issue i: julia oxenreider's poetry

Mutilated sex organs part one:
(out of millions and millions and billions.)

they cut off her clit with a dull piece of glass
and when she collapsed
all the men slapped her ass
and laughed.
she bled for a week
maybe more
with out her clit
she was safe...
from being called a whore.
when they raped
when they fucked..
when they assaulted her with their big, man sausage dicks
they would rip open the stitches
call her a dirty bitch.
she never did heal and it became too hard to piss
so when she became septic
they threw her in a marshy ditch.


Anonymous

when she had an abortion to save her own life
everyone called her a selfish fucked up cunt
who deserved to die.
\
the catholics said they owned her ovaries
the corporate politicians said her eggs were public property
the evangelicals said she would go to hell
/and all the groups, everday,
worked real hard to:
-Cut the aid to mothers and children
-furrow their brows at women's right to a decision
-raised the price of childcare
put and end to welfare
-create ignorance around contraception
-lie to create mass deception.\
instead of feel bad and sad about her decision..
she became raging mad
/ she raised her fists
and gave the gift
of Revolution.

issue i: debbie selnow's article

Alright. So, my boyfriend called me a cunt a few weeks back. I’ve never been able to reclaim the word for my own personal, empowering use. I feel like this contention deserves a discussion, and what better place to state my own opinion, than on my own, personal, feminist blog.
Before I get started, just let me clarify that I, as a person, a whole, was being identified entirely by my genitalia; he was not referring to my “sweet cunt,” nor am I dating James McAvoy. At any rate, I don’t feel it necessary to divulge the details of the situation. Suffice it to say, conversation was heated, and the implications behind the use of the word were not particularly loving.
I already said that I have never been a ble to reclaim the word for myself in a positive light. To me, there is too much hate surrounding its use. However, in comparison, the term “queer” was also incredibly hateful, and has been successfully reclaimed as an empowering word by the queer community. In that regard, I am willing to acknowledge the potential in reclaiming the word “cunt” for myself—as a woman, and as a feminist.
The latest issue of Bitch, the “Lost and Found” issue, contains a piece by Julia Appel about the slur “J.A.P.” (Jewish American Princess) Appel discusses the various attempts at reclaiming the word, and the ways in which the racism that originally defined the term continue to resonate across the nation as a whole. Appel notes that,
“The problem with reconstructing any slur for use by one group is that there are plenty of other groups out there who never stopped using it in the first place.”
I think this is true in any attempt at reclaiming a harmful word. There has to be agreement among those reclaiming it, and a restructuring of the term in a positive and empowering light that is agreed upon broadly, so that the new implications are so strong that it becomes incredibly difficult for any individual or group to use the word slanderously while still being taken seriously.
I am trying to reconsider my opinion with regard to another point Appel makes. She says that the reason most attempts at reclaiming the word “J.A.P” have failed is that “the term is left with almost all its negativity intact.” When I was called a cunt (and for the record—probably not something to boast about—this was not my first time being called a cunt, simply the first time someone I cared about deeply and who knows me quite well used it toward me in a retaliatory context) I felt it with all its hatred intact. I felt not empowerment, no pride, no actual confidence whatsoever.
I went through a period—actually, very recently—where I did try using the word relatively casually. I failed miserably. I failed because I used it only in reference to myself, and I used it to acknowledge that I knew I was being seen as irrationally bitchy in the situation, and I actually used it as, more or less, a means of writing off my rudeness and by expressing just how upset I was about something. I admit this for two reasons: First, to point out that there could possibly have been a reason for my boyfriend to misunderstand my stance on the term, since my failed attempt at reclamation—if you can call it that—was as recent as it was, and second, simply to demonstrate an attempt and reinstating a term bound by hate gone horribly awry. I fully admit to my naiveté in doing so.
Still, this attempt was bound in frustration, and lasted me less than two weeks before I became completely disgusted in myself and refused to even speak the word. At that point, I see a regression in place. However, to reiterate the way in which a word can be used to invoke such a great deal of hate and hurt, let me just say this: After this instance I do see things more personally. Like I said, not the first time I’ve been called a cunt. But it was the first time I was called one by someone I love. It took until I compared the “c” word to the “n” word (my partner is mixed) days later for him to tell me, “If you would have made that comparison earlier, I would have COMPLETELY understood that ‘Hey, not okay.’” I’m not entirely sure that I buy that. I first of all don’t think it is ever okay to call your girlfriend a cunt, and secondly, definitely don’t think it is okay to call your feminist girlfriend a cunt. At least with anger—which is almost inevitably perceived as hate—behind it. I do take responsibility for my recent reckless use of the word, and understand a degree of misunderstanding. However, I think the situation does help me recognize just how lost I can be within my own feminist ideals, but what is more, how painful one word can truly be.
I have no solidly constructed thoughts on the matter; all I have is what I have said. As a plus, I always like to know that I am still able to feel passionately about something.

