Sometimes I Wish I Had Had an Abortion.
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Lets talk…..Period.
To help keep a healthy body and mind during the second lock down, I have been walking each day. I wrap up warm taking along a flask of coffee. Last week my walk ended abruptly. I felt the familiar wet warmth down below and a cramp crept around my lower stomach - I had an unexpected visit from Aunt Flo, the crimson tide, mother nature’s gift, and any other euphemisms you wish to call it. (Personally, I like to call it the pain in the arse!) Muttering under my breath as I turned back, I grumbled how unfair life was. I know, I know, but in my defense, I am extremely irritable when it is my time of the month.
Do you know what I did when I got home? I had a warm soapy bath. Afterwards I grabbed a sanitary pad; a hot water bottle and made a sugary cup of tea. Then as I stretched out on the sofa with cushions popped behind my back, a water bottle on my belly and a hot cup of tea in my hand, I had a reality check. Here was me pissed off that my walk was caught short, yet I can come home and have everything at my fingertips. What do people do who are homeless or on low income? What does a person do when they are on the street or have to decide that milk Is more important for the kid’s cereal?
When thinking of hygiene products for the homeless: soap, razors and toothpaste spring to mind. Why has tampons and pads eluded me? Why did I not think of these essential items? I decided to investigate further and started exploring campaigns and charities that help with distributing hygiene products.
There are many organizations and charities working hard to raise awareness and trying to put an end to period poverty. After an internet search I could see there were many worthwhile causes such as Blossom Project, Dignity-Matters, and Bloody Good Period to name but a few. However, the one that resonated with me was Tricky Period who are based in London.
Tricky Period was set up by Caroline Allouf and a small team of volunteers who were already working to support homeless people on the streets of North London for Street Kitchen. Caroline wanted to address the horror for many women that live on the street and are unable to afford basic period products. At Street Kitchen Caroline and other volunteers were regularly hearing stories from women with no choice but to shoplift, skip meals and use newspaper to provide their monthly protection.
‘None of these things we say are an exaggeration,
I mean in the terms of people literally having nothing.
Coming in stained, having to steal, using leaves in knickers.’
It was then that Caroline realized that something had to be done and the grassroots project was born at the beginning of the year (2020).
Caroline and the gang launched Period Poverty at the Vagina Museum in Camden London in February 2020. The Vagina Museum is about erasing the sigma around the body and spreading awareness of gynecological anatomy. Caroline said, “this felt totally apt”.
The gang distribute pads, tampons with applicators and without, wipes and disposable bags to women’s shelters, refuges, mother and baby units as well as the women on the streets via breakfast outreach. Tricky Period have teamed up with ShowerBox London, a free and secure shower and changing rooms which travel around London providing support for the homeless and this makes for a good partnership. “It’s a great opportunity to start conversations with the women” said Caroline, and notes that throughout outreach she has noticed a rise in homeless women. “Sadly, and this is a non-scientific approach from being out there, but there are noticeably younger women”. Some backdrop of these cases are of domestic violence, leaving home and then having nowhere to go in lock down. Caroline has come across women that will sleep with men just for a bed for the night.
Photo by Anna Shvets.
Tricky Period are working with a growing number of council libraries who are acting as product pick up points. They have been collaborating with libraries to provide period products to those experiencing homelessness and poverty. “It’s a model that can be replicated,” explains Caroline. The free supplies to libraries enable the women to come and get what they need under a no questions asked policy. Caroline says “the idea of libraries is that it is one of the few places in the community where everyone is welcome and safe – especially the homeless, people can walk into a library and not be looking over their shoulders or feel self-conscious.” Anyone who needs to use the service can tick off the items on a form and hand it over to a librarian. Caroline adds, “Just like they would go out the back to find a book that wasn’t on the shelf they then come out with the products in a bag”. She is keen to reiterate that this is a no questions asked policy.
With COVID-19 closing libraries Tricky Period have had to adapt in the lockdown and have been able to use family centers with open access. The future of Tricky Period is to focus on a space where women can feel safe, have a coffee, and enjoy the company of others. “Not just between 3pm and 5pm, and we are already connecting people to make that happen.” She is also excited to expand the library model.
I asked Caroline to describe the essence of Tricky Period:
“Tricky Period are just human beings building trust and relationships.
There are other projects, amazing projects out there. What matters to us
is that the people are getting what they need. We want to be able
to develop relationships with the most vulnerable women and support them.”
The realization of the lack of access to sanitary products is shocking. Many low-income and homeless women often don't have access to tampons and pads at all. Women confront the demoralizing task of finding resources to soak up blood and then having to find privacy to change and dispose of used items. Menstruation is not only a physical challenge for vulnerable people, but it’s also a psychological and social issue. I have never had to make the decision on either spending money on food so that I am not hungry or spending it on pads so that I am comfortable and dry. I’ve never had to use napkins from McDonald’s, and I don’t need to rip up a t shirt to line my knickers.
Pads, tampons, and liners are desperately needed. Initiatives, charities, food banks, and shelters distribute them, but they're often in short supply. Even more so in the current climate (COVID-19). Please check out and support your local and regional organizations and if you can please donate.
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Justina Jameson is an emerging writer from the UK. When she is not writing at the weekend, she can be found holding down a 9 to 5 as a Senior Administrative. Justina has a Social Welfare and Community Degree which examines the quality of human life in a society in all its dimensions. She feels strongly in female empowerment and believes that women should make personal and professional choices that they want and not let society make them very guilty about those very choices. Justina likes art,dogs, books, laughter and lives with her long tern partner and their dog Cooper-Star.
Avocados are Murder
“Meat is murder” has been a pro-animal rights slogan since the 80s. When the Smiths first released their iconic slogan, they couldn’t have envisioned the life the term would take on. Since then, PETA and many other rights groups have taken it as a crusade against mainstream meat-eating. While many (not all) vegans make the switch to support animal rights or the environment, few consider the human cost of their eating habits. Produce like avocados and quinoa have become staples of the vegan diet.
The problem is that while the mass production of meat is labor-intensive and environmentally harmful, the mass production of these vegetables is no different. This is especially an issue in the cultivation, shipping, and mass consumption of the avocado.
Avocados are labor and water-intensive fruits. Recently, as the popularity of Latinx food and avocado-based cuisine has erupted in the West, the pressure on farmers has become overwhelming. Green gold - as it has come to be known, is slowly destroying the ecological equilibrium of Latin America’s once vibrant and diverse farmlands.
According to UNFAO stats, avocado is officially grown in 71 countries for export, trade, and mass consumption. Its top ten producers are almost entirely located in the Americas, but none has suffered more than the world’s third largest exporter of the fruit - Chile.
