"Her courage would change the world."
It's a big claim about a person, isn't it? I remember when I first heard the phrase: it was 1995. It was, according to Wikipedia, September 4th, and I was agonizing over the impending commencement of another year of college - my fifth year, to be exact. So, yeah, I'm basically confessing that I was one of those kinds of college kids.
You can tell, if you know me - mostly because you know I'm neither a doctor or a lawyer today.
So, yes - it's true that I'm not out there surgically saving lives every day or asking the tough questions over a pile of legal briefs. But that doesn't mean I don't help people whenever I'm able to do so; don't underestimate me.
And yes, it's true that I graduated from college with a degree in English. But that doesn't mean I'm incapable of changing the world; far from it, in fact.
I think everyone's capable of changing the world, but each of us has our own process. And my process to change the world is through the act of inspiration - or, at the very least, that's what I hope I'm achieving with these pieces. Whether it affects the planet positively or not, I can't say. But that doesn't stop me from shouting "Go, planet!" and trying anyway. But, there's more to my process than that.
That process may not be as obvious to people as I might think. As my blog continues to grow in readership - thank you! - I find myself getting a lot more emails. Along with the spam, grody pick-up emails and the less-occasional-than-I'd-like death threat, I get questions about how and why I do what I do. And one of the questions I've gotten most often is a variation of this question: "Do you come up with the hero first? Or do you select a virtue and then think of a hero who fits that?"
The answer is easy, and I would've thought obvious: I choose the virtue first. I look at the world around me and think about what matters to me when I start writing, what's important to me at that moment, what's on my mind. I think about where I see problems in the world and how I think people should deal with those problems. Once I know what aspect of real life I want to write about, that informs the hero in my life who best exemplifies that trait. To think of the heroes first simply doesn't make sense to me; if I chose that route, I'd be concentrating on the fiction - and the fiction is the least important part of the equation.
Real life is, and should always be, everyone's priority.
And yes, it's true that I graduated from college with a degree in English. But that doesn't mean I'm incapable of changing the world; far from it, in fact.
I think everyone's capable of changing the world, but each of us has our own process. And my process to change the world is through the act of inspiration - or, at the very least, that's what I hope I'm achieving with these pieces. Whether it affects the planet positively or not, I can't say. But that doesn't stop me from shouting "Go, planet!" and trying anyway. But, there's more to my process than that.
That process may not be as obvious to people as I might think. As my blog continues to grow in readership - thank you! - I find myself getting a lot more emails. Along with the spam, grody pick-up emails and the less-occasional-than-I'd-like death threat, I get questions about how and why I do what I do. And one of the questions I've gotten most often is a variation of this question: "Do you come up with the hero first? Or do you select a virtue and then think of a hero who fits that?"
The answer is easy, and I would've thought obvious: I choose the virtue first. I look at the world around me and think about what matters to me when I start writing, what's important to me at that moment, what's on my mind. I think about where I see problems in the world and how I think people should deal with those problems. Once I know what aspect of real life I want to write about, that informs the hero in my life who best exemplifies that trait. To think of the heroes first simply doesn't make sense to me; if I chose that route, I'd be concentrating on the fiction - and the fiction is the least important part of the equation.
Real life is, and should always be, everyone's priority.
And it's an uncomfortable and pressing awareness of that battle between living in real life and living in fantasy that led me to my thoughts on the purpose of this piece: asking the very real question about what you have to do to find the strength to change the real world.
But along with that comes the other half of the equation: the role fantasy can play in being helpful toward achieving that strength.
Obviously, if I didn't think fantasy served any purpose at all in my life, it wouldn't be part of what I do and who I am. And if I didn't think that these fictional heroes can help us in our real lives, I wouldn't write an essay about how I'm inspired by Xena, Warrior Princess.
So, at this point, the question might be asked: "Dee, what's been on your mind that makes you think of all this need to change the world in the first place?"
Believe it or not, it's because of Facebook. More specifically, it's because of the open letter that appeared recently on the website The Huffington Post calling on Facebook to change the way that Facebook handles incidents of imagery thought to promote violence against women.
