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W H A T P E R M I S S I O N S Authortorial ►
ThinkingDaughters
ToGrowAGirl
We the last who remember, still.
Who
are you
to
speak?



What
it
was


 back
then
 
to
grow
a
girl.


What permissions

to
give and take to
your
self,

slim encouragements
in that long wait
for
form
to assemble
and manifest
 subjectI


in her, a girl,



ThinkingDaughters
OurAncientArguments
T H A T C A L L U M B I L I C A L
Being female
remains
radical,
still?
a girl growing into our long fight for relational being,

for that dream of being heard

a speaking self
whole


and in the tellingMoments
 Subject to Subject.




   
That dream of humanBeing

the perceived perceiver,
encouraged and encouraging.

B e i n g f e m a l e r e m a i n s r a d i c a l , s t i l l ?
 
ThinkingDaughters
OurAncientArguments
Narratorial 1 ReturnToSpine ►

Whispers ▸

			
	

to each other    


no more
no more


			











this unveiling   
		

   We,
   your
   gifts,

   your bond sealing kinship
   say,

   no more.

   We are not,
   will
   not
   one
   minute
   longer
   be

   kindling
   one male to another
   in
   your
   economies
   of
   exchange.

   How could

   unearthing
   this meaning,
   not change
   everything?

BookScan image: Judith Butler. Gender Trouble. p.52.

What, in this Judith Butler quote made me grab a sticky note, scribble a comment and mark page 52?

Her gift of understanding came to me in a revelatory rush as a major piece of the puzzle clicked into place: the puzzle of relation between men and women; between men and all usOthers.

WeObjects given as gifts of exchange, used to bond groups of men together. Without our own, we reflect masculine identity by being the site of its absence; an absence made real in our passing from one man to another man, as property bound with the added value of sex/procreation and domestic labor and wrapped in the promissory word "family".

Love? Not even on the table…

In her explanation of this ancient, foundational meaning of woman not by and for herself as a partner human but of use for binding groups of men together, Butler lays bare womanBeing preemptively emptied out to voided Other. For the uses of men.

It was/is a practical, economic matter for them.
Are we women responsible?

To the extent that early on this contagion of void caught hold through us at our expense. And we went along. But, how else?

It was before, back then, when this underlying bedrock, these economies of survival took root; these alliances between men bound together through trade in women.

The sad truth of us, the human animal, deeply complex & driven, is that change in this patternHabit of value extraction, one from the other in the relation between men and women/Others, the force for true change will be, is, in large part on us; we who are the molten ore to these economies of exchange.

But the benefits of living an engaged selfhood, brought into ourBeing from working to recognize and disencumber our relation to/with one another from these burdens embedded in us, are great.

And now’s our chance.