LJIdol Week 8: No Comment
They called themselves revolutionaries with their split-knuckled hands raised. They pledged loyalty to a fascist who shouted, “Make America Great Again! We’re gonna grab them by the pussy!” Their wide blood-shot eyes were feverish and blind to the hypocrisy which smelled of burning iron.
They lurked outside the public restrooms with ham-fisted fingers and flaring nostrils. They bludgeoned a woman who is trans as they spit insults. They tore at her clothes looking for offending genitalia, as they shouted about the safety of their women.
A blonde college boy offered to walk a co-ed who had too much to drink home. She got sick and passed out behind a dumpster, where two men witnessed that blond-haired boy raping the unconscious girl. They wrote that he was an athlete, and they wrote about how his life would be ruined if he were imprisoned. They sneered and hissed, “She was asking for it by wearing that skirt and imbibing.”
So which is it, are you concerned for the safety of women, or the safety of a sex offender? They made no comment.
They cheered when a ban on travel for people who practiced Islam took effect. They crowded around the local mosque with their white skins glowing in the firelight as the structure burned to the ground. Men chased women who wore hijab through the streets. They wrapped their arms around their throats and pulled the fabric from their heads.
A child attended private Catholic school. The favorite teacher was a habit-clad nun. They picked their child up from a day of indoctrination, smug their offsprings’ souls would be admitted to a heaven they always dreamed about. They warmly greeted the Sisters, and on Sundays they prayed to a woman in blue wearing a white veil.
So, which is it, are you angry women cover their hair or angry the woman is not Christian? They made no comment.
They elected a good ol' boy from Idaho who addressed women’s access to reproductive healthcare. He asked a medical consultant if a pregnant woman could swallow a camera, so a doctor could determine her “situation” from afar. He was fascinated when the medical professional explained, no, the esophagus is not connected to the womb. They took away our clinics because women sought safe abortions.
A young mother applies for government assistance when the father chose not to be a part of the family he helped create. She worked a full-time job and still, there is not enough. They voted to defund the programs which helped the child gain access to healthcare. They voted to defund the programs which allowed this woman to feed herself and her child.
So, which is it, do you want babies to be born, or do you want babies to be raised? They made no comment.
Before they burned the history books, I read the intelligentsia thought a woman's "wandering uterus" caused panic disorders, schizophrenia, and general non-compliance. Cures included hitting her abdomen with high pressured water, institutionalization, or old fashioned pregnancy, one after the other to keep the uterus occupied and stable. This is how they kept them home, and silent, and indentured.
Now, the cut-wife lives secluded across the moors or up the mountains. No one says her name, and she never comes into town. Everyone turns their eye elsewhere when a young girl walks that direction. She doesn’t always come home again.
Now, grandmothers whisper in dim rooms behind closed curtains to dampen a stray word that might lilt past her granddaughter’s ear on how to be a woman in this world.
Now, the women gather in red tents under full moons and ask each other, “How did you persist?”
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