acid-burned damage, what you see if you look at the surface
of violence against women. Rape plays a role in every form of
sexual exploitation and abuse. Rape happens everywhere and
it happens al the time and to females of al ages. Rape is
inescapable for women. The act, the attempt, the threat - the
three dynamics of a rape culture - touch 100 percent of us.
Heartbreak
How did I become who I am? I have a heart easily hurt. I
believed that cruelty was most often caused by ignorance.
I thought that if everybody knew, everything would be different. I was a silly child who believed in the revolution. I was torn to pieces by segregation and Vietnam. Apartheid broke
my heart. Apartheid in Saudi Arabia still breaks my heart.
I don’t understand why every story about rising oil prices does
not come with an addendum about the domestic imprisonment of women in the Gulf states. I can’t be bought or intimidated because I’m already cut down the middle. I walk
with women whispering in my ears. Every time I cry there’s a
name at ached to each tear.
My ideology is simple and left: I believe in redistributing
the wealth; everyone should have food and health care, shelter
and safety; it’s not right to hurt and deprive people so that
they become prostitutes and thieves.
What I’ve learned is that women suffer from terrible shame
and the shame comes from having been complicit in abuse
because one wants to live. Middle-class women rarely understand how complicit they are unless they’ve experienced torture,
usually in the home; prostituting women know that every
breath is bought by turning oneself inside out so that the
blood covers the skin; the skin is ripped; one watches the
world like a hunted animal on al fours in the darkest part of
every night.
There is nothing redemptive about pain.
Love requires an inner fragility that few women can afford.
Women want to be loved, not to love, because to be loved
requires nothing. Suppose that her love brought him into
existence and without it he is nothing.
Men are shits and take pride in it.
Only the toughest among women wil make the necessary
next moves, the revolutionary moves, and among prostituted
women one finds the toughest if not always the best. If prostituted women worked together to end male supremacy, it would end.
