Helene Cixous

 Helene Cixous is one of my favorite feminist philosophers, and a major reason I have started to write again.  She has provoked my animus.  

Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven’t written. Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it’s reserved for the great – that is for “great men”; and it’s “silly.” Besides, you’ve written a little, but in secret. And it wasn’t good, because it was secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn’t go all the way, or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off.  (The Laugh of the Medusa)

I wrote a mess as a child.  But upon the first denying response to an autobiographical draft, I stopped.  I policed my own hand as to not offend the sensibilities of others.  Writing has become so personally feminist to me, something that allows me to step out of my restrained identity.

I am not bothered by the fact that having a (male)lover that has called me to write again.  I am in love, and I choose to be more myself, being confident in my ability to love. I am not afraid of being too much.  And he, my beloved, is the cause of my inspiration.