Harman Kaur

Pornography also eroticizes male supremacy. It makes dominance and subordination feel like sex; it makes hierarchy feel like sex; it makes force and violence feel like sex; it makes hate and terrorism feel like sex; it makes inequality feel like sex. Pornography keeps sexism sexy. It keeps sexism necessary for some people to have sexual feelings. It makes reciprocity make you go limp. It makes mutuality leave you cold. It makes tenderness and intimacy and caring make you feel like you’re going to disappear into a void. It makes justice the opposite of erotic; it makes injustice a sexual thrill.

December 1705. A woman greets the arrival of her husband with the weight of a promise made to his father. his answers are not enough. his excuses are not enough – she tells him that he already left his head at the feet of a king. so she doesn’t believe it when he says he stole it back. she reminds him that the two of them are one so how could his breaking not fracture her spine as well that – when you make a promise to truth you don’t get a refund so she rises up and willfully takes his place – she’s been thirsting for this moment. aching for this moment. longing to serve in a way that some would shame her for. but she stands. And she leaves. and he follows. they call her Bhago. the sound of her horse’s hooves are the only jago that resounds with the people of her pind and when she returns to her Guru’s side to regain the only honour that’s ever mattered in this world she is followed by kaurs with spirits like the tides of tsunamis and 40 singhs who did not know that they were drowning until their sister held her breath to pull them from the sea. March 5 1993 Manjit Kaur walks to the back of an overcrowded bus and takes a seat belly swollen and back aching she is surrounded by strangers. as the wheels begin to revolve, a man with flames in his eyes looks back from the seat farthest from hers. he nods as if to affirm everything she already knows her mind is the most beautiful room I have ever walked through she has learned to greet dusk with dawn and oppression with resistance and when the bus suddenly lurches to a stop her heart is not heavy even though she already knows that she won’t reach her destination today. outside the doors, under a scorching Punjab sun stand five men dressed in the one costume that justifies all violence. they’ve been waiting for a singh who once walked right out of their clutches with ammunition and the attitude of an inquilaabi but before the cops can do more than tear through the bus doors and put hands on Manjit Kaur’s husband a body is already on the floor she refills the clip as she tells the passengers to leave because this battle is has only ever been between her kaum and a state hellbent on its suppression so she and Raminder Singh Tainee stand side by side as they greet death the way they greeted one another on their wedding day. and bullets pour down upon them but they’ve never been bothered by rain so when a grenade falls through the window and their spirits rise to shaheedi there are only scars of fruitful struggle painted upon their limbs and echoes of liberated smiles upon their faces. Nov 12 1988 she tells her mom that she’s leaving for hockey practise but when Amandeep Kaur reaches campus it becomes clear that her mind has not planted roots in the hopes of her parents. her revolver has become her closest companion in a world where rebellion has left her comrades in ditches and cages. her body rages against everything and everyone that seeks to suffocate her. she does not know how to breathe. how to mistake the shackles on her wrists for peace or the silence between bullets as safety. so she joins the Sikh Student Federation but if truth were to be told she craves a role more combative. she’s never known complacence. never taken no for an answer never accepted that the problems of her world are not hers to solve. so when her brothers tell her that battle is no place for a woman that she should just stick to moving ammunition she asks them why her Guru would give her this will to resist if she was born in the wrong body. if to be a woman is to sit safe on the sidelines supportive but always behind the front line and for the first time for the first time her brothers open their eyes and see their sister for who she is a Sikh. October 22nd 2015 Traffic needs to flow on this road but blood has been flowing through the rivers of Punjab for far too many years so she pulls me to the pavement and says we aren’t moving. we sit down on the colonizer’s ground the same earth where feet once left to occupy my homeland to split Punjab into pieces and spit the shards back at us. my people are in pain. have watched the oppressor laugh at our father’s torn limbs at his blackened bones. and then tell us that we lit the match ourselves. they’ve watched as water cannons were fired upon those whose minds resisted in meditation. as home was pulled from our hands and then held over our heads just out of reach because they thought they could make us feel helpless to make up for the way our rage shook them. Charan Kaur turns to me arm linked  with women with refusal in their eyes and says “we need to be here for our Guru’s satkaar for every mother and sister taking back the dharti of Khalistan.” she says she’ll get locked up but won't  let her Guru’s crown touch the ground and when the cops grab her and I watch them place handcuffs on her wrists resilience and rage paints her face. she was never helplessly caught in the crossfire - she chose this struggle every step of the way and when I hear a brother shout that that is our little sister what I really want to say is that she is older than all of us – and her heart has planted roots far deeper than her age because she knows the Guru’s way is not to sit back passively but to fight against the grain and to take back our land and our freedom  our own way no matter what it is that anyone will say. Oct 24th 2015 beyoncé once told a generation of girls that her persuasion could build a nation as if to say that a woman’s curves are her greatest weapon against oppression. I once heard a youth parchaarik say that you and I are equal but different that I should wait for my brother to load the ammunition and when he falls that’s when I should grab the gun and rise to his position my body and my mother’s body and your mother’s body have endured violence have held Punjab close as she bled have held tight to our revolvers and tighter to our Guru’s hand. my mothers raised revolutionaries and became revolutionaries refusing to comply with the ones who thought we were easy targets. my sisters stood steadfast in the face of those who took joy in the sight of their motionless bodies of their dislocated bones of their bleeding wombs of their dead children my sisters Guru Gobind Singh Jee’s daughters will rise without permission because we belong to a force that has already uplifted us.