Feminist Majority Foundation Tribute

So today is my last day as an intern for the Feminist Majority Foundation and woman, what a crazy summer it's been here. Between campus visits, blog writing, speakers, and summits it's been a great journey in understanding my own experience as a woman and how others connect with my story. My fellow interns are some of the most creative and knowledgeable people I've met, and sitting in the intern pit with them dissecting underlying gender politics in different articles and getting rallied around an activist social group has been completely inspiring. Love these connections I've been able to make and the ways in which my mind has been opened up to all of the inter-sectional complexities of the feminist movement. There were ups and downs of couse, but overall it's really been a really rewarding experience.And without getting too mushy, I also just wanted to shout out to all you crazy feminists out there--both in and out of the organization--who help to remind me that I'm not alone. That will probably be the biggest thing I take away from all of this. Love you all <3

So I didn't expect to write a tribute poem, but several weeks back when we were in Santa Barbara and I was trying to fall asleep I just got this weave of inspiration and have been working on it ever since. And though I'm not sure whether or not I'm comfortable with it just yet, I figured I pass it on as kind of a "thank you" to the FMF and my internship this summer.

________________________________

Don't be that girl
by Sydney Odell

They didn't want us to talk about it, the night we rode the midnight blur

of the express train because they thought proximity was dangerous.

if they only knew the deeper cuts they tore into the

parts of our bleeding hearts that were never really yours to begin with because

you couldn't possibly understand as you are a little girl

and everyone knows god only speaks to his little boys

whose orifices are the only ones divinely sanctioned to make policies for ours.

You tell me I’m more than a number, that this

fetus is more than how many weeks you can point to on a calendar

but you continue to degrade my body into a mathematical equation,

So here are some numbers for you

where I come from, one plus one means subtraction

means lost in action

trying to find the enemy lines through the thick fog

of all the post racial political bull shit I see draped as closure

over a 16 year-old black teenage girl still looking for a home

after growing up to find that not all mothers are born into white picket houses.

Covering the mother of three who found that four

could keep the door to safety locked by the same hands that leave her blue at night.

Holding the 1 in 5 whose skirts must have asked for it because

in these instances the body did not find a way and their

wombs are forever forced to be cultural baptisms

for horny men’s "nature."

You tell me you don’t want to hear

but I don’t want to see, don’t want to feel the way 

your noose feels tight around my neck every time he’s taught

he’d rather not, it’s more pleasurable this way.

Tell me the choice in this. As if agency

was something we decided on in theory

but like communism fall apart in practice because

all I know is the day man invented the wheel was the day woman got left behind

and we’ve been running in circles ever since chasing a horizon only meant for a few

but promised to all.

Forgive me if I don’t regurgitate the preferred statistics

the 1 in 4, the 75% though none of it means anything

if you can’t acknowledge that I bleed when you do

that actions mean more than the words you profess to

believe in because our bodies are battlefields being pulled to the right and the left and

don’t you know red is on its way out

it's time to bleed humanity blue

it’s true that I am more than a number and you

are more than the physician you profess to be, but

to see the way out we have to know the way in so

This is for the women, this is for the men,

this is for those who are too busy loving to care

and the ones who don’t project blanket assumptions but instead use their arms

to cover the wounds of strangers,

to pull the stitches out of other people’s mouths

this is for the ones who feel too fat, too tall, too dumb, too black, too white

too loud, too poor,

too tired to keep fighting for a humanity you no longer believe in

but wake up each morning with forced amnesia towards past failures

in order to create a more perfect union

and this is for that girl on the train and the

story she was able to tell when she fell from grace

and finally saw the face of God in her window’s reflection

and saw that it was good.