For the past ten years, central Chile has been experiencing a megadrought. The worst of its kind in 1,000 years. Rainfall has severely decreased, particularly in the areas that surround the metropolitan city of Santiago. In 2019, the Ministry of Agriculture announced that over 50 municipalities are official “agricultural emergencies.” To add to this new state of emergency, El Yeso, a major water reserve that serves Santiago and the surrounding areas, is experiencing an unforeseen strain. All of this comes as Chile is emerging as a global agricultural powerhouse.
In Petorca, a city just three hours outside of the capital sits the “gold mine” that is Chile’s avocado farms. One would think that these farmers should be reaping at least some of the profits of their lucrative cultivation. But the opposite is happening.
The boom in demand for the fruit has sucked the region dry - both figuratively and literally. All the water from the quickly drying water source is spent on growing avocados that the Chilean people almost certainly will not consume. This is the result of just a decade of big avocado companies descending on the Valiproso region.
The companies swarmed in and have not only taken much of the labor that small and more environmentally conscious local farmers but their very life source. The water crisis has been the leading cause of migration in the region. More and more families have been forced out of their homes, communities, and cities because there is no water. The town of Petorca and its surrounding area have become uninhabitable.
At the core of the issue is water rights. This crisis actually began back in the 80s when huge avocado plantations began to crop up on the foothills of the Andes on the fringes of smaller farms in the valleys of Petorca. Under the Pinochet dictatorship, in a time when neoliberalism was sweeping over much of the continent of Latin America, water rights were privatized. These firms came in at just the right time and they bought the water rights when they bought the land.
Since then the overwhelming abuse of the once ample river has caused many farmers to give up their land to these huge plantations and move out of the area. The rivers now run dry, water is more expensive than ever, and the locals are suffering.
The people of Petorca, have been crying out for the government to cease the exportation of these avocados. Many view their exportation is the theft of the little water that is still available. These concerns have been in the background of Chilean politics for years, but the issue cannot possibly be ignored any longer.
The avocado market has exasperated the drought. While civilians are forced to drink water from tanks that make regular deliveries to the most affected regions, big mono-crop farms get to abuse the safer water sources even further. The issue has already created hundreds of internally displaced climate refugees, and as the strain on the water supply continues, this number will only grow.
Small farmers have two options; continue to suffer from the harshest effects of the drought, impending widespread poverty, and dwindling government support, or move. Many are making their choice, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of the nation. As more people have to flood metropolitan areas like Santiago, the strain on basins like El Yeso will only increase.
Avocado production needs to be heavily regulated, but there is still a more significant global food production problem. This drought is being caused, at least in part, by a natural cycle that would take place with or without the Chilean people. Still, it would have never been this dramatic or destructive if it weren’t for the agricultural industry’s large-scale monocropping agrarian firms that have come to coopt food production in much of the global south.
The issue expands far beyond Chilean avocados or even avocado production. The fact that a trend in a country over 4 km away can result in the worst drought in 1,000 years is terrifying. That should make us rethink how we consume.
A culture of year-round seasonal fruit and exotic cuisine is killing entire ecosystems and industries.
Many people are vegan or vegetarian with the best intentions and with great concern for the environment, climate change, and the farmers on the other end of the production chain. But if we genuinely want to help farmers in the global south, we need to pivot away from our current consumption habits.
Avocados are murderous, not because they are born of any animal’s flesh, but because their mass production erodes the very ecological system that made their production possible. All over the world, small farmers are being pushed out of their usual farmlands; some are even forced to give up the trade entirely because of big agricultural firms. Ones that have little if any concern for the environments they destroy.
The unspoken cost of our comfort is all too real to the people of Chile - to farmers all over the global south.
As the people in towns like Petorca and the rural areas of Valiproso continue to wrestle with the erosion of their way of life, the onus is on us to make a change. We need to do more than simply be vegan or vegetarian; we need to eat local and consider more seriously the food miles that accompany our favorite dishes.
Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley
I’m a Sex Worker and This is How I Spent Election Night.
I’ve voted in exactly four presidential elections, and that makes me feel both older and younger than I’d like to admit. This is the only one I've participated in where I've been an actively working sex worker however, and it really changed how I felt both about politics and about my role in our greater society.
The first time I voted was for Obama, and he won my first year in college. Life felt hopeful, and inspiring. The second time I voted, I was living on the west coast pursuing my dreams of being a writer, with barely two pennies to pinch together. My friends and I celebrated with cheap beer and stale weed, in a basement apartment in LA. It was dirty and grimy and I loved it. I felt like we had really taken a positive and permanent turn as a country, that things were turning out alright. We had gotten out of the worst recession in living memory and all my friends and I had jobs, had places to live. Hey, I was living in a closet under the stairs (earning me the affectionate nickname of Harry) but it was where I wanted to be, and I felt like I was playing a part I could easily escape at any time. We were lucky, then.
The next election in 2016 found me living abroad in Berlin. I had gathered a small group of friends in my flat to celebrate in anticipation of a Hillary win. As the night wore on, we stopped cheering, and eventually, there were tears. I couldn't believe that I was so far from home, and that we not only missed our chance to elect our first female president, but that we had handed our democracy to Trump. The cheap wine tasted like vinegar in our mouths, and I stayed in bed the next day, skipping my classes and not answering my phone. For the next couple of weeks as I wandered the streets of the city, shopkeepers or random people would stop me when they heard my accent and ask 'are you American?' For a long time I lied and told them I was from Vancouver, that what happened down there in the United States hadn't happened to me. I was in denial, and I was ashamed.
That was four long years ago. Now, I live in New York City and make art while also doing sex work on the side. The impact of Covid on my professional life has been unbelievable, and turned my incredibly busy intimate life into a barren desert. In some ways it was a crisis, as I found myself jobless like countless other people in the country, and yet because of the nature of my work I wasn't able to apply for unemployment relief. I did have many clients who still wanted to see me, but what had been for so long a safe haven for men to come and see me, and to escape the stress of the world became just another risk. I started setting up digital-only appointments, and answered many, many emails from clients who worried about me, and who were struggling to take care of their mental health under all the stress.
The past couple of months have seen a slow but steady return to some normalcy, with many sex workers such as myself becoming more and more familiar with ways in which we can minimize our risk, and with increasing ease of access for Covid tests making it easier for our clients to meet with us, it’s been getting gradually easier. While it was nowhere like it used to be, it felt good to be able to see my darlings.
Last week was the election and it put me in a very different sort of space. For months I'd been binging podcasts, watching the news until nearly sunrise, and feverishly scrolling through social media, consuming every poll and new article or projection about the election, and that was when my inbox started flooding. Loads of clients old and new started to contact me, with subject lines such as 'need to escape the news cycle for a bit' or 'I can't bear to watch this election alone.'
The night of the election, I met with a wonderful man whose only request was that we didn't talk about the election. We laid in bed and held hands and stared at the ceiling like we were in a French new age film. For awhile, we forgot that there was an election at all, and while it was always lingering somewhere in the back of my mind, it felt really good to get away from it for a moment, to have a valid reason to not look at my phone.