issue i: jaden witt's article

(Caption: Me, #17, wondering why he caled heads.)

A Girl on a Football Team

Today, when practice was done, we were in the huddle and coach was giving us our pep talk. He said “Ok boys, we have a game tomorrow so don’t stay out too late at the bonfire. Go home and get a good night’s sleep.” Then Tanner said, “O, so Jaden can stay out late at the bonfire and doesn’t have to go home and get a good night’s sleep?” Then coach said, “Yea, she’s a good student and doesn’t get bad grades.” It was really funny.

Some times when coach is yelling at players, for missing a tackle or running a wrong route, he grabs their facemask to talk to them. I feel left out sometimes, because he never does that to me. I think he would, but I don’t think he does because of that law that male teachers can’t touch girls. He leans on my shoulder pads, like every one else, when we’re in the huddle, but I still feel like I am separated from the rest of the gang.

It’s kind of hard to have long hair and play football. Trying to keep a pony tail in with a helmet on is really hard. We have to take off our helmets to get water and my hair always gets stuck in the pads in the helmet. So it pulls my hair out of the pony tail. When I put my helmet back on then I always have bangs in my face and I always have to stick my hands up my helmet to get them out of the way. Even if I use the non-slip pony tails it still gets all messed up. It is so annoying.

It is kind of disappointing that I can’t get pumped up in the locker room before games with the rest of the team. I can hear them laughing and yelling from the girl’s locker room and I feel like I miss out on so much. At least this year our games are right after school so the volleyball players are getting dressed for the practices or games when I’m getting dressed for mine. Next year it’s going to be even harder because I’ll be on varsity and our games are at night so the volleyball players won’t even be there when I’m dressing for my games. It’s going to be hard because I won’t be able to hear the pep talk before the game unless coach gives it to us in the hallway or something. I don’t know how it is going to work next year because the visiting team uses the girl’s locker room to get changed. Sometimes I leave my things in my locker and I have to go in there and the boys just throw their clothes everywhere. It’s so gross because their boxers are just lying on the floor and the benches. Then it smells like colon and guy’s deodorant for a week after that too. I get a headache every time I go in there. It’s disgusting!!!

There’s a look at a girl’s life on a “boy’s” football team.

issue i: val mikelson's article

The Virgin Mary as a Controversial Catholic Theme in Contemporary Art
-a Review of the Discourse surrounding the originality of art critic Eleanor Heartney

