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I’m writing this a week after Todd Akin claimed that pregnancy in the case of rape was rare because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” I’m writing days after Arizona wrote into a law that pregnancy begins two weeks before conception in an effort to limit women’s control over their reproductive choices. I’m writing this on the second day of the Republican National Convention, where someone threw nuts at a black camerawoman, saying this is how we feed the animals. And this is months after reading VIDA’s statistics on the poor representation of women in publishing; months after a female friend and writer was verbally assaulted by a male editor at the biggest literary conference in the US because she refused his sexual advances. I’m writing this as a human being who resides in a woman’s body, who moves through the world as a woman, who has survived rape, who has endured sexual harassment, who is herself an immigrant, who is black, who does not want to be a mother, who is a writer. |
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2012: Writing from Within the War on Women
By Lauren K. Alleyne
I’m writing this a week after Todd Akin claimed that pregnancy in the case of rape was rare because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” I’m writing days after Arizona wrote into a law that pregnancy begins two weeks before conception in an effort to limit women’s control over their reproductive choices. I’m writing this on the second day of the Republican National Convention, where someone threw nuts at a black camerawoman, saying this is how we feed the animals. And this is months after reading VIDA’s statistics on the poor representation of women in publishing; months after a female friend and writer was verbally assaulted by a male editor at the biggest literary conference in the US because she refused his sexual advances. I’m writing this as a human being who resides in a woman’s body, who moves through the world as a woman, who has survived rape, who has endured sexual harassment, who is herself an immigrant, who is black, who does not want to be a mother, who is a writer. I’m writing this to say, that as this year ends, I wonder that I am still writing at all.
What makes it hard is that principle at the core of being a writer is a belief in one’s voice. And by voice, I mean several things: I mean a sense of inhabiting and speaking from a unique and valued being; I mean a sense of having something vital, however large or small, to contribute to the march of human history; I mean the freedom to act out of one’s own sense of purpose and ability. I mean a safe space to explore, to think, to be open and be vulnerable in, to make mistakes and discoveries. I mean the ability to give a true account of one’s experiences, thoughts, and desires. I mean the right to have a say, and having said, to be thoughtfully, critically, and seriously considered.
The aptly, if terrifyingly named “war on women” robs women of foundational rights, placing in jeopardy our rights to legal, medical and physical safety—the right to manage our bodies, the right of choice with regard to childbearing, the right to ethical health care, the right to honest and honestly paid labor—the right to be regarded as equal and capable members of our communities, rather than dismissed as sexual and reproductive instruments. Day after day, our personhood is being whittled away by the society we live in. And as a woman who defines herself as a writer, it is from and into this society, in concert and in conflict with it, that I must levy my voice.
The current social climate strangles rather than advances women’s voices, and while many of these struggles are not new, this year the battles have been particularly brutal. The language of our day makes caricatures of women. It tells us we are worthwhile only for our bodies, and then, that we should not control our only valuable asset. It shames, silences, and blames. It lies to us and about us, and these lies are fast becoming our definitions. It means that as women who use language as a tool of self-making, who need it to make our meanings, who find in it our strength and our value, we are forced to hold the lines against false language and definitions that would take us away from ourselves. Instead of engaging in the full work of our creative lives, we are fighting to keep the earth that’s falling away beneath our feet. Over and over we are forced to remind our lawmakers, our law enforcers, our doctors, our husbands, our friends, our children, and ourselves of who we are and why we matter.
I’m writing this as 2012 draws to an end because I fear for my voice. I’m writing in this moment because it is the only way I know to be in this world, and I am compelled to resist my own extinction. I’m writing today so that for my voice, there is a tomorrow.
Lauren K. Alleyne is a native of Trinidad and Tobago. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from Cornell University, and is currently the Poet-in-Residence and an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Dubuque. A Cave Canem graduate, her work has been awarded prizes such as the 2010 Small Axe Literary prize, the 2003 Atlantic Monthly Student Poetry Prize, the Robert Chasen Graduate Poetry Prize at Cornell, among others.