The next day, even though the election hadn't been called yet, I met with another regular of mine who wanted me to meet him in Connecticut, which I gladly did. When I saw him, he looked exhausted, and had the washed out and messy appearance of an unmade bed. I haven't slept all night, he told me sheepishly, and I just wanted you to help me feel like things were going to be okay.
I saw two other people that week, who both said things along the same lines. I don't want to worry about the election for awhile. I'm so tired, and so worried. It's too late for me to do anything about it, all we can do is wait, and I want to wait for a little bit with you. I felt the burden of their exhaustion, and I was tired from caring for them, and yet I felt like it was an essential duty in many ways.
It reminded me of something I saw being shared earlier in the pandemic on twitter, that while we have relied first and foremost on the medical experts; the doctors and public health leaders to tell us what's going on and how to protect ourselves, after that, we turned to the artists. Many of us started reading again for the first time in a long time, or we watched shows that we had never gotten around to seeing before. Loads of us bought art supplies and took online classes in painting, DJing, or playing guitar. We turned to the artists, to the writers, to the creators and the creatives to hold us up and give us hope. And in the same way, as the stress of the year wore on and the trauma and anxiety of the election outweighed the fear of the pandemic, I was reminded of the ways in which in times of emotional need, my clients can turn to me for healing and escape.
So I didn't spend my election night, or week, watching the news and chewing my fingernails. I spent election night holding hands with someone while talking about our favorite sushi restaurant that does super cute takeout boxes, and about Schitt's Creek. I spent election week going on an urban hike to get a great view of the city and talk with someone about how Max Richter's take on Vivaldi has been keeping them sane. I got to pet a client’s dog. I got to write emails to people to give them hope, and to suggest reading Normal People by Sally Rooney if they needed something to distract them. I spent the election caring for people who were exhausted, worried, hurt, and afraid, and it felt good.
The election ended for me on Saturday, when I heard my entire neighborhood erupt in cheers, clapping, and honking. The war isn't over but a big battle was won. And I am reminded by my week, even though it was exhausting, that the way we move forward isn't isolation, anger, or obsession. It's with gentle care.
The Colonization of Porn
As millions of people flock to OnlyFans to enjoy local sex work, there is a sense of nostalgia for those 90s kids who can remember a time before free porn. OnlyFans represented a reprisal of that golden era of video sex work where women and their producers were getting wealthy from their content creation. For a long time, there was a sense that the golden era of pornography was long gone.
In the 90s, porn was something you bought. Different producers had websites and hard copy videotapes that people bought and paid for with real money. It was nearly impossible to come across sexual content like that without paying. But even then, life was finding a way. In chatrooms on obscure websites, men and teen boys alike were exchanging passwords and subscriptions so that they could access a world of online content for free.
This idea of subverting and circumventing the traditions of buying and selling pornographic content was novel in the 90s, that was all about to change. One unique kid in these chatrooms was concocting a business model that would radicalize porn, sex work, and the world at large. This man’s name is Fabian.
Where casual consumers saw the porn industry of the 90s as a treasure trove of content locked behind a series of paywalls, Fabian saw an opportunity. He was looking at the bigger picture, and that led him to create a site that is so ubiquitous with theft and abuse that producers and actors alike fear it.
The German “entrepreneur’,’ entered the industry by buying up existing sites and bringing them in as subsidiaries. This was the first in a long line of changes that would soon rapidly transform how we produce and consume porn.
He bought a company called Mansef and another called InterHub, the latter of which created what Fabian described as “the youtube of porn.” It was with this naivety that he began the colonization of the porn industry.
Mansef soon became Manwin, which later came to be known as MindGeek. The adult film conglomerate that consumers know and love. When Fabian bought them out, Interhub had just developed Pornhub and Redtube, and they had no idea how huge (and profitable) it would soon become. But much like most other capitalist inventions, it will come to oppress more than it benefits.
Manwin and their subsidiary Pornhub was forging a new path. The idea wasn’t unique, and neither was the infrastructure, but having the finances and confidence to make the site what it is today was something wholly unique to Fabian.
At a time when many sex workers were unable to access banking, the supreme irony of Fabian’s ability to obtain a loan that would soon erode their incomes cannot be lost on us. All the same, he got the loan and began to expand his platform. Soon he was the prince of free to access porn, and everyone else was just the benefactors. At least, that’s what he thought.
That was a half-truth; the problem is that saying Pornhub, Redtube, Youporn and all the other MindGeek properties are “ the youtube of porn” is that their business models are different. Youtube encourages users to create independent content, and there are heavy regulations on copyright infringement. Pornhub, however, actively incentivizes theft. The business is built on screen recording, downloading, and reposting content that someone paid to create and view elsewhere.
Moreover, the company has only expanded on that model since its inception. Jon Ronson spent a year following the effects of the flood of free porn on the internet, and what he found was unsurprising yet thoroughly unnerving. From custom porn to virginal sex offenders, the take away was obvious- free porn isn’t good for us.
Fabian was the first colonizer of the porn industry. He entered, wielded his privilege, money, and power to overhaul every step of the porn production and consumption process. He built on a long history of white men changing industries for the worst. Much like Bezos has co-opted the delivery market, Fabian robbed pornstars and producers of their power and gave it to consumers and the Montreal tech bros.
This is another reason why the Youtube comparison falls through because porn is shameful.
We live in a society that is obsessed with sex but shames sexual commerce. In the 90s, when production companies hid porn behind paywalls, porn was something you could do more casually. It was a thing you could leave behind, do until you are 20 and get a “regular” job. People couldn’t recognize you, and if they did, they were too embarrassed to mention. Now, we have become more and more comfortable with sex, but only if we aren’t paying. Fabian found a way to capitalize on that and profit from the sense of shame and discomfort that comes from a society that feels female bodies should be free for the taking.
He has made being a pornstar so much harder. Quality has been thrown out the window in favor of volume. Women (and men) in the industry have to film more and more videos to get less money. All the while, they were becoming more and more replaceable. The sex industry has always been a space for high turnover, but the introduction of pornhub also stole the art and creativity that used to dominate the industry. It’s all prepackaged cookie-cutter content that demands the women seem younger and younger and the sex to be more violent. Regardless, many porn actors have attempted to persevere in the face of adversity to no avail. At the end of the day, their hard work is stolen, reposted, and they realize they can do nothing to fix any of it. DMCA takedowns are too time-consuming and futile, only for the same person or a different one to post the same video to a site that remains apathetic to the creator’s plight. Even worse, you couldn’t leave. Or at least, it wasn’t as easy as it once could have been.
But, that was just how things were; that was the new normal for the porn industry. For years, the women (and men) behind and in front of the camera found ways around it. Whether it was making custom porn for high-income men with particular tastes or other kinds of sex work, they were still making a living doing what they loved, and in many ways, that was all that mattered. For a long time, it felt that the power would never be given back to the women (and men) who enjoy creating this content.
