WARNING: Discussion of rape, assault, misogyny, misogynistic slurs, and other violence.
A week ago, my college campus participated in the 1 Billion Rising rally meant to raise awareness for women subjected to physical, emotional, and sexual violence. I was invited to perform a monologue I had been cast in in a student production of the Vagina Monologues this coming April, and I had to get off book between the day I was asked and the day I was to perform -- about a week and a half's span of time.
The monologue that I'd been cast for was...grueling to say the least. "My Vagina Was My Village" is the story of a woman violated by soldiers and doctors as part of systematic civil war tactics in Eastern Europe. I put off memorizing it until the absolute last minute, so I found myself sitting up at four in the morning, typing out the words over and over and over again and then rehearsing them until I got them right. I had to, I thought, if I did anything at all with my college career, this was it. I needed to get this right, in honor of the women who survived that kind of violence, and women all over who had.
I'm one of the lucky 66% of women who have not been violated. I don't know firsthand what it's like to go through the kind of hell one billion of my sisters have gone through, so I know there are parts I can never understand -- things that will, hopefully, always be incomprehensible to me.
So I owed it to those billion women who had to get this monologue right. It scared the shit out of me to do it, not to do it -- I was just afraid.
But I did what I could, memorized what I could, and snatched up a fitful two-and-a-half hours of sleep before that day's early morning class. Maybe it was spending the night buried in that monologue, but I wasn't afraid anymore. I had a mission, something important that I needed to do, and I was going to do it, come hell or high water.
I advertised the rally to a girl in my class, a deeply religious Jewish girl who was uncomfortable with the word 'vagina.' And it got me thinking about vaginas, about what they mean, and about the power of language.
So I talked to her about it. I didn't shy away from saying vagina, and I think I made a good portion of our incoming classmates uncomfortable with how easily I said the word.
But I have to be easy about the word, because words have power, and girl-world-words either get laughed at or are symbols of misogyny, objectification and violence. Cunt, pussy, twat -- all insults. Twat for someone who is irritating and ignorant, pussy for weak and unmasculine and cowardly. Cunt is worst; calling someone "cunt" doesn't even have a distinct definition. But it's the worst, dirtiest word we know -- because of course being linked to vaginas is the most terrible thing in the world.
I know these words have power, but I refuse to give them power over me.
I have a vagina. I refuse to be silent about the issues that affect my vagina. 1 in 3 women worldwide have been assaulted, violated, abused, and that 1 in 3 shot that it'll be me someday is unacceptable. I wouldn't willingly do something that only had a 66% success rate, but, being a woman with a vagina, it's impossible to escape. And I've got the luck of being white, middle class, cis, and hetero-passing. The numbers are far worse for trans* women, women of color, and poor women.
And yet, I would be the immediate face of feminism, because I'm relatively unintimidating -- I'm less different from the old-white-men kyriarchy than others may be, and that kyriarchy would be more comfortable dealing with me.
My responsibility, then, is to use this position to speak to that kyriarchy, and to defer to people with experience in the oppressions I've been privileged to avoid. My feminism needs to be one of connexion, of boosting the radio signal for the women whose voices don't get heard, for whatever reason.
That's the attitude I was wearing when I went into the One Billion Rising event, realizing that here, here I had a chance to connect to people on a visceral level to remind them of what the point is -- that, as the poster reads, "One billion women violated is an atrocity; one billion women dancing is a revolution." My reason for being there was to remind them of the atrocity, of the very worst kinds of abuses.
But fear took me again before I had to mount the stage and perform -- because what if I screwed this up? What if I offended someone, or made someone feel unsafe? I doubted I could forgive myself.
Still, there was no turning back then, so I began.
Within four lines, I made my first mistake. By a third of the way through, the entire left side of my body was shuddering uncontrollably. My voice broke halfway through, and I needed to take instants that felt like forevers to compose myself.
But I finished. I did what I set out to do when I agreed to perform at the rally, and I dismounted the stage still shaking, tears in my eyes not from the stress of being onstage, but the monologue I was performing. For one moment, one extended second, my heart broke and my body responded to the words I was saying -- I was afraid for these women who had been violated, and afraid for a long moment that it would happen to me.
It's one of the moments in my college experience that I will never forget. That feeling of fear isn't something I've ever had to live with -- I've never been afraid, despite the statistics and systemic oppressions stacked against me. But in that moment, I was terrified, wide-eyed and shaking. In that moment, I think I caught a glimpse of a world beyond my privileges, and it scared the living hell out of me.
And that fear, I think, has galvanized me. It's made my feminism steadier, surer. It's made me think about the things I say, the kinds of behavior I let myself see as acceptable. It's made me willing to get angry instead of afraid, and for that, I'm thankful.
I had to leave the rally early to go to work, but I'd say it was the most productive Valentine's Day I've ever had.
No comments:
Post a Comment