a play composed of body; in parts
“The woman's body is the terrain on which patriarchy is erected.” - Adrienne Rich
Act I, Prologue
Adrienne Rich proposed that the woman's body is the terrain on which patriarchy is erected. I look to the stories of my own body in asking how does the body hold onto the impact of containment, power and control? How does the body hold patriarchy? If this relationship is true, how does or can one’s body exist as a ground of feminist practice? What is that practice?
Act 1, Scene i, Wherein I imagine a conversation that could have happened with my father, let’s say 10 years ago, when he still had the capacity for conversation, reason and thought
DANIELLE: Dad, I’m working on a book project about how the body holds patriarchy.
[Dad’s face slowly alters, revealing a mild look of bewilderment. His face expresses an inability to process what that question translates to.]
DAD: What does that mean?
DANIELLE: Valid.
So I ask myself, what the fuck does this question mean?
Patriarchy is interchangeable with colonialism in the context of this question. One could ask how the body holds colonialism. We could do so with all the ism’s that fall under the umbrella of colonialism; white supremacy, capitalism and racism. There is not one of us reading this right now who was not born into relationship with colonial constructs and all the isms that stem from that. We have some words, words that bring greater understanding to intersections of impact. Like weathering, or accelerated biological aging due to the impacts over time of racism and misogynoir on the body. But we need more than words and definitions in addressing how the body holds patriarchy. We need stories. All of them. I ask myself to be specific now - how does my body hold the story of patriarchy. By extension, can I tell a story to let it go? (Can one even…)
I wonder every day about how my imagination has been policed. What are the dreams I haven’t begun to dream? What have I not been able to see or imagine because it’s outside of my own mapping? I wonder if it is ever possible to transcend outside of the containers we exist within. (Can one do this work without mushrooms?)
What I am about to type jolts me with, what to me, is its incredible cis-heteronormativity: I have a boyfriend. That is right, label and all. (Haven’t done this in a decade.) But when the mind, body and heart say yes - you make a yes decision. It was from the start - yes.
My boyfriend sends me a text about the book I am working on. The text in question “Can’t wait until I’m reading your brilliance cover to cover.”
I wanted to respond with a silly sexual quip. Something about him, under the covers, what have you. Instead of acting on that urge, this time, I calmly noted it. I asked myself why? Why is that my default?
Act 1, Scene ii, My mind in a span of either 2 or 20 minutes; also - time, another fun construct!
DANIELLE RULED BY PATRIARCHY: I’m not going to hold space for this light to shine on me, because certainly - he doesn’t mean it!
DANIELLE RULED BY DANIELLE: He does mean it.
DANIELLE RULED BY PATRIARCHY: I’m in no way brilliant, fuck, he is brilliant, I am nothing.
DANIELLE RULED BY DANIELLE: I am not nothing.
DANIELLE RULED BY PATRIARCHY: Almost every romantic experience I have had in my life with cis-hetero men has centered upon me as a sexual value of some sort. Men say things to me to with the intent to extract, the intent to get me into bed. I have no other value in their eyes.
DANIELLE RULED BY DANIELLE: Do you see what you are doing, the work, the labor of patriarchy itself? You are diminishing your multitudes, you are performing and presenting one sliver of self here. Can you imagine holding space to allow yourself to be fully seen, fully witnessed, fully known in all your multitudes?
DANIELLE RULED BY PATRIARCHY: No because everything I have experienced has proven to me otherwise. I’ll keep doing the labor.
DANIELLE RULED BY DANIELLE: You have to name this. If you can’t name it or note it, how the fuck you ever gonna let it go?
Act 1, Scene iii, Flashes of memory that follow
In high school, one of my theater teachers had us do a project where we wrote one line about every person in class. Something about who this person was. The teacher compiled all of the anonymously given lines for each student and gave them a unique print out. One of my lines read “She’s actually really smart.”
A high school party, I am 16 maybe 17, in conversation with a guy who had graduated already. (Why was he at this party?) Sharing about what I was reading lately and my thoughts on it, he waited until I finished to mock my apparent mispronunciation of Nietzsche. (The shame I felt at that moment still sits in my body and presents itself in my gut whenever I say a name new to me.)
In college outside of a dorm room, an open door, hearing my boyfriend's name and mine mentioned. “Well he’s only with her because of the sex.” (Real college early aughts #girlboss feminisms)
Again in college, during my first private Alexander Technique session, as offered to all acting majors. The practitioner has me laying across a table. She moves her hands across the top of my body as she talks. She works her way to my lower belly, to my pelvis, and she asks me when I was raped.
The flashes go on. (The body keeps keeping its scores.)
I am about 21 and I spent the night pictured partying with friends outside of San Diego. These two dudes were friends of my friend and I had just met them that night. We had absolutely no physical contact all evening. When someone brought out a camera, this immediately happened. I remember one grabbing my breast and both of them hugging and touching me. My body shows me giggling, smiling, this is fun right? I felt sick to my stomach as it was happening and at that point in my life, I no longer even knew any other way to react. (I hate this photo.)
Act 1, Scene iv, Danielle monologues
DANIELLE: I share with you my inability to sit with the beauty of a simple text. Vulnerably, I name it. I note it. I give voice to it.
I want to let it go, this patriarchal control over my body and mind pushing me to my own self diminishment. I want to exist in all of my fullness, sexuality included, but not at the debasement of the myriad other aspects of self.
It has grown like a slow spreading cancer over the decades, holding a firm footing in certain places in the body. Overtime it has infected the mind. I fight back. It has degraded the imagination. I dare myself to reimagine. As I improve my immune system in one area, it attacks another area hiding in darkness until presenting itself at an inopportune moment.
If I could talk to my father again, and tell him about my book, how would I answer? I do not have any easy answers, and my answers would certainly be different from yours. It is confusing and complicated and complex. All I have are the stories of my body, and an ever growing awareness that some of these stories must die.
I concur... fucking brilliant.