What kind of imagery does this refer to? I'm not going to promote the pictures by reposting them here. If you really want to find these trashy posts, you can go looking for them on Facebook or elsewhere. But that's not how I fight. I fight by not giving this material a venue on my blog, which is my battleground. It's where I make my stand every time I write - because, as I've said before, writing takes courage.
But that's not the only way to fight, and there may be disagreements about which way is most effective. The Everyday Sexism Project is a big part of the Facebook petition, and they fight by raising awareness of negative portrayals of women on Facebook. Women, Action, & the Media is a group that works for positive portrayals of women and against sexism in media.
I urge you to check out those links, and inform yourself if you're unaware of these issues. At the same time, I likewise urge you to do more than simply read webpages. I urge you to do something about it, whatever that might be. If it means boycotting the products of advertisers who support Facebook's current policies, go for it. If it means calling those advertisers on the phone, great. And if it means writing about yourself and your own life in a blog to try to show people how you fight back, that's awesome. We all have our own ways of fighting against injustice.
But here's the take-away from that: fight back.
And that conflict between doing something and nothing is where I made the conncetion to Xena, and is the reason I decided to write about her.
Have you ever seen or heard a woman acting on some kind of outrage and fighting back? I'd be honestly dismayed if you haven't. But if you have, you might have noticed a response that comes from men. This response can take many forms, but one of them is the mildly-sarcastic remark that's a variation on this: "Whoah, calm down, there, Warrior Princess."
Now, of course, I admire those people who can maintain their calm in a stressful situation. Keeping a peaceful and centered state of being is incredibly beautiful, amazingly noble. It's also one of my biggest challenges in life, to even get close to that state of mind. It's not how I think. It's not how I work. I usually react toward my oppressors.
But what's interesting to me about this phenomenon - the arrival of "Calm down, Warrior Princess" into everyday dialogue - is how and when I observe it being used.
Most often, it's used when a woman is fighting back, as opposed to aggressing. It's used when a woman speaks out about her own well-being. It's about when a woman says "no" to being a part of something that men want her to be a part of but she doesn't. It's used when a woman flexes the muscles of her freedom.
And, as I've said before on this blog, it's my belief that there's not nearly enough flexing going on out there.
As women, we need to fight back - against anything and everything that oppresses us. I don't believe that peace can be achieved on our terms. We have to use the terms and tools that counteract the forces that marshal against us as women. Put another way: if someone's coming at you with a sword, intent on killing you, then raising your hands and offering peaceful friendship might not be the path toward achieving the highest rate of likely survivability. Odds are, fortunately, that most people in the United States aren't going to find themselves in a situation where someone's coming at them with a sword, intent to kill them. We're not in those kind of REVOLUTION times just yet. But the concept makes my point: it's great to have ideals, but survival can require a person to resort to the tactics of their opponent if they want to live.
And the enemies of women are using every tactic imaginable. They're attacking women physically, mentally, intellectually, economically. They're using the law. They're using guns and knives and fists. They're using rhetoric. They're using schools, businesses, churches & mosques & synagogs. They're using the elderly. They're using children. They're using the media. They're using quiet conversations at the back of the bar. They're using public scandal. They're using whispered gossip. In short, they're using literally everything at their disposal to destroy us because they're waging war against us.
But, guess what? We've really started to seriously fight back. And that resistance is growing; the edges of our swords have been honed for a long, long time.
And we're fighting back in countless ways. We're fighting back on all those fronts I listed two paragraphs above this one. We're fighting on countless fronts, waging countless battles. We're using different tools, working with different circumstances - but we're all working toward the goal of liberating us from our oppressors.
We are of varied strength, yes. We are of varied capacity, true. Some of us are more direct than others. Some of us are more effective than others. With such conflict surrounding us on all sides, I found myself asking: "What's the one thing all warriors must have in order to fight back - on whatever level they're capable of doing so?"
The answer came to me: courage.
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And that's when I thought of Xena - and of that last line of the introductory narration: "Her courage would change the world."
Not her sword. Not her chakram. Not even actress and advocate Lucy Lawless' awesome Xena speaking voice. Ultimately, it was Xena's courage that was going to change the world. And I realized that it's the same in the real world. And that's when I knew what I had to write about, and why Xena has helped me become the person I am today.
But Xena isn't about just one kind of courage.
