The following is a quotation.
"In the emergency room, they have what's called **** kits where a woman can get cleaned out."  
-Texas State Representative Jodie Laubenberg

Dear Mrs. Laubenberg,

I have never felt so betrayed by another woman before.
And I know this was your attempt at a prolife argument.
But you don’t understand anything about your own anatomy.

Unlike you, I know my own body.
The home I've created here,
inside myself,
these shoulders,
hips,
scars,
and stretch marks.

Believe me when I say - I am my own war memorial.

So let this body be ready to be broken.

I will give birth to umbilical cord nooses.

Hang myself with my own womanhood.
Blood soaked ******* and blue and black bite marks.
I will never be anyone’s victim.

I was built - hand crafted by some creator - who knew he was breeding me for war.

Let this body be a graveyard to all my past lovers.

Let it be known that I was built for destroying things just as often as I create them.
The lipstick I wear is the same color as blood.
I was made to devour.
A caged animal in my throat.
A growl asleep in my chest.
A ribcage built for holding me captive because I'm a savage animal.

Do not call me weak.
A ***** bites.
A ***** swallows her prey alive.

So don’t you dare push my knees apart into metal stirrups, and
“clean me out”.
Do not bandage my wounds.
Do not wipe me clean of this recklessness.
Do not cover these bruises.
Let me stand, a testimony to what they have done to me.
To us.
My wounds will not be silent.

I want you to look at me.
At us.

We need to carry these battle wounds with us.

On my college campus, we have been broken in like cattle.
We know the scent of fear.
We’ve been branded black and gold.  
We were told to carry mace like an accessory to this sin.
To never walk alone at night.
To travel in packs.
To carry weapons.
To carry guns.
To carry our femininity concealed because bare thighs are dangerous here.

Each week is only finished when a ****** assault paints my campus crimson.

**** is a hate crime against weakness.

So I’m taking back femininity and I’m deciding what it’s synonymous with.

And never again will submission mean woman.
Never again will girl mean powerless.
Never again will tenderness be considered vulnerable.

I am a flower on ******* fire.
I am Mother Nature,
Thousand watt lightning storms and forest fires that could turn you into dust.
You cannot break me.

Every 90 seconds a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth.

So yes, we are used to giving this thing called life, our absolute everything.

There are 400,000 untested **** kits in America alone.

So yes, I know, Mrs. Laubenberg.

I know you picture women’s bodies like machines,
cold,
hard,
metal.
Something than can be deconstructed, cleaned, and put back together.
But I am a human being, and I don’t assemble easily.

****** assault belongs to the survivor.

How dare you try to white wash your own guilt and try and file our stolen femininity under blood slides and nail scrapings.

You are a woman too, Mrs. Laubenberg.

And I know, these hate crimes look like girls in short skirts to you.
They look drunk.
They look *****.
They look like *** workers caught in fishnets.

They look deserving.

But Mrs. Laubenberg,

They also look like your sisters.
And your mother.
And your daughters.

And if something isn’t done to change this,

Maybe

**They might end up looking like you.