To those men who ask that I submit*:

When novels like Speak and Living Dead Girl aren't so immediately devastating because there are too many baby girls who have had the agency over what happens to their bodies taken away violently, then I will submit to you.

When books like The Natashas or videos like A Teenage Girls Guide to Surviving Sex Slavery no longer apply to the daily realities of girls and women around the world, then I will submit to you.

When a court in the UNITED STATES doesn't decide that once sex has started, I lose the right to say no, when such laughably offensive language as "re-flowered" isn't actually used in the LEGAL OPINION, then I will submit to you.

When my daughters and granddaughters are not taught from birth that what lays between their legs is something that others will try to take by force if they aren't careful; when I'm not linked to cereta's post and find myself nodding my head, or getting a knot in my stomach when inlovewithnight says by way of linking: "The idea of all the things I haven't done, the experiences I passed on, because nobody wanted to go with me and it just wasn't the smart/good/safe thing to do by myself," * because I KNOW that feeling, then I will submit to you.

When my reproductive rights are no longer a topic of debate in the political discourse; when doctors are not gunned down for giving me the opportunity to exercise my right; when you can read personal testimonials like Gretchen Voss' or Lynda Waddington's and understand that abortion is never an easy choice but it MUST remain A CHOICE at every stage of pregnancy, then I will submit to you.

Are you seeing a theme here? So until then feel free to be offended every time I openly laugh in your face when you grumble about us "independent women" and our inability to "submit to our men as the bible says" because let's not get it twisted: I totally mean to offend the fuck outta you.

*This is actually directed at one man in particular, but I thought I'd just make it an open letter to all of the mens.

For something made entirely of words, they fail when I try to articulate how this makes me feel.

Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem

My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers
of my palms tell me so.
Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish
at the same time. I think

praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think
staying up and waiting
for paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension this
is exactly what's happening,

it's what they write grants about: the chromodynamics
of mournful Whistlers,
the audible sorrow and beta decay of "Old Battersea Bridge."
I like the idea of different

theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,
a Bronx where people talk
like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow
kind, perhaps in the nook

of a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayed
anyone. Here I have
two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back
to rest my cheek against,

your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.
My hands are webbed
like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed
something in the womb

but couldn't hang on. One of those other worlds
or a life I felt
passing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother's belly
she had to scream out.

Here when I say "I never want to be without you,"
somewhere else I am saying
"I never want to be without you again." And when I touch you
in each of the places we meet

in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dying
and resurrected.
When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,
in each place and forever.

- Bob Hicok

ETA: Discovered via the wonderful musesfool.