Fuck(ed) feminism
Reading this made me feel *old*.
The hope. The optimism. The ne’er-may-care punk rock naivety. Certainty.
Me was she, now I’m…
Somewhere along the line
my feminism
got
Fucked.
~
Lou Reed & Metallica – The View
I want to see your suicide
I want to see you give it up
Your life of reason
I want you on the floor
And in a coffin your soul shaking
I want to have you doubting
Every meaning you’ve amassed
Like a fortuneOh throw it away
For worship of someone
Who actively despises you
On International Women’s Day (08/03/2012)*
Kate and the Queen are coming! Kate and the Queen are coming! Get out the flags and bunting!
Kate’s gonna choose new shooes!
Pretty satin-y slippers
a la Cinderella, (and aaaall that).
Girls gonna gasp:
Hah!
I want some new shooes too.
A brand new pair of DM boots.
But that redundancy notice looms and there’s a rusty chain
(that’s right, no jewels)
clasped round my neck.
Four heavy letters dangle from it:
Spell:
RENT.
Girl’s gonna groan:
Oh.
But get the flags and bunting out! Get the flags and bunting out! Keep cheering smile applauding!
Forget
that we,
women,
this whole wide weirdo world
is/are
not free.
~
*(‘cause my feminist fires still BURN, you know, they DO! they DO!
Sort of.)
My feminism…
… is radical; not content with taping up the edges; only with exploding the entire system and envisioning and creating it anew.
… sits in sympathy with socialist ideas, aligns with the left, and wants capitalism brought down with the patriarchy.
… is inflicted with postmodern paralysis though, so saying you want capitalism brought down with the patriarchy becomes something to scoff at, for it’s not as simple as that.
~
My feminism…
… cannot be reduced to some A – Z roll call of issues – E for Equal Pay, P for Porn, R for Rape, S for SmashingPatriarchy – I deal with on my days off.
My feminism…
… is much, much more; a rich and broad-ranging ideology and philosophy, inextricably bound up with the intangible and everyday aspects of life.
… is a state of mind; an identity; always there, overt or covert, feeding and bleeding into everything I do.
~
My feminism…
… knows the need for nuance and difference in political discussions and organisation, and
… has a vision of a future in which all women are taken into account; where there is support for our different situations, and celebration of our varied selves.
My feminism…
… recognises we have a government opposed to all that; instead preferring to set everybody into some white public-school boy mould, and forgetting about anybody who doesn’t fit into it.
My feminism…
… wants to wage a counter-attack on this conservative ideology; not issue by issue; but by striking at its very principles, which are contrary to everything lefty, radical feminism has ever stood for.
~
My feminism…
… scorches and soars like loud rock guitar.
… is fuelled by the crests of electric guitar waves; sounds just like them; is indistinguishable from them.
~
My feminism…
… goes arm-in-arm with a DIY punk rock/non-conformist outlook, and so
… says no to marriage, no to a mortgage, no to a perm 9 – 5.
… seeks autonomy, impermanence, and freedom instead; freedom from treading well-worn paths, those which have stifled many women’s screams, screams to escape the dead-ends they lead to.
~
My feminism….
… embeds itself in everyday, concrete reality.
… speaks from personal experience, and
… likes other feminisms warm with the blood of personal voice, emotion, and passion.
My feminism…
… aims to express itself thoughtfully, creatively, wholeheartedly.
~
My feminism…
… is confused, complicated and contradictory;
… critical as well as contemplative;
… queerying and self-questioning.
… stands in solidarity, but also sits alone .
~
My feminism…
… experiences excited hopeful energy, but
… also knows hopeless despondency, from recognising all that needs remedying.
~
My feminism…
… disappears on looking in the mirror.
… does not unfurl that curl of self-esteem I feel when I see my own reflection, and
… gets frustrated by what I do for a living; serving, assisting, and pleasing; playing office housewife.
~
My feminism…
… validates my loner wanderlusting; for women should be able to roam wherever they may like too, literally and psychically; alone; unbound by convention, routine, and sexist expectation.
My feminism…
… signals an opportunity for self-discovery and self-definition.
… demands space to be herself/ves.
~
My feminism…
… dreams big, and
… harbours a revolutionary, idealistic zeal.
… takes the form of a lifelong journey, which goes with its ebbs and flows, and
… is all-encompassing.
~
First there was the student riot at Millbank Tower, where in amongst the groups of your atypical lefty male activist-types, were women experiencing direct action for the first time, including, “a shy looking girl” who “squeaks in fright, but sets her lips determinedly and walks forward, not back, towards the line of riot cops” and giving “the glass under her feet a tentative stomp, and then a firmer one. Crunch, it goes. Crunch.”
Then there were the young women taking to their city centres to demonstrate against cuts to the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) and occupying their student unions in protest at increased university tuition fees; their faces lit up in joyous defiance, their stand self-assured: “They are cutting EMA and they are cutting arts and sports programmes, but they are not cutting the Ministry of Defence and nuclear weapons which is ridiculous. They need to get their priorities sorted out.” And I thought: how fucking brilliant is this? These women may be heading into adulthood amidst the bleakest social and economic times of recent years, but perversely, this is also inducing their political awakening, an awakening which may have taken longer to dawn had their futures beamed a little brighter. These 15, 16, 17, 18-year old girls have now found their political voices, felt the freedom in fighting back – something they’ll never forget. So now their resistance has been piqued, who knows what further riots they could inspire?
