Mango trench
Oak + Fort top (c/o) (similar)
Sezane skirt
Jonak babies (similar)
Chanel handbag
ASOS beret
Linjer ring (c/o) (similar)
Location: Arno river walk – Florence, Italy
The last six years have felt like a lesson in dismantling all of the beliefs I learned in childhood, and held onto, about my place in the world as a female person. Growing up, I learned that as a girl, even as a girl (a fact that was always stressed, because no one ever suggested to me that the world was perfect, that true gender equality existed or that anyone would accord me the same level of privilege as a boy), I could be anything I wanted to be. That my body, although a source of shame and objectification, was inherently my own to do with what I wished. That if someone interfered with it, I could come forward to speak out about that and that people would believe me.
It’s not that those lessons were lies, exactly. It’s not that the things we were told were untrue. The people who taught those lessons believed them, or wanted to; perhaps in teaching them, they were manifesting a version of reality they hoped that we could make, as adults, by simply believing in it strongly enough.
They were wrong. Those beliefs alone give us no power. And I think, this week, as we all watched the United States Supreme Court strike down Roe versus Wade, many of them felt the same acute sense of betrayal and disappointment that I did.
“I try not to take it personally,” a friend told me. And I admired her in that moment, because what she is doing is something that I cannot, and will not, attempt to do. How else can I take it, but personally? This is my body, this is all female bodies. There is nothing impersonal about it. This isn’t business. It isn’t transactional. It’s my right to life, women’s right to life, which according to the law in all but thirteen US states, we now sacrifice the moment we become pregnant. Our needs and desires are of no consequence. They are not part of the conversation. Our ability to survive is no more important. Even if a pregnancy is not viable, even if it could kill us to continue it to term, we are legally required to do exactly that.
My existence is not conditional and does not depend on your ability to recognise or perceive it. But in the United States, my rights over that existence are conditional and legislated by state governments, which are overwhelmingly white and male. Similar laws exist in Malta, in the Philippines, and in twenty-two other countries worldwide, all of which have a total ban on abortion enshrined in law. In these countries, the state can prosecute women for seeking abortion, even if their pregnancy is not viable and it could kill them to continue it to full term. In some of them, the families of rapists can sue women if they fail to carry a rape-induced pregnancy to term, while the state simultaneously prosecutes them for the murder of their unborn child.
I do take it personally. And personally, I feel violated by this change in legislation. It doesn’t matter that the country that enacted the legislation is not my own. My rights, women’s right, are human rights. Any country that violates them violates them for all women, and makes the world less safe for us to live in.
What we experienced this week was a fundamental shift in the social paradigm, but a shift in the wrong direction. Women have the right to even less safety than they did a week ago. And I take that personally, because it’s my safety, my friends’ safety, my cousins’ and my colleagues’ and neighbours’ safety. We are in danger. This is gender-based persecution disguised as law. And this law will not stop abortion. It will simply disrupt access to safe abortion.
If the intent of the Supreme Court were to protect children, the approach would be entirely different. They would enact laws to limit gun ownership, as a starting point. And then laws mandating universal healthcare, along with good quality public education for all children, regardless of their economic status. The intent is to police women and our bodies. I don’t just take that personally; I feel attacked by it. Most women feel something similar. I hope that any woman who does not can take look inward and truly ask herself why. And more importantly, I hope that men who have given this no consideration because it does not impact them personally will wake up and consider it, too. Silence, after all, is complicity.