In this essay we will look at three artists in Postmodern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art. †Kiki Smith, Chris Ofili and Robert Gober are influential artists that used direct icons of the Catholic tradition and stirred up controversy. They have been exposed to Catholicism, and in a few select pieces have responded to the religion. †The pieces made such an outrage that the discourse around them went farther out then the traditional realms of art criticism and caught the attention of politics.
Eleanor Heartney recognizes the Roman Catholic sensibility within the contemporary art scene. Heartney’s argument for understanding the contemporary artists she features in her book centers around the idea of an “Incarnational Consciousness”. Heartney draws this idea of from the work of the sociologist and Catholic priest Andrew Greenly who writes about how Protestant and Catholic minds differ. Catholics are more acceptant of metaphor, where as Lutherans are more weary of it.
Some examples of these differing attitudes regarding metaphor can be seen in the ritual of Communion that both Lutherans and Catholics share. In Catholicism the bread and wine aren’t symbols of Christ they become Christ once consecrated. This creates the belief of God dwelling in the world and being a part of humans by being consumed. Lutherans see the bread and wine of the ritual of Communion as symbols of Christ, and don’t see God as necessarily dwelling on the earth but feel God is distinct from earth. The body has a different metaphorical presence in the Catholic consciousness. As Kiki Smith puts it, “Catholicism has these ideas of the host, of eating the body, drinking the body, ingesting the soul or spirit; and then of the reliquary, like a chop shop of bodies. Catholicism is always involved in the physical manifestation of physical conditions, always taking inanimate objects and attributing meaning to them. In a way it is compatible with art.” (1) The aforementioned quote belongs to the noted Kiki Smith whose work is featured on the front cover of Postmodern Heretics. What is interesting about Kiki Smith is how a featured article in ARTnews (3) was hushed and muted about Catholicism running though her work. Her outspoken opinions and ways of reinterpreting the Virgin are clearly dealt with in Postmodern Heretics, as opposed to carefully handled in ARTnews. † Smith Reluctantly opened up about her Catholic upbringing. (3 p.129) It seemed it was prompted by a friend, Jane Dickson who pointed out how “She has a baroque love of opulence and luxury and she’s interested in the mortification of the flesh. She’s fascinated by jewels but also by decay.” (3) Smith said doesn’t like the dogma of the church and doesn’t claim to uphold the religion, but she loves the spaces of meditation and introspection. Her love of these introspective spaces reflects her other comments on her childhood, “I sat under the house a lot in the dark, I sat in the hamper a lot, I sat in the shower a lot, I did things like that.” She said she would like to make a “non-denominational chapel-but with blood and guts.” Heartney makes a space to get right to the heart of Smith’s politics in Postmodern Heretics.
In 1999 there was an exhibition of artwork from young British artists entitled, “Sensation” that caused a sensation on the Brooklyn Museum of Art. (4) The allegations that erupted around Chris Ofili’s painting The Holy Virgin Mary that is was attack on Catholicism. Ofili, who is of Nigerian ancestry, featured the Madonna with dark completed skin, elephant dung and collaged cut outs from pornography. The mayor of New York, Rudolph Guiliani, saw the piece specifically as an attack on Catholicism. The museum was threatened by him to be shut down if the offensive painting wasn’t removed. (1, p.142) The use of elephant dung was seen as the most offensive feature to the painting, and as Heartney points out, Guiliani didn’t object to the use of pornography at all. Heartney suspects that Guiliani based his condemnation on the museum catalog, which featured the painting as a small photograph, which made the pornography undetectable. Another point of contention for the controversy is Mary being seen as a strong and powerful presence. The viewer is made to feel vulnerable by the magnitude of the 8-foot tall painting, and from her confrontational stare directly at the viewer. Kiki Smith asserts, “The Virgin Mary always extends her arms, making the body vulnerable. Vulnerable and compassionate, but to be vulnerable is to loose insight. It makes you exposed. For me, to be that vulnerable, I think you could loose all your insides, losing your self…I am angry that the Virgin Mary pays for her compassion by being neutered… The position of the Virgin robs you of your femininity and sex.”(1, p.159) Heartney explains, like Ofili’s Nigerian influence, Kiki Smith’s blending Mary with Female Goddesses from Pagan, Egyptian, Celtic and Greek origins to “regain the sexuality and the fecundity which the Christian tradition denied her.” (1, p.159) The Virgin symbol has evolved passed her traditional renderings and become more complex. Another artist focusing on the complexity to the symbol of Mary is Robert Gober.
Like the controversy in New York, Robert Gober’s use the traditional depiction of Mary was condemned also. His exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary art in Los Angeles featured the Virgin Mary pierced through the womb with a culvert pipe standing over a drainage grate. The art critic Joselit points out that Gober is an open homosexual and talks about the piece in sexual terms, “Gober’s project seeks not to create an “other” nature, but to denaturalize both heterosexuality and homosexuality.” (5, p.66) In the same way that Kiki Smith feels the Virgin is neutered for her vulnerability, Gober might feel neutered being a gay man within Catholic dogma. Gober expressed that he objects to the way Catholicism is taught and wants to, “ventilate that and complicate that in terms of life.” (1, p.144) Gober uses what Joselit refers to as the “quasi-readymade” (5, p.68) image of the Virgin. We look through a drainpipe, we see through her womb. Does the pipe strengthen the symbol of Mary depicting her as the “aqueduct that brings the grace of God coursing down the stairs and into the city of the faithful” (1. p145) as Heartney explains? Joselit says, “The virgin’s womb is eviscerated by an empty pipe, which blasts a hole in the place where the Son would have gestated. The object of grief, the dead Son is absent: regarding the virgin head on, you can see through her body...” Gober seems to have achieved what he set out to do with his depiction of Mary; he definitely ventilated and complicated the symbol. The pipe is either a path for God, or a place where God would have been. The pipe can be taken in terms of its positive or negative space. This reiterates the Marian duality expressed by Smith, “Vulnerable and compassionate, but to be vulnerable is to loose insight.” (1, p.159) As Linda Ekstrom writes in the National Catholic Reporter felt Gober “had taken license with one of their sacred symbols”. (6) She responds to the outraged Catholic masses with calm assertions of how “reinterpretation of sacred imagery can help keep religion honest.” She points out how religious symbols have been used in “highly political, territorial and oppressive” ends. She accepts how the Marian figure as “leaked out” of the institutional church and into the world through various “sightings” around the world. (6) By not censoring religious symbols and allowing overlaps in the art world and religion to occur, she sees potential for influencing theological notions because of how it challenges the status quo. Heartney relates Ofili and Gober’s use of the Virgin Symbol this way, “[they] touch on the Virgin Mary’s problematic role in Catholic doctrine. Ofili’s works make sly reference to official denials of Mary’s sexual nature, while Gober’s suggests that her purity need not be synonymous with sterility.” (1 p.146)
Another good point Sue Taylor brings up in her critique of Postmodern Heretics is why the artists and her self are no longer practicing Catholics. Could the experience of “consuming” or “swallowing” an artwork or idea be related to the ritual of Communion where we consume Christ’s flesh? Can the hallowed ground of art galleries reflect the sacred spaces of the religious? Looks like glimmer of a unifying idea, sure to stir up controversy.


