|
VI. TARGET OF ASSAULT
Fashions in women's physical form have come
and gone
through the centuries.
But, since women's suffrage, in the 1920's,
when the men on top
suffered women to have the vote,
a token of political power,
the most fashionable belly for a woman
is the one that you cannot see.
The belly is woman's power center, both as
a symbol
and in physical fact.
Have you noticed that advertising
for women's undergarments
reads like an FBI directive
on suppressing foreign insurgents?
(Achieve firm control,
obtain total control;
eliminate undesirable elements.)
The belly is woman's power center, both as
a symbol
and in physical fact.
You think I'm just talking about girdles? I'm not
just talking about girdles.
You think I'm just talking about girdles? I'm not just talking
about girdles.
I'm talking about the news—
- Every 12 seconds another husband or boyfriend
hits a woman. Forty percent of battered women are assaulted during
pregnancy, with the offenders hitting and kicking the women's
bellies.
- In the United States, a woman is raped every
three and one-half minutes.
- Each year 7 billion dollars is spent on pornography,
which most frequently brutalizes women's bellies.
- Birth by Cesarian section and hysterectomy
are the most common major surgeries performed in the United States.
- Wombs are removed from nearly one million
women each year. One study concluded that more than 90% of recommended
hysterectomies were unnecessary.
- Another study estimates that half of the
nearly 1 million C-sections performed annually in the U.S. are
unnecessary.
- Repro-tech-fetal monitoring, embryo transfer,
test-tube fertilization, and artificial wombs-and legal restrictions
on abortion are eliminating women's authority in childbirth.
...These are the current events.
We also remember in our bones,
in our bloods,
in the memory of our cells,
our sisters' history.
The attempt to eradicate the female soul
is not a peaceful proposition.
It is massacre. It is slaughter. It requires mutilation.
For three hundred European years,
from the 15th through the 17th centuries,
the fathers of church and state eliminated nine million persons,
mostly women, mostly women, mostly women wise
in the ways of midwifery and healing.
The men on top burned the women,
hung them, tortured them
with maniacal invention.
One favored form of torture
was forcing water down a woman's gullet,
then beating on her bloated belly
until her innards burst.
The attempt to eradicate the female soul
is not a peaceful proposition.
It does not even require the extraordinary Inquisition.
As the Muslim women and girls of Bosnia
can tell us,
ordinary war will do.
|
|
VII. GUTSY WOMEN
Shhhhh!
In polite company, we don't
see, hear, feel, or talk about woman's belly.
Well, now that we've removed woman's gut
from our verbal and visual vocabulary,
where are the words for gutsy women?
Where are the words for soul-strong women?
Women alive and thriving, self-defining;
words neither diminutive, nor derivative,
nor de-meaning
We have—
hero and heroine
master and mistress
governor and governess
priest and priestess
Who are these women, anyway-
sort of, kind of, excuse me, but not really men?
Where are the given names of soul-strong women
claiming the framework in which to name ourselves?
We have—
Paul and Paulette
George and Georgette
Harry and Harriet
John and Jeanette
Where are the family names of soul-strong
women?
kin to the lineage of women arriving through time
We go by—
Anderson and Johnson
Harrison and Harriman
Stevenson and Thompson
as if we were sons of men in drag, or property,
or slaves bearing our masters' name-brand.
Where are the words for soul-strong women?
Words almost lost from the language,
cut from our mother's tongue-
hidden in dictionary whispers, twisted.
We have—
hussy: in its origin, a female head of household;
prude: in its origin, a wise and good woman;
spinster:in its origin, a woman spinning;
scold: in its origin, poet.
Where are the words for women
whose being matters in this world?
In its origin, mann meant humans as
a whole.
Some men still claim that "man" names all of humankind.
So let them tell me this:
How does man, being a mammal, breast-feed his young?
How does man give life to birth?
How does man, in these times of trial,
nourish and sustain this earth?
|