Then as I sat amongst rows of young feminists at the recent Bristol University Feminism Conference, I was struck by the way feminist activism has taken off on university campuses in the past couple of years. I attended my first feminist conference in 2005 (FEM 05 at Sheffield University Student Union) shortly after graduating, and there had been no similar student feminist movement back then. And yet now there are all these pockets of student women finding feminism and wanting to run with it.
In short, it’s really exciting and encouraging to see such a surge of political energy coming from young women – at a time when it’s most definitely called for.
~
My current optimism signals a shift in my feelings about the efficacy and value of some activism, particularly in relation to how it’s utilised in feminist movement. A couple of years ago, I was writing quite critically about feminist activism in the UK, arguing that one-off demos were unlikely to achieve much and that more vigour and commitment was needed behind the more high-profile campaigns.
However, I’ve been engaging with feminism in a more positive way again recently, mainly because of the Women Speak Out (WSO) project I’ve been doing. I’ve been meeting women involved in some of those campaigns I’ve since cut ties with, but getting out from behind the computer screen to instead talk face-to-face with them has humanised and provided a better context for me to understand their commitment and motivation for getting involved in the causes they do.
For instance, at our discussion in Bristol, we were talking to women who were most concerned with porn, beauty ideals and the sexualisation of young women. Now, these are no longer the sorts of things I get so worked up about, and I’ve got my issues with how feminism tends to tackle them, however there’s no escaping the fact that, just like the young women we were speaking to, my first forays into feminism also involved protesting lad mags, rape, and sexual objectification. I too remember discovering that feeling of joyous defiance, the freedom in fighting back (something you can see for yourself if you read through the entries made on this blog through 2006 – 2007).
My feminism has since calmed down and got more complicated, is even contradictory in places (rock music by guys would suit the tone of women-only marches really well!? fuck beauty ideals, but I really want clear skin!?). But recognising my younger feminist self in these burgeoning feminist activists – as well as in some of those girls taking their first tentative, yet also heady footsteps, into activism via the issue of education cuts – has made me more empathetic and understanding towards their activism and the feelings fuelling that activism. So, instead of completing disavowing my early feminism, and continuing to criticise other, often younger, feminists for continuing down that road; almost expecting my feminism to be their feminism, I’m now more in the mood to try forging productive alliances and dialogues with them, on the understanding that we come into, and do, feminism at different stages and from different places.
~
If we acknowledge that being a feminist involves taking a political journey, one which will see our politics change as our personal circumstances change, then that not only allows us to question and shift our own positions on certain issues, but also means we are better placed to accept the different positions held between ourselves and other feminists.
And perhaps there is no better way to set out on that journey than to just dive in and see where it takes you. I’ve been critical in the past about feminists protesting for the sake of protesting, to no specific end, and that coming together for a couple of times a year to march through the streets of London is never going to bring the revolution. But that was talking as someone who had already embarked on the journey and was ready to alight at the next stop – I’m not going to criticise other young women for joining in the way I did, and dismiss them when they declare, for example, how empowering marching alongside other women is (which it is!). I’ll cheer on any young woman who makes that choice – still a pretty radical one – to step out on the streets and speak back on something that rouses her ire. If nothing else, it’s a way for her to test out her new political ideas and experience what resistance feels like. Even if the aims of the campaign aren’t achieved, even if it requires a bit more work to be successful, even if she comes to a point of disillusionment with it, at least she’s now gathered further fuel to embark on the next stage of the journey.
And this is something that will continue throughout the journey; you stop to focus on a particular campaign or figure out a new theory, before setting off again, either because the campaign/theory no longer fits, or on the contrary, its success requires you to keep moving forward with it. No one sets out with their feminism fully formed, but then again, no one can ever claim to have a fully formed feminism, because our politics will always change alongside our personal lives, therefore we shouldn’t be expected to get it right all the time, we’ll make mistakes, and say and do things which in a couple of years we may no longer want to align ourselves with.
The important thing is to create spaces and dialogues that allow for this within feminism. We’re not always going to agree with each other and wish to attach ourselves to the same causes, but I still believe in the possibility of entering into constructive dialogues with those at different stages of their feminist journeys, whether those differences arise from ideology, personal experience, or how long we’ve been on those journeys.
We had such a discussion at Bristol; some of us were speaking from different backgrounds, with different beliefs, and investment in different causes, but I found it exciting to see the young feminists we spoke to keen to ask questions and listen and learn from each other. They were idealistic, but not dogmatic. They had their convictions, but they were open to having them challenged and expanded.
‘Tis another reason for the optimism.
~
But I also feel like cheering on this rush of young female resistance, because now is not the time to be holding back and staying home. Again, in contrast to what I was saying two years ago, I think it’s better we head out and make our voices heard than not do anything at all.
When I read about young women, “feeling alive, really alive” as a result of their political awakening and involvement, I see that as the key thing right now. In these times of neo-liberal, Conservative rule, where we turn up to work and get coined as ‘resources to be rationalised’, then expected to find solace in television schedules stuffed full of shiny soulless entertainment; told our hearts should lie with Royal Variety Shows, where the heir to the throne shakes hands with those nice boys from Take That, and no matter the kids outside who’ve left London burning because they’ve just been dealt a debt-ridden future; in these times, we need to be storming Parliament Square, taking to the streets as huge masses of women, and turning off the X Factor to tune into a heartier soundtrack; to show that we’re fuckin’ Alive and not falling for any of it.