One aspect of courage that she displays to me is in the way she illustrates that the errors of one's past don't have to define one's future; that it's possible to forgive oneself for past failures and try again without living under the weight of what's come before in one's life. After all, Xena was once a barbarian chieftain who ruled an oppressive army that crushed its enemies. When she showed mercy toward a child, her army abandoned her and she needed to find a new path in her life. She renounced her barbarian path and traveled the countryside seeking to right wrongs instead of perpetrate them. And she did, working in the broad narrative terms of the story, being on the "side of good."
But those broad narrative terms aren't what's important. What struck me then, back in 1995 when the show began - and stays with me now - is that she refused to be characterized by her previous actions. She understood that people judged her by them, and recognized she had an uphill battle to climb. But she climbed it. And she refused to let the echoes of her warlike past diminish her efforts in the present.
And real life works like that, too. I've talked to people who tell me their pasts have been so traumatic that they feel they can't fight back in the present. I dispute this. I think that the word "won't" is too often turned into the word "can't" by people's own self-doubts and fears. Now, those fears aren't baseless. They've had a basis, more often than not, in real life traumas. But those traumas are, hopefully, in the past. And if they're not, that person needs to be working on getting past those traumas to have any hope of survival beyond mere subsistence. That person needs to fight back in their own life. They need to refuse to calm down and to be a Warrior Princess, to extricate themselves from that situation and from those limitations - whether they come from external or external sources.
This doesn't mean that people who have what many call triggers are weak. There's nothing weak about being affected by the echoe of one's own past. Terrible things happen to people - and they often leave scars both psychological and physical. But what it does mean is that we can't let ourselves as women be defined by these triggers.
We can't let ourselves be silenced by them. We can't let ourselves be stopped by them. We can't let ourselves be destroyed by them. We can't let ourselves be limited by them. We can't let ourselves be OK with them. Most of all, we can't let ourselves be defeated by them.
It hurts. It hurts a lot. It's incredibly painful. But we have to get back on the horse when we've fallen off. And if we don't have a horse to get onto, we need to figure out how to get that horse. And if we can't figure out how to get the horse, we need to fight to gain whatever we're missing in our lives that prevents the horse. And if we can't fight that, we need to learn to stand. And if we can't stand, we need to learn to crawl. And if we can't crawl, we need to be unafraid to ask for the help from someone else who can. These aren't simply suggestions: to me, they're the definition of what it means to live one's own life.
And that fact - that it's sometimes necessary to ask other people for help, is another part of Xena's legacy as a character that's important to me and helped teach me, and that was that her strength was not solitary.
She was not the lone figure of courage, suffering her past in silence and enduring the ravages of the world all by herself.
She found courage in sisterhood.
Whatever your feelings on whether you think Xena and Gabrielle were lovers, let me say first of all that I think they were. But I only mention that because I want to cover the broadest spectrum of relationships possible, inclusive of lovers as well as people who are simply friends. But when it's a bond between two women, the sisterhood I'm speaking of is metaphoric, obviously.
The important element to me was that it's hard for me to open up to other people. It's hard for me to trust other people. But I recognize that in order to survive in a world that's so hostile toward all women - even transwomen - that trust is essential. A Xena needs a Gabrielle needs a Xena needs a Gabrielle needs a Xena needs a Gabrielle. We all need each other. And, too often, when we're as wounded as Xena is - by whatever wounds us - we retreat. We lash out; worst of all, we often lash out toward the people who would be most likely to be our allies.
We get into fights about safe spaces. We get into fights about the definition of words. We get into fights about the natural order of the universe. We get into fights about religion. We get into fights about politics. We get into fights about each other's tastes and favorites. We get into fights about whatever we can get into fights about, really. And, as a result, we often get so wrapped up in putting our house in order and forming alliances of agreement that we seem to forget who the real enemies out there are - and what we need to do together to defeat them.
We have to recognize, I think, that we're all fundamentally different. Part of that, though, means looking out for each other, the way Xena and Gabrielle do. We need to have each other's backs - and that doesn't just mean our friends, but people we disagree with, too.
