Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

by Lindy West

I am also not a uterus riding around in a meat incubator. There is no substantive difference between the repulsive campaign to separate women’s bodies from their reproductive systems—perpetuating the lie that abortion and birth control are not healthcare—and the repulsive campaign to convince women that they and their body size are separate, alienated entities. Both say, “Your body is not yours.” Both demand, “Beg for your humanity.” Both insist, “Your autonomy is conditional.” This is why fat is a feminist issue.

All my life people have told me that my body doesn’t belong to me.

It steers humanity toward conservatism and walls and the narrow interests of men, and it keeps us adrift in waters where women’s safety and humanity are secondary to men’s pleasure and convenience.

The real scam is that being bones isn’t enough either. The game is rigged. There is no perfection.

(In a certain light, feminism is just the long, slow realization that the stuff you love hates you.)

The “perfect body” is a lie. I believed in it for a long time, and I let it shape my life, and shrink it—my real life, populated by my real body. Don’t let fiction tell you what to do.

We do not stigmatize people with stomach flu. The active ingredient in period stigma is misogyny.

Privilege means that it’s easy for white women to do each other favors. Privilege means that those of us who need it the least often get the most help.

As a woman, my body is scrutinized, policed, and treated as a public commodity.

Denying people access to value is an incredibly insidious form of emotional violence, one that our culture wields aggressively and liberally to keep marginalized groups small and quiet.

Shame is a tool of oppression, not change.

I’m a sex thing first and a human being second. That my ideas are secondary to my body.

Women, it seemed, were obliged to be thick-skinned about their own rapes, while comics remained too thin-skinned to handle even mild criticism.

There is nothing novel or comedic or righteous about men using the threat of sexual violence to control noncompliant women. This is how society has always functioned. Stay indoors, women. Stay safe. Stay quiet. Stay in the kitchen. Stay pregnant. Stay out of the world. If you want to talk about silencing, censorship, placing limits and consequences on speech, this is what it looks like.

Just because you haven’t personally experienced something doesn’t make it not true.

I’m a disobedient woman.

Misogyny is explicitly, visibly incentivized and rewarded.

Being fat and happy and in love is still a radical act.