(A lament to secular feminism)
Phil Thrailkill, (a friend of mine), shared this poem with me that a friend of his had written this week. It took my breath away.
goddess
by Heidi Densmore
Ah, Feminism, look at you now!
I remember when I suckled at your robust, braless breasts. I joyfully drank the milk of freedom you gently tendered.
Your arms cradled my adolescent girlhood as you sang me lullabies of rights and liberties and belonging to myself.
In your ancient songs you taught me what my freedom meant: I was no longer hindered by antiquated blockades to fun like virginity and childbirth.
I willingly sacrificed my body for lust upon your ramparts without remorse, to celebrate that no bastard children could choose me for their mother.
A simple, civilized pill relieves me of concern—makes a freeway of my body where many men have tread.
The litter left behind, an honored sacrifice to you—herpes, syphilis, gonorrhea, HIV, AIDS, PID—our martyrdom to hard-won self- determination.
Your sophist arguments were easy mash to swallow. How downtrodden we had been in your reconstructed history;
Where we had been nailed high upon a pedestal by patriarchal mandates; When filthy haloes hung around our heads and Incarnate babes languished in our arms.
How lucky we are now to be less like us; you gave us our rights to work as slaves in factories, free of children and husbands. You crooned into existence a pill that makes nothing out of something, so we control all forces of nature.
You taught us how much more value it is to be a toy with a price tag, than to be a priceless nurturer.
Thank you, goddess, that I have no children to abuse me with demands, no grandchildren to give butterfly kisses.
My arms are as empty as my belly, and my breasts sag and wrinkle, never spent on milk for demon children stealing my personhood away like thieves.
You have few daughters now—you did your job so well;
Your family is old, and barren. Cloistered in nursing homes where no visitors return. Unchosen ghosts of children float down sterile corridors, weeping, as we cry alone and wonder why our freedom costs so much.
But wait! There is a pill for this! I can choose my death as easily as I chose the death of countless others; no need to suffer.
Ah, goddess, I see you now. Your arms have fallen off, your breast are stone your face is ancient and I see you now.
Your other names were Baal’at; Ishtar; Inanna, Aphrodite; Atargatis; Tanit. You new name is Feminism, but you’ve had a thousand names, and are unchanged. You are life-hater; you bring chaos and annihilation in your names.
You are the dragon Holocaust and death is in your breath.