Don’t Ask for My Rage—Demand My Rebellion

You tell me to write of my rage.

To immortalise it in prose, to strike a match to my pain.

But the world is already thick with flames. My anger is just another ember in a blaze that has been ravaging our planet my entire life.

I could tell you of the tears that fell when I realised the man who assaulted me can identify so directly with the one running a global superpower. Or the nausea that overcomes me knowing the lasting pain of my abortion is a privilege women will be stripped of to serve a pseudo-nationalist agenda. But why should we speak of my personal scars when this presidency will inflict wounds far deeper for far longer?

Yes, I am angry, but my anger is a luxury. Anger doesn’t arrest me. It doesn’t target my reproductive rights. It doesn’t question my gender identity or rule my sexuality immoral.

I have the privilege of observing from a distance, of wringing my hands over choices I don’t have to make. I am yet another white woman weaponising her tears. Even as I speak against this injustice, I live in a system that protects me from the raw violence others are subjected to. The colour of my skin and class I was born into grants me protection from the state. Even when I have spat, sworn, and chained myself to fight against these institutions, they still rule in my favour. The truth is, I’m part of it, no matter my outrage, no matter my regret.

So you don’t need my rage, nor the sorrow or guilt that follows it. You don’t need my words about shattered ideals or sleepless nights filled with grief. Don’t ask for paragraphs immortalising the arguments and diary entries and fallen tears. What you need is my complicity broken, my silence shattered. Don’t come to me for words, tell me to fucking fight.

Photo by Oscar Brouchot on Unsplash