SECOND SEX, OR NOT ?

By Xiaolu GUO aka Sabotage Sister

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De Beauvoir published “the Second Sex” in 1949,
Mao Zedong announced the birth of the People’s Republic of China in 1949,
And my mother was born in 1949,
In a house with seven sisters and one brother.
Seven sisters and my mother formed an army,
To assist one brother
To become a lawyer.
A lawyer to protect woman’s rights
in my province.

But I want to know:
What is “the second sex”?
What is “the feminine”?
What is “domestic science”?
Is it the trap of hierarchy’s hold?
A kitchen sink’s hole?
A toilet’s flushing bowl?
A hungry stomach’s howl?
A bank debt’s gulf?
A suburban bungalow, where
Man chews his beef boiled,
And woman cooks her soup slow,
While child screams before TV’s glow?
It’s a lack, a missing, a dark passage,
where sound and visuals each other swallow.
And so, a black hole gives the birth to the universe,
then ends it?

Haunted by femininity, I ask:
What is ‘the other’?
What is ‘the other sex’?
What is “domestic science”?
Woman is not born, but becomes.
Woman is not the opposite sex, but the sex.
Woman is not the sexual object, but the object.

Haunted by femininity, I say:
woman never exists,
Nor has she ever been born.
Only wombs, ovaries, eggs,
A uterine universe.
Not even female spirits,
Not even woman when ‘woman’ ruled.
In the matriarchal world –
the womb is the credit, no woman there
The womb produces the man
But no woman is born

Haunted by femininity, I say:
Cut the womb!
Shrink the womb!
Or, be constructive,
Let the womb be transplanted universally!
Grown in men, in every boy-child’s bowel!
Everyone shall carry the womb!
And woman shall rise from her tomb!

Haunted by femininity, I say:
Cut the womb!
Shrink the womb!
Or, be constructive,
Let the womb be grown in every creature.
Grown in men, grown in drone,
Grown in bull, cock, or ram,
Grown in buck, stag, dog, and President!
In every creature grown.

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2011

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