My feminist manifesto starts and ends here, with my bones
and flesh. My body. Me.
I am sculpted by the DNA of my ancestors, every ancient wedding
and bedding is here, in my pale skin and my blue eyes. I am the result of
generations of princes and peasants, homesteaders and engineers, doing the
things people do.
I am sculpted by every experience I’ve had. Every push-up,
every mile I’ve run, every hour I’ve spent sitting in conference rooms,
classrooms, and offices. My body tells the story of my life, from the tiny
smallpox scar on my left arm to the ragged edge of my labia stitched together
after childbirth by a clumsy student nurse.
I live in Texas, where the state government routinely
attempts to regulate my body as though it were somehow separate from me. But I
am my body. If it is not mine, then I am not mine. The most basic construct of
humanity, my very concept of self, is considered a political bargaining chip,
my body bartered for the votes of the right-wing evangelical by lobbyist-funded
politicians. My body sold to prop up the corporate take-over of our government
institutions.
The horrifying, opportunistic marriage of religion and
government power is built on a foundation of the objectified bodies of women. I
long ago stopped believing that the scripture had somehow been co-opted by
ill-intentioned power-mongers. Starting with Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib, to
be man’s companion and helpmate, the Bible is an intentional and complete
evisceration of the power, the sanctity, and the agency of women. Not only is the
biblical god male, but woman is removed from god and allowed a relationship
with the sacred only through man. The entire Bible is a road-map for the
destruction of matriarchy, a tool for the oppression and destruction of the
feminine in humanity and in nature.
I can stand in my own space and say “I am an atheist and a
feminist, and I reject this world-view entirely.” Which is true and means almost
nothing. Every aspect of the judeo-christian society we live in is steeped in
intrinsic sexism. Like the Seven Samurai, my existence is defined by fighting.
I am never free from the stress and anger of having to battle the society I
live in for the right to be me, the right to my own flesh, my own life, my own
dreams. I am utterly defined by existing in opposition to the ruling paradigm
of my world. Freedom, I imagine, would be some world where I could be me
without the fight. But I can’t REALLY imagine it because I’ve never seen such a
place, and that’s a problem. Because the anger can start to feel like my friend,
it can define me and rule me and I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to have to
be that. I don’t want to forget the possibility of something else, something
more, something free.
Sometimes when I’m alone, the tears will come and I’ll mourn
all the people I’ve never been, all the losses I’ve suffered. But as I get
older, I cry less. Not because I hurt less – because I hurt more.
