QotD: “Gender is who gets to be human, and who gets hurt”

The social practice of Gendering is the method by which women are oppressed. The man-made construction of how women should look, how women should behave, how women should speak, how women should walk, how women should dress, how women should be treated, how women should be used, how women should be abused: only man is huMAN. Woman is less than.

Anti-Porn Feminists

Gender is not some cosmic yin/yang; it’s a fist, and the flesh that bruises. Gender is who gets to be human, and who gets hurt.

Women live inside the barricade of sexual terrorism. Men live outside the barricade of sexual terrorism. In fact, men built that barricade. Fist by fist, and fuck by fuck. It is exactly those violent violating practices that construct a class of people called “women.” That is what men do to break us, and to keep us broken. And that is what gender is: the breaking, and the broken.

Lierre Keith

(Found at the Bewilderness)

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No… That’s not the Right Word, Either

I didn’t say the right thing. I could see that. He had been watching me so intently, his mouth curved in a slight smile that I didn’t recognize. His head forward, face down a little, tilted, as if he was presenting his cheekbone to me. Looking, up, almost, at me from the corners of his eyes. His eyes.

It was a very generous gift, I said so. And added, with a smile of pride, enamored, that he had very good boyfriend skills. Imagine me, my smile said, with such a fine catch as you!

It wasn’t the right thing.

I made mental notes, and the next time I touched on how well his mother had reared him, to give such thoughtful and unique gifts. They were just perfect. Because, they were. And he knew it, his eyes glowed as he watched me unwrap.

But, it wasn’t his mother. That wasn’t the right thing. That, very much, was not the right thing, said the involuntary tightening at the corners of his lips. The deadening of his eyes.

On the next occasion, I could tell by the way his eyes roamed over the gifts, almost caressing them, that a great deal of thought had gone into his selections. That he had thought deeply of me, of what I wanted most, when he made his purchases. I complimented his memory and attention to detail. Both very compliment-worthy attributes, but no, not the right things. Not the right words.

As a class, the word is appropriation. Those males, tired of their self-compliance to gender socialization, who decide it must be easier to be a woman. Who decide they can be better women than they were men. They re-define and re-word and re-create and re-claim. They appropriate.

As an individual, the word is inhabitation. He doesn’t want to be like me. He wants to be me. He wants to occupy me, my life, who I am.

Those gifts, they were never for me. They were for him. For his inhabitation of me.