This is screaming into the void. I know it is. I have zero confidence it will make one iota of difference, except in my own worried heart. I doubt anyone will even read it. But if I don’t get them out, put them to paper, the thoughts bounce around in my brain like a bullet ricocheting off stone. And they do greater damage. This has always been the way with me. The feelings—these enormous, unrelenting, godforsaken feelings—fester inside like sour milk until they come screaming back up. So here we are.
I hate elections. Goddess knows I hate them. I hate the biparty system, the hype and hyperbole, the inevitable “othering”. I hate the vitriol that follows. The way we delight in tearing each other down. I know this is an enormous privilege—to live in this country, to vote in a democracy, especially as a woman. It is not lost on me. But win or lose, I still loathe the general miasma that persists around the ballot box, the fumes of dread and ire, the apocalyptic threat that seems to escalate every cycle. It overwhelms me. So, know that I am not here, writing this, willingly. I do not enjoy adding to the diatribe.
I have heard a refrain of unease circling the internet, a repetitive and persistent dissociation that seems to be plaguing many people, particularly women. And I cannot hold my tongue any longer. That discomfort you can’t ignore, the feeling you are outside of time, misplaced in your own life, that you have lost something you can’t quite recall, like leaving the house and knowing you have forgotten something but don’t know what it is? That is the ground eroding beneath your feet. That is another chunk of earth falling away from your foundation, a crumbling you can feel even if you can’t see it. I know because I feel it too. Because I am having to regain my footing, restore my balance, with an ever-shrinking, ever-sifting pile of shit to stand on. It is the awareness that what has been lost will not be restored today, tomorrow, or in four years. Not that that was ever promised, but it was certainly hoped for. Now, the hope too is gone. And in its place a bald-faced fear is blooming, that what remains is not secure either. That another pound of your flesh might be carved away, fed to the wolves. That we are not safe. And maybe we never were. But we are certainly less so now.
If it isn’t yet clear, I am speaking about women’s rights, of which reproductive rights are a vital and inalienable core component. Though you could, with minor alteration, place almost any historically oppressed group at the heart of this essay—black, gay, trans... I have always said that a woman’s—and a man’s for that matter—most basic agency is the freedom to choose what they will, or won’t, do with their own bodies. This hit home for some men during Covid, when they took to the streets with our signs reading, My body, My choice, in protest to the even the whisper of a forced vaccine. And yet, they still struggle to make this minute calculation of empathy, to find the emotional and logical wattage needed to power the bulb of recognition in their brains. This isn’t a commentary on vaccinations or misinformation. I won’t get into that here. And I’m not claiming these are apples to apples scenarios. But I am drawing the parallels that seem so painfully, abundantly obvious and yet have been conveniently overlooked again.
I know so many men who voted, not only this time but in the past, for the side that is actively threatening and reducing women’s rights. Good men. They’re not murderers. They’re not rapists. They’re not even internet trolls. They bend over backwards for their families and would likely never dream of telling their wife or daughter what to do with her hair let alone with her body. At least, not directly. And yet they don’t see that’s exactly what they’ve done. Worse, in fact. Because they’re handing the baton over to a stranger. Someone whose values and ethics they don’t truthfully know, whose shadowed past may be riddled with acts they’d never conceive of, whose driving ambition might far out-blacken their own. Either way, good or bad, you gave a stranger a club, and you’re hoping he doesn’t beat me with it. Because of course, it’s understood he would never beat you.
But the economy! they cry. And listen, I get it. I live in the same capitalistic society you do. I count my money the exact same way, tangle with the same lenders and interest rates, shop at all the same stores, fill my tank at all the same service stations. But I’m not asking you to pay for it with your body in this case. You’re asking me to pay for it with mine. And I can’t help but wonder, were the shoe on the other foot, if you would so readily hand over the keys to the kingdom. The irony, of course, is that my body shouldn’t even be on the table. Whether I menstruate this month or next doesn’t really drive the stock market. What it does drive are the conditioned subconscious patriarchal fears of a subset of the American people. And everyone knows that fear is a great motivator. A motivator that might get someone who is overworked and undercaffeinated, who between lattes and SSRIs and soccer practice and insta-pot meals and rising property taxes and hurricane season and organic detergent and Tiktok duets and AHA versus BHA and colonoscopies and Taylor Swift’s twentieth vinyl release and snaking the drain and where the actual fuck is the gluten-free bread in this store? to take a little time out of their harried day and stand in line for thirty plus minutes to check a box next to a name that they hope and pray might actually make their lives a millifraction easier. And by extension, the rest of us who are compelled to try and cancel that vote in an attempt to hang on to the fragile liberties we have left.
And of course, there are the ones who espouse a woman’s right to her own body, though not enough to put their vote where their mouth is. They often cry economy! the loudest. I feel for them. I truly do. They have opened a wound within themselves, sold out their own conscience, made a reductive prioritization that they feel compelled to defend. But the men in this category have made a gamble not with their lives, but those of their mothers and sisters and wives and daughters. One that I am reluctant to believe they would have made at their own risk. It is a bet they hope does not come calling to collect at their door. One that will, most definitely, be paid in women’s blood and health and fertility and wellbeing. But if they are lucky, not their women.
