Sunday, July 10, 2016

It's July again, you would be 16

Dearest Phoenix on the WEb,
Your sixteenth birthday was a week and a day ago: July 2. Today was the day five years ago that J. moved out. This is a month of anniversaries, births and deaths. It is also the month of the Amazon. It would have to be, hm? Remembering my strength and ability to affect change in this messed up world is a daily act. I wish I knew how to better organize; I think that Patriarchy depends on my ineptness and of course other's ineptness too.

I'm feeling a mixture of strength and sadness today, so I come to write you again. So much intense hatred in the world, violence and hatred against the most vulnerable. It's what killed you six years ago: one man's hatred and violence and gun. Sometimes I just don't know what to do with my own hate and anger. Taking up arms is not an option for me; I must find my own revolutionary path. That is not easy because men's path is so well grooved, guns so readily available and encouraged, violence so well modeled. Hatred of women has never wavered in spite of good things that women are doing for women. There is still rape and as long as there is still rape, there is still male hatred of women. It's not a less or more thing; like somehow we are doing 'better' in the world because there is less rape or some such argument. If any woman is raped, we all are at risk in men's unstable world. The concept must be eradicated from the human heart and mind. And to do that takes men stepping up and saying enough. The burden is on them.  In the meantime, we Amazons continue to protect and defend.

So, that is my feminesto. As Andrea Dworkin said: I want a 24 hour truce of rape. That's all. 24 hours. Seems like that is doable. Wars succeed in truces: guns laid down. And yet, can men do that? Can rapists put down their weapons? Turn off their porn? Stop prostituting women? For a mere 24 hours?

Not likely. No one seems to be trying because that's what rapists do. They rape.

So, my dear Phoenix, this is my cry onto the WEb: despair and clarity and desire to find action that continues to protect and defend.

I love you. Thank you for your presence through the WEb. It/You never go
unnoticed.
M.E.