I see a lot of stories, for instance, about women who are being harassed on the bus. When I see it happening in front of me, in real life, I feel that I have to act. Sometimes, I've called authorities. Other times, there hasn't been an opportunity for that and I've gotten involved to stop the abuse. Either way, it can be dangerous. I've been threatened before in doing it. But it was necessary, in my view.
Doing something because it's right, even if it might be risky, is a major component of real courage, in my view.
We must look out for each other. We must protect each other. We must fight back against our oppressors with each other. If we don't, we're going to lose, because the fraternities (ahem) of so-called "brotherhood" that join together to attack women do so because they find strength in numbers. We need to find that strength in our efforts to fight back against them if we want to survive. We must act, and we must act together - in a co-ordinated effort.
And we need to help each other to act when we falter - because it's going to happen. There will be times when one of us stumbles. We need to reach out a hand and help that other person up to keep up with the fight. Part of that will likely sometimes mean sharing some hard truths, and refusing to hear when someone says they "can't" make it.
If someone can't make it, put them up on your shoulders and carry them the next mile. Maybe they'll change that "can't" to "can" and keep going, or maybe you'll just have someone to spend time with when you reach your goal.
The fundamental point to all of this is that we all have to refute the notion of "can't." It guarantees failure, because there's not even an effort to try. Notice the reverse isn't true: saying "I can" doesn't guarantee success. But at least it doesn't eradicate the possibility the way "I can't" does, when you don't even try.
And please note - I'm not saying that we need to measure each other by success. That's divisive. If someone tries a thousand times, and fails a thousand times, I'm going to have more respect for that person than someone who says "I can't" and doesn't try once.
Are you triggered at the thought of leaving the house? Try to leave the house every day. I won't judge you if you fail. Are you triggered by violent images of women being attacked? Try to find an outlet for the way those images make you feel and see if you can get to a point where seeing that imagery stirs your impulse toward positive change in your life. Are you triggered by harsh language or shouting? Try to shout out about the beauty of the world until you drown out the hate. But try and try and try. Try over and over again. Try even though it's exhausting. Try even though it's dispiriting. Try even though it's miserable. Try even though you get kicked into the dirt. Try. Try. Try. Most of all, try whenever anyone tells you that you can't. That's when you have to try most of all. You may save your own life by trying. You may save someone else's.
And don't do the work of the enemy for them. The folks out there who insist upon the weakness of women are trying to prove that we can't handle anything, that we're too weak to deal with life. When we recoil and retreat from mere words - does that tell them they're wrong?
Does it tell someone who tries to portray women as weak and powerless that we're not if we curl up into the fetal position and suck our thumbs when they say "Boo?"
No, it does not prove them wrong. It tells them they're right. And they're not right. They couldn't be more wrong. And we have to prove that they're wrong, over and over, every time, every single day of our lives. We have to prove that we can take what they dish out and give back in equal - or greater - measure. But we don't have to take it alone. That's the twin keys to our strength: that which comes to us in overcoming our own adversity, and that which is shared by our unbreakable bonds of sisterhood forged in our shared oppression.
But it is an oppression that cannot stand. It will fall. It is falling even now. The rage we see on the side of our oppressors comes from nothing else so much as the fact that their hateful behavior and vicious methodology are crumbling around them. The civilized world isn't tolerating their kind of outlook toward women, and women are taking places in the decision-making processes that dictate civilized society's attitudes with increasing frequency.
We've been knocked off our horses long enough.
It's time for us to ride hard into this war - and to ride together, against a common foe that, if it isn't on its last legs, is really feeling the heat and about to face our wrath on a level it hasn't felt in the war so far. And when we arrive in the camp of the enemy we will - together, side-by-side - be armed and ready for whatever they bring against us.
And we'll win that war.
We'll win because we're right.
We are all capable of changing the world. We are all sisters. We are all Warrior Princesses.
But along with that comes the other half of the equation: the role fantasy can play in being helpful toward achieving that strength.
Obviously, if I didn't think fantasy served any purpose at all in my life, it wouldn't be part of what I do and who I am. And if I didn't think that these fictional heroes can help us in our real lives, I wouldn't write an essay about how I'm inspired by Xena, Warrior Princess.
So, at this point, the question might be asked: "Dee, what's been on your mind that makes you think of all this need to change the world in the first place?"
Believe it or not, it's because of Facebook. More specifically, it's because of the open letter that appeared recently on the website The Huffington Post calling on Facebook to change the way that Facebook handles incidents of imagery thought to promote violence against women.
What kind of imagery does this refer to? I'm not going to promote the pictures by reposting them here. If you really want to find these trashy posts, you can go looking for them on Facebook or elsewhere. But that's not how I fight. I fight by not giving this material a venue on my blog, which is my battleground. It's where I make my stand every time I write - because, as I've said before, writing takes courage.
But that's not the only way to fight, and there may be disagreements about which way is most effective. The Everyday Sexism Project is a big part of the Facebook petition, and they fight by raising awareness of negative portrayals of women on Facebook. Women, Action, & the Media is a group that works for positive portrayals of women and against sexism in media.
I urge you to check out those links, and inform yourself if you're unaware of these issues. At the same time, I likewise urge you to do more than simply read webpages. I urge you to do something about it, whatever that might be. If it means boycotting the products of advertisers who support Facebook's current policies, go for it. If it means calling those advertisers on the phone, great. And if it means writing about yourself and your own life in a blog to try to show people how you fight back, that's awesome. We all have our own ways of fighting against injustice.
But here's the take-away from that: fight back.
And that conflict between doing something and nothing is where I made the conncetion to Xena, and is the reason I decided to write about her.
Have you ever seen or heard a woman acting on some kind of outrage and fighting back? I'd be honestly dismayed if you haven't. But if you have, you might have noticed a response that comes from men. This response can take many forms, but one of them is the mildly-sarcastic remark that's a variation on this: "Whoah, calm down, there, Warrior Princess."
Now, of course, I admire those people who can maintain their calm in a stressful situation. Keeping a peaceful and centered state of being is incredibly beautiful, amazingly noble. It's also one of my biggest challenges in life, to even get close to that state of mind. It's not how I think. It's not how I work. I usually react toward my oppressors.
But what's interesting to me about this phenomenon - the arrival of "Calm down, Warrior Princess" into everyday dialogue - is how and when I observe it being used.
Most often, it's used when a woman is fighting back, as opposed to aggressing. It's used when a woman speaks out about her own well-being. It's about when a woman says "no" to being a part of something that men want her to be a part of but she doesn't. It's used when a woman flexes the muscles of her freedom.
And, as I've said before on this blog, it's my belief that there's not nearly enough flexing going on out there.
As women, we need to fight back - against anything and everything that oppresses us. I don't believe that peace can be achieved on our terms. We have to use the terms and tools that counteract the forces that marshal against us as women. Put another way: if someone's coming at you with a sword, intent on killing you, then raising your hands and offering peaceful friendship might not be the path toward achieving the highest rate of likely survivability. Odds are, fortunately, that most people in the United States aren't going to find themselves in a situation where someone's coming at them with a sword, intent to kill them. We're not in those kind of REVOLUTION times just yet. But the concept makes my point: it's great to have ideals, but survival can require a person to resort to the tactics of their opponent if they want to live.
And the enemies of women are using every tactic imaginable. They're attacking women physically, mentally, intellectually, economically. They're using the law. They're using guns and knives and fists. They're using rhetoric. They're using schools, businesses, churches & mosques & synagogs. They're using the elderly. They're using children. They're using the media. They're using quiet conversations at the back of the bar. They're using public scandal. They're using whispered gossip. In short, they're using literally everything at their disposal to destroy us because they're waging war against us.
But, guess what? We've really started to seriously fight back. And that resistance is growing; the edges of our swords have been honed for a long, long time.
And we're fighting back in countless ways. We're fighting back on all those fronts I listed two paragraphs above this one. We're fighting on countless fronts, waging countless battles. We're using different tools, working with different circumstances - but we're all working toward the goal of liberating us from our oppressors.
We are of varied strength, yes. We are of varied capacity, true. Some of us are more direct than others. Some of us are more effective than others. With such conflict surrounding us on all sides, I found myself asking: "What's the one thing all warriors must have in order to fight back - on whatever level they're capable of doing so?"
The answer came to me: courage.
And that's when I thought of Xena - and of that last line of the introductory narration: "Her courage would change the world."