That was until OnlyFans popped up. Initially invented for social media influencers, Only Fans soon broke the sex work industry in the best way possible. Suddenly, women (and men) in the sector could make absurd amounts of money safely and consistently by posting content that ranged from not-safe for Instagram booty pics to kink and nudity. The important part was that the power was once again in the hands of the sex workers.
Only Fans was like custom porn meets Instagram and Patreon. You subscribed (or followed) your favorite creators for a monthly fee; once you could view their page, you could request personalized videos at an extra cost. The prices were all set by the performers. This was radical. OnlyFans was branded as a safe haven for sexual commerce, a renaissance. Just like that, we were back to paid-for local porn.
The site has yet to succumb to the colonial forces of pornhub, but there is a more immediate threat to the space. A side effect of having such a low barrier to entry was yet again, rich white celebrities (in this case) could co-opt the space. At first, it started with lightly disruptive content. People posting mildly sexier photos and get paid - sure.
But all hell broke loose in late August this year when Bella Thorne destroyed the “economy of Only Fans.”
After she entered the platform in mid-August, she made 2 million dollars in her first week. To make matters worse, posts began to circulate claiming that Thorne had posted a single nude which sat behind a hefty paywall of $200. As hundreds flocked to pay to see this elusive photo, they quickly realized these were all lies. As requests for refunds mounted, the team behind the site was forced to find a solution.
OnlyFans had to push for monthly, not weekly, payouts. Moreover, they began to limit their monthly fees and tip amounts. All this, for one white woman drunk on her privilege and ability. Thorne came under fire for her actions and claims that all these changes are being made for her documentary. She essentially claims that she accidentally destroyed the site’s pro-sex work infrastructure for an experiment.
If more and more celebrities begin to flock to OnlyFans and dip their toes in the water of sex commerce, it is uncertain what more changed the site will have to make to keep up. There is an overwhelming fear amongst sex workers that this is just the first in a long line of changes that ultimately ends in their renewed oppression.
Porn is still stigmatized, and as comfortable as we are watching it, we still don’t seem quite as okay with paying for it. The reasons for that are wholly patriarchal, and they speak to a desire for female sexuality. Fabian came to colonize sexuality, not necessarily with patriarchal intent, but with a capitalist one. He is a perfect example of how female and sex worker oppression is rooted in capitalist ideals. OnlyFans is just one rejection of that model, and even it falls under threat.
As a world, we need to question where our porn comes from and if we like that place. Our options are simple, go local, or contribute to yet another system of oppression.
Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley
The Day After.
By the whorticulturalist.
It's the day after election day and I'm so exhausted that I can barely focus my eyes on the work I have to do in front of me. I feel sick, my lower back aches, and my eyes are already burning. The blinds are pulled shut and my curtains are drawn. My apartment, which is usually full of music or podcasts, is blissfully silent. I want it to remain that way, I want to preserve the fragile tendrils of certainty and safety I feel.
It's surreal, to say the least, that we've finally made it here. I can still remember this day in 2016, and the feeling of hopelessness and betrayal. I was living abroad in England at the time, and as I went about my day and ran my errands, I was asked by many who recognized my accent what I thought about the election results. I didn't want to talk about it with strangers though, I didn't want to cry in public, so I just told everyone that I was Canadian. I didn't want to take on that responsibility, I was ashamed of how low we'd come.
There was a heavy feeling in my heart, as a woman, a sense of oncoming doom. I already felt tired thinking about the fights that were to be had. Maybe even back then, maybe I was already starting this magazine in my head. Just like back then, this week I'm thinking that this is not the end, but the beginning of something huge. I want to think about all the ways that this election, and this presidency have galvanized a lot of people to participate in their communities in ways they had never previously imagined. And I think about all the thoughtful energy created. People are paying attention, and people are beginning to care.
It's too early to say whether or not we are too late. It's too early to know whether or not we're going to be able to save the world in time. I feel even more lonely when I think about how more people voted for Trump in 2020 than they did in 2016. We need to change this. We need to change it all.
Last night I took a walk through the city to observe what I could. I could see streets that were eerily empty, and sports bars with election coverage on their tvs. I stopped next to a woman who was helping a homeless man, and when she walked away, the man told me that she had stolen his phone. I paused to look at graffiti on the sidewalk and a man leered at me and asked me to get a drink with him. I saw the empty hotels of SF with their rooms selectively lit up to make the skyline a choppy row of glowing hearts. I went home so tired, but I didn't sleep. I didn't sleep at all.
This isn't the end, this is just the beginning. This is us realizing, as we did back in 2016, that there is no end to the work to dismantle patriarchy, white supremacy, and exploitative systems of colonization and capitalism. We are tired, but we are determined. The tide is turning, and we will have our turn.
Is This Really Feminism?
Though today many self-identified feminists would rather bicker about semantics, feminism has a long history of fully embracing all women and all people. There are debates over when “feminism” as we know it today truly started. Most, however, accept that any movement that sought out the advancement of women’s place in society can be considered feminist regardless of how the movement itself identified. These are generally called “proto-feminist movements”.
The feminism we are acquainted with today was born at some point in the 18th century when women in the West were facing violations of their most fundamental rights. They couldn’t work, vote, or be independent in any meaningful way. White feminism was based on the principles of gaining access to the labor force and voting rights, but it was an exclusive group. Picture the suffragettes, dozens of women meeting in secret putting together their fight, asserting themselves through civil disobedience, entering local government, and starting their own publications. Or Rosie the Riveter, the image of wartime womanhood, giving women a surprising entry into the workforce. Feminist organizations were fighting for women’s most basic rights but the fruits of that labour were only accessible for a particular group of women.
Intersectionality wasn’t introduced as a feminist issue until the 80s. Intersectionality expanded feminism’s purpose and intent - made it accessible to more women (and men). Since the black feminist theorist, Crenshaw, first introduced the idea of intersectionality, feminism has changed and expanded. It came to include trans rights, queer rights, and more women than ever before. Suddenly, feminism was for all women.
This radically changed who and what feminism stood for. Now it became more than just a bid for rights or access, it became a mission to uproot the patriarchy on all fronts. It made feminism for men; trying to extricate themselves from the toxic notions of masculinity that trap them. It made feminism for trans and genderqueer people; understanding that the gender binary exists only to exacerbate patriarchal oppression. It made feminism for black and brown women a world over; feminist principles had been wrapped up in the ideals of Western white women, but intersectionality pushed that envelope.
Intersectional feminism is an ever-expanding discipline because feminism is ever-evolving. Everyday women (and men) are identifying new facets of patriarchal oppression and finding new ways to tackle and approach them.
