Just try to lock us up.

 I’m enraged by the reality that as a woman/uterus owner in this country, it is my responsibility to protect myself from cis men and their choices. Legally.  It is my job to not get too drunk, not be too pretty or show too much skin, my job to be on the pill, my job to be ready when you are, my job to make sure I do not get raped or assaulted and get pregnant, my job to carry the child, to birth it, to feed it,  raise it, with no help. It’s on me regardless of who put a seed in me or a hand on me. My body is my responsibility and my problem. 

So you would think that it is mine. You’d think that I own my body then, no? 

If I am responsible for everything that happens to it. 

That is not my experience. I identify as a cis/white/bi/woman. I’m 40 years old and I am not a virgin. I'm extremely privileged. And this is what I've been through. 

There have been countless times in my life when I realized that the world and cis men specifically saw my body, as a cis white woman, as property. Something to be owned, used, flaunted, ransacked, praised, criticized, judged, manipulated, abused, and codified for their use, pleasure, or financial security. Just listen to ANY woman of color and this experience is amplified 200%. 

I’m waking up after 2016, after Roe V. Wade becomes past tense, after understanding my experiences being black-out drunk and assaulted, over and over again (and blamed for it.), after my life-threatening experiences while pregnant, after my miscarriage, after the harrowing birth of my two children in my late 30s, after living in the closet for 35 years to protect my financial security, after waking up to the fact that as a woman in the world, freedom is a delusion, after waking up to the fact that I was made to be seen, not heard, to bare children & raise them, and to pleasure men and nothing else, after realizing that I was property of the state --- I learned that in order to free myself – I would have to sell myself. 

No matter how privileged I am. 

In order for a woman to be free in this nation, we have to be willing to prostitute ourselves until we can buy ourselves back. 

We HAVE to break the law to be free in America. 

We must give up the idea of respectability – of pride or prudence. We MUST reject our own acceptance in a patriarchal society, in the faith systems of our childhood. We must rage against the norms of our “gender” and our sexuality and SELL those parts of us that society values to the highest bitter. 

We MUST RAGE AGAINST RACISM and SEXISM. 

WE MUST FIGHT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AT ALL COSTS. 

Until we can buy our freedom. 

Until we can make the laws. 

Until we can finally say:

I. Am.  Not. Owned.  I am not for sale. 

I shall not be your plaything. 

                                      Your vessel. 

I am. Everything you never loved about me. 

I am. Everything that depreciates value in your eyes. 

                              I am cheap. 

I will rage against your values with every fiber of my being. 

Until I resemble a new. 

           Being. 

Free. Un-ownable.  

No value.  to you. 

                               Nothing you needed anyway. 

Now watch me go. 

With pride. 

I. Am. Not yours. 

Anymore. 

I am doing just fucking fine thank you very much. 

Owning 

My own. 

Body. 

My own choice. 

Fuck the Supreme Court. 

Just try to Lock US UP.