All Women Must Reap: A Punk Flower Story
A Hopepunk story to honor the fight for women's rights.
Several centuries ago, it was decreed that all women with fertile land had to plant flowers. Generation after generation, women planted flowers, which had to be delivered to industries, companies, and governments to serve as fuel and decoration. The women saw the flowers destroyed and mistreated, deprived of water, light, and pure soil. Still, they could not do anything to help them: if they did not deliver them, the women were seen as immoral and selfish, and if they tried to protect the flowers, the women were even judged as sick and hysterical, since the flowers had to stand by themselves.Â
In many cases, women couldn't stop reaping even if they didn't have the conditions to take care of the land and the flowers because the pressure for them to do as they were told was too strong; some women were promised support to take care of their harvests, but once the reaping was ready, they were left alone with the obligation of sustain their flowers. Most industries were closed to women since their main duty was to reap. As a result, most women were poor, and their ideas were dismissed as insignificant.Â
Women were judged by their own mothers, mothers-in-law, and friends if they decided not to use their land to have flowers since it was everyone's duty to give more flowers to the robots. The robots were promises of progress and prosperity that excited past generations. In many, the robots inspired rendition and blind faith. People forgot that robots were lighted with their own existence, that their metallic bodies and electric souls were only lighted by the energy and attention people generated. There was no time to figure out different ways of living nor to stop and see the tragedy of the surroundings. Flowers must be produced nonstop, and so sun and wind were used to perpetually create perfect reaping conditions. The robots demanded flowers. People give flowers to them.Â
To plant flowers, some women subjected their land to treatments that impoverished or exhausted them. Sometimes, the flowers were born wilted, without stems or without petals. Although these flowers needed very complex and expensive systems to survive, which had to be paid for by the women themselves, they were punished if they decided to cut them before their time. The flowers of these crops also had to serve the robots, regardless of whether they were defoliated along the way. If someone entered the property without permission and violated the land with seeds that the women had not requested, they couldn't interrupt the harvest, regardless of the difficulties or the pain they felt when seeing their lands trampled.Â
It was said among the women that it had not always been like this. In small, discreet groups, gathered in valleys or in gardens full of buds, they activated the hologram systems that showed them a past in which flowers grew wild and women could care for them with attention and consideration, and their beauty only existed as part of nature that was now full of junk, dirt and dilapidated buildings.
The more awful the panorama grew, the more flowers were used to hide its defects, light the giant dome that sheltered the greenhouses, and make the robots look attractive and sublime. The robots asked for things they never used. They only produced garbage that women and their flowers had to make do with. They produced rules that were impossible to fulfill without becoming even colder and more static than the robots themselves.
The final straw came when an implant was created to force women to harvest their lands, no matter what. At first, this only meant one or two crops per land, as had happened before. But over time, it began to be required that the harvest be continuous, regardless of the risk of drought or soil erosion. Despite the unfairness of this new system, even other women who loved robots agreed, wrongly thinking that their submission would deserve the favor of the robots. But for the robots, all women and all flowers were the same.Â
There were fewer and fewer women who had the time and humor to connect to the hologram of the past since they all had to produce flowers, and those who could not or did not want to had to work for the robots in any other way possible. But this dedication did not guarantee an increase in harvests: many women, especially the poorest, died trying to remove the fertility device ingrained in their land, while others simply stopped planting, even if they loved the flowers, even if they were attacked. This also meant that women were isolated from each other since they were either being punished or exploited. There was no time to heal the ill or to listen to the sad; with flowers or without them, women needed to serve.
However, the roots of the flowers grew so deep they reached the system that lighted the dome. The antique hologram was fed into the circuits, and soon, it illuminated the whole sky as a promise of paradise and an inspiration for change. Then, the protests began. The women remembered that they were owners of their lands and had the right to harvest them whenever and if they wanted. They had the right to care for the ground, the flowers, and themselves however they wanted, and no one knew better than them how to do so. The science that had failed them so much in the past had to be dedicated, in the future, to their well-being. Women remembered that they had the right to demand that they be helped with whatever was necessary to nourish their lands and flowers. The revolution ended when men and women turned off the robots and returned to caring for the flowers in peace and harmony. Their lands deserved more worship than the robots, which were disassembled, and, with their parts, new homes, greenhouses, and monuments were built. The dome was lifted to let the sun and the wind flow. Life grew again in gardens, valleys, and forests.