However, the expansive nature of this constantly changing school of thought is getting harder and harder for the average person to fully grasp. It makes answering the question: “who is a good feminist?” nearly impossible. There is an indispensable value to asking that question though because being a good feminist has meant a lot of things over the years. Today, while feminism has become a fully-fledged discipline with many academic papers, it is also easier than ever to learn about. With the advent of social media and free search engines, comes a wave of educational material that is readily available for a generation of budding feminists.
That being said, it is also easier to derail than ever. Feminism has become a more diverse movement since the introduction of intersectionality. It has a myriad of branches that offer a different perspective and reading of principle feminist texts. Moreover, in a turn of events that seems ripped from the 1960s, many feminists have taken to arguing over who feminism supports. Now, some would say there is no answer but to me, the answer is undeniable - feminism is for everyone.
It must be working towards the dismantlement of the patriarchy, and the simple fact is that the patriarchy oppresses everyone - including those who support it. There is no sense or basis to the question because exclusionary feminism isn’t feminism.
Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism (TERF), isn’t feminism (contrary to the beliefs of the famous author, JK Rowling). Trans men and women were crying out for their rights long before modern feminists accepted them. Their fight isn’t dependent on feminist support but it is emboldened and aided by it. Their oppression under a patriarchal system is undeniable, and we cannot claim to be feminists if we don’t support those who fall victim to this transnational system of oppression. Moreover, we cannot claim to be in opposition to the patriarchy if we uphold it in our organization. The gates of feminism should be open to everyone with feminist values and that includes trans women and men more than it does any TERF with a Twitter account.
‘Feminism’ that fails to stand with our black, Latinx, Asian, and indigenous brothers and sisters, doesn’t deserve the label. Women of color, both where they are a minority and when they are a majority in the world, face oppression for their gender and color. The fight that black indigenous people of color are facing is the greatest aim of feminist liberation. It is the all-encompassing condemnation of every form of colonial, capitalist, patriarchal oppression. There is no feminism without BIPOC individuals, just as there is no feminism without women.
Finally, while we think that the patriarchy doesn’t oppress white men (especially wealthy ones), it does. Machismo (or toxic masculinity), cages men in a prison of emotional seclusion and incites violence in them. It is easy to see this as benefits because undoubtedly white men are the biggest beneficiaries of patriarchal oppression, but they are also losing their own autonomy to identify themselves outside of this image. Feminism has to include men because feminism has to liberate everyone - not just a few.
“Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism” is a hoax in the same way that feminism that centers only on white femininity is a hoax. Feminists need to fight for more than the liberation of all women but for the liberation of all people. We need to show up for every protest because where there are rights being violated, there is almost certainly a patriarchal system violating them.
Centering whiteness or heteronormativity prioritizes palatability over people.
We are living in a time where feminist activism is supremely important to creating real and long-lasting change.
Evil is so loud right now, we can’t afford to be fighting each other when there is so much to oppose. We are living under governments that are benefiting from the inability of activists to unify and call out for their goals. Letting a few loud fake feminists derail the entire movement, at a time so close to revolutionary change, will be our greatest failure. We need to leave those “fake feminists” behind and keep seeking out the goals of feminism that isn’t palatable, that supersedes and goes beyond the demands we had before, that seeks justice for everyone, not just a few.
Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley
Learning to Rethink Your Value
Everyone is scrambling to find meaning in the midst of this pandemic, throwing themselves into new hobbies, discovering making sourdough, etc. While these are all wonderful experiences, I think in these times of economic degradation we need to find value in new things. Unemployment all over the world is skyrocketing and that is placing radically new strains on families everywhere. Now, more than ever our understanding of our value and time is rooted in economic gain and output.
One thing I have been trying to learn especially getting back into school is to redefine my value. We live under a capitalist system and the few times we get to subvert the system are small but invaluable forms of resistance. Being still, loving yourself, - these are all unspoken forms of activism.
Capitalism demands that we spend every second of every day creating, producing, and working. But the world is constantly changing, we can’t always be working - especially now. For months we were all stuck at home, and instead of finding peace within ourselves, we sought out work. The one question that should be on our minds is do we truly enjoy work or do we think it’s the one thing that gives us value? Especially as lockdown restrictions are slowly being lifted (for better or worse), and many of us are getting the chance to get back to our old lives.
How are you valuing yourself, your time, and your mental space?
Let’s talk about you first. Beyond thinking your the hottest thing to walk the earth since its formation, do you appreciate your body? Even the parts you don’t love? Be honest - think about it.
Here is the thing, regardless of how much you love your body or how you see it, it is valuable. Even when you are just being still, your body is still working so that you get to live. That is a function you can’t deny. It keeps you breathing, makes sure oxygen gets where it needs it to go, and it does all of that without asking anything extra of you.
Whether or not you love every bit of yourself, appreciating it, feeling happy with it is activism. Body positivity has been co-opted by influencer culture but it was built on a platform of accessibility and disruption. If you have a body that you actively appreciate then, you are already disrupting a system that preys on your self-hatred.
You don’t need to post about it or even be loud about it. The key to it is to truly appreciate all that your body does and to help it function. Eat healthily (but we will settle for just eating), drink water, and be satisfied.
As you go back into “normal” life, redefine what body positivity is for you.
Now, we come to the question of time. The saying “time is money” is probably as old as capitalism itself, but we are failing to get to the heart of that. Yes, time spent relaxing could be time spent working, but the sole reason for living is not working.
It doesn’t matter if it is a job you love, work is hard, and it will wear you out. Take time for you and only you. Not for your friends, not for your family, take some time away from any social obligation and just vibe.
Stop demanding production out of relaxation. You don’t need to do a face mask or have a wash day to be caring for yourself. Be still.
Take that time you spend being still to repair your mental space. Personally, trying to find a balance between work and school is exhausting. Not just physically, but mentally.
Something I have been trying to learn; is to not turn every other thought into a new article or research paper topic. It got so bad that it felt as though all my thoughts had to be productive or useful. But when you start to think like that, your other thoughts lose their intrinsic value.
We have to divorce ourselves from this system that consistently asks us to produce more and more content.
This is all about protecting yourself, your time, and your mental space.
Art by Keelin Montzingo
How do we put that into practice?
You have to be willing to challenge yourself. Here are some things that have been working for me over the past week:
Do nothing!
This week I challenge you to do nothing productive for a whole day. The real challenge is not thinking about being productive. When I say do nothing, I mean truly free yourself from any sense of obligation. Don’t think about work, don’t do work, don’t even look at anything to do with work.
Close your tabs, don’t open moodle (or any other site related to school/work), try to truly forget that you live a life filled with tasks and duties.
2. Feel great about yourself!
Look in the mirror, take any time you might have spent critiquing yourself, and be positive. Sometimes, I find myself thinking these subtly negative thoughts. My inner voice says:
”Oh, that part of me is great, kind of makes up for this other thing I hate”.
