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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.
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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? |