Not her sword. Not her chakram. Not even actress and advocate Lucy Lawless' awesome Xena speaking voice. Ultimately, it was Xena's courage that was going to change the world. And I realized that it's the same in the real world. And that's when I knew what I had to write about, and why Xena has helped me become the person I am today.
But Xena isn't about just one kind of courage.
One aspect of courage that she displays to me is in the way she illustrates that the errors of one's past don't have to define one's future; that it's possible to forgive oneself for past failures and try again without living under the weight of what's come before in one's life. After all, Xena was once a barbarian chieftain who ruled an oppressive army that crushed its enemies. When she showed mercy toward a child, her army abandoned her and she needed to find a new path in her life. She renounced her barbarian path and traveled the countryside seeking to right wrongs instead of perpetrate them. And she did, working in the broad narrative terms of the story, being on the "side of good."
But those broad narrative terms aren't what's important. What struck me then, back in 1995 when the show began - and stays with me now - is that she refused to be characterized by her previous actions. She understood that people judged her by them, and recognized she had an uphill battle to climb. But she climbed it. And she refused to let the echoes of her warlike past diminish her efforts in the present.
And real life works like that, too. I've talked to people who tell me their pasts have been so traumatic that they feel they can't fight back in the present. I dispute this. I think that the word "won't" is too often turned into the word "can't" by people's own self-doubts and fears. Now, those fears aren't baseless. They've had a basis, more often than not, in real life traumas. But those traumas are, hopefully, in the past. And if they're not, that person needs to be working on getting past those traumas to have any hope of survival beyond mere subsistence. That person needs to fight back in their own life. They need to refuse to calm down and to be a Warrior Princess, to extricate themselves from that situation and from those limitations - whether they come from external or external sources.
This doesn't mean that people who have what many call triggers are weak. There's nothing weak about being affected by the echoe of one's own past. Terrible things happen to people - and they often leave scars both psychological and physical. But what it does mean is that we can't let ourselves as women be defined by these triggers.
We can't let ourselves be silenced by them. We can't let ourselves be stopped by them. We can't let ourselves be destroyed by them. We can't let ourselves be limited by them. We can't let ourselves be OK with them. Most of all, we can't let ourselves be defeated by them.
It hurts. It hurts a lot. It's incredibly painful. But we have to get back on the horse when we've fallen off. And if we don't have a horse to get onto, we need to figure out how to get that horse. And if we can't figure out how to get the horse, we need to fight to gain whatever we're missing in our lives that prevents the horse. And if we can't fight that, we need to learn to stand. And if we can't stand, we need to learn to crawl. And if we can't crawl, we need to be unafraid to ask for the help from someone else who can. These aren't simply suggestions: to me, they're the definition of what it means to live one's own life.
And that fact - that it's sometimes necessary to ask other people for help, is another part of Xena's legacy as a character that's important to me and helped teach me, and that was that her strength was not solitary.
She was not the lone figure of courage, suffering her past in silence and enduring the ravages of the world all by herself.
She found courage in sisterhood.
Whatever your feelings on whether you think Xena and Gabrielle were lovers, let me say first of all that I think they were. But I only mention that because I want to cover the broadest spectrum of relationships possible, inclusive of lovers as well as people who are simply friends. But when it's a bond between two women, the sisterhood I'm speaking of is metaphoric, obviously.
The important element to me was that it's hard for me to open up to other people. It's hard for me to trust other people. But I recognize that in order to survive in a world that's so hostile toward all women - even transwomen - that trust is essential. A Xena needs a Gabrielle needs a Xena needs a Gabrielle needs a Xena needs a Gabrielle. We all need each other. And, too often, when we're as wounded as Xena is - by whatever wounds us - we retreat. We lash out; worst of all, we often lash out toward the people who would be most likely to be our allies.
We get into fights about safe spaces. We get into fights about the definition of words. We get into fights about the natural order of the universe. We get into fights about religion. We get into fights about politics. We get into fights about each other's tastes and favorites. We get into fights about whatever we can get into fights about, really. And, as a result, we often get so wrapped up in putting our house in order and forming alliances of agreement that we seem to forget who the real enemies out there are - and what we need to do together to defeat them.