“Hmmm, that part of me looks worse today than it did before” or,
“Ehh, at least I look cute in photos so it doesn’t matter if I don’t look as good in real life”
That kind of thinking is harmful.
If you think like this you have a new challenge this week. Now, when you find yourself looking into the mirror, smile, and think of something you are grateful for and happy about. Hype yourself up!
3. Know your own worth.
I mean this in every way but especially, know the value of your time. Don’t waste it on people you don’t enjoy being around or people who don’t respect you.
Trust, it isn’t worth it.
When you start understanding your value and respecting yourself, you will know when others don’t. Once you recognize that they don’t respect you in any meaningful way, you can stop taking sh*t from people.
This week, only make time for things (and people) you value and people who value you.
Take these small things into account as you go through the next week. Use them to redefine how you value yourself, your work, and your time.
Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley
Keelin Montzingo studied Communications at the University of Massachusetts and Modern and Contemporary Art at Christies. In 2017 she returned to painting propelled by her insight in art history and commercial markets which gave a contradictory and fascinating perspective of her subject matter. Recent exhibitions include ‘Creatures’ at Olsen Gruin, 2019 and ‘Shifting Skins’ at Leonard Tourne, 2018. Her upcoming solo exhibition ‘Cosmic Latte Nostalgia’ will open in London in 2021.
Stop Saying ‘People’ When You Really Mean ‘Men’
“Humanity doesn’t have a violence problem, we have a male violence problem.”
Humanity doesn’t have a violence problem, we have a male violence problem. It sounds confronting when you hear it put in such clear terms, but denying reality won’t change reality, whereas accepting and discussing it might.
The numbers don’t lie.
Some women are violent, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the majority of violence, whether against women or men, is perpetrated by men.
For those few of you who’ve been living in an alternate universe, I’ve included links at the bottom citing what we already know. Men are a lot more violent than women, across the board. Men throughout all cultures, ethnicities, men of all colours, creeds, and religions are much more violent than women—to each other and to women.
Men are the main instigators of war, commit at least 90% of all violent crime, and behave as though raping women in wartime is an aperitif.
Allow me to pause here for a second to allow the ‘not-all-menners’ to step away from the keyboard. If you’re not a violent man, you’re not under discussion, nor are my fiance, my son, or my brothers. Just as you know when you read an article about scientists searching for a cure for cancer they don’t mean all scientists, you already know “men” doesn’t mean “all men.”
How did this happen?
Nobody knows.
You can posit whatever theories you like, and they are plentiful. All we truly know is that somewhere humanity took a wrong turn. Some men, at some point, decided that the simplest way to get what they wanted was to use violence to get it. And they did that because they could.
Somewhere, at some time, physically stronger men decided that it was okay to harm others if their immediate whims were satisfied. Somewhere, somewhen, men started suppressing the knowledge that women are human too. Other men quickly learned they had to be violent to have their whims satisfied, too.
Women began being taught that defending themselves could lead to being beaten raped and murdered. Of course, women not defending themselves leads to them being beaten raped and murdered too, so women being taught to be subservient just makes it easier for violent men to harm women. But when you live in a society shaped by the most violent men (and we do) that sort of clear thinking logic is difficult to apply.
“It’s tempting to assume male dominance is the natural state of human society. It isn’t.”
We can apply all the theories we want. But the truth is, it doesn’t really matter why we have ended up living in such a dangerous, violent world run by dangerous, violent men. The reality is, we unfortunately do.
Sugar and spice and all things nice—men just can’t help it.
If we all woke up tomorrow and women were just as physically strong as men, many of your cherished myths about what is “natural” female behaviour would be dispersed fast. I know I’ve never remotely resembled a submissive or placid little doll who’d be happy to let you stomp on her rights. But that’s irrelevant because we won’t wake up in that world tomorrow.
However, what is relevant is that violent men are, for the most part, choosing to be violent men.
How many times have you seen the man who just snapped and couldn’t help himself from assaulting or murdering a woman at the local supermarket, church, school run, PTA meeting—or even the local pub? You haven’t. And if you claim to have seen this, you’re in the tiny minority. Even in a place where alcohol is regularly consumed, it is almost unheard of for men to “just snap.”
They wait until the woman is unprotected and choose to assault her away from protective eyes.
On almost every occasion violence occurs, men are choosing that violence. It is a choice. It starts as a choice to use violent language and moves into violent behaviour which ends, a lot more often than it should, in the rape and death of women by men.
Make the link.
The Make The Link Organisation discusses the link between sexist jokes, speech, and behaviours, and more violent behaviours. Turning a blind eye to ugly slurs and insults means you are turning a blind eye to potentially dangerous men.
Please don’t pretend you don’t already know that men who speak in foul terms about women are dangerous men. There is a direct link between sexist or misogynistic behaviours and “jokes” and more dangerous behaviours.
Why It Matters.
Language shapes attitudes. Attitudes shape behaviour. We police ourselves.
Our ape brains accept what the society of other apes accepts as normality. The majority of the time we naked apes will go along with the majority consensus. Blame evolution. Only when we actually make the effort to remove a behaviour from society do we see real change.
Remember when women weren’t allowed the human right of voting? Remember when people smoked everywhere, planes trains and automobiles? Remember the hardened believers telling everyone they couldn’t change anything, it was just the way it was and always would be?
And yet change things we did.
The vast majority of behaviours complied with by societal agreement are not policed by any outside source. It would be an unmanageable system. Without being aware of it consciously, we agree to social terms when approved by the majority, and for the most part, as social apes do, we go along to get along.
And male violence is taught to children, normalised, accepted and winked at, at every level of society. From kindy to the grave we make excuses for and turn away from male violence. The why of that isn’t really the issue. The issue is that we can change this.
And one easy way to start that change is to remove the bubble wrap around speaking about male violence. Stop worrying about hurting men’s feelings. Start thinking about pushing back and changing things for the better.
When reporting the news, commenting on an article, writing a post on Facebook, or out in the real world, indeed anywhere at all, if discussing male violence and male crimes, say so.
Say men kill women. Say men kill men. Say men are responsible for at least 90% of all violent crime. Say men start wars. Say men murder one another in horrific amounts. Say the word men if you are talking about men.
Violence didn’t kill her. A man killed her. Do not use the word people if you mean men.
If you imagine we already do this, I’m afraid you’d be wrong. Really look at the words people use and the headlines. Read things critically. Then name the problem. Let “people” see the extent of the problem the world has with male violence.
A First Step
The first step to forcing those men responsible for most of the violence in the world is to actually speak about their violence as being unacceptable in a loud clear voice. If we make the effort, as “people” to state the facts about male violence clearly, if we call out men for their violent behaviour instead of hiding behind the word people, we drag the problem into the light.
We can only do that by naming the problem. The problem is not human violence. The problem is male violence.
