This entry includes a rough transcription of comments I gave at the Oxford, Mississippi Women’s March on October 2, 2021. The event itself was a success, but I was bitter about having to get there in the first place, having to drag up the emotional strength to get mad AGAIN about right wing extremists getting their agendas through state legislatures. This year, it was Texas, and beyond.

In October of 2011, I was standing on a different part of the same public square, speaking into a microphone against a statewide ballot initiative that aimed to destroy reproductive rights by constructing “legal personhood” at the point of human XY DNA merging and cellular reproduction. This would have denied abortion access to any woman, regardless of the risk to her own life, and it would have rendered multiple, commonly used forms of birth control unlawful to prescribe. Employer control over birth control choice and criminalization of all manner of prenatal and birth outcomes were and continue to be in the landscape of discussion.

It was through my activism that time that I first got to the heart of what these extremist right wing and religious efforts are truly about–that, even if that cellular being is a “person,” it is relying on the body of a Person to survive. And the Person with the self-sufficient body was a Person first. The dependent cellular “person” is no different from a dependent adult Person. The question is not about whether that adult Person NEEDS my blood or my organs to survive–the question is whether they are entitled to take those things from my body against my will. We GIVE blood. We DONATE organs. Even after death. There is no room for the “Person” status of the self-sufficient body to be destroyed merely because a cellular “person” requires those functions. We literally will not even create enough money to support fully-embodied Persons in this country, but people with female reproductive organs can be conscripted into providing reproductive resources?

I have spent a decade in one-on-one conversations explaining the most simple, basic aspects of human reproduction and how birth control works, to men who had never heard of some of this before I said it at a public meeting or on the internet. For years, I looked to patience, reputable links, clear and concise points, oscillating between refusing to get caught up in men’s emotional displays over their own politics, vs. being perceived as an asshole by speaking my mind about how over this conversation I was and am. I lost multiple male acquaintances from social media in this way, due to their devolving into unhinged, abusive rants. I knew these behaviors were bigger than my interactions and a bigger problem by the time Gamergate came around, but all people are Cassandras when it comes to calling out dangerous male behavior. As a society, we just don’t believe that the pile of women’s and children’s bodies are human enough to inspire us to actually deal with the threat.

At the 2021 event, I told a student journalist that I have lost my patience explaining simple shit to people. In 2011, we were trying to “save birth control,” so we were avoiding naming abortion or “going too far” into such a “controversial” subject. In 2021, my rally sign said “Abortion Is Health Care” because I’m SO OVER mincing words, apologizing, qualifying what I say, shrinking, and second-guessing self-torture. In the 45 Administration/Q era, in Mississippi, this has been great for my mental and emotional health. At the microphone, the first thing I said after “Good morning” was “Welcome to the world’s longest war.”

Sources and attributions for the information and themes I drew from are included here. “The World’s Longest War” refers to a piece by Rebecca Solnit. If we really believed gendered violence was real violence, we would include family annihilators in our “mass” murder statistics, and first responders would screen for brain injuries when domestic violence victims report strangulation. I think back to my 20’s, and the friends of mine who had patio plants and furniture destroyed by enraged, drunk exes they had locked out of their houses. But they didn’t call the police. Myself at 22 years old in an office, “managing” an all-female, minimum wage staff–where two different employees, on separate occasions, came straight to work after being physically attacked by current or former intimate partners. They both tearfully told me what happened to them but did not report it to police. I used to worry one of my employees’ exes would shoot up the parking lot after work one day, or follow them into the building in a rage. Upper management included a powerful and wealthy white woman who clearly hated her underlings. She had no fucks to give about who might be shot at the office, or who had been strangled and dragged through a car window at lunch.

If women are gonna get real about what we are dealing with when we say “patriarchy,” we have to understand all of these numbers and anecdotes as a real war against ownership of our own bodies and ownership over our reproductive capacity.

You could start earlier in history, but for my comments, I started with the witch panics of Medieval Europe, primarily because they are one example that I know was a cultural panic of a type that we are still susceptible to.

“Welcome to the world’s longest war–the war over whether or not women own themselves.

In this world and in this war, women who show too much self-possession are punished and killed. At one time, throughout Europe and early America, 40,000-50,000 people, 75-80% of whom were women, were murdered for alleged witchcraft. Some scholars refer to this as a “gendercide” that occurred over about 400 years. Many of these murdered women were midwives and practiced folk medicine. But many were simply on the margins of society. Maybe she inherited land without a husband or a male heir. Independence and power got many women tortured and murdered, through official channels.

[NOTE: Though the vast majority of accused witches were killed through the legitimate or at least dominant authority’s processes, I choose to refer to their deaths as “murders” rather than “executions”.]

In medicine, male doctors spread fear and propaganda about midwives in order to control who had access to women’s bodies during pregnancy and childbirth, resulting in more women and infants dying. (This refers to the pre-germ-theory era when physicians didn’t understand why maternal and infant mortality were higher in hospitals than at home, and in physician care rather than midwife care.) Poor and uneducated women in Puerto Rico were the subjects of the first birth control pill trials, without informed consent, and with high rates of severe side effects.

In the Southern U.S., after 400 years of literal ownership over Black women’s bodies, rape, family separation, and forced labor in medically unsafe conditions, Black women’s reproductive subjugation continued in the form of forced sterilization. A “Mississippi appendectomy” is what Fannie Lou Hamer called this.