Sure, we need to make sure our protests are potent and on target – just like those of the recent student movement, which feminism could take a lot from (particularly as the two movements overlap, anyway) – but we should also be encouraging all those young women who want to get involved to get going.
For girls – your time is now. Dare to dream and turn those dreams into reality. Get stuck in and set off on your political journeys; calling out what tugs at your heart and turns your stomach. Don’t be afraid to second-guess, criticise and change your minds. But do insist on writing your own futures – don’t let others read them to you.
~
Muse, Butterflies & Hurricanes
“Why does is it have to rain now, on Monday morning, when I’m walking to work?”
The clouds had been converging ominously
I set off cursing its bad timing
but a good mood was also brewing.
Once I got to the office, it emerged.
The grey rainy air seemed to settle everything down; it was quiet; things weren’t as fraught as I was expecting them to be.
~
I go back outside, and welcome the cool brisk wind, get high on its breath.
Not minding the rain landing on my skin:
it bristles, bringing me back to life, invigorated.
This is more like it –
no more staid sleepy sun, with its expectations to be
pretty and perfect in suntan still.
But boisterous breeze, splashed stains, rushed roars of rainy wind
making our hair messy, our trousers dirty, and our thoughts go wild and free.
~
Step inside. The dark sky forms a thick blanket to retreat under, made warmer by the solid silence that surrounds me now I’m home.
The gentle but assured drumming of the rain on the roof
a steadying soundtrack.
Everything seems easier.
The niggles are appeased.
~
I’ve got a clear head again. So, I’ve been able to do stuff; I could finish typing up the minutes; I could speak, and keep going despite only a handful of hours sleep.
The humid air and bright muggy light have gone away, taking the tired body and muffled mind with them.
~
Cosy quiet lamp lit evenings
turning the television off for bouts of silent reading instead.
Flashback to last summer, when the office I worked in injected me with swathes of lethargy, leading me to collapse into thoughtless, wasted evenings.
But isn’t that what we’re meant to do? ‘Switch off’ once we get home from ‘work’?
But what if we do jobs that keep us ‘switched off’ all day too?
When are we meant to come Alive?
Get some proper work done?
~
Walking to the Dr’s through a thunderstorm.
Rain falling in long, straight, clean lines.
Picked up my prescription for more pretty pills aka antibiotics to treat my acne.
They’re kicking in now. That blazing bathroom light has been kinder
so on looking in the mirror, I see cleaner, calmer skin.
Sneak up closer and you’ll see the scars.
But I’m happy with how much healthier my face is looking.
~
Walking back home
remnants of rain falling tranquil.
Remembering winter:
darkening wet outsides and lit up insides.
~
The thunderstorm stops, the rain dries up.
The sun then emerges, like a yawn
slowing it all back down.
~
“I find it hard to believe – 1 in 4? What about battered men?”
asks the bloke who sits next to me at work.
How to respond?
My stiff awkward disposition sets in.
Self-consciousness scratches as I try to reply, but I’m not working.
I lack the words and strength of feeling to galvanise a hearty, assured response.
“Women live 10 years longer than men – we have to bump you off somehow!”
he continues with a chortle.
I guess this is supposed to be taken as one of those knowingly anti-PC jokes we’re just meant to laugh along with, unless we want to be accused of ‘taking things too seriously’.
It’s this sort of thing that crosses a line with me, though.
Slams up hard against my feminist foundations.
Responding to the harsh facts of violence against women
with laughter, mocking questions, disbelief.
Such attitudes make it likely that domestic violence happens to women on the scale the statistics suggest. The indifference, ridicule, lack of empathy, unwillingness to listen and believe what women are trying to tell you, creates the conditions for it to continue.
It’s not nasty bogey men who are closing their ears to these violent truths.
It’s honest, hardworking, otherwise decent blokes.
My dad. My colleague.
Making my relationships with them difficult.
“You’re good, but how can you *think* that? How can you *think* that & still be a good person?”
Do they deny women’s voices, gay asylum seekers’ human rights, because if they embrace them, they fear they’ll be knocked off their privileged perches?
~
Then I go home, turn on that television, and laugh along to sexist jokes.
~
The clouds are converging again, the rain returns.
Fold away the fretting office doing nothing.
Fold away the Friday evening traffic going nowhere.
Tuck up into the weekend instead.
Floods of rainy rock guitar. Freedom sounds.
Buoyed once again.
… inspired by our second Women Speak Out discussion in Birmingham.
What is radical feminism to me? Don’t get your definitions of radical feminism from postmodern academic theory – they’re distorted. Turn to the original, brilliant radical feminist thinkers/writers Shulamith Firestone, Andrea Dworkin (her book, Woman Hating, is a precursor to queer theory), Robin Morgan and Charlotte Bunch (her collection of writing, Passionate Politics, is some of the most nuanced, eloquent, complex, radical feminist writing I’ve come across, and I highly recommend it). What these women came up with was more nuanced and aware of dynamics of race/class/sexuality than radical feminism is often given credit for.