1. Heartney, Eleanor. Postmodern Heretics. New York: Midmarch Arts Press. 2004
2. Taylor, Sue. "A New Catholic Iconography?" Art in America Feb 2005: p39-41
3. Boodro, Michael. "Blood, Spit and beauty." ARTnews, Mar 1994, p.196
4. Baker, Elizabeth C.. “Sacred or profane?” Art in America, Nov 1999, p.39
5. Joselit, David. “Poetics of the Drain” Art in America, Dec 1997, p.65
6. Ekstrom, Linda. “Gober’s Mary fires debate on art, religion.” National Catholic Reporter, December 5, 1997, p.18
7. Mullarkey, Maureen. “Art-Smart Catholicism” Crisis Magazine, Sept. 2004, p.50

issue i: anonymous' poem

1.) THE MORNING AFTER

Swollen,
red,
tender,
sore,
and torn to pieces.

I sit down to pee.
Just a drop trickles out.

I press against my very full bladder.
Try to push it out. Try to push it out.
No luck.

What does this mean?

Maybe I should see a doctor.

But what would I say?
How would I explain?
They'd think I was a slut.

Maybe I am. A slut.
Or just plain stupid.

Confused --- that's what I am.
What the hell happened last night?

Whatever it was, I want to forget.
But my vagina remembers.



2.) RAPE

Manipulation.
Coercion. Defeat.
Big bony fist.
Boyfriend's fist.
Punching. Tearing. Destroying.
Plunging into MY vagina.
My personal space.
Invaded. Intruded.
Put to shame.

Can't move. Can't breath.
Must end. now. NOW!
Stop.
now. please.
can't speak. can't think.

Finally. It's over.
But the pain remains.
Confusion. Shame. Hatred. Sorrow.



3.) AN OPEN LETTER TO MY RAPIST

Dear Asshole,

I'm just writing to say...
Fuck. You.

Fuck you
for plunging into my personal space.

Fuck you
for invading my dreams and making them nightmares.

Fuck you
for thinking we're still friends.

Fuck you
for your apparent amnesia.

Fuck you. FUCK you. FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!!



4.) PAYBACK

You sentenced me
to self-doubt and shame,
to confusion and pain.

To tears that wouldn't stop
and to self-harm that brought
scars to my wrists
and marks to my thighs.

You sentenced me,
so now I sentence you.

I sentence you
to see what you've done.
To know your mistakes,
to fall to your knees.
To beg my forgiveness
and scream pretty please!



5.) FUCK THE PATRIARCHY

I'm fucking tired
of this world
that trained me to be
your punching bag.

Angry with these lessons
that taught me to
see myself
through your eyes.

I'm leaving this prison.
I refuse to lose myself here.

