i am enraged

oh, Agnès Varda

i am enraged. everyday i wake up enraged. every time i open that fucking app owned by Meta that used to give me visual inspo and a sense of awe i find another thing about those fucking men and what they do to women, children, queer people, immigrants.

there is not one day that passes without me feeling rage and grief and violence and despair at the state of the world and the absolute impunity that is embedded within capitalism and patriarchy.

i’m tired to the bones and you know what? the first thought i have now is that it would be stupid of me to bring a child into this world.

mind you, i don’t even know if i want kids! the last few years i said i didn’t want kids because of the climate crisis (and i’m saying this as a privileged cis white woman with a French passport).

now, it’s because of something else: what if my kids were raped in kindergarten?

wait, let me rephrase. active voice: what if a grown ass man raped my kids in kindergarten?

that’s not unusual, isn’t it? we know that now. and if my children go through their first 3 years of life without anyone raping or putting their fucking filthy hands on them, what will happen in school?

there’s a private school on my street. catholic. the director was arrested a few weeks ago for alleged sexual assault on a 7 year-old boy at school. he spent a night in custody. he’s free now.

what guarantees do i have that it won’t happen to mine? what options would i have to obtain justice if someone violated them — god, if someone violated me — in a world where women and children are never believed? where we have to argue, again and again and again, against “not all men”? where the epstein fucking files exist and are normalized? where men in power can be rapists with zero consequence? where a country can bomb a girls’ school and say oopsie, casualties?

and if my children were boys, how can i educate them to respect women in a world where 62 million men visit one porn site hosting a rape academy in a month? where watching porn starts at 9 years-old? where andrew fucking tate has 991k+ subscribers on substack? where sam fucking levinson degrades every female character he writes on screen and calls it art? how can i educate them to never sexually assault anyone when men will protect themselves and their boys’ clubs at any cost? where they laugh at women in locker rooms? where they film themselves hitting a punching bag with all the strength they have to knock down a woman if she says no and post it on tiktok for millions to see? where husbands fantasize so much about raping their wives and the mothers of their children that they turn to a fucking rape academy to learn how to drug them and share the footage with all their rape buddies? where men are actually women and children’s number one predator? where mothers who refuse to give their children back to their abusers are sentenced to go to jail?

what amount of violence does it take to make someone refuse to reproduce?

we’re way past shame. we’re way past anything, really. and it completely shatters me.

those men are incredibly lucky that we’re not seeking revenge en masse. we’re just mainly decentering them. we just wanna fucking live, for god’s sake.

and so i fantasize about another world cause this one ain’t it. those monstrous structures put up by monstrous people in power belittling and abusing and killing women and children and the planet for centuries ain’t it. endless extraction ain’t it. systemic violence ain’t it.

i fantasize about a world where predators are never at the top of anything. i fantasize about a world where community, harmony, coherence and care are pillars. i fantasize about a world where if you harm the community, the land, the creators of life, the children, you’ll pay for it immediately. no question asked. a round of applause!

i fantasize about female bonobos. Polly, Tao, Ngola, Djulie, and Bella, beating in unison 20 year-old male Hugo to oblivion because he attacked Bella’s infant. mind you, bonobos are a pretty chill species. when i read that article, i thought: wow, five female bonobos are way more effective at reducing infanticide than developed countries’ justice systems. shocker! mother nature really is our best teacher.

i fantasize about common sense. and i abhor how impotent i feel in the face of it all. the grief that comes with disillusion and complete loss of faith is not for the weak.

mental state so bad my friends and fam tell me to stop seeking information.

that won’t stop the rage, though.

at least i know i’m human.