Radical feminism is something I can still associate with because:
• I see it as advocating for a radical overhaul of society – nothing else will be enough to secure women’s liberation.
• Patriarchy exists and the overthrow of capitalism alone will not be enough – capitalism and patriarchy are keenly intertwined.
• Radical feminism is from the grassroots, it centres the personal, everyday experiences of women, it’s not top-down theory.
• It applies a materialist/structural lens to examining society and women’s place within it.
• It doesn’t see gender/sexuality as biologically determined.
What I don’t like about radical feminism (the more contemporary variant thereof):
• Its attitude towards trans people and transgender/sexual issues more widely
• Its dogmatism around the issues of pornography; male violence; femininity
• Its tendency to support women over men at all times – what, even when the female boss is being a shit & you, as a secretary, have more in common with the everyday working experiences of the guys delivering the post/fixing the photocopier/taking out the bins – sorry, but I’ll be joining the blokes on the picket line.
• How it forms its agenda around a few massive issues, but is somewhat removed from the nuances and mundanities of everyday life – it fights the display of porn in the staff room, but doesn’t really talk about you know, just getting up and going to work, and what goes on there. Radical feminism dissects the extra-curricular of your life, what you face when you’re out alone at night, or in a shop faced with sexist imagery, but not your main everyday subject.
• Its suspicion of ‘Queer’ politics and identities.
• How it doesn’t like to question and critique itself.
The representations/treatment of women within different rock music sub-cultures. Does metal music sexually objectify women more, than say, punk and grunge, which tend(ed) to be more egalitarian in attitude and androgynous in appearance? And if so, why? And how does it relate to the actual content of the music?
Tackling lap dancing/lad mags/prostitution – banning them is not the way to go vs their continued existence signals women’s inequality in society. And how putting things on top shelves and away from the high street just moves the problem elsewhere – usually to affect a more disadvantaged group of women. A danger of middle-class directed feminism – it’s okay to get these things out of our sight, ‘cause then we don’t have to think about them, but now it’s just going to gravitate to the more deprived outskirts of town, where (non middle-class) women are going to continue to be adversely affected.
The biological sex vs gender as social construct dichotomy – should we be moving beyond this dichotomy? Could it be that men and women are actually born with different traits which society then exaggerates/distorts to fulfil its stereotypes? If they were less exaggerated and encouraged to turn out in a different way, would things be a whole lot different? We all have ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ traits – and often in various, contradictory combinations. So, I’m quite feminine in my voice and mannerisms, I’m not assertive, I don’t take up space, but then when it comes to talking and expressing emotion I’m more stoically, silently male, I don’t like dressing in a feminine manner, I don’t like a lot of stereotypically feminine things i.e. shopping, I’m not maternal. And yet a woman who comes across as feminine via her physical appearance – heels, make up, et al – can be dominating and assertive in her personality (ref: Julia Serano – Whipping Girl).
Abstract feminist theoretical questioning vs just laying claim to simple gut emotions. I can to and fro all day long about whether I should be supporting a woman because she’s a woman, I should be looking at the context in which she’s behaving to explain what she’s saying/doing, I should consider her background, her situation… but thing is, I just think she’s being a right fucking bitch – and that’s all I want to say on the matter.
I don’t know what, but there must be something about the month of May that makes me re-assess the state of this blog and decide on a new direction to take it in.
I skipped along like this until around May 2008 when, half way through an MA in Gender Studies, I was stopped in my increasingly strident tracks. Academia threw all my radical feminist politics up in the air, whilst at the same time I had begun to feel more uncomfortable with the increasingly extreme and intolerant views of the online radical feminist community I had connected with. So, I stopped blogging and kept my distance for a bit; ended up with a piss-poor degree; back at my parents and working another soul-sucking admin job, and increasingly critical of the ‘state of UK feminism’. I returned to blogging to vent my thoughts on this, writing thousands of words about how the movement I had so enthusiastically participated in a couple of years ago seemed to be dissipating and could do with a rocket being stuck up its arse. Looking back at what I wrote then, I was too critical, perhaps writing out of a personal sense of disappointment at the collapse of my own feminist activism and relationships, which prevented me from acknowledging how the activism I was criticising may still have something of a place, and my calls for women to do more than just write letters and attend annual protest marches were ignorant to the demands and constraints placed on most women’s lives.
By May 2009, I had tied myself up in knots and felt so burnt out and uninspired at the thought of writing about feminism, that I decided to stop blogging here. This coincided with my moving into my own flat (well, I rent, but you know what I mean), and whilst I never stopped identifying as a feminist, I was more keen to explore all the other things that inspire and interest me, rather than just that specifically associated with feminism.
But circumstances curtailed me from pursuing anything of interest further. Last year was spent working a horrible job, which sucked all my time and mental and physical energy. Looking back now, I can see how miserable and trapped I felt, but whilst in amongst it I just continued to plough on through. Most of the summer I felt hot and lethargic, alternately bored and stressed, weekends spent angsting over my situation, and more of the same come the Monday morning walk to work. Things picked up a bit come September, when I accepted a pay rise instead of doing what I should have done, and got the hell out of that office, away from that boss, because by the time winter rolled round, everything felt shit again. I was increasingly irritated and strung out by the work I was doing, but also by my own attitude and my colleagues’ behaviour towards me. I’d got myself into this situation where my job was all I did, I let it take over my mind and drain my energy, I was too accommodating and worried about performing well, and others noticed and took the piss. I felt increasingly put upon and fed up – I wasn’t doing anything with my life, I just felt nauseous, tired, confused and stuck.