I'm going out into the world.
Ready to fly free.

What you did was not my fault.
This punishment
that never should have been
must die today.

Because I am so much more
than you could ever see.
So much more
than what happened that day.



6.) AND YOU WERE GONE

I had a dream last night.
You reached out to touch me.
I told you to stop.
You yanked down my skirt.
I froze with fear.
Your fist came at me.
But I shot you a stare
that crumbled you into
a thousand little pieces.
And you were gone.
Dead.
Forever.
And I felt safe
knowning you would finally
leave me be.



-----------------------------------------

More than 1 in 4 women are raped in their lifetimes, and 80% of these rapes are committed by acquaintances, friends, relatives, or significant others. Since women are socialized not to recognize the criminality of these attacks, it may take a survivor years to realize she was raped. Remember --- if you feel raped, you were raped. Trust your gut and always know that it was not your fault. It's never too late to get help. Rape survivors CAN be happy people. For more information or support, contact the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center at 293-7273.

Rape myths:
It's only rape if the victim physically resists.

Girls will have the mental clarity to resist and fight back.

Girls will know they're being raped while it's happening.

Rape is only committed by strangers.

It's only rape if the penis is used for penetration.

issue i: becca sorgert's article

Women in Comics

This past summer I was finally convinced and decided to give the world of comic books a try - something new that I thought I would never enjoy or comprehend. Soon, I found myself at Paradox Comics, a strange, new environment that instantaneously made me feel like an obvious outsider. Where to begin, I had no clue. I looked around dumbfounded for a long period of time trying to find out how the comic book order was within the shelves. Spending hours in libraries, I could make no sense of the order. In desperation to find an item, I went home with Girls – a comic book with the epitome of male dominancy that many don’t see and I have no idea how one could not.

Next was The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg. Although the comic is feminist to a certain degree and the authors have integrated community action and activist art, the writing is juvenile and ending is centered around male action and success -- too adolescent, not what I wanted.

Then, I discovered Alison Bechdel’s glorious graphic autobiography, Fun Home, only by stumbling upon it at Zandbroz. Bechdel’s feminist, lesbian voice narrates her work by focusing on her relationship with her father, growing up, and learning to accept one’s identity and familial history. Fun Home puts hope in the comic industry. But is the comic book industry accepting of this literature when you can not find this within a comic store?

Excited beyond belief to find more feminist work after Fun Home, I returned to Paradox to inquire about female authors. I did not realize such in inquiry would stump the staff -- their suggestion: read a comic written by men that has a wide female audience. I settled with Y: the Last Man. Although trying at times, it proved itself as quite a feminist piece, but not written by a woman. This field is exclusively by men for men.

Looking further into the male dominated authorship of this field, Gail Simone’s Women in Refrigerators theory exposes the double standards of male and female heroes an their endings. Women in Refrigerators focus is on shedding light and to change the fate of women in comics, for women superheroes die a more brutal death and injury without full recuperation, without revenge, and are less likely to return after death. Simone has collected a list of over one hundred female characters affected including Stephanie Brown or Spolier’s fate of rape and torture by drill (Cochran 34).

To further this theory, Perry Moore has recently compiled the destruction of around forty gay identified characters. For example, a character many can picture, Batwoman is “reveled as a closeted lesbian, kidnapped [and] tortured” (Moore 27). Mathew Bakko, doing his own research about his identity within comics, found that gay superheroes in comic books started as identifying as straight and authors deciding a gay sexual identity later on and issues such as dating, hate crimes, and general safety were becoming prominent then to the character. With physical appearance, Bakko found that gay “males were androgynous; presented more femininely then other superheroes” and that “the only comic book characters that I found that were gay were white, which is an issue” (Bakko).

As for the status of sexuality in comics, Bakko believes that “it is good that sexuality is being discussed, although should be more comprehensive. Gay characters didn’t have much exposure as actual physical sexuality, more of romantic feeling. At least it is a step in the right direction” (Bakko).

One of most exciting comic I discovered was Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist by Diane DiMassa. Hothead’s website says it best: “Hothead and her beloved cat, Chicken, have been providing rage therapy for exhausted devotees since 1991. Hothead is fully in touch with your Inner Societal Rage and gleefully carries out the fantasies you would never act on. Would you?” (Hothead). Read it.

