political-linguaphile:
Things no one tells you:
- Having sex doesn’t make you a whore.
- Not having sex doesn’t make you a saint.
- You don’t have to have kids if you don’t want to.
- You are the only person who has rights over your body.
- You are no one to judge others.
- “Femininity” is not anti-feminist.
- Verbal harassment is not flattery.
- If something makes you uncomfortable, you don’t have to endure it.
- You don’t owe anything to anyone.
(Source: viva-la-vulva-zine)
(Originally from Viva La Vulva!, Reblogged from Change how you see, not how you look.)
“these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top”
— “hips”, by lucille clifton
There have always been women who remember the old ways.
Women who hold within them
the memory of a time
in the very beginning
when women were honored.
Women who refuse
to worship the gods,
to learn the language,
to take the names
of the fathers.
Women who refuse to twist
their female bodies out of shape
to fit into definitions,
to transcend limitations.
Women who love their bodies. Regardless.
Women who refuse to please others
by becoming smaller than they are.
Women who take space
with their thoughts and feelings,
their needs and desires,
their anger and their dreams.
Loud and strong
women from every age
wild women, spinster women
wise women, rebellious women
women who love women
midwives, witches
healers, activists.
One by one the women step up
and commit the forbidden act
of biting into patriarchal thought
refuting it, smashing it,
discarding it and beginning again
in the very beginning when women
loved their bodies
named their gods
authored their lives
when women refused to surrender
except to life as it pulsated through them.
Women reminding us
there is nothing wrong
there never has been anything wrong
there never will be anything wrong
with woman that’s why nothing ever works.
Stop asking the question!
They speak the truth of a woman’s life
told with heart, mind, and body
refusing dissection
they are women and poets and theorists
who gather our brokenness
into their words
an impulse toward wholeness
awakens within us
and we become again
as we once were
whole.
(This I found in a book of the same name)