Once in the light, the second step should be speaking up loudly, often and regularly (when safe to do so) on how it is totally unacceptable that these men are so violent. Never victim-blaming. Never pontificating. Simply stating that violent men are disgusting men, they are choosing to be violent, and we want them to stop it. Make it clear that these men should and must stop it.
Shame As A Societal Tool
Shame violent men into being less violent. Shame is a well-studied tool, and it works.
There will always be a small core of resistant psychopaths, those with cognitive issues, and anti-social deviants. But if you bother to make a behaviour unacceptable (as we have in no way done with male violence) over a relatively short time all but the most hardened recalcitrants will, at worst, minimise their behaviour, and at best, stop it.
“Through the lens of evolutionary biology, shame evolved to encourage adherence to beneficial social norms. This is backed up by the fact that shame is more prevalent in collectivist societies where people spend little to no time alone than it is in individualistic societies where people live more isolated lives.”
Not only don’t we shame violent men, but we also glorify them. We glorify them in the media, in our speech, in our leaders. And then we hide male violence behind the word “people.”
The third step—who knows what that might look like. If we can all, collectively, agree to steps one and two, we can collectively find a third step to move forward.
Make the first step. You can do one thing differently. One thing that matters.
Please stop saying people when you mean men. Because the truth, for some, could be a matter of life and death.
Sources:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23831740-400-the-origins-of-sexism-how-men-came-to-rule-12000-years-ago/
https://makethelink.org.au/make-the-link/whymakethelink/
https://fs.blog/2020/01/positive-side-of-shame/
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women
https://www.ourwatch.org.au/quick-facts/
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2018001/article/54978/02-eng.htm
https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/domestic-abuse-is-a-gendered-crime/
https://ncadv.org/statistics
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4628110/
Alison Tennent is Scottish by birth, bloodline and temperament, and Australian since 2002 by citizenship ceremony. She’s worked as a counsellor (Grief and Loss), and in disability and mental health for many years. She is an outspoken advocate for de-stigmatising mental health disorders and challenges, and resides in Queensland, Australia, where the weather offers sunshine one day, cyclones the next. You can find a link to her Medium work here: https://medium.com/@besomandbletherskite
Gendered Language
The language we use matters. Whether or not it’s conscious or unconscious, we infuse the words we use with power, agency, and meaning. A wonderful discussion/dissection by guest author Nazia Kamali.
In common everyday terms, gendered language is one that is often biased towards a particular sex; it carries a prejudice which degrades one sex in comparison to another. It needs no explaining as to which is the debased one. In the global cultural scenario, the legacy of patriarchy is so deeply seated that our language system too whether spoken or written has evolved with a bias against women. Within this biased linguistic construct, ‘man’ has become a term which is not only used for a male human being born with a pair of XY chromosome but also ‘being a man’ has become a reference for everything that is of import, demanding respect and recognition. Thus within the ambit of language across all cultures and lands, man became the norm while woman became the ‘deviation’, something/someone who does not follow the original.
Any language in its process of evolution is a product of its society. We speak and listen in a manner in which we are conditioned to. Each word has a meaning which involves a signifier, a signified and a hidden struggle of power associated with the use of that word. For example, when a common person ‘says’ something, it is a simple utterance of a series of words that convey his thoughts, but when a ruler, a king, a commander ‘says’ something, it becomes an order, a thought, a proverb or something equally worthwhile. Within this power struggle, woman has become the ‘signified’ one, which means she is the passive receiver for all that language had to offer. She is the subject who is spoken to and is spoken for, one who listens and obeys. She has become the one who is being talked about without asking for her opinion.
Thereby throughout the centuries, language had developed as one of the most powerful tools of gender discrimination. Sexism has found its way into our lives by means of gendered language where everything that is passive or weak is characterised as female, while whatever exudes power is symbolised as male. Sex determines who becomes the commander and who becomes the follower and language honours this discrimination.
Language that we speak today evolved and seeped into our daily lives through various literary texts. Words flowed from Iliad and Odysseys, and from the pen of Shakespeare and mingled with the lingos, jargons, and vocabulary used by common men and women. The dialogues and symbols used in the classics became our dialogues and symbols. This evolution further enhanced the gender bias as language used for women in most of the ancient epics was derogatory to their dignity. They were objectified and identified in terms of their physical appearance rather than talents. Only the meek and submissive woman in need of protection was fit enough to be the partner of the protagonist. Men though were very conveniently allowed to be manipulating cheats like most lead characters of picaresque novels. Thus women who stood up for themselves, worked hard to make a name, and competed with men became un-feminine, a disgrace to womanhood and were name called, an idea which is quite commonplace even in the twenty first century.
The idea of stereotyping has proved throughout generations that women should display certain warmth in their behaviours, they are expected to be subdued and submissive, someone in dire need of protection while men are allowed to be arrogant and dominating in their mannerism. This prejudice got filtered from literature into the society and thus began the unending cycle of getting inspired from those texts and moulding women into the stereotypical cast.
This happened mainly because of the fact that the ‘higher’ classical genres of epic and poetry were inhospitable to women. Women did not have the benefits of a classical education which included knowledge of languages such as Greek and Latin thus the language construct and culture that came out of these epics and became a part of our daily lives was male centric.
This overwhelming influence of men over classics enshrined overtly masculine qualities and values of virility and martial prowess. Consequently every word that reflected power became masculine by default.
Within the process of this staged evolution, man and authority became synonymous. Everyplace that one looks at from job postings to law and order, gendered words such as policeman, fireman, mankind and chairman abound. These words are a part of the norm that colours the language in bias against women. While we never stop to think of this as wrong, however, the use of such words unconsciously frames the male as absolute. This develops a prototype for that particular role or job. Then an expectation related to that profession develops within which the professional has to behave in a certain way irrespective of their innate nature.
In order to fulfil this language generated expectation, women are supposed to shed their feminine traits and behave as men. A woman who works as a firefighter or a police woman is expected to have a masculine gait and musculature if she wants to excel or be the one to be treated with respect. A woman’s work, mannerism, and output are always questioned because of her sex and that reflects in the language used at the workplace. Women are judged as soon as they make a mistake and called out as if that mistake was made on account of their sex. They are mostly kept out of jobs that involve higher risks as those jobs are supposedly a ‘man’s arena’, thereby elevating the standing of the sex as well as the word associated with it. She isn’t fit for this kind of work. It’s a man’s job after all; is the most commonly used sentence.
As a result of this biased development of language and lexical choices, an asymmetry in status of men and women in our society comes to play. This status awards power to men and hence places them at important position as compared to women. Linguistic, syntactical and grammatical rules are often formed in such a way that feminine terms are usually derived from the corresponding masculine terms. Common examples of the same include - ‘heiress’ derived from ‘heir’, ‘actress’ derived from the word ‘actor’, and so on. This has the effect of making woman disappear from the mental image while talking about the positions/ terms in general. She becomes the secondary while man retains the position of primary.
