I wasn't born a feminist

I didn't leave the womb with my fist in the air. Didn't take my first steps onto a path of radicalism. I didn't ask questions of power in preschool, didn't notice the haze of injustice that coloured the structures of my childhood. I wasn't born a feminist. I wasn't born bearing arms, bearing a cross, bearing an anger and a passion that can feel like fire, which unwatched could consume me.

And yet, here I stand, observing the weight of reality, measuring the oppression that surrounds me. No, not that surrounds me, rather, that permeates me. That seeps into my being sometimes insidiously, sometimes with the force of a runaway train. I am taken over, territorialized.

I wasn't born a feminist. I was forced a feminist. 

And the oppression, well that I can deal with, I can fight with. It belongs to a greater cause. I belong to a greater cause. But it's the hurt. That little personal bubble of pain that scratches at my skin like sandpaper on bone. That's what I can't deal with. Because my hurt is mine. I share my cause with others, but how do I share my hurt?

Oh, but don't let me sound angry. Don't let me sound revolutionary. Don't curse me to the pile of "anecdotes" that don't count. I wonder at what point that urgent pile of anecdotes will become evidence? How many of us must have stories, have oppression, have hurt, before our righteous anger is more that patronized?

So no, I wasn't born a feminist. I was born a gendered woman. But as destined as I am to be marginalized, perhaps equally destined I am to resist. So resist I will.

I will.

It's just that sometimes, like today, I really wish that there wasn't so much to resist, it burns.