It had to end, and I was already making plans to quit, when a few days before the Xmas holidays I came down with a cold and cried; burnt out and brain tired. I looked round my flat, and thought: ‘fuck, I never even got round to getting proper furniture’, after months of saying I would. And I knew then that I had to get out of that job and make some changes.
I quit that job at the end of January, took another temp job for a month to see me through February, until one weekend that month I decided to take a couple of months out to concentrate on my own thing and get back to myself. Sounds wanky, I know, particularly when you’ve been raised to believe, as I have, that the most important thing is to ‘get a job’ and ‘do something useful’, even though I struggle to explain to my parents that those are two mutually exclusive categories and people are put on this earth to be more than just someone’s employee, spouse, parent and/or child.
But a respite from the rat race seemed to be just what I needed, because over the past couple of months, I’ve felt more inspired and centred than I have in months. Importantly, it gave me the space to strengthen my perspective on what’s important and what’s not. A Job is not important; it’s just something you have to do. A Job is what you do to support your life, not the other way around. I always knew this, but now I’ve resolved to put it into practice. This week I started a new admin job, part-time, which by virtue of being part-time, is already proving more bearable. This can’t carry on forever, because money’s going to start getting tight, but for the next few months it’ll do nicely. With The Job parked in its rightful place, with me refusing to let it run all over the other parts of my life, I have more time to write and do things (such as this). So far, the summer of 2010 is shaping up to be a hell of a lot better than the sickly stressy summer of ‘09.
Clearly, I broke my decision to stop blogging here and this signals the greater sense of space, time, energy and inspiration I now have to write and think again. It also points to my newly-reinvigorated feminist energy, and my wish to connect with other feminists and get active again. There seems to have been some synchronicity to it; just when I had the time to reflect on it, there seemed to be all this talk of the ‘new feminist movement’ (as documented in the BBC’s Activists documentary and books such as The Equality Illusion by Kat Banyard and Reclaiming the F Word by Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune). Whereas a year ago I might have felt distanced from it, now I recognise it as something I was a part of, and whilst still critical of some aspects of contemporary feminism, I can also see it for what it is. When I hear about feminists storming Tesco to protest their display of lad mags or a young woman declare she’s stopped shaving her legs (which I started to do again last year – more on that to come), instead of shaking my head to the tune of ‘we ought to be doing more than this’, I now accept that this is how a lot of young women get their feminism going – it’s how I got mine going. And it has its place. I’m now more interested in considering how to move my own feminism forward in a more positive way, and figuring out how to be active in regards to my own interests and inclinations, instead of always seeking to criticise what others are doing. I’ll still criticise and point things out, but I’m also keen to be more positive and productive in my feminist writing and activism.
Which brings me to the next thing; so far LonerGrrrl has been A Feminist Blog, she has been A Feminist. But now I want to shift gears, and show all the different sides to LonerGrrrl in addition to the feminist one. This is picking up on what I was saying this time last year; how I’m interested and inspired by a lot of other things, do a lot of other things, am a lot of other things, than that which is feminist per se. And I want to start opening up and exploring some of this more, talk about such things as:
… being a loner; rock music; books; television; dealing with acne & eczema (umm, gorgeous!); family; social anxiety/awkwardness; electoral politics; the news; working as an admin assistant; walking; keeping house; solitude; my hopes, dreams, ambitions, anxieties and fears; projects I’m doing; balancing a Job with life; writing; living alone; being lazy; being productive; feeling low and uninspired; feeling heady with ideas and energy; quarter-life crisis; money; independence….
I want to start integrating all these different aspects into my writing, into my work, into my activism, into my life, instead of doing what I’ve done up until now, which is keep them all separate and self-contained, which hasn’t quite satisfied me.
My feminist identity is the one that’s taken precedence here, but now I want other parts to join it. Because solitude is just as important and inspiring to me as feminism, and punk rock principles guide my politics and action as much as feminist ones do. And all three of these things also meet at various points along the way. And I want my writing to start reflecting that more, and LonerGrrrl blog seems a good place to do that, because LonerGrrrl is also all those things (and also because I didn’t want to set up a new blog with a different name, because even with all the flux in my life over the past few years, that name still sounds like it goes with me). I really like Liz’s approach to blogging, which she uses to sum up different junctures of her life, and writes about all the things she’s inspired by and has been doing, and how all that relates to the bigger picture. I’m keen to take this blog in that sort of direction.
I guess I also returned to this blog because I just love writing. I keep notebooks which I treat as journals, where I record key events and feelings, which not only keeps me writing, but also proves therapeutic and grounding. I also have a bunch of drafts on a range of topics I want to turn into posts. And allowing myself to write on different topics and on more personal matters, has made me feel more excited about returning here. I also aim to stop abstracting so much, and just be in my writing. I don’t have to explain myself the whole time – some things are because they just are. I want to reconcile and revel in all my contradictions and confusion. So, that’s the kind of thing to expect here from now on. This is no longer A Feminist Blog (even though it will still have feminist content), it’s LonerGrrrl’s blog.
