(Song of the Oppressed: Girl-Witch, Interrupted-Hunted)
If someone shouts at me
right now I think I might—
Kill ‘em!
Cry and cower!
Fight or Flight.
I’m no killer,
Wouldn’t really —
I couldn’t if I tried.
But anger overrode the senses
when mocked because I cried,
Because I dared to have emotion,
Because I felt my pain and fought,
Because I stood for who I am,
Beneath the masks I have been taught.
Oppress someone enough to crack
their resolve and you’ll see
Their will to live begin to
override their decency.
Fight or flight—
Stay or go.
It follows, so I’ll stand.
I’ll feel my weight upon the earth
Plant my feet just like a man,
Square my shoulders,
Tilt my chin,
hold your gaze—
I shall not waiver,
And when and if you soften,
It’ll do us both
a favour.
Fight or flight,
The body preps,
The state is set,
The rules unmet—
You expect concession:
‘Submit, you wench.’
I shall not sit upon your bench.
I’ll choose my fence,
I’ll choose my hill.
I refuse to bend to their sheer will.
In darker hours, weakened, weary:
Group coercion: dark and scary.
They’ll mock me, break me,
Twist my point
then drive it through me
Joint by joint
Until I dance,
A lifeless puppet,
Highly strung,
(They’ll jeer ‘you muppet!’)
If someone shouts at me
right now I think I might—
Accept my body’s
fight or flight.
It’s not so hard to understand.
But he’s been pardoned—he’s a man.
For a woman,
it’s quite different.
Are you looking?
Don’t you see?
How we’re raised
to grow
in captivity?
As women,
we’re expected
to absorb the pain
and bloom,
We raise ourselves,
our men, and children,
but we don’t have any room
To simply feel
without
contempt
oppressing
basic need
To feel, to fly, to flourish,
To vent, to cry, to bleed —
Without raising doubt and fear
that it will somehow breed
The kind of chaos they unleash
And must quietly absorb,
But without somewhere, someone
to tend us…
How do we endure?
We fall apart
Then bond ourselves
together,
piece by piece,
not quite broken,
not quite whole,
Just intact enough
to cease
the condemnation of
society
whose cruel eye
gives no relief —
And when alone,
WE give ourselves
permission
to release.
Shona Clingham (Oct 2026)
[I wrote this in one afternoon, (today) in what societal conditioning has me calling ‘rage’ but was actually an outpouring of everything I’ve said too many times in so many different ways which needed condensing in a way none of the explanations I offered was able to deliver. Poetry is my format of choice.]
Some men live by different standards than those of the patriarchal system. Some women are victims of that system in one capacity or another. Some of us are victims in ways that others demean and diminish as though only the extremes deserve attention and addressing, and some of those are more extreme than most care to acknowledge.
Has anyone searched the term ‘victim mentality’ on social media lately? There is a lot of hate for those having a victim mentality. Very few seem to recognise the process a victim has to go through in order to grow.
Growth begins with acknowledgement.
A person cannot grow if they cannot at first acknowledge what happened to them, that they were in fact a victim at some point or several. Validation reinforces that and leads to growth, but enabling a harmful behaviour perpetuates a dynamic that leads to more abuse.
It is important that any victim eventually learns how to establish and maintain boundaries and healthy interactions. This cannot be done through more harmful behaviour. It creates more of the same.
Standing your ground is very different from sticking to your guns.
I have no weapons.
But I will defend.
Featured image created with AI (Chat GPT)