...because we think for ourselves and act on what we know. We don't need a man's permission to live our lives the way we want to. We say what's on our minds.
Bitches are the kind of women our abusers hate — self-respecting, self-sufficient women who take care of ourselves. Why did we think it was so bad to be called a "bitch?" We know why they think it's so bad to be one!
Most of us didn't like to be labeled anything, especially "victims." It makes it sound like we had no choices, no freedom, and bear no responsibility for what happened to us. Most of us didn't like admitting that someone else was in control of our lives.
For a while, we took responsibility. We blamed ourselves for everything. We tried to figure out what we were doing to "provoke" our abusers' violence. We thought that if we could figure out what we were doing wrong, and just not do it anymore, things would get better. It made sense that if we had the power to start the violence we also had the power to stop it.
So we tried and we tried being the way they said they wanted us to be, doing things the way they said they wanted things done. But eventually we realized it didn't make any difference. There was just this pattern — and we didn't have anything to do with it.
The men always found some reason to be violent. We began to understand — they beat us up because they wanted to and because they could. No one would make them stop.
And that made us real angry.
But instead of being angry at them, we turned our anger against ourselves. After all, we let them do it. Lots of people had this attitude that men don't beat women if the women don't let them. We still wonder sometimes why we didn't fight back.
Then we remember that fighting back would have made it worse. Especially because our abusers were cops and firefighters.
If we'd fought back, we might not be here to talk about it today. And we are thankful that we are here to talk about it.
It's a powerful word, "bitch" — it names a powerful woman. A BITCH is a woman who is:
When they call us bitches now, we thank them for noticing how far we've come. We've worked hard to get here.
We've come full circle. We were strong and independent (bitches) when we met our abusers. They worked on us, made us ashamed to be bitches until we lost that strong sense of ourselves. They battered the bitch right out of us until they made us victims. We lived through it, though, and so we can call ourselves "survivors."
We have taken back control of our lives. We have promised ourselves — and each other — that we'll never go back again. We'll proudly remain bitches forever!
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