I find it quite fitting that Women’s Equality Day (8/26) is during Virgo season. Or maybe it’s some terrible astrological joke considering its symbol is the Virgin (Mary). The definition of a ‘virgin’ is a woman who belongs to herself. Our culture doesn’t exactly teach us that. It teaches us that we first belong to our fathers and then to our husbands. We pretend that we have moved so far past that, but we really haven’t.
We teach girls to cover ourselves, so that we don’t “attract the wrong attention,” but we don’t teach the boys to stop treating women like they are playthings. We tell girls that when boys hit them, it’s because they “like them,” but we don’t teach boys not to talk with their fists. We encourage it in fact. When a girl does it, she is hysterical, a bitch, or acting ridiculous.
They use the lack of education as a way to keep us uninformed. (Hello Critical Race Theory.) They did it with the Bible ages ago by insisting that it only be written in Latin. They lower class citizens couldn’t read Latin, so they could only assume that what they were preaching was the truth. It’s not like they could prove otherwise.
Modesty & Restraint
Women are not taught about their bodies at all. Trust me when I say I have asked my gynecologist some pretty fucking dumb questions. You should see the nightmare that is my Google history. I might want to clear that out one of these days considering the Amazon ads I’ve been getting. They do this on purpose to keep us ignorant. If we don’t know how our bodies work, than we have to rely on them to tell us what to do. They, the people who do not own vulvas or vaginas. And if you don’t know the difference between those two terms, I would recommend The Vagina Bible by Dr. Jen Gunter. It was my first bible. Ha! She also has an amazing email newsletter called the Vajenda.
This Victorian energy is en vogue again. This whole idea of purity and perfection, it’s quite gross actually. It’s like my whole value as a female individual relies on being untouched until the marriage night, where my role then changes into being an Easy Bake Oven. The first thing my now-fired gyno asked me after I tied the knot was, “When do you want to have children?” When, not if. Before that it was the annual, “Do you want an STD test?” Some people should probably keep doing that one, but that’s an entirely different conversation.
Now we have turned my ‘purpose in this life’ into legacy and lineage. You must carry on the family line by having a valuable boy. Um, excuse me? I get to determine my value, and that does not include pushing a small human out of my vagina. So many women struggle with wanting and not being able to have babies. I do feel for them. I am simply not one of them, and I firmly believe that doing so will not make me happy. Isn’t that the ultimate goal, happiness? I’m not a baby-making machine for Christ’s sake.
While we are on the topic, why do we call it “losing our virginity?” It’s not lost. I know where it went, although I am not entirely happy with how that went down. And men don’t “lose” anything in the process. “The woman’s a whore and the child’s a bastard, but there’s no word for the man who doesn’t come back.” Anyone watch Peaky Blinders? You can’t expect us to scream if you don’t teach us how. Pretty sneaky.
The Lady of Rage
I recently learned that Black women have been encouraged to bleach their skin and straighten their hair, because it was more appealing to the general public. You mean it makes them look more like the Eurocentric white model of what is considered attractive? I find it quite interesting because growing up, I was encouraged to fry my ass in a tanning bed. I was too white. Let us not forget about the perms that I would then brush out into a giant puff ball on my head. It was rough growing up in the 90s.
I rock rough and stuff with my afro puffs. (Rage!)
Afro Puffs, The Lady of Rage (1994)
Jeff used to sing that to me. I raged. Fun fact: Robin Yvette Allen AKA The Lady of Rage is from from Farmville, VA. I am still angry, not at Jeff, but at the world in general. They are pitting us against each other, and we are still falling for the same traps they have been using on us for centuries. If we women keep tearing each other down, we have no energy left to fight the real enemy. It’s the patriarchy. Did I need to say that?
I get why bra burning was so huge back in the 70s. I would probably do it too, except for that whole fire thing. I just stopped buying them. Okay, except for the ones that I basically wear as shirts. I live in Virginia, and it is humid. I sweat a lot. It is what it is. Oh, and there is that whole climate change thing that I won’t get into today.
A Natural Way to Belong
Glennon Doyle states that “there is a price to pay by swallowing the truth.” I think that so very on point. Men in power have been hiding the facts about life for centuries, and they are continuing to do so despite the fact that we can pretty much Google anything, like their voting records and financial donors lists. I digress, yet again.
When you turn that phrase inward though, it’s a totally different mind fuck. Some call it death to the ego, but it’s basically admitting to yourself that you maybe were wrong. That can feel like a sucker punch to the gut, but do you want to know a secret? Nobody ever said that you are going to always like yourself. If you are anything like me, the things you liked about yourself got shoved down because everyone around you was ‘shoulding’ all over you. Don’t even get me started on learning to love yourself. I am still trying to figure that one out.
“The freedom is in getting real.” Tara Brach describes this Lion’s Roar, but I am going to be honest, standing up for yourself is hard when you’ve have it trained out of you. Most days I feel like Simba practicing his pounce in a field on that poor little Zazu. That bird had it rough.
Mad love, Jenna
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