Photo by Mark Beazley

Were I stone, I could remain impassive as I watch the forces of oppression gather on the hilltops. Instead, I am flesh, and goosebumps rise against the chill. They are coming for me and mine, and I will not let them take us. But where, oh where, do we go?.

Last evening, I drove about 50 miles to attend my eldest daughter’s soccer game. The air was butterscotch, thick with slanted sunlight and seed spores released from trees preparing for their winter hibernation. The hillsides were tinted red; most of the trees are still green, but the undertone of the green is scarlet, or yellow, or orange, and when the light hits them, the hillside transorms. In two to three weeks, this area will look as if it is on fire, and the colours of fall will ignite me. And yet, I will be sad, for the bitter winter bides its time.

When it is cold, I can bundle my daughters up against it, layering them with love and extra clothes as they slog through the snow and ice. But how can I protect them against what lies before us?

My eldest daughter is a fighter. She takes on the world virtually every day. She is tenacious. Even when she came into the world, she fought back, and I spent nearly four hours pushing her into the bright lights of the delivery room. She knows this world already; despite the shelter of her home, she has butted up against injustice--not only against her, but against her friends. She will not tolerate those who hate, and she will fight you if you threaten those she loves.

My youngest is an artist. Quick to cry and to laugh, she showers affection upon all of the earth’s creatures, finding beauty in crayfish and kittens. She draws and dances and dreams.

They are what is at stake for me in the continuing body wars. There are those out there who tell me that the flesh is evil, and that it must be restrained, and disciplined, tortured and punished. They laugh as they apply electrodes to men’s testicles, laugh as they burn down medical clinics, laugh as they shoot the children of their enemies, laugh as they watch pregnant women die. They laugh the laugh of righteousness, of an arrogance that allows for no other thought, no nuance, to dispute the words of their gods. They are closed. They are convinced of the correctness of their beliefs.

How I pity them. The fear that drives them, the fear of the body, and of dying, and of pleasure must be all-encompassing.

Their disgust with the quotidian experiences of the body, the ones that require them to wash and wash, performing their ablutions as penance, how this must insult them, scare them, anger them. They take their anger out on us.

They take their anger out on me.

They will not take their anger out on my daughters. I will fight for my daughters until I have no more strength, and then I will fight some more. You will not take from my daughters what is rightfully theirs: their pleasure, their experiences, their bodies.

I am not stone. I am Medusa.