me you have no regard for human life.