birthing bodies are unimaginably complex. yes, we’re beautiful gods/goddesses or whatever. we’re also swollen footed farting machines that have to wake up every 3 hours to pee an unsatisfying amount of pee. and that’s the easy stuff. we’re fast tracked on trauma healing journeys so we don’t replicate the cycles of violence in our families and our world. we doubt our abilities to parent well while navigating jobs and a world where our bodies our not ours. not in the streets, not in the courts. where capitalism grinds on and works to grind us down.
while on a walk a few weeks ago i thought that maybe women like being pregnant because all of a sudden people treat you well – like you matter and deserve respect. a feeling most of us aren’t used to. i’ve felt unsafe when navigating public spaces alone since i can remember. since i was a kid. it is how i (we) learned to exist and survive in a femme body. while still in this thought- that pregnancy was a protection – i was harassed and followed, 7 months pregnant- made again to feel unsafe in my body. a body that just wanted to travel down the street on a warm day and think.
we are robbing the world of girls and womens and femmes minds. forced to devote brain energy to safety. we could be using it on art, liberation, abolition. but depending on the privilege we individually possess we often/always have to devote it to vigilance.
and yet still, with all of this, there is SO MUCH power and brilliance in femme bodies and brains. we are power despite what they try to strip from us – in the streets, in some of our homes, in the government. they are trying. and we are still here.
so this is a pep talk to me. that we’ll have abortions and babies when we choose to. that our future sees femme energy as our liberator. that there is hope.