We have to recognize, I think, that we're all fundamentally different. Part of that, though, means looking out for each other, the way Xena and Gabrielle do. We need to have each other's backs - and that doesn't just mean our friends, but people we disagree with, too.
I see a lot of stories, for instance, about women who are being harassed on the bus. When I see it happening in front of me, in real life, I feel that I have to act. Sometimes, I've called authorities. Other times, there hasn't been an opportunity for that and I've gotten involved to stop the abuse. Either way, it can be dangerous. I've been threatened before in doing it. But it was necessary, in my view.
Doing something because it's right, even if it might be risky, is a major component of real courage, in my view.
We must look out for each other. We must protect each other. We must fight back against our oppressors with each other. If we don't, we're going to lose, because the fraternities (ahem) of so-called "brotherhood" that join together to attack women do so because they find strength in numbers. We need to find that strength in our efforts to fight back against them if we want to survive. We must act, and we must act together - in a co-ordinated effort.
And we need to help each other to act when we falter - because it's going to happen. There will be times when one of us stumbles. We need to reach out a hand and help that other person up to keep up with the fight. Part of that will likely sometimes mean sharing some hard truths, and refusing to hear when someone says they "can't" make it.
If someone can't make it, put them up on your shoulders and carry them the next mile. Maybe they'll change that "can't" to "can" and keep going, or maybe you'll just have someone to spend time with when you reach your goal.
The fundamental point to all of this is that we all have to refute the notion of "can't." It guarantees failure, because there's not even an effort to try. Notice the reverse isn't true: saying "I can" doesn't guarantee success. But at least it doesn't eradicate the possibility the way "I can't" does, when you don't even try.
And please note - I'm not saying that we need to measure each other by success. That's divisive. If someone tries a thousand times, and fails a thousand times, I'm going to have more respect for that person than someone who says "I can't" and doesn't try once.
Are you triggered at the thought of leaving the house? Try to leave the house every day. I won't judge you if you fail. Are you triggered by violent images of women being attacked? Try to find an outlet for the way those images make you feel and see if you can get to a point where seeing that imagery stirs your impulse toward positive change in your life. Are you triggered by harsh language or shouting? Try to shout out about the beauty of the world until you drown out the hate. But try and try and try. Try over and over again. Try even though it's exhausting. Try even though it's dispiriting. Try even though it's miserable. Try even though you get kicked into the dirt. Try. Try. Try. Most of all, try whenever anyone tells you that you can't. That's when you have to try most of all. You may save your own life by trying. You may save someone else's.
And don't do the work of the enemy for them. The folks out there who insist upon the weakness of women are trying to prove that we can't handle anything, that we're too weak to deal with life. When we recoil and retreat from mere words - does that tell them they're wrong?
Does it tell someone who tries to portray women as weak and powerless that we're not if we curl up into the fetal position and suck our thumbs when they say "Boo?"
No, it does not prove them wrong. It tells them they're right. And they're not right. They couldn't be more wrong. And we have to prove that they're wrong, over and over, every time, every single day of our lives. We have to prove that we can take what they dish out and give back in equal - or greater - measure. But we don't have to take it alone. That's the twin keys to our strength: that which comes to us in overcoming our own adversity, and that which is shared by our unbreakable bonds of sisterhood forged in our shared oppression.
But it is an oppression that cannot stand. It will fall. It is falling even now. The rage we see on the side of our oppressors comes from nothing else so much as the fact that their hateful behavior and vicious methodology are crumbling around them. The civilized world isn't tolerating their kind of outlook toward women, and women are taking places in the decision-making processes that dictate civilized society's attitudes with increasing frequency.
We've been knocked off our horses long enough.
It's time for us to ride hard into this war - and to ride together, against a common foe that, if it isn't on its last legs, is really feeling the heat and about to face our wrath on a level it hasn't felt in the war so far. And when we arrive in the camp of the enemy we will - together, side-by-side - be armed and ready for whatever they bring against us.
And we'll win that war.
We'll win because we're right.
We are all capable of changing the world. We are all sisters. We are all Warrior Princesses.
I love Xena! Definitely something that drew me to the blog. Great post, and reminds me how much I miss having action pieces with female leads on TV.
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