public service announcement

It has come to my attention that Heart is accusing me of plagiarism, with the help of her commenters.

Now, mind you, she is doing it at her place, where I am not welcome to respond, and she has left neither a comment nor a trackback to present her position to me to my figurative face. She has levelled a fairly serious accusation at me, in other words, without telling me and in fairly explicit terms, without giving me a chance to challenge her in actual conversation--and, by the way, I caught that snide "she or he" in there, Heart, and considering that you've interacted with me many times and read the piece, you know exactly what you were doing, there. Tagging your post 'War on Women' and 'Male Terrorism' goes a little further in clarifying your intentions.

I don't really want to dignify it with a response, but I have a lot of new readers right now, and I feel like they deserve some clarification, so I'll do it here.

Now, I've never read Robin Morgan before. The poem Heart quotes is a hell of a piece of work, and in other circumstances, I'd thank her for giving me some new reading material. I will see, once I know Morgan's work, how to go about honoring her legacy to feminism.
To claim, however, that Ms. Morgan, or radical feminism, are the only place I could have gotten inspired to work with the imagery of monsters and struggle, a major theme for discussing human experience--especially that of desolation and radical Othering--for the entirety of recorded history, is patently ludicrous. To accuse me of stealing another woman's work simply because she and I shared some source material much older than either of us, regarding themes that have direct bearing on my life and experiences and which, as someone raised on a lifelong love affair with history and mythology, I have been marinating in since early childhood--themes I have worked with before, over and over--is ridiculous. We don't even use the reclamation of monsterhood in the same way. You might as well say I stole my imagery from Sesame Street--they make "monster" a positive thing, too, don't they?

Is it that frightening for you to read someone like me actually achieving something like self-acceptance, or deriving strength from having been ground into the ground and refusing to break? Are you so threatened by the idea that I might be proud of my life or that I might reject attempts to shame my deviant body that your first instinct, on reading my declaration that I refuse to roll over and die, is to denigrate, accuse, and sneak about trying to undermine it? Are you so far gone that your first reaction to someone writing about getting past hurt and trying to live life fiercely in a hostile world is to say, 'wait! I'm the only one who gets to talk about overcoming adversity! Anyone claiming to be something decent in life is just trying to steal from me!' and this doesn't worry you? Because that proves only that you didn't understand what I was writing, and further, that you've proved my point.
You can go on calling me whatever you like, but you've got a long line in front of you if you want to see me bleed. Some of the people in it even have the ovaries to say things to me directly.
Keep kicking.

And hey, thanks for driving up my hit counter.

Edited to add: Because I am being called a "liar" in regard to the first sentence of this post, I should clarify. Heart did not use the word "plagiarism." She simply claimed I was stealing the ideas of another writer without credit, which is very different, and made applauding comments when other people used the word "plagiarism." I apologize for the misunderstanding; I also should not attribute to her, for instance, the reference to me as "it," since that was done by a commenter not herself who she merely told that she "loves the way [she] think[s]"--she is not in any way, by her own affidavit, "transphobic," nor would any such inclination be involved in the substance of this dispute; I am assured Heart found my piece "moving."
Additionally, the charges have been modified to include "appropriation"--that is, a white American woman is asking that I refrain from using imagery pertaining to female-presented deities including those from a Middle Eastern, Asian and/or Pacific Islander cultural heritage (that is to say, my ancestors) as this constitutes "colonization." Additionally, goddesses with transsexual priesthoods, if they are mother-figures, are off-limits. Actually, this probably also includes the ocean, and the earth, and pretty much anything concave, for caution's sake.
Also, the literature of feminists predating the radical movement should be considered inadmissible, as well, due to having already being claimed. Further, laying any claim to my ancestry is probably gauche, as belonging is sort of like owning, which is a patriarchal sort of thing to engage in, and it would prove as such that I am really a man. I therefore freely admit I have no right whatsoever to read or reference anything related to my religious practice, ancestral culture, or favorite childhood reading material, as this may or may not be subject to the Dibs! Act of 1967, wherein they had a flag stuck in them by people who have never prayed to my gods, had their countries invaded by European powers, or bothered to study other branches of the movement they also claimed through that same statute, viz., feminism.
I also have no right to interest in feminism, because I might once have made $1.00 to the $0.75 I will be making for the rest of my life, had I had a chance to be employable during those formative childhood years.
Also, apparently I have had some surgeries I was not aware of. One of these may or may not have been the addition of someone else's stolen skin. I will take care to provide more information about those in the future.
Also, my work was apparently about erasing the work of prior generations by producing content myself, in continuity with another branch of the greater feminist movement, rather than simply quoting people I did not know about who, I'm told, would disapprove of everything I represent. With my apologies, please consider this addition to the canon transparent, then, so that prior generations are still visible and can continue to be found in bookstores and libraries and schools across this fair land.
In addition, I encourage you all to read the work of Robin Morgan, who I am assured is pretty good, and who wrote at least one poem that I have now read and enjoyed, though I have to admit I prefer Anne Sexton's, repeated in comments below. I would, but I'm not allowed to--or at least, were I to, I wouldn't be allowed to talk about it. Still, please do it in my stead.
I hope we've cleared this up and can move on to more constructive pursuits. I apologize for my errors in wording, and for my laxity in making these corrections more swiftly.