Sexist men in power refuse to let women have an opportunity in this medium. For those of you who may be thinking the field is this way because women do not buy comics, let alone read them, Trina Robins, writer (including a pro-choice anthology Choices: A Pro-Choice Benefit Comic for NOW) and co-founder of the Wimmen’s Comic Collective, responds: “It’s total bullshit to say that girls don’t read comics. Girls read comics when there are comics for girls to read” (Robbins 4). Women comic book writers are clearly under the radar, but recently there has been an increase in women creating graphic auto-biographical graphic books that are being published by fiction presses. Such comics include Fun Home, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, and Long Tac Sam by Ann Marie Fleming.

It is my conclusion that women are frequently not published in the male dominated comic field and find themselves self-publishing like Fart Party by Julia Wertz somewhat similar to many radical comics in the 90’s, or being published now by presses that are new to the graphic/illustrated novel. Women are finding a place on the shelves, but not in stores that specialize in their field. Questioning authority’s norms and rebelling in existing, woman (comic) writers are excluded from equal stocking and place within their field and are shown that they need to prove their existence. Seeing relatable images, plot, and voice draws readers to texts because it represents themselves and their place in society. Not having women writers accessible and biasing gay and women comic heroes excludes women and others that are considered a minority from society and each other through this medium and equity.

Works Cited

Bakko, Mathew. Personal Interview. 25 May 2008.

Cochran, Shannon. “The Cold Shoulder: Saving Superheroines from Comic-book Violence” Bitch 35 (Spring 2007): 23-6.

Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist. 2008. Diane DiMassa. 6 July 2008

Robbins, Trina. From Girls to Grrlz: A History of Women’s Comics from Teens to Zines. Chronicle Books, 1999.

issue i: anna musselman's In Early Morning

In Early Morning

English is not sufficient to say

the sound of a thousand silver dollar aspen leaves

-wafer thin and diaphanous-

moving rapidly back and forth in morning breeze

knocking into each other

delicately, like millions of heeled dance steps

heard in the wash of a hundred mile distance.

Light filters through them as they move,

cupping and dropping the shine-spill

from tiny green fingertips.

Across the road where I stand silent

struck still

watching and listening,

the ponderosas are answering with a sigh.

It comes through the multitude of faintly flexing needles,

It comes swimming around their many trunks

with cracked skin like old women

who have stood with their ankles in the wet ground for centuries.

The sun is rising over fan rock in the

east and this music will fade

with the movement of light.

In sixty seconds’ time

this pre-birth hush of

hanging in infinity

and the quiet sense that

all is done,

all accomplished,

all set right- will pass.

The sun will top hunter mesa and

awake the people and mules in the campground below.

In the valley where I pass summer days

the crew will push at their eyes with balled fists

and stumble to breakfast.

Aspen leaves have awakened outstretched plains of peace within me.

Their music will tickle, beckon, and lull my spirit through the day.

I will read about them in the words of poets

who have heard their music

or something exactly like it

in the Sahara or the mountains of Tibet.

issue i: elizabeth olson's Lizzy Crystallized

“Sometimes the rare, the beautiful, can only emerge or survive in isolation...They had not reached that point of utter cynicism, that distrust of self and of the human past which leads finally to total entrapment in that past, “man crystallized.?? "
Loren Eisely, The Night Country