Sexist language thus breeds a bias that shows men to be morally, spiritually, and intellectually superior as compared to women. The most frequently cited examples for the same include:
Use of ‘man’ to refer commonly to the entire population: The word ‘Mankind’ is used as a reference to the entire population of universe, while when women are specifically being talked about, their sex is emphasised like a ‘sample’. Proverbs such as ‘practice makes a man perfect’ very conveniently use the word to denote men and women both.
Overuse of the pronoun ‘he’: The pronoun has come to symbolise everyone instead of just men. Whenever one talks/writes about a random person whose sex is unknown, the common practice is to use the pronoun ‘he’. This ultimately leads to complete removal of women from the majority. They evaporate from the vision unless being referred to especially.
Use of ‘Miss’ and ‘Mrs’: Though the new convention to use MS before a woman’s name has been brought about, women are still called as Miss or Mrs depending on their marital status while men are quite conveniently called Mister from the very beginning of their youth till the end. Thus proving that marriage somehow makes a marked change in the status of women while having a negligible effect on men. The effect of this biased use of prefix can be seen in the way a single, divorced, or widowed woman is treated by men in general. They are deemed to be ‘available’ for flirting. A married woman though is given a wide berth in this respect, is often considered incompetent in office work on account of her role in the household. Men on the other hand enjoy all the freedom that comes with the constant prefix. They are never judged on account of their ‘marital status’, neither are single/married men differentiated with while being handed over a project or promotion. Thus the use of language that evolved in our culture through generations becomes a source of burden to women.
Stereotypical words: There are words in English language which are specifically used to praise someone and make them feel glorious. Problem arises when these words are associated with a particular sex. For example, the word ‘manly’ or ‘man up’ is used in the stead of ‘courageous’ or ‘become courageous’ respectively. While calling someone ‘ladylike’ has of late become a derogatory remark used on purpose to make fun of a man for his ineptitude. Men are often called ‘sissy’ if they are scared.
Such use of language marginalises women and creates an impression of a male dominated society. It reduces women to a small sample unit within the universe whose main claimant are men. Such speech patronises women and puts forward the assertion that man is the original, the absolute, the light, while woman is the opposite of that absolute, absence of power, darkness. Reality thus becomes a construct which is mediated by language working blindly in favour of men.
Efforts of many crusaders and linguistics have brought into existence gender neutral language but that is not seemingly enough. Language in the context of countries and culture still use terms that are offensive to women. Anglo American culture has filtered into the language of most English speakers across the globe, who fondly use terms like ‘pet’, ‘love’ for women thus denying them recognition of an individually thinking alert. Woman gets reduced into a creature that needs to be tamed or trained like an animal. This creature is expected to lose its own identity and form a new one that is more favourable in the eyes of men and thus in the eyes of society at large. Hence, gendered language robs them of the chance of being a person with a separate identity.
Moreover, compliments in our language which label culturally likable women as ‘goddesses’, ‘princesses’, deny them the right to be ‘normal’. Since childhood, girls are conditioned to be the ones in need of such nicknames. This affects the choices that men and women make in their everyday lives wherein women while growing up learn that they should strive to be more than just normal humans, they need to put in extra effort to be praised in terms of beauty or behaviour. If they are not looked upon as ‘goddesses’ or ‘princesses’, something is missing from their lives.
Insults hurled at women by people especially men use words such as ‘slut’, ‘tart’, ‘whore’ that mark women as promiscuous or unattractive. Judging women by appearance, calling a pretty woman ‘blond’, has come to an unsaid meaning that she must be of low intelligence. More than half of the stand-up comedians make the world laugh by cracking jokes on hysterical mothers-in-law. Such instances enforce patriarchal control over women through language. These humiliating words and jokes ironically have no male counterparts. There is no male-slut or male-bimbo/male-blond even though there are men who behave the same way as women being termed as slut, bimbo or blond do. Similarly hysterical males rarely make appearances in jokes or literature. Additionally women are taught that men are mean to them because they like them. Thus they are trained to take insults welcomingly.
All these patterns in our everyday language are a reflection of the how deep are the roots of patriarchy in our minds, which has contributed to creating an unequal world for women wherein every remark has a hidden sexist undertone. Ignoring these undertones has become so commonplace that any woman who tries to raise a voice is an enemy of culture, who is raising hell to undo our centuries old traditions. Such women are treated with contempt and
the language used for them is again the one that she has been fighting against. The need of the hour is to un-learn the association of masculine and feminine with words and bring into existence and usage gender neutral linguistic constructs. We need to look for a middle ground in language that defies the power struggle and paints a bias free picture.
Nazia Kamali is a research scholar of Gender Studies. She has written for local news paper as well as research journals. Additionally her poems have been published in anthologies by Cape Comorin Publishers, PCC Inscape and also in magazines. When not hunched over the keyboard clicking away keys, Nazia is busy admiring birds and trees around her.
Dick Pics and Why I Want Them
The only thing that’s been giving me hope during the pandemic is dick pics, a story.
“Rather, they were tentative offerings of themselves, saying, ‘this is how I see myself, this is what I like about myself, and I hope that you like it too.’ They are feminine, and thoughtful in a way they never were before.”
In a time of quarantine, sexting has made a raging comeback. It’s easy to see in terms of the raging increase of the use of dating apps like Tinder and Bumble, as more and more people turn to socially distanced outdoor hangouts, or zoom dates, Netflix shared streaming and texting marathons. Everyone needs a dedicated friend to shelter in place with, and you gotta admit, there’s something kinda sexy about the end of the world.
I hopped on Bumble before the shelter-in-place order came down, and stayed in touch with two or three guys after it started. It felt dangerous to feel like there was a person in the city who was into me, and that I couldn’t have them. Or, for the one who lived by himself, it was comforting to know that if all hell broke loose, I had someone to save me. (ahem, I’m a feminist, but if the purge is about to happen, I’ll take the guy with muscles, please and thank you).
For the most part though, I’ve spent lockdown alone in my apartment with my computer and my vibrator. Before, it was so easy to invite guys back and watch them leave in the morning while I sipped my coffee, but now, not so much. Now, I felt like I have taken fifteen years off of my life and reverted to being the geek I was back in high school. I can no longer rely on body language or facial expressions to read a man. Now, I had to hang onto every single word of his text messages, which were always timed a strategic two or three hours after I had sent mine. The weeks stretched into months, and I was glued to my phone, waiting for the next ;).
I was climbing up the walls and I needed some relief, and that came in the form of dick pics. Almost all of them were unsolicited, and some sent around the distasteful hour of 3am, but each one was received with delight and immediate, careful examination. I’m dating men who are solidly in their thirties, and I’m impressed with the exponential improvements in penis photography since the last era I got dick pics, which we will not mention except to say it was the before times.
No longer is there dirty laundry in the background, or a stack of pizza boxes just beyond his thigh. Now, there were tasteