[Greggs] Steel Magnolia
by Ali Greggs
March 15, 2006
I am a woman. I write about it all the time. The dating, the shoes, the makeup, the irrational bouts of temper and the complicated decisions. I often get teased about it. People I meet usually laugh at most of my statements, letting me know they are fully aware of what I am saying, but generally don't agree with it. It's the politeness of the South. I try not to care when this happens. I really try not to care when I know the dismissive act is preceded by the realization that I have boobs and wear perfume.
My mama once told me that, as a woman, just getting the opinion out of my mouth and letting it float in the air was half the battle. Someone choosing to pick it up and take it to heart is entirely their own decision. I won't say that the fact that I am often discounted because I am a girl doesn't hurt. It does hurt. It upsets me when I see it occurring, shames me for a small amount of time (which it is designed to do), but then makes me angry enough to get up and go at it again. I imagine this feeling is pretty common among most women.
This week I've been upset that I am afflicted with a vagina. Not for the usual reasons, but because the Mississippi Legislature is trying to decide that I can no longer choose what comes out of it. This is upsetting to me. I guess there are a lot of people who don't find it upsetting.
I can understand why. We are taught from birth that life is to be loved, cherished, protected at all costs. We are saving the whales, the dolphins, the eagles and the pandas. We are saving clean air, clean water and several thousand extremely dirty businessmen. We revere life. This is natural. We are frightened of death. This is natural as well.
I sometimes wish the debate for or against abortion wasn't fundamentally tied to the issue of protecting life. How could it not be, you say? Well, despite the fact we all should revere life, and despite the fact that we think all babies come straight from heaven, there is this idea that humans should be free to choose their own destiny. It was written once. Penned somewhere on this huge document hanging in Washington. There is a fundamental belief that the government's right to legislate should stop at its citizens' skin.
I stood back Monday morning, read the news about the House of Representatives passing the abortion ban, and my heart broke. It wasn't broken because I couldn't "run right out and get an abortion if I so chose." It was broken because I realized how far we have slipped. It was broken because I finally understood how bad things have become. My right to make my own medical decisions was being bandied about in the Capitol for fun, for politics; it was now the sacrificial lamb for those who would procure votes from the right-leaning population in this state.
My heart broke. My heart cried for this state, this state I have called home, this state in which I belong, as much as a man. I stopped in that one moment and realized, "This is what oppression feels like."
And I marveled. Because as sure as I know I have felt "oppression" before, I had stupidly assumed this battle was decided long ago. It was a battle fought by the women that came before me. A battle fought by our grandmothers and mothers.
This fight seems almost foreign to us 20 and 30 "somethings" who were generally raised believing the battle for most fundamental women's rights had been won years ago. They even wrote about it in our textbooks. They used words like "suffrage" and "oppression," words that we have come to equate with foreign nationals and minorities. In one moment on Monday morning, when I read the news, this came to mean women's rights in Mississippi.
This is what it feels like to be stomped on, rolled over and tossed around. I told myself to remember the feeling, to remember it every day and for as long as I possibly could. This feeling has led people to the streets, to rally, to fight, for years before me. And it will lead them to it for years afterward.
This is oppression.
I write this specifically in the "Chick Issue" because this is for us. It is for all of us, but even more so for those of us in our 20s and 30s who somehow find ourselves in uncharted territory. It is now that we finally must take interest in our government. As women, we have no choice but to uphold the work created by those who came before us. It is now our turn. It is time to stand for all the things we were taught to believe. To stand for women being equal, for women to enjoy a full and complete set of rights.
Being a woman is always difficult. Being the one expected to do everything and look cute while one does it isn't easy. It is even harder when we are shamed for simply fighting for things in which we believe. This week alone, only because I have been very vocal about my heartache concerning this decision, I have been called both a "tramp" and told that I have "absolutely no reverence for life." Neither of these slurs characterize the woman that is me, and both are simply designed to force the opinions I hold back into my mouth. My mama taught me better than that. She didn't raise a shrinking violet. She raised a steel magnolia.
Gloria Steinem once said: "Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood."
To the women of Mississippi I say, "It is time for the sisterhood."
To the status quo I say, "Bring. It. On."
© Jackson Free Press, Inc.
