One of the most universal languages is the language of fists and power and dominance and aggression and violence. I was socialized as a woman, which means I learned this language but was told to never speak it. I was told that when when I spoke it, this was evidence that I was beyond the bounds of the acceptable, legible, governable, and ought to be punished for my transgression. The fact that this langauge is always spoken first at home, in living rooms, bedrooms, across dinner tables–and is so often spoken at women, queers femmes and the sick–reveals the fantastic disingenuousness, the ostentatious hypocrisy, that architects the gender of our language.
Johanna Hedva How To Tell When We Will Die