Until May 2011, when I’ll probably want to set off somewhere new again, but we’ll see…
There comes a point when you need to stop making excuses and realise that This is It.
The one shot at life you’ll get.
Your one chance to be the best you can; to develop your unique, individual self to her fullest; to push all your ‘wild’ dreams & ‘crazy’ ideas (so they say), & the creative energy needed to make them come true, to the brim so they spill right out and all over.
So there is no longer any distinction, any separation, between your everyday self & your real self; so your everyday consists of doing what you believe needs to be done & not what you are told should be done; so you have the opportunity to bring to the fore what you previously believed couldn’t surface because the everyday kept getting in the way; so we can be our whole selves.
We make excuses not to pursue our ideas; follow our heart’s pull; devote ourselves more fully to the execution of our talents and practice of our principles; to make a difference; to realise what we truly can be.
“I don’t have the time”; “I can’t get there”; “I can’t afford it”; “It would take too long”; “I don’t know anybody else”; “no one would notice/read/listen/watch/engage with it anyway”; “it won’t make any difference”; “I’m too tired”; “I have to be up early for work tomorrow”; “so-and-so might need me”; “I’m not good/interesting enough”; “I tried before & never got anywhere with it”; “no one else can be bothered, so why should I?”
This is what we say when the hands of the everyday grip us round the neck and suffocate our souls; when the tangled webs and heavy chains of gender/race/class oppression have paralysed us into silence & self-doubt and snapped from our hands that which we need to move; when ‘just getting on with things’ becomes the only mode and mantra of existence, whether by necessity or habit; when we cease to look at the bigger picture.
The bigger picture is that which consists of who we really are and what we’re really interested in; what needs to be done to change things for the better, for ourselves & others.
It’s that place where our oppressed selves are replaced by our liberated selves. Where we are allowed to give more of our time, energy, selves, to that which we really want to do, and dare to dream of doing – art, writing, activism, caring, community work, educating – but which we dare not realise, for our everyday selves and situation take over.
We have to go to our jobs, put ourselves away & present false, conform & perform to fit what we don’t reckon with, our time, energy & souls being sucked away… and hence come the excuses.
But there comes a point when we realise that this isn’t good enough. It can’t continue. A life of split selves, wasted weeks, too much compromise, of just making do, of resignation, of always dreaming, but never getting round to actually doing, changing, realising anything.
Stop.
We can find a way.
We must find a way.
Mix things up a bit. Shift priorities. Put our foot down and ourselves first.
Take your idea, your dream, and sit with it. Break it down, bit by bit. What steps do I need to take to make it come true? Counter the excuses. There may be more ways than you think, ways around and about, a perceived obstacle, if we dare to think & dream beyond the everyday.
See? It could still happen, there is another way, and you do have the chance to make your dream come true, to realise your full self, to change things, to live. Stop making excuses. Just get on with it.
It won’t be easy. It will ebb & flow, stop & start, fall apart and need to be built back up again. Participation in the everyday, with its monetary rewards, will still be essential to an extent.
But if we dare to make our dreams come true, dare to declare the importance of pursuing our interests & making our voices heard, the prickly everyday need cause us to itch no more. Because we finally realise what is important. What needs to be done. What life is really all about.
For those outside of the centre – women, BME communities, queers, anti-capitalists, punk rockers, the disabled, those with heads full of mind wars & wanderings, who never fit in, in the school playground & still don’t in the office, idealists, and so on – this is imperative if we are to survive & be happy.
We can’t realise our true selves in the everyday, that which forms the centre from which we are shunted. If we want in, we have to switch off and over to another self, compromise our creativity, dilute our principles, pipe down our voices, wear proper shoes.
We may kid ourselves into thinking we can get a place at the centre and play along like everyone in the everyday. So we sweat, scratch and spill tears in our efforts to fit in and find our niche.
But you don’t.
You just end up compromising yourself, diluting what made you & your work so great in the first place. You twist yourself into a position which will allow you to get a foot in the door, but you just end up bending yourself so out of proportion, that whilst you may have got in, once there you’re so completely tangled up in someone else’s standards, having untied the knot of your true self at the door.
It’s important to remember what you’re really about, where you & your inspiration come from, what your passions and politics and personality really stand for, and find another way.
Your own way. Doing It Yourself.
Because no one else will provide you with the forum to express who you really are.
Because no medium exists which will tolerate, or take on board, your form of expression.
Because at the centre, in the everyday, they expect you to be some neat tidy monolithic package, easy to label and sum up in a sentence, when in reality you’re wide open and all over the place, full of messy confused contradictions, myriad passions & politics, between which you have formed your own individual connections, but you do you really expect them to get it?
Because you can’t work to the everyday’s schedule, can’t dance to its beat. There’s nothing there to dance to.
Because you can’t live up to their standards, ‘the standard’.
Those outside of the centre need to Do It Themselves, to stay true to themselves, to create their own space, products and politics so they can say they exist as laws unto themselves & not just to fit some everyday mould.
They’ll be no thank you from on high for going this way; you’ll be told what you create isn’t good enough and what you’re saying doesn’t make sense; it won’t make you rich & famous; maybe what you do will go completely unnoticed…
… but despite all this, Doing It Yourself promises a greater sense of empowerment, fulfilment, self-realisation, happiness and liberation. A more real, centred, true to yourself existence can emerge from making the decision to take the plunge to pursue your ideas, projects, dreams and plans. You can revel in the fun a self-determined life on the margins can bring. Relish the deeper world view it can help flourish.