She was opt to think of herself as Elizabeth Bennet; “Lizzy” to her pet rabbits. She was paler than most. She executed technique with passion, not talent. She liked red, circular lollipops; they reminded her of the sun at 8:34PM, when a trillion people look at it, and presume its crimson. When it melts away into your lips.
Lizzy wrote poetry, an aggressive form of her passivity. She couldn’t publish her papers to save her life due to an inclination to engage an internal rhyme scheme. Her writing was too feminine for academia, she inferred from all the rejection letters. She skipped academic conferences. She went on digs alone. An anthropologist is not unique in his inclination to isolate, but none were as successful as was Lizzy.
She walked alone at night, from her Thoreauvian cottage on Lake Meniscus into the open fields of the meadows surrounding. She strode without fear, not a characteristic of the female sex, yet something Elizabeth Bennet would do. The wind toyed her head, making her earlobes drip heavy with oranges and her throat burdened, gulping a huge apple. Lizzy resentfully worshiped the wind, trying not to dive too hard into its freedom, into its swiftly melancholic efficacy.
She followed the breeze as unaffected as she could, each blade under her feet a reminder not to twirl and whirl into Piazzolla’s oblivion, no matter how overwhelming was the openness of everything she could not have. She came to a grassy spot she often borrowed, and knew exactly where and how to sit to not disturb the resting bones. A rabbits’ graveyard did not require Lizzy to alter her normal behavior as she simply observed the precision with which each old bone asserted its own ossuary in which was ossified the twitching wonderment of a rabbit transfixed to stillness in the moonlight.
With the penetration of no other anthropologist, Lizzy was able to tell the rabbits’ stories from mapping the progression of osteoblastogenesis, which was a science perceived not by the mind, but by a proper construction of senses and reactions felt deep within one’s own bone marrow. Lizzy had written a paper on it once. It was too light for the journals.
Lizzy sat until morning, feeling the intensity of lapine evolution, its stark cessation in contrast to her own jutting and narrow hipbones. After those many hours of sitting, Lizzy went to relieve herself in a bush. As she did this, she suddenly heard the familiar, yet distant grasp of human vocal chords that were not her own. Without moving an inch, she twisted her head around slowly.
“Listen, fella,” said a short, seemingly good-humored man, “I’m sure you far from home, but that don’t mean I like to find a man taking a piss in my bushes when I’m lookin’ to shoot my breakfast. Y’hear?”
Lizzy’s eyes fell, her limbs twitching in unnatural paralysis. The moonlight of the night was replaced by the unbecoming glow of morning. There she was, emerging from the cynicism of her bones’ oscillation: she was “man crystallized.”
Lizzy turned, she apologized, she left. Leaves, like urns of rabbit and human marrow, crunched under her feet as she returned to the cacophony of her isolation; her essence like the swift melancholy of the wind, but more twitchy, and without the freedom.

issue i: gwen olson's article

"We must remember the chemical connections between ourselves and the stars, between the beginning and now. We must remember and reactivate the primal consciousness of oneness between all living things."

Barbara Mor

Women are not supposed to talk about periods. We are hushed up or scolded when we struggle to voice our feelings, we are discreetly passed tampons and pads when the dreaded blood begins to flow. Commercials proclaim full secrecy with their new and improved feminine products-- a woman accidentally drops a Pearl tampon, and her male friend attempts to write with it.

Men shake their heads, frequently dismissing angry attitudes up to PMS. And women have become shameful of a part of their lives that should be celebrated. Historically, perspectives seemed to always be negative regarding menstruation. The Bible, specifically in Leviticus, appears to abhor women’s menstrual blood. Leviticus 15 goes into much detail about menstruation.

“She shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean / until the even…And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles, or two / young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest…and the priest shall make an / atonement for her before the Lord for the issue of her uncleanness.”

With such language as “unclean” and “atonement” being used in sacred text, it is understandable why menstruation has become a cultural topic of shame and disgust.

Shawn Dell Joyce, a visual artist from New York, took Anna Diamant’s popular book “The Red Tent” to heart by creating several displays of what the red tent might look like in modern times. “In Biblical times, the red tent was a place that tribal women gathered to celebrate births, and to menstruate monthly. At what point did this sacred space become a punishment rather than an honor? When did our “moon blood” become “Eve’s Curse”? What would happen if we started to celebrate this rite of passage in America?”

Diamant carefully depicts the red tent as a celebratory place for menstruating women, not as a place where women were cast off for a seven days. As Rachel “bled her first blood,” the other women crowded around her, decorating her in henna and jewelry. They sang songs to her and rubbed her body down with aromatic oils.

As Chicklit.com contributor Deborah (no last name provided) explains, “… we are deeply influenced by the language we choose….I think that if we refer to our periods as a “pain,” there's a greater chance that they will be exactly that. If we use language that conveys the idea that menstruation is shameful or dirty, is it any surprise that women have trouble accepting their bodies?”

Many women are familiar with the code words and phrases associated with menstruation—all meant to cover up or disguise a part of female physiology that should be lauded and rewarded.

I wish for a time when our periods are not something disgusting. I want menstrual art and paintings to be celebrated. Menstruation should bring us a renewed sense of womanhood and femininity.

I have hope that there will be another time in life, because this life is so very cyclical, women will be applauded for being a source of life. Women will be able to talk openly and honestly with one another about their bodies. And women will once again be at ease with themselves.