Womxn come from all kinds of backgrounds and can have so many differences between them. However, they all share varied, yet similar experiences in their womxnhood. It is always interesting to me to read their stories because I can always learn something new from them. I can laugh, cry and almost everything in between just from the words written by womxn about womxn. All that being said, the reason why I think it is important to tell womxn’s stories is so that people, as a whole, can begin to see the nuances, feelings and beauty that comes from a womxn’s story.
When my partner, who identifies as a man, read it, he told me that he was scared. That he pictured me as the main character and that even though it did not resonate with him personally, he could still feel the emotions and story that I was trying to get across. However, the critique he had of the piece was that the percentage of the battery was too high. That it did not sound realistic. I explained to him my genuine fear about my phone getting that low. He said that it was my story, so ultimately the change was up to me. After a few days, he told me that one of our mutual friends, who identifies as a womxn, asked him for his portable charger because her phone was at 25%. That was when he saw that this was not just a me thing. When we got together with friends, they all said the same thing about their fears about their phone battery getting that low.
That is why womxn’s stories are important, so that experiences can be talked about freely. Something that I learned in one of my classes here at UCLA was that although numbers and statistics serve a purpose, they are never as powerful as stories because there is no emotion backing them up. With stories, we are able to form a connection. With womxn’s stories, specifically, we get to hear of the experiences that do not tend to be mentioned in canonical literature, which are usually dominated by experiences of white men from the past.