You can live with the knowledge that you at least tried. You didn’t spend your life just dreaming and posing ‘what if’s?’ to yourself all day at your desk- the consequence of making too many excuses and not waking up to the importance of just Getting On and Doing It Yourself.
Taking part in the Million Women Rise (MWR) march on Saturday, I realised my feminism has changed. Whilst I still believe in the importance of trans inclusive women-only demonstrations to protest against male violence, I felt less enthused and more removed from it all on Saturday, compared to previous years.
And that’s more to do with me, and the impact of the changes in my thinking and experience over the past year or so, rather than it being any criticism of the march itself.
When I started attending these mass feminist demonstrations, my first being in 2006, I found them really empowering, I think because it was the first time in my life I’d literally raised my voice and was therefore doing something out of character. It was also exciting, for getting involved in public protest was me stepping out and doing something different with regards to my background- I wasn’t brought up to align myself with progressive, radical politics; my feminist foremothers are to be found on my bookshelf, not my family tree.
It was also empowering and exciting because these demonstrations were taking place amidst a bunch of new feminist groups and campaigns cropping up, coalescing to form this momentum, a new ‘wave’ of UK feminism, which has now started to be documented in books. I remember being there – organising and protesting – near the beginning of this most recent ‘wave’, and it felt great to be a part of this activity, a part of something bigger than myself, which simultaneously allowed me to become more of myself. It was life-changing- for the first time in my life, I really felt a part of something, I ‘fit in’, there were women like me out there, I was working to make a difference.
But my activism has dissipated over the past couple of years and ties with sisters severed… meanwhile the movement has continued to get bigger and this is where some of my displacement was felt yesterday. Listening to the speaker from Object talk of the success they’d had with their campaign to re-license lap dancing clubs and the optimism her speech invoked of the tide finally turning in feminism’s favour… it was good what she was saying, but I didn’t feel a part of it. Aside from the fact that I hadn’t got involved with the lap dancing campaign because I didn’t fully agree with its aims, I also felt some distancing as a result of my current attitude towards sex object culture and the feminist fight against it.
Whilst I still think dealing with the sexual commodification of women and girls in popular culture should be high on the list of priorities for UK feminist activists, my anger around this issue isn’t as visceral as it was a few years ago.
I don’t particularly know why, but I think it may have something to do with how I’ve become more interested in issues surrounding women’s oppression and exploitation in the workplace (though I acknowledge this can take the form of sexual objectification), class analyses, and the extent to which the work a woman does and what position in the class hierarchy she holds either helps or hinders her ability to do activism.
These interests have arisen out of personal experience- one of the reasons my activism has dissipated recently is because I simply do not have as much time as I used to, to do activism. Being a single woman, living alone, working a full time job – being the breadwinner and housewife – leaves little time for organising.
Anyway – and this was also something that came up in my thoughts on Saturday – I feel I’m more naturally inclined towards directing my feminist energies into writing, publishing, and documenting activism for the herstorical record, as opposed to organising groups and campaigns. I could never be an inspiring public speaker or someone who stirs the crowd into a chanting frenzy. I think it’s important to find ways in which our individual personalities and talents can be used to push feminism forward and not necessarily always look to change ourselves to fit a dominant stereotype of what we think a feminist is and does e.g. a loud, confident, shouty woman at the front of the protest, or someone working in public, organising other women and campaigns.
There were also other instances throughout the march and rally which made me reflect on the way in which how I feel about, and identify with feminism, has changed.
I still think marches such as MWR are a crucial feature of feminist movements. They can be a site of empowerment, particularly for women survivors of male violence – to be able to join together with thousands of other women to reclaim your strength and speak back against the violence you have experienced, is something not to be dismissed. And hearing the culmination of a few thousand women’s voices, shouting and cheering in unison, is definitely something. These marches also offer inspiration, for those taking part and those watching it from the sidelines, they can raise awareness and spark thinking in the general public who come upon it. Probably the best part of the march for me this year was seeing other women applauding us as we went by; receiving and sending validation in equal measure. Continuing to hold these events also carries on a fine tradition of herstory; this year’s protest was particularly poignant, taking place as it did almost exactly 40 years on from the first UK Women’s Liberation Movement demonstration.
Despite all this though, I still felt a lack of something.
It often feels like these mass protests exist in their own bubble, and I think I’d have felt more satisfied on the way home yesterday if I’d felt more reference had been made to tackling violence against women in relation to the specific political and economic context we currently inhabit. I dipped out for a time during the rally, so didn’t hear all the speeches, but the ones I did hear made no reference, for example, to the recession or the upcoming general election. Yet, I feel if we want to end violence against women in our lifetime, we need to be engaged with those broader political contexts and legislative processes that can affect it.
For instance, it would be good to use these mass rallies to call out the main political parties on what they’re doing – or not – to tackle male violence against women so as to inform our vote on polling day. Another way I think we could extend the impact of these protests is if they consisted of a few, specific demands, as the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) of the 1970s and ‘80s did. Whilst these demands have still to be fully met, they gave the WLM something to galvanize behind and did provide the framework by which some change could – and did – occur. Ultimately, we need to come up with more ways of channelling the empowerment generated at these events into some concrete action.
