The world owes us nothing; we owe each other the world
I feel like fangirling. I don't know why I'm so completely asdfghjkl; over Ani Difranco for the last few days, but I am. So it's a post filled with music and photos and lyrics. Because she's my bisexual, feminist, activist goddess.
'I love my country, by which I mean I am indebted joyfully to all the people throughout its history, who have fought the government to make right. Where so many cunning sons and daughters, our foremothers and forefathers came singing through slaughter, came through hell and high water so that we could stand here, and behold breathlessly the sight; how a raging river of tears cut a grand canyon of light. Why can't all decent men and women call themselves feminists, out of respect for those that fought for this?'
'I am not an angry girl,
but it seems like I've got everyone fooled
every time I say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger,
and never to their own fear
and imagine you're a girl
just trying to finally come clean
knowing full well they'd prefer you
were dirty and smiling
and I am sorry
but I am not a maiden fair
and I am not a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere'
'I want you to pay me for my beauty
I think it's only right
'cause i have been paying for it
all of my life
I was eleven years old
he was as old as my dad
and he took something from me
I didn't even know that I had
so don't tell me about decency,
don't tell me about pride'
'I would have returned your greeting
if it weren't for the way you were looking at me -
this street is not a market
and I am not a commodity'
'He said "Ani, you've gotten tough" 'cause my tone was curt,
and when I'm approached in a dark alley I don't lift my skirt
in this city self-preservation is a full time occupation
I'm determined to survive on these shores
you know, I don't avert my eyes anymore
in a man's world I am a woman by birth
and after nineteen times around I have found
they will stop at nothing once they know what you are worth'
'When I was 13 years old
I woke up one morning
thighs covered in blood
like a war
like a warning
that I live in a breakable, takeable body
an ever increasingly valuable body
that a woman had come in the night to replace me
I sing sometimes
like my life is at stake
'cause you're only as loud
as the noises you make
I'm learning to laugh as hard
as I can listen
'cause silence
is violence
in women and poor people'
'I had to leave the house of privilege
spend christmas homeless and feeling bad
to learn that privilege is a headache
that you don't know that you don't have
I had to leave the house of conformity
in order to make art
I had to be more or less true
to learn to tell the two apart'
'and if you don't like abortion
don't have an abortion
teach your children
how they can avoid them
but don't treat all women
like they are your children
compassion has many faces
many names
and if men can kill
and be decorated instead of blamed
when a woman called onto mother
can choose to refrain'
'May you never test positive
pregnancy
HIV
may you never be the receptacle of blame
may you never be the scapegoat
for a whole world full of shame
may you never be fighting for your life
and at the same time
have to fight for your name'
'when you grow up surrounded by willful ignorance
you have to believe that mercy has its own country
and that it's round and borderless
and then you have to grow wings
and rise above it all'
I'm no heroine
at least, not last time I checked
I'm too easy to roll over
I'm too easy to wreck
I just write about
what I should have done
I just sing
what I wish I could say
and hope somewhere
some woman hears my music
and it helps her through her day
cause some guy designed
these shoes I use to walk around
some big man's business turns a profit
every time I lay my money down
some guy designed the room I'm standing in
another built it with his own tools
who says I like right angles?
these are not my laws
there are not my rules
I'm no heroine
I still answer to the other half of the race
I don't fool myself
like I fool you
I don't have the power
we just don't run this place
'I love my country, by which I mean I am indebted joyfully to all the people throughout its history, who have fought the government to make right. Where so many cunning sons and daughters, our foremothers and forefathers came singing through slaughter, came through hell and high water so that we could stand here, and behold breathlessly the sight; how a raging river of tears cut a grand canyon of light. Why can't all decent men and women call themselves feminists, out of respect for those that fought for this?'
'I am not an angry girl,
but it seems like I've got everyone fooled
every time I say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger,
and never to their own fear
and imagine you're a girl
just trying to finally come clean
knowing full well they'd prefer you
were dirty and smiling
and I am sorry
but I am not a maiden fair
and I am not a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere'
'I want you to pay me for my beauty
I think it's only right
'cause i have been paying for it
all of my life
I was eleven years old
he was as old as my dad
and he took something from me
I didn't even know that I had
so don't tell me about decency,
don't tell me about pride'
'I would have returned your greeting
if it weren't for the way you were looking at me -
this street is not a market
and I am not a commodity'
'He said "Ani, you've gotten tough" 'cause my tone was curt,
and when I'm approached in a dark alley I don't lift my skirt
in this city self-preservation is a full time occupation
I'm determined to survive on these shores
you know, I don't avert my eyes anymore
in a man's world I am a woman by birth
and after nineteen times around I have found
they will stop at nothing once they know what you are worth'
'When I was 13 years old
I woke up one morning
thighs covered in blood
like a war
like a warning
that I live in a breakable, takeable body
an ever increasingly valuable body
that a woman had come in the night to replace me
I sing sometimes
like my life is at stake
'cause you're only as loud
as the noises you make
I'm learning to laugh as hard
as I can listen
'cause silence
is violence
in women and poor people'
'I had to leave the house of privilege
spend christmas homeless and feeling bad
to learn that privilege is a headache
that you don't know that you don't have
I had to leave the house of conformity
in order to make art
I had to be more or less true
to learn to tell the two apart'
'and if you don't like abortion
don't have an abortion
teach your children
how they can avoid them
but don't treat all women
like they are your children
compassion has many faces
many names
and if men can kill
and be decorated instead of blamed
when a woman called onto mother
can choose to refrain'
'May you never test positive
pregnancy
HIV
may you never be the receptacle of blame
may you never be the scapegoat
for a whole world full of shame
may you never be fighting for your life
and at the same time
have to fight for your name'
'when you grow up surrounded by willful ignorance
you have to believe that mercy has its own country
and that it's round and borderless
and then you have to grow wings
and rise above it all'
I'm no heroine
at least, not last time I checked
I'm too easy to roll over
I'm too easy to wreck
I just write about
what I should have done
I just sing
what I wish I could say
and hope somewhere
some woman hears my music
and it helps her through her day
cause some guy designed
these shoes I use to walk around
some big man's business turns a profit
every time I lay my money down
some guy designed the room I'm standing in
another built it with his own tools
who says I like right angles?
these are not my laws
there are not my rules
I'm no heroine
I still answer to the other half of the race
I don't fool myself
like I fool you
I don't have the power
we just don't run this place