How Our Voices Are Weapons Against Patriarchal Violence

December 21, 2014 / Venessa Marco

Too many girls are introduced to womanhood through legacies of misogynistic violence. They see their mothers abused and violated by the men they love. As they grow older, they become the recipient of harassment, assault, and objectification.

Because this cycle of patriarchy has been turned into cultural identity through institutions of family and religion, women are taught to be complacent, silent, welcoming.

In response to this generational trauma, Tonya Ingram and Venessa Marco perform this powerful poem addressing the resilience that happens when women assert themselves. They remind women that they are more than insults or tools to provide some man a sense of pleasure or power.

They remind women that their voices are the weapons that can fight and conquer systemic and cultural oppression.

Click for the Transcript

TONYA INGRAM: Us women, merely second opinion, but first appetite are taught early how to restrain the wolves. When the men converge on gnawing teeth and salivating fangs, these insatiable men, who snarl us out of our lineage. Sabertooth nonbelievers who cannot consider how loud we can be, how brass and trombone this world has played us. There is no place here to unravel ourselves for them, bow our heads.

BOTH SPEAKERS: Unlearn our names.

VENESSA MARCO: For those of us who introduce the bold face of mouth becomes a horse tooth, become agile breasts, become unbounded thighs.

TONYA: I learned to be quiet when the anvils of a false prophet mistook my 13 for playground.

BOTH: Only the quiet survive.

VENESSA: I saw my mother give her body away to a man she didn’t even know, didn’t even love that. My eyes swallow the whole of him and her—

BOTH: And all that it meant.

VENESSA: To know who I come from shook loose a skin the last time. A love of bed for me beautiful. For origami hands, someone who could crease fold his skin. I told him I was the aftermath of paper—

BOTH: When it bows out of pretty.

VENESSA: When the wind smacks it straight on its back—

BOTH: We’ve been smacked straight on our backs.

TONYA: Too often for someone to assume us to be fragile daughters of Eve. Simple creatures only of night and a devil who plagues us.

BOTH: We are not only a mouth and luring siren. We are the women—

VENESSA: Who dare think of ourselves as more than a fuck. When we lend our thoughts to breath, we know often—

BOTH: We are speaking the words that will kill us for we are then called—

VENESSA: Bitch, cunt, whore.

BOTH: Never a voice, just that static sound.

TONYA: I learned to yell when I met the devil. He would make cigarette burns on my mother and call it chimney. Birth me a riot, now I speak with intention. We’ll not cower to buildings of men who belittle me orphan, chastise all that I have to say. It is always too much or nothing. All nag or too shy.

VENESSA: When your voice is a shotgun, a warning to the careless that will make sweet meat out of you.

TONYA: Go ahead, I have seen hell enough times to know it’s scorched. It has taught me to forge this voice into sword. Sharpen tongue into that are called the bone back into your lost, your stolen haw threat does not cause my peace to be still.

BOTH: This is our birthright. This is our inherit. We are women who capsize entire crowds with the saying of the wind. Holy knuckles full. A fight.

Please read the following Everyday Feminism articles to learn more about interrupting cycles of oppression:

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Tonya Ingram is a poet, writer and performer. She is the 2011 New York Knicks Poetry Slam champion, a member and co-founder of NYU’s poetry slam team, a member of the 2011 Urban Word – NYC team and the 2013 Nuyorican Grand Slam Team. She is the author of “Growl and Snare”. Please follow her on twitter at @TonyaSIngram.

Venessa Marco is an African Caribbean writer by way of Cuba and Puerto Rico. She has recently moved from Los Angeles, California to Harlem, New York. Marco is currently pursuing her PhD in English. She was a member of the 2012 Da Poetry Lounge slam team and the 2013 Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Please follow her on twitter @marco_venessa.

Video courtesy of Button Poetry. For more amazing spoken word performances, check them out on YouTube and Facebook.