Suffer(age) –
suffrage
1 : a short intercessory prayer usually in a series
2 : a vote given in deciding a controverted question or electing a person for an office or trust
3 : the right of voting : franchise; also : the exercise of such right
A picture of Alice Paul hangs over my desk at the domestic violence shelter. The two of us labor away; each bent over a desk, pouring our souls into phones. I like the image when I think of us, stacked on top of one another in this anachronistic graph. We are two pings on the radar that maps out eternity (or so I like to think).
I wonder how our conversations are different. I wonder how they are the same. The women’s’ voices floating into our ears, faint as crackling missives from the spirit world, are channeling the same frequency regardless of the history. They speak of battery, rape, unfair wages, reproductive coercion, unfeeling governments, incompetent societies, corrupt police and policies. Has anything changed?
I think of Alice and her women. They couldn’t vote at the ballot box. They voted with bricks through windows. They chained their bodies to the White House fence. Then came the infamous hunger strikes. Their wardens, husbands and priests would shove tubes in their noses and save them with a baptism of milk and eggs. They literally crammed the patriarchy down the women’s throats.
They were force-fed other mothers’ breastmilk and ovum as if they themselves were foie gras geese all for the crime of insisting that they were more than eggs, breasts, and thighs. They were tortured for insisting that we are all more than meat.
Is anything better now? Is it actually worse? Women are treated the same, but we are much more meek. Where are the brick-throwers, the fence-chainers, the hunger-strikers? Have they gone completely extinct?
Politeness is a strong instinct. After all, who wants to be a “bitch Femi-Nazi?” No, no. We think, such radicalism is too extreme. Things are much better now. We tell ourselves that sexism is over. We drive cars and have smartphones, for heaven’s sake. It’s manipulative to play the Woman Card. Just smile pretty and try not to think.
It’s not like mail-in ballots are being “lost” in their hundreds. It’s not like polling stations are being closed or moved with no advance notice. The closed polls and missing ballots surely don’t come predominantly from areas with socio-economic or partisan implications. It’s not like state and Federal supreme courts are backing this obstruction. Right? Right?! Not in our shining beacon of a Democracy. Right.
I finally remind myself that “suffrage” at its core really means prayer. It means to beg for intercession from someone or something who just might care. This is what I hear day after day entering my soul through my sweating ear.
I just want him to be the man I married.
I just want a car so I can get to work.
I just want to earn enough that I can afford to get off welfare.
I just want the fucking child support!
I just want to kick these pills.
I don’t want to be piss-tested for my welfare or forbidden to buy a candy bar.
I just want my kids to have it better than me.
I just want someone to listen to me.
So, I listen. Does it do any good? I would offer absolution if I could. If I weren’t a woman, I could be a priest, but my body is not enough like Christ’s. I could give them 96 Hail-Marys. I could tell them to do penance for every un-cherished year since we have had the right to vote but we don’t. Why don’t we feel enfranchised?
Who feels heard when the same struggle for survival is grinding on as if nothing ever changed? When we all know we’re little more than meat? Put on some lip gloss and don’t say anything too political. Never get angry. Certainly, never ever throw a brick. Smile pretty and try not to think.
No, many of the women I hear with my sweating ear pressed to the phone will not vote. Does that make it our fault? I don’t know. Go ask Alice. But vote or no vote, you can bet that every one of us is asking,
When the fuck are we going to count?
What? Aren’t you wondering? #metoo.
The rest is his-story. There seems to be no end to the Age of Suffering.
- Definition of Suffrage from Mirriam-Webster Online: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suffrage
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1.800.799.7233
Rock the Vote: Non-partisan political empowerment: https://www.rockthevote.org/