kavanaugh was confirmed to the u.s. supreme court after all.
i wish i had more to say about it. i wish i could even be surprised, but iām not. so many of us arenāt.
who do you think hurts worse, the women blindsided by this betrayal, or the women who see this as one more piece of evidence that this is not a world meant for us?
it was inevitable. i donāt know why i hoped against hope. i donāt know why i believed that maybe justice could be served. they may use a womanās face to represent justice, but they spit in a womanās face when she tries to enforce it.
itās gotten so hollow, this heart of mine, but it still aches when i see the grief upon the faces of women i love, as we know exactly what this means: we mean very little in the eyes of society.
this is a country that hates women. this is a country that cannot stand the very notion that women are people, and will do its best to remind us at any time that what rights we have are tenuous and unstable and could be revoked whenever.
and even with rights, our social standing means nothing. our word against his? his will always win out. our spaces over theirs? theirs will always win out. we are told, in no uncertain terms, that itād behoove us to hide ourselves in the shadows, or to run away completely.
but the worst part is knowing we can never run away from misogyny, for there is no country to flee to, no land where weāre safe. there is no utopia where women can be protected, only places where women are sometimes treated a little better - depending on the woman.
we will always be targets. always, always, always.
and people will always celebrate our destruction. always, always, always.
there is that saying that goes around, that many women take to heart: we are the granddaughters of the witches you couldnāt burn.
what about the daughters of these witches? did they ever think the world would be like this? when they bore daughters of their own, swaddled and sleepy-eyed, did they ever fear that another era of witch hunting would be in their futures?
maybe they believed in the resilience of women, across time and history. times where women had to poison themselves to be free of pregnancies, where women had to invent languages of their own to be able to read and write, where women were kept in harems and in shackles and in marriages to men too old to walk when they themselves had just started bleeding.
i, too, believe in the resilience of women - but i hate that our strength must come from bearing a hundred crosses. we are formidable, but only because of what we withstand. when will we be recognized on the merit of what we built, rather than what we survive?
itās a dark day for women, but no darker than any other day, i think. itās easy to forget that women suffer everywhere. so many crimes against women that go unnoticed simply because who cares?
who cares about the girls in villages, only ever seen as the cup half-empty compared to their brothers, these daughters valued less than their dowries?
who cares about the women in brothels, with their heads on their pillows, in a constant state of dreaming so they can get through the nightmare of reality?
who cares about the elders in nursing homes, abused and abandoned by the very children they helped create, their milk and their blood meaning nothing in the end?
are they really crimes when you donāt even consider us human enough to be victims? are they really crimes when theyāre so commonplace, you canāt imagine putting down laws to prevent them?
i donāt know where iām going with this. i write and i write and i write, and i never feel closer to answers. i never feel closer to a deeper understanding, a peace of mind; i only feel closer to rage, as if my despondence is a seed preparing to break free of the soil.
i stop and i ask myself, is my rage pointless? is my rage impotent? is my rage hopeless? i am only one woman among many.
but when i write, i like to believe that i reach out to these many women, and i join them; and as powerless as i feel and as crushed as my spirits are, they will help heal me.
they weld the pieces of me back together until i am whole again. when their hearts fracture, i use the same technique that i was taught, from one sister to another.
when i see new faces around, sore and bleeding, i will begin the cycle anew and show them that our strength isnāt only in whatever pain we can endure: that we can build things, too. wonderful things, that need not matter in the eyes of men to be good.
we have never built a country of our own, but instead we build connections. we hold group meetings, make mailing lists, call each other and write to each other and form our own homes within each other.
under shrouds of darkness, weāll light each otherās candles. to lead each other, to honor each other, to serve as signals to each other. when we are lost at sea, we will find the beacon, one way or another.
they will always try to bring us down in any way they can. always, always, always.
but against all odds, weāll always be here.
