There's no sugar coating it.
On the streets, in stinky hotel rooms, behind office desks, in hidden apartments or on weekend getaways, a prostitute is a prostitute is a prostitute.
Mfon has always said this, but some women will never agree with her. They make their own money after all.
Mfon laughs, everybody's back still touches the ground at some point.
"Ma'am, your baby will be fine. You need to keep believing that. We'll have the surgery, and yes there's a fifty percent chance that things will go sideways, but we'll do our best."
Gloria stares at the doctor through a blurry curtain of tears. How impersonal he is, how brusque, how unfeeling. Does he not know that the baby in question is her child? The one she knelt down to give birth to? Does he have any idea what it means to be in labour for eighteen hours, and doctors tell you you can't push yet because your cervix isn't fully dilated? Her breath is hot now, and choppy, she's taking in ragged oxygen and seeing red. She ties the baby shawl around her waist, if her baby dies, she and the doctor are going too.
"I want daddy! I hate you! I want my daddy!"
Modupe fights back tears as she tries to get her son to eat his breakfast. How can she tell her absolute joy that his father likes to keep women underfoot and likes them a certain way, pretty and unblemished. How does she tell him that she has run away with him because she doesn't want a sociopath for a son, because she has seen the signs in his father? He's screaming loudly now, and she throws her head back, inhaling and blinking back tears. I want my daddy too, she thinks, I want my mommy. I want to just sit down and not have to look over my shoulder everytime. I want to go back in time and live my life again, undo my mistakes and maybe tell my mom she was absolutely right. She takes a huge breath again and looks down at her son, he has gone quiet, staring at her, his eyes widening in shock and she sees the shiny knife at his throat.
A short note:
Women go through a lot. They have their negatives, too. They shine in their positives, and sometimes they just need someone to echo their affirmations back at them.
Women can be users and be used too. They can be cheaters and be cheated on. They can be abusers and be abused too.
Women can do the most, and they can be the laziest.
Women are just that, women.
They're never the same.
No two women have the same desires, needs or wants.
Women are a unique class, and so we echo their affirmations today:
Beautiful, strong and happy.
And at the same time, we do not champion victimisation, nor misandry nor femme-prostitution.
We urge women to fight for equity rather than equality, and to love other women at the top and at the grassroots, in truth, in words and in action.
Happy International Women's Day!
P.S. it was yesterday, the 8th of March.
I'm putting this one out today, just because.
Photo by mrish_marina_alekseevna from Pexels
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