To My Sisters, by Monica Day

I heard this poem recited on a recording of an intensive for women & the power of it hit me so hard I had to pull my car to the side of the road & cry for 5 minutes. I cried again reading it on her website 

I believe we are at a new crossroads as women that *includes* absolute gratitude for the Feminist Movements that have come before; that *includes* absolute gratitude & Respect for the women who are our mothers & grandmothers & aunts & great grandmothers (and their male allies), and ALL that it took for those women to rise & create the future we live in now.

AND, it *includes* the next step, which is so vulnerable: to take each other's hands; to own, as she says, that 'we are the motherloving majority' & that our rights cannot be taken from us when we are truly united....

__________________________

To My Sisters, By Monica Day

*as performed at the Unite Against the War on Women rally in Harrisburg on 4.28.12.

Welcome my sisters
to Unite Against the War on Women
I come here today based on just one word, UNITE
I come here to give voice to our struggles, our victories, our defeats
I come here in celebration of our potential
in memory our ancestors
in honor of our children

I come in love

But I also come to this unique point in time
when the present feels like the past
when the future feels riddled with
ancient problems re-surfacing

and if I am to also come in truth
then I must say, I come in anger
in disappointment
I come shaking my head

at how much we are forgetting
at how much we are willing to give up
at how we take the same bait, and have the same fight,
over and over

at how we have drawn the same old battle lines
along the contours of genitalia
as if this identifies friends and enemies with any accuracy
at how we continue to be distracted by bullies
at how we continue to act as if our rights can be taken

we are the motherloving majority
in fact, if you consider that every single human being on this planet
was delivered through the legs
held by the hands
nursed at the breast
loved by the heart
of one of us
then we are already the ones in charge

and I can’t fathom
why

we continue to ask permission
why
we feel obliged to uphold this system
why
we fight when we have already won
why
we do not see our power
why
we entertain fools
why
we turn on each other

the first person who called me a slut
was not a famous radio personality
or a member of Congress
or even a boy I liked at school
but rather it was the girl
who liked the boy
I liked at school

that’s right

we are sisters to a point
that point usually stops
at the foot of a man
whatever man wears our collar
on the third finger of his left hand
our sisterhood ends on the button
that secures his jeans

let’s be honest
my sisters
it is our relationship with one another
that is tenuous
our genitalia doesn’t define our friendship
anymore than it defines this
supposed war

so let’s stop hiding behind it

let’s admit
that we’re not so sure of one another

let’s admit
that it’s easier to go to war
than it is to love

let’s admit
that it’s more familiar to fight for our freedom
than it is to live with it

let’s admit
that we may have learned how to survive
but we have not yet
learned how to thrive

let’s admit
that we do not
see ourselves clearly
when we look in the mirror

let’s admit
that the answer is not in Washington DC
or in this Capital Building
but it is in our homes
in our bedrooms
among one another

it is in our ability to stop cutting each other off
and leaving each other out
and judging each other’s choices
and letting each other struggle
and forgetting who we are

it is in our willingness to
claim our wisdom
own our sex
languish in our vulnerability

to teach what we know about love
and know there is enough to go around

our strength lies in remembering
that we know how our bodies work
that we can say ‘no’ with force
and ‘yes’ with abandon
and we can speak the direct truth

and we know with undeniable certainty
that no law, no declaration, no panel, no religion
has enough power to stand against us when we are truly united

and we can admit that if we are falling
it is not because we got pushed down

but because we let go
of each other’s hands

© Monica Day

(http://www.thesensuallife.com/writing/to-my-sisters/)

I don't have much contact with mainstream media or reports on which famous people are doing what, so I may be way behind the times here...
But after I read about this over on Peerie Flooers, I am just loving the Pinkett-Smith family that much more:

On letting their daughter, Willow, shave her head, Jada Pinkett-Smith responded:  

"The question why I would LET Willow cut her hair. First the LET must be challenged. This is a world where women, girls are constantly reminded that they don't belong to themselves; that their bodies are not their own, nor their power, or self determination. I made a promise to endow my little girl with the power to always know that her body, spirit, and her mind are HER domain. Willow cut her hair because her beauty, her value, her worth is not measured by the length of her hair. It's also a statement that claims that even little girls have the RIGHT to own themselves and should not be a slave to even their mother's deepest insecurities, hopes, and desires. Even little girls should not be a slave to the preconceived ideas of what a culture believes a little girl should be."
(source)

And Will Smith said:

"We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it's like how can you teach her that you're in control of her body? If I teach her that I'm in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she's going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She can't cut my hair but that's her hair. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she's going out with a command that is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives."
(source)

Thank freakin' G-d for parents willing to challenge themselves (and all of us in the process) to allow their children to be more than a reflection of themselves!