And then there are the women in this category. They at least have the courage to throw their own bones on the table. Along with their daughters’, their sisters’, mine, yours. Most likely out of a profound need to right an immediate wrong over a distant one. They believe in bodily autonomy, sure. But they just want to be able to afford their fucking groceries again. They have mouths to feed. Doctor visits and prescription medications to pay for. Cars that won’t stop crying for gasoline. Rent that won’t stop rising. A cell phone they can’t work without and a subsequent bill they can barely pay. They’re voting for survival just like I am, but theirs is immediate. They’re facing the tiger head on right now. That one in the distance I keep clamoring is coming for us sooner or later? That one can wait. They’ll fight that battle when they get to it, if they get to it. If any of us do.
And then there are the other women. The ones who ceded their ground to their fathers and husbands and church pastors years ago. The ones who believe they have a moral obligation, nay a holy mandate, to see to it that we do too. Those of us who, in our wickedness, dared to value ourselves, our liberties and contributions, as highly as our male counterparts. Of course, even they are standing on privilege. Voting off the backs of the women who came and fought before them. Who made sure they had a right to show up at the polls, to open a checkbook, to own property. And yes, to safely tend to their reproductive health without government overreach and intrusion in whatever way they see fit. By all means, if I hand everyone a cookie and you choose to give yours to your brother so that he has two, be my guest. But I’m gonna eat my fucking cookie if it’s all the same to you (or if it’s not). I may even do it where you can see. I’m free like that.
To be fair, those women often don’t see what they’re really giving up. They made their reproductive choice a long time ago, once and for all. And I would never try to change it. But they understand the anatomy of women’s rights only in terms of body parts. They don’t see the ligaments, the joints, the fascia. The way the leg bone is connected to the hip bone and the ribs are encasing the heart. They don’t perceive the body of rights as a whole, every piece torn away leaving us a little less stable, a little more vulnerable. They believe themselves to be the rib taken from Adam. We don’t need bones to stand, they insist. That’s what the men are for, to hold us up. I don’t know, maybe their men are spectacular specimens unlike any I’ve witnessed. But the men I’ve met, the ones I know and love and work with, who I whole-heartedly appreciate and am grateful for, are for sure going to drop me at some point. And I would say, based on this election outcome, they just did.
Besides, I would never ask them to do my heavy lifting because they have their own burdens to bear. That’s how we operate in my little corner of the world. In coordination, cooperation, as a team. You get the groceries on the way home. I’ll make sure the car registration is up to date. You pay the homeowner’s insurance on time. I’ll refill my birth control prescription so we can keep feeding the kids we already have.
The big issue none of these people see—or maybe see and don’t care about—is that every freedom, every liberty, every inalienable human right you take away from me, from women or any group for that matter, sends a message. A message that we are not as valuable. Not as needed. Not as worthy. That we provide less and therefore deserve less. That maybe, now that you mention it, we shouldn’t be protected in other ways—from sexual assault or domestic violence or bullying and harassment. Maybe we needn’t have our own bank accounts or drive cars or be allowed to seek a divorce. Maybe we shouldn’t be given contraceptives or fair trials or equal pay. Maybe, now that we’re careening wildly down this road, women really aren’t people at all. Maybe they’re just property, chattel, livestock. Maybe they always were.
That message isn’t voiced, it’s implicit. And we see its ramifications encoded in the statistics, in the history books, in the lived and shared experiences of women. Experiences of fear and violence and brutality and frustration and anxiety and exhaustion and depression and disease. So, if you’re a man, don’t stand there on your solid, unshakeable square of earth and gaslight me for crying not that the sky is falling but that the ground is quaking, ripping apart between my legs, and falling away in tangible, measurable clumps. Don’t tell me I’m overreacting or being dramatic when my mother, God rest her soul, was the first fucking woman in her family who had the right to apply for a loan without a male cosigner, and then only in the three years before I was born. Do not admonish me for “crying wolf” when every single female friend or acquaintance I know, myself included, has been a victim of sexual assault or partner abuse, often many times over while their perpetrators were never punished or even acknowledged and therefore free to go on and commit more crimes against women and children. Don’t pit your government games against my humanity, use me and my daughters as a political crowbar, and then tell us to swallow or else. Women have shouldered the psychological burdens of this country since its inception, done the emotional labor alongside the physical, eaten the poison of this culture time and again, and born the shame of our men as our own, all to our detriment, often tirelessly and silently.
But it has never been my nature to stay silent. And I won’t do it now. You don’t get to have it both ways. You don’t get to fuck me over and tell me not to complain about it. I know this makes you uncomfortable. But I’m not interested in your comfort. Not when it—needlessly, foolishly—costs me mine. Own your choices, your gambles and bets (the women in your life will have to). Call it what it is. Don’t cheapen us all with excuses or semantics, which we are perfectly aware of. We showed up to the same election you did. We knew the stakes. I put my liberty and autonomy and that of my daughters before inflation, before foreign policy, before the cost of bread. Not because those things don’t matter but because I won’t pay for them with my freedom. I won’t lay down for the red wave to march over me when we can get ahead without trampling women underfoot. It’s a zero-sum game I was made to play. And maybe you were too. Maybe you hate it as much as I do. Or maybe not. Either way, own your move on the board, take my words and choke on them, or don’t. You can chalk it all up to hysteria as has been done countless times before. I am a woman after all. I’m sure everyone will believe you.
THE BANE WITCH: 3*18
PRACTICAL MAGIC meets GONE GIRL in Ava Morgyn's next dark, spellbinding novel about a woman who is more than a witch—she's a hunter.
"A compelling dive into the darker side of human nature, of good and evil, and the gray areas in between. Thrilling!" –Mindy McGinnis, Edgar Award-winning author of The Female of the Species
Read the first chapter here: READ NOW.
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