Safety Manifesto
Tell me, what would you do if you found out you had cancer,
that your body housed a sickness that might kill you?
Would you ignore it, tell no one as it grew day by date?
Pretend not to be sick, and hope that it would go away?
Or would you nourish your body?
With good food, fresh air, exercise and medicine?
Would you acknowledge your sickness and fight for survival?
What would you do if I told you that this "community" houses cancer?
that besides being creative, subversive, strong, resilient and brave, we are also a microcosm of the society that we claim oppresses us?
What would you do if I named the cancer, called it 'violence',
If I told you that women batter other women, that queers abuse other queers.
That your girlfriend's feminist analysis offers you no protection.
That lesbian love isn't a sanctuary from the patriarchy
This is the dirty family secret that most don't want to discuss.
This is the incest that touches each of us.
I think we need to pull abuse out from the closet.
I think we need to name it, it's violence.
Whether it's tiny daily cruelties that erode your self esteem, however small, or rage punching a hole through the bedroom wall
whether you stay because she'll kill you, or leave because he'll kill himself when you're gone.
I'm heartsick with grieving for the people I love, entangled with partners crazymaking, spirit breaking.
I don't know how to create and maintain safety in a community where everyone knows everyone else.
I believe today's batterers could be tomorrow's healers,
and I believe that the violent among us deserve compassion,
that self-loathing will not heal in isolation.
But made to choose between safety for a survivor and the safety for a perpetrator, I know where I'd place priority.
I don't have the fucking answers.
Somedays I feel exhausted with the weight of my chest, grief chokes the lungs , anger lodges in the shoulders, blocks creative energy.
We're on the very edge of beginning to deal with this shit.
We need an approach both individualistic and anarchistic.
I know of no field guides to these territories, but we enter clarity through the sharing of our stories.
I've learned that the difference between survivorship and victimhood is volume
and my voice has been my compass.
If we are to be a force in the world to rent asunder, the system which feeds power of one over another, then we must recognize in ourselves elements we revile in mainstream heterosexual culture.
We can nurture form, create a culture which names and condemns violence
Which offers support, and a way out for those enduring it, and those inflicting it.
This new culture will be the product of focused dedication, earnest conversation:
I don't want to just survive,
I was to thrive
So tell me, are we a growing, evolving community,
more then just perverts who recognize each other in the bar?
Bold enough to be out and proud, but also bold enough to create a dialog around our broke parts?
Tell me, what would you do if you found out you had cancer,
that your body housed a sickness that might kill you?
I'd treat cancer with whole foods and herbs,
and I'll treat violence first with strong words.