grow a pair means don’t be scared. we are familiar with the idea that testes are the seat of male courage.
and what if so for women?
fear is a complex mechanism, but the fundamental function, i think, is simple. don’t die. don’t do the thing which might make you die. don’t do the thing which might hurt you / harm you, because damage is in the direction towards fatal, and too much damage you might die.
fear is a risk assessment algorithm. it takes all previous experience, the sensory information available, your emotional state and the ambient environment, and decides what level of risk is acceptable.
but i also think the drive to become alive, to make new life, to continue life through generations, is a different thing. not dying is not the same as making life. conservation is not generation.
what if ovaries are the thing which move us past fear into the territory of the generative, the creative, the living.
is our (western) culture fearful of ovaries? are women inside it scared of their own ovaries? are the ovaries inside our bodies fearful, bound and shackled, because their expression causes the woman to be harmed in this ambient western culture. don’t get hurt remember, don’t die. conservatism is, necessarily, not renewal.
so is it los ovarios who will drag us through, past the threshold of fear into change, regeneration, life. los cojones too. will the drive to make new life that continues after ours galvinise us through the trials of change? we can’t not die forever… eventually we will. so at what point will we have the ovaries to gather up the resources, make something, and fling it forward through time to live on after us?
