This is not a poem. This is my acknowledgement that a problem exists within our language. This problem doesn’t appear to me because I have sisters, nieces, or a mother. I am not a feminist because of those reasons.
I am a feminist because I don’t view my masculinity as fragile as a ship in a bottle on the verge of shattering if I make one wrong move.
I find it difficult when I hear the latest celebrity claim that they are a feminist because they have a female family member. Tripping over such a common excuse you’d think they plagiarized it from Wikipedia. As if the only way to recognize a woman’s proper place in our culture is to have one related to yourself, a man.
Our language is continuously furthering an issue that our culture does not fully accept as a problem. We use such violent words to describe the act of having sex.
Fuck. As in the sound that leaves your lips when constantly being used to describe harm being done. “I fucked him up.” “I got fucked over.”
Bang. As in the sound that erupts when a fist collides with a face, when a body collapses on to the floor.
Destroyed. As in the complete and utter removal of something that is most likely considered meaningful and beautiful to someone else.
Smash. As in the sound created at the inevitable impact after one of your favourite glasses gets knocked off the countertop and shatters across the floor, unable to be pieced back together.
For a lot of men, sex is not all about the pleasure. But also, the action of testing and proving your masculinity.
We are taught, through our language, our culture, our discussions, that sex is a transaction between partners in which the woman gives and the man takes.
In which the man is given both the power and the possession.
This is not a poem. This is an acknowledgment to just how fucked up the language surrounding sex has become.
