Language is a virus

 

What are these words that we use to constrain and curtail and confine? More and more, I feel despondent in response to the recent restriction of reproductive rights. How can a life be imposed upon another without acknowledging that it's a form of servitude? The government uses bland, ordinary words to continue to deny so many of us our rights to bodily autonomy. In so many ways, language is the virus that has made all oppression possible. Categorizing, prioritizing, mythologizing. And for someone who considers herself a storyteller, who clings to language as a respite from the horrors of the world, I wonder if it's still possible for language to be a force of liberation. For now, for today, let's hear it for the cats.