Mercy
cold and
    dark and we walked through a door into hell, some nightmare
    some monster dreamed up. Hell was a building with a door
    and you walked through the door. But the men got out the
    next day on their own recognizance because the pacifists
    hurried to get them lawyers and hearings, spent the whole day
    w orking on it, a Friday, dawn to dusk, and the wom en didn’t
    get out because the pacifists didn’t have time; they had to get
    the heroes o f the revolution out before someone started
    sticking things up them. They just left us. Then it was a
    weekend and a national holiday and the jail w asn’t doing any
    nasty business like letting people who don’t exist and don’t
    matter loose; we were nothing to them and they left us to rot
    or be hurt, because it was a torture place and they knew it but
    they didn’t tell us; and they left us; the wom en who didn’t exist
    got to stay solidly in hell; and no one said rape; in jail they kept
    sticking things up us all the time but no one said rape, there is
    no such w ord with any meaning that I have ever heard applied
    when someone spreads a girl’s legs and sticks something in
    anywhere up her; no one minds including pacifists. One
    woman had been a call girl, though we didn’t know it then,
    and she was dressed real fine so the women in the jail spit on
    her. One woman was a student and some inmates held her
    down and some climbed on top o f her and some put their
    hands up her and later the newspapers said it was rape because
    lesbians did it so it was rape if lesbians piled on top o f you and
    lesbians was the bad word, not rape, it was bad because
    lesbians did it, like Nazis, and it wasn’t anything like I knew,
    being around girls and how we were. Later the newspapers
    said this w om en’s jail was known as a hellhole torture place
    and there’s a long history o f wom en beat up and burned and
    assaulted for decades but the pacifists let us stay there; didn’t
    bother them. There was a woman killed there by torture.

    There were women hurt each and every day and the newspapers couldn’t think o f enough bad names to say how evil the
    place was and how full o f cruelty and it was known; but the
    pacifists let us stay there; didn’t bother them; because if you
    get tortured they don’t hear the screams any more than if you
    talk in a meeting; you could be pulled into pieces in front o f
    them and they’d go on as if you wasn’t there; and you weren’t
    there, not for them, truly you were nothing so they weren’t
    w orrying about you when you were well-hidden somewhere
    designed to hide you; and they weren’t all overwrought just
    because someone might stick something up you or bring you
    pain; and if you got a hole to stick it up then there’s no problem
    for them if someone’s sticking something up it, or how many
    times, or if it’s very bad. I don’t know what to call what they
    did to me but I never said it was rape, I never did, and no one
    did; ever. T w o doctors, these men, gave me an internal
    examination as they called it which I had never heard o f before
    or seen and they used a steel speculum which I had never seen
    before and I didn’t know what it was or why they were putting
    it up me and they tore me apart inside so I couldn’t stop
    bleeding; but it wasn’t rape because it wasn’t a penis and it was
    doctors and there is no rape and they weren’t Nazis, or lesbians
    even, and maybe it was a lie because it’s always a lie or if it did
    happen was I a virgin because if I wasn’t a virgin it didn’t
    matter what they did to me because if something’s been stuck
    up you once it makes you dirty and it doesn’t matter if you tear
    someone apart inside. I didn’t think it was rape, I never did, I
    didn’t know what they did or w hy they did it except I knew
    how much it hurt and how afraid I was when I didn’t stop
    bleeding and I wouldn’t have ever said rape, not ever; and I
    didn’t, not ever. The peace boys told me I was

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