An Exercise in Empathy

If someone was to shove a long, metal object into your sexual organ and deposit semen inside of you, impregnating you without your consent or any concern for your feelings, what would you call that?

If you were to carry that baby through a full pregnancy, birth that baby, and be ready to love and nurture that baby, only to have him dragged away from you almost immediately, as you cry out in protest and despair, never to see him again, what would you call that?

If you were subjected to this same vicious cycle year after year until your tattered body was no longer profitable enough to justify keeping you alive, so a steel bolt was sent into your brain, what would you call that?

As a society, we call this milk.

Written in 2013

Artwork, “What if the Shoe Were on the Other Hoof?” by Keith Allison