Another way in which my feminism has changed – which I anticipated before attending the march, and which taking part in it clarified for me – has to do with my feelings around woman-identification.
Two, three years ago, I would have vehemently positioned myself as woman-identified. But on yesterday’s march, I felt somewhat awkward amongst all the loud, radical woman-identification which set the tone of the event. Again, that’s no criticism of radical woman-identification in itself, just that I don’t find it so easy to identify strongly with it myself at this point in my life. This is, I think, down to what’s been happening in my life over the past year or so, and what I’ve taken comfort and reprieve in as a result.
Until recently, the bane of my life has been a female manager and work colleagues… and what got me through those horrible working weeks wasn’t any feminist theory, but music from some ageing all-male ska band (The Specials). I spent more time last year listening to male bands and laughing along to male comedians than doing feminism, and whilst some of the music and jokes were sexist, I could cast this off for the rest of it was good enough… and I don’t think this contradicts my feminism.
This contrast in the identifications I’ve experienced over the past couple of years was exemplified at MWR with the ‘one woman one song one body one love’ message that opened and sealed the protest and on hearing the female singers performing at the rally.
I don’t identify with that sort of thing at all, that level of woman-identification, that sort of energy. I wasn’t comfortable chanting back the ‘one woman…’ mantra, ‘cause it’s not where I’m coming from. When it comes to emotional outpourings of feelings, I’m more stereotypically male than female – they don’t come easy; whilst women with acoustic guitars do nothing for me… I’d rather listen to some Metallica. That comes nearer to representing my energy, more closely mirrors the anger and upset and tension I may experience as a result of being a woman living under patriarchy.
Again, I don’t think this male-identification over woman-identification should imply any contradiction in a feminist identity – after all, rock ‘n’ roll performed by men has saved many a woman’s life. And sometimes I think it would be good to blast something a little louder like that at this sort of thing… something like this….
Muse – Unnatural Selection
A perfect protest anthem, I think.
So, MWR this year did stir some mixed feelings, and their consolidation perhaps signals the next stopping off point in my feminist journey. One where I’ll still endorse women-only protest, but won’t be as forthright in it as I once was; where I’ll sometimes choose men over women and that’ll be ok; and doing feminism in a way that more closely matches my disposition and talents.
I closed down this blog for a while due to some changes/upheavals/distractions/other important stuff going on in my life. Throughout this time I’ve been without regular Internet access and such a break proved to be as refreshing and re-invigorating as I hoped it would be. You see, I was getting tired of the same old arguments, the pettiness, the rigidity and factionalism that permeate the feminist blogosphere, whilst also finding it hard to keep up with the number of new posts and lengthy comment threads on the topics I was/am keen to engage with.
Such a break has clarified for me that I want to engage with more, do more, be more than the feminist blogosphere seems to allow. Returning my attentions to the blogosphere has roused in me feelings similar to the ones I have on going back to the parental home. There’s that comforting familiarity, but also a stifling staidness to it all, a feeling of needing to say more, of wanting to break out and be more, than that which is allowed.
For whilst I’m still a feminist, I’ve come to a point where I want to write about things that are not so specially tied to ‘feminism’ per se. Maintaining this ‘Feminist’ blog doesn’t appeal to me much anymore, because my interests, inspiration, attentions, and priorities encompass more right now. Feminism still permeates my life, my identity, it’s still a guiding passion, a bedrock of ideals and politics to live by, something that bolsters me. But there’s more going on for me now… I want to talk about other things, other politics, express other sides to myself, delve into the other parts of me, things that I feel can’t be expressed whilst remaining cooped up in the blogosphere box labelled ‘radical feminism’.
My thoughts have turned onto other things lately… stuff that I want to write about & express… but not necessarily here, as ‘LonerGrrrl’. Undoubtedly, feminism is still a part of all this other stuff, for the personal is political, and your feminism cannot be separated off from the other facets of your life & doesn’t stop influencing your thoughts on and responses to other things. But I also don’t want to feel compelled to write about feminism with a capital F all the time…
I also feel like this blog got a bit too theoretical and self-conscious… it started to feel like a burdensome volume of feminist theory, and writing it started to feel a strain, as I felt the need to analyse and account for everything… whereas right now, I want to cut loose from that, I want to be a bit bolder, whilst no less thoughtful, in expressing myself. A part of me wants to return to the personal & everyday, and not always to books and big ideas. Although I still like books and big ideas. But I don’t like theory and writing and talking that is devoid of warmth, emotion, integrity, reality… and yet I also don’t think invoking the personal, the everyday is antithetical to complication and contradiction. I want to mix things up a bit more, not be so tied down.
I’ll no longer update this blog with long feminist analyses, although I’ll leave it open to post other stuff from time to time. I also want to leave it up so what I have written can still be read by others… I think I’ve written some good stuff here, and I want that to be available for others to read.
Instead, I’m thinking of putting together a zine of longer essays/articles/rants/whatever, because there’s a few topics I want to write about, and doing this in a printed form seems to afford me more time to do a better job of it, and the potential lengthy nature of these articles seems better suited to paper than screen.
There’s also other things I want to do, new directions I want to take, in terms of my feminism & otherwise, which I feel will be best served if my energies aren’t so wholly absorbed in the blogosphere as I feel they have been previously.
So, see you around…