[NOTE: A previous speaker also discussed the forced sterilization of Indigenous women by the U.S. government. They also discussed the importance of access to abortion care to trans men, and the denial of agency the medical system often engages in when making medical and surgical decisions for intersex patients during infancy and onward.]

“The issue of self-ownership and self-determination is apparent in heterosexual relationships. Historically and in the present, male partners use a variety of abusive tactics, from intimidation and coercion to assault and fraud in order to control their access to a partner’s body or reproductive capacity. In the most severe cases, they take total control over the woman’s body, and often also her children’s bodies, in an act of murder.

Murder is the leading cause of death of pregnant women.

Of all women murdered in the U.S., about 1/3 were killed by an intimate partner.

Women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner related physical assaults and rapes every year. Less than 20% seek medical treatment.

[NOTE: Above statistics are from the NOW website.]

“First responders and emergency departments have long failed to recognize symptoms of brain injury in victims of strangulation. The number of domestic violence victims with undiagnosed traumatic brain injuries is thought to eclipse the numbers caused by contact sports.

At the time these comments were given, the cause of Gabby Petito’s death had not yet been released. I was fearful for her from the moment she was reported missing. I wondered if the officers who separated them overnight had considered that she would not be safe staying in the van–that maybe she needed a door with a deadbolt, and triple-pane windows. I wondered how normal it really is for officers in that part of the country to respond at all to a domestic violence call, and how often they have left women alone in the middle of nowhere with an enraged man who wants to destroy her just out in the world.

[NOTE: The following stories are not intended to be representative or comprehensive of domestic violence murder and attempted murder in my area. These are just the ones that I remember seeing in the news at the times they happened.]

“Locally, in 2016, Pamela Williams was killed while at work as a mail carrier in Panola County, by her abusive ex-husband.

In 2019, Tabitha Webb had filed for divorce and requested an order of protection when her husband shot her and then himself in the parking lot of the Sardis (correction: Batesville) Police Department, where she fled to when she saw him following her while driving. She survived, in critical condition.

In 2019, Shahara Coggins ran inside a gas station, yelling “He’s gonna kill me,” before her boyfriend shot and killed her. An on duty officer who was present then shot and killed her boyfriend. (I originally stated that Shahara worked at the gas station and was pregnant at the time–however, those details are about a witness, and my notes failed to communicate that to me while I was speaking.)

Within Oxford, Dominique Clayton‘s police officer boyfriend and affair partner (he was married) snuck into her home, shot and killed her while she slept, and left her body for her eight-year-old son to find.

Recently, the murderer of Ally Kostial pleaded guilty to his crime. They were both University of Mississippi students. He was her on-again/off-again boyfriend, and she found out she was pregnant. She wanted to meet with him to talk. He put her off long enough for him to drive to Texas to get his father’s pistol, and then he shot and killed her in a state park picnic area.

Whether or not individuals own the capacities of our own bodies is what is at stake in this war. And that brings us to Dr. Alan Braid, the Texas physician who performed an abortion outside the new restrictive law. If you have not read his opinion piece about WHY he made that choice, I strongly recommend you do so. In his practice of abortion care over the years, he witnessed women’s lives. He witnessed the devastating outcomes of illegal abortions. He believed women’s own experiences, and characterizations of their own needs. By violating this law, he fundamentally affirmed women’s self-ownership, and I want to raise him up for doing that, and let us make sure that our hearts are with him in this legal fight. [Invitation to applause]

At the sign-making party yesterday, a song came on that I have been thinking about ever since. It said “We who believe in Freedom cannot rest until it comes.” And I think about it as I look back on this advocacy that began over a decade ago for me. If showing up to events like this is new for you–welcome to the fight. Some of us have BEEN here, and we plan to still be here.

At this point, I want to offer a small practice, for each person here to connect to the self-ownership that is already part of you. There’s a lot we CAN’T do to effect the landscape of the war around us, but this war is also something we absorb from culture. We are full of a lack of self-ownership in ways we can’t even see. The liberation to own ourselves, in body and beyond, begins by deconstructing our own internal beliefs that our bodies belong to something or someone else. So you can place either hand on your heart and the other hand on top, and first just allow this contact to be present in your body and in your hands. Take a good, big breath. You can begin to repeat either silently or aloud, “My Own. My Home. My Own. My Home.” You can tap your hands against your heart as you say each word. “My Own. My Home. My Own. My Home.” Hold yourself within your own strength, and self possession.”

This exercise felt really good to do, and it seemed to resonate with the group. You’ll never get as big a crowd in the rain, so I was impressed at the turnout. It included a number of familiar faces, and some highly effective new ones, namely the Students Against Social Injustices group on campus. The former theater/choir girl in me wants to say that they need a little bit of mic and projection training, but they are on top of absolutely everything else in their advocacy.

Other speakers included light heart opening and Lion’s breath with Southern Star’s Stevi, who always makes me proud to be her student; an abortion doula, a personal abortion story from a friend of mine whose story I had not yet heard, and a great song by our local soul singer and activist maven, Effie Burt.

It’s simultaneously so draining and so affirming to participate in moments like this. And it’s so important. Not everyone can make it to every. one. of the things we think are important, that we try to show up for. For me, every public demonstration I have showed up for in the past couple of years–other women’s marches and BLM protests, meeting with a rep from an elected representative’s office to object to the 45 family separation (of course she is a total loyalist and was not worth the time to speak to), has been about me supporting all people’s Self Ownership, the Self Possession necessary for all of our liberation.