I would go further, and say we must teach both our daughters *and* sons that their bodies are their own, that their thoughts are their own, that they need not conform to societal 'norms' *nor* break them in simple rebellion - they are truly their own people.  Perfect & perfectly loved - for their own sake.

Not for us the approve or disapprove, not for our profit & gain, and not for furthering our ideals & ideas.

For.  Their.  Own.  Sake.

As Utah Phillips said in a speech he gave at the Washington State Young Writers Conference:  "You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource.  Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources?!  Have you seen a strip mine?  Have you seen a clear cut in the forest?  Have you seen a polluted river?  Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource!  They're going to strip mine your soul.  They're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist, because the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked!"

Over It .or. I have Nothing More to Add

Over It
-by Eve Ensler

I am over rape.

I am over rape culture, rape mentality, rape pages on Facebook.
I am over the thousands of people who signed those pages with their real names without shame.
I am over people demanding their right to rape pages, and calling it freedom of speech or justifying it as a joke.

I am over people not understanding that rape is not a joke and I am over being told I don't have a sense of humor, and women don't have a sense of humor, when most women I know (and I know a lot) are really fucking funny. We just don't think that uninvited penises up our anus, or our vagina is a laugh riot.

I am over how long it seems to take anyone to ever respond to rape.
I am over Facebook taking weeks to take down rape pages.

I am over the hundreds of thousands of women in Congo still waiting for the rapes to end and the rapists to be held accountable.
I am over the thousands of women in Bosnia, Burma, Pakistan, South Africa, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, you name a place, still waiting for justice.

I am over rape happening in broad daylight.

I am over the 207 clinics in Ecuador supported by the government that are capturing, raping, and torturing lesbians to make them straight.

I am over one in three women in the U.S military (Happy Veterans Day!) getting raped by their so-called "comrades."

I am over the forces that deny women who have been raped the right to have an abortion.

I am over the fact that after four women came forward with allegations that Herman Cain groped them and grabbed them and humiliated them, he is still running for the President of the United States.
And I'm over CNBC debate host Maria Bartiromo getting booed when she asked him about it. She was booed, not Herman Cain.

Which reminds me, I am so over the students at Penn State who protested the justice system instead of the alleged rapist pedophile of at least 8 boys, or his boss Joe Paterno, who did nothing to protect those children after knowing what was happening to them.

I am over rape victims becoming re-raped when they go public.

I am over starving Somalian women being raped at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, and I am over women getting raped at Occupy Wall Street and being quiet about it because they were protecting a movement which is fighting to end the pillaging and raping of the economy and the earth, as if the rape of their bodies was something separate.

I am over women still being silent about rape, because they are made to believe it's their fault or they did something to make it happen.

I am over violence against women not being a #1 international priority when one out of three women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime -- the destruction and muting and undermining of women is the destruction of life itself.

No women, no future, duh.

I am over this rape culture where the privileged with political and physical and economic might, take what and who they want, when they want it, as much as they want, any time they want it.
I am over the endless resurrection of the careers of rapists and sexual exploiters -- film directors, world leaders, corporate executives, movie stars, athletes -- while the lives of the women they violated are permanently destroyed, often forcing them to live in social and emotional exile.

I am over the passivity of good men. Where the hell are you?
You live with us, make love with us, father us, befriend us, brother us, get nurtured and mothered and eternally supported by us, so why aren't you standing with us? Why aren't you driven to the point of madness and action by the rape and humiliation of us?

I am over years and years of being over rape.

And thinking about rape every day of my life since I was 5-years-old.

And getting sick from rape, and depressed from rape, and enraged by rape.

And reading my insanely crowded inbox of rape horror stories every hour of every single day.

I am over being polite about rape. It's been too long now, we have been too understanding.

We need to OCCUPYRAPE in every school, park, radio, TV station, household, office, factory, refugee camp, military base, back room, night club, alleyway, courtroom, UN office. We need people to truly try and imagine -- once and for all -- what it feels like to have your body invaded, your mind splintered, your soul shattered. We need to let our rage and our compassion connect us so we can change the paradigm of global rape.

There are approximately one billion women on the planet who have been violated.

ONE BILLION WOMEN.

The time is now. Prepare for the escalation.

Today it begins, moving toward February 14, 2013, when one billion women will rise to end rape.
Because we are over it.

Spread the word:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/over-it_b_1089013.html

If You Want to Change the World

If you want to change the world… love a woman-really love her.
Find the one who calls to your soul, who doesn’t make sense.
Throw away your check list and put your ear to her heart and listen.
Hear the names, the prayers, the songs of every living thing-
every winged one, every furry and scaled one,
every underground and underwater one, every green and flowering one,
every not yet born and dying one…
Hear their melancholy praises back to the One who gave them life.
If you haven’t heard your own name yet, you haven’t listened long enough.
If your eyes aren’t filled with tears, if you aren’t bowing at her feet,
you haven’t ever grieved having almost lost her.

If you want to change the world… love a woman-one woman
beyond yourself, beyond desire and reason,
beyond your male preferences for youth, beauty and variety
and all your superficial concepts of freedom.
We have given ourselves so many choices
we have forgotten that true liberation
comes from standing in the middle of the soul’s fire
and burning through our resistance to Love.
There is only one Goddess.
Look into Her eyes and see-really see
if she is the one to bring the axe to your head.
If not, walk away. Right now.
Don’t waste time “trying.”
Know that your decision has nothing to do with her
because ultimately it’s not with who,
but when we choose to surrender.

If you want to change the world… love a woman.
Love her for life-beyond your fear of death,
beyond your fear of being manipulated
by the Mother inside your head.
Don’t tell her you’re willing to die for her.
Say you’re willing to LIVE with her,
plant trees with her and watch them grow.
Be her hero by telling her how beautiful she is in her vulnerable majesty,
by helping her to remember every day that she IS Goddess
through your adoration and devotion.

If you want to change the world… love a woman
in all her faces, through all her seasons
and she will heal you of your schizophrenia-
your double-mindedness and half-heartedness
which keeps your Spirit and body separate-
which keeps you alone and always looking outside your Self
for something to make your life worth living.
There will always be another woman.
Soon the new shiny one will become the old dull one
and you’ll grow restless again, trading in women like cars,
trading in the Goddess for the latest object of your desire.
Man doesn’t need any more choices.
What man needs is Woman, the Way of the Feminine,
of Patience and Compassion, non-seeking, non-doing,
of breathing in one place and sinking deep intertwining roots
strong enough to hold the Earth together
while she shakes off the cement and steel from her skin.

If you want to change the world… love a woman, just one woman .
Love and protect her as if she is the last holy vessel.
Love her through her fear of abandonment
which she has been holding for all of humanity.
No, the wound is not hers to heal alone.
No, she is not weak in her codependence.

If you want to change the world… love a woman
all the way through
until she believes you,
until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art, her passion,
her wildness have returned to her-
until she is a force of love more powerful
than all the political media demons who seek to devalue and destroy her.

If you want to change the world,
lay down your causes, your guns and protest signs.
Lay down your inner war, your righteous anger
and love a woman…
beyond all of your striving for greatness,
beyond your tenacious quest for enlightenment.
The holy grail stands before you
if you would only take her in your arms
and let go of searching for something beyond this intimacy.

What if peace is a dream which can only be re-membered
through the heart of Woman?
What if a man’s love for Woman, the Way of the Feminine
is the key to opening Her heart?

If you want to change the world…love a woman
to the depths of your shadow,
to the highest reaches of your Being,
back to the Garden where you first met her,
to the gateway of the rainbow realm
where you walk through together as Light as One,
to the point of no return,
to the ends and the beginning of a new Earth.

--Lisa Citore