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When she is born they wrap her in the warm, woolly blanket of ‘no’s and 'cant’s so that when she grows up she learns the painful art of shrinking. Her first childish rebellious thought is “I wish I was born a boy!” as her little brows furrow in blossoming anger; and if she could discard her girlness like the cape of a superhero and be free of its claustrophobic presence she would have. She is told because she is of the people who live in war that this is normal- this daily internal dying. She learns how to be less so that those lesser than her feel tall. She learns fulfillment, even pride in the shrinking. She learns the words “shame” and “honour” before she learns the word “I” and she learns that she is a walking disaster, temptation and aversion, a walking threat, dirt walking for what may be, what could be. So she learns that what could be and what may be are more important than what can be and what should be. So she learns hiding, shrinking, fading, fasting, existing without being seen, being without making a sound, surviving each minute perfecting the profound art of absolute stillness. Even as she grows to believe that the ache of her anxious, nervous heart- the rabid, trapped fluttering of her rapidly beating heart against her rib cage- is girlhood.

She grows up hearing epic love stories of Shirin and Ferhad, Mem u zin, and Layla and Majnun by night but during the day wakes to hearing stories of honor killings and self immolation and grows to believe that violence- the silencing, swift slice of death are normal daily acts of existence like breathing and sleeping - for women, only for women. Prophetically, looms omnious the awareness of the impeding doom of fading girlhood into ill-fated womenhood. She learns that love in her world is violence and escape. Its death and freedom and its the ominous in the loving paternal advice of chastity; its the unshakable clutch in the loving maternal guidance to accept that what has been will always be, will always be until “will always be” echoes in the aching corners of her tender, struggling, fading spirit. She learns cognitive dissonance as she internalizes violence while her rebellious spirit, like a withering fading flame slams itself against the prison complex of her body and mind and says “wait, wait, wait. Survive. Your day will come. It will come…” So as she perfects the art of silence, the art of internalised inertia, she struggles, breath after breath, fantasizing grand narratives of bleak self liberation. And she waits, breath after breath, for the moment- even as she doesn’t recognize that as she was perfecting the art of dying she still breathed.

She still breathed.

-Hawzhin Azeez- The Middle Eastern Feminist

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🙏

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Very fair was her face, and her long hair was like a river of gold. Slender and tall she was in her white robe girt with silver; but strong she seemed and stern as steel, a daughter of kings. Thus Aragorn for the first time in the full light of day beheld Éowyn, Lady of Rohan, and thought her fair, fair and cool, like a morning of pale spring that is not yet come to womenhood.

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“Surely it must be a sin to want someone so badly.”

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“I have a rule- if it’s not supposed to be able to talk, don’t trust it”

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Today make sure you have your self-care time by doing something that makes your soul happy. that’s all that matters anyway

The Awakened State (via theawakenedstate)

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Your Grandmother’s prayers are still protecting you.

Lalah Delia (via vibratehigherdaily)

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“The past followed her, as the past often does, somehow never quite getting the hint”

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6 inch - Beyonce LEMONADE wall-paper for iphone ♥

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That’s where I heal myself

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if you can appreciate how much of womenhood is tied in with liking & dating men then it shouldn’t be difficult to understand that lesbians usually have complicated relationships with their gender

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I wanna pull you in by your jacket and kiss you.

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Prompt #148

Submitted by: katplushie

“The real treasure was the memories we made along the way.”

“I almost died!”

“Ah yes, that was my fondest memory.”

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Gotta be honest. As a gay man I find myself really angry at "queer gay men" who are so often women who fetishize gay men and our relationships. However, as I'm reading more and also trying to recognize my own misogyny, I think some of my anger is kind of sexism fueled. After all, I'm angry at men appropriating womenhood and being predatory to lesbians but not the same kind of anger. Think it's my inevitable misogyny or the personal nature of me being a gay man myself?

I think it may be a mix of anger over homophobia and anger that it’s directly affecting you. it might be some misogyny? i just dont feel comfortable answering this because I really can’t relate and i don’t think i have enough info to make that claim for you