women’s world

The story’s I tell, that had become my life are told not to benefit me, but to help you. You who have been abused, whose life at times never ended the pain. The women who suffered and some who died tell of times in their lives that cheated them of humanity and dreams. The world took away from the reality that should have been and placed them in pain. It often amazes me at how women survive, but we do, and we do so others can survive too. My travels have taken my home to a place now that I can be heard, that when I speak my words are believed. It took me a long time to get to this place, and years and scars are etched upon my face. But I am beautiful just like you, and desire the human kindness that had so long been denied me.

Many of us who have suffered, suffered in silence, and at a time when men claimed they owned us. The church supported them, and so did our community. Our family’s believed that men were the head of the house and they had a right, a right to abuse us, beat us, and demand our time and our lives. They thought they owned the children that we gave to them as gifts, gifts many paid their life for. Many things have changed since then, but it still amazes me that laws regarding a husband rights still say that he has a right to rape his wife.
I know thorough out the world women suffer at the hands of those who are suppose to comfort them, they suffer In ways I could not believe, having their genitals cut out of them, being raped by hundreds just so the army can feed the sexual desires of men. They walk for miles to retrieve water, and return to find their children murdered. They give and give and no one hears the cries that they just want to live.
We as a world, turn away from them, afraid I suppose to know just what the world has done to them. We stand and salute the very country that has destroyed the hearts of women who only wish for peace, and only want for food and water. We turn off the television when it gets too much to see, and we pray that it will cease but never once do we lift a hand, to help the want and need.
The cost to us is not in dollars or in cents it’s in the lives of women lost, millions who have died in vain and those that did not die, are shipped to places and sold for sex, or sent to houses to care for others children while their children are forced to live in places we dare not say. They pay in hours and sometimes days, cutting a sewing blue jeans for Christ sake, blue jeans they get a penny or two for if they get paid at all, blue jeans we wear with pride, as we tell the world how much we paid, just to have the label say Levi’s. What to hell has this world come to, that it is willing to give away half of our family just so we have a comfortable place to sleep, and eat.
They call me a feminist, and I suppose I am. Many, who hear the word, try to discount what feminism is they call us bitches, and angry women. They call us lesbians, and man haters. It’s funny to me that what we fight for is not the fight to hate a man or sleep with his wife. It is a fight for freedom for humanity. A fight if we do not stand up for, more and more will die. We don’t shot the guns that kill us, we are women who believe in peace and you chose to call us enemy. We ask that you keep our water clean and you stand and piss in the stream that is needed to care for your children. We ask you to take a moment and listen to our pain and you think it’s because we have something to gain, some power we seek to take away from you. Well if we must, we will take from you your guns, your knives, your possession of the world, but it’s to seek the truth and to find a human inside of you that sure does not seem to exist.
So call me an angry woman if you must, but its anger that is deserved and just. If everywoman stood and shed a tear, the world would be flooded, but maybe just maybe then justice would be done.
I’ll shed a tear for you
I’ll not pretend I understand
Because I have not walked the
Path you had begun
But I’ve heard your screams echoing
In the silence of the night
When it rains I ‘ve saw the bruises
On your face
Hiding beneath your shame
It’s okay to be afraid
To feel the desperate pain
So if I reach to touch your cheek
Please do not react in fear
It’s just compassion that leading me
To reach out and wipe away the tear
I know someday you’ll walk away
And feel the wanting to tell the world
What has been done to you?
But for today your silence
Tells me that your story true
And I will shed a tear for you
Until you find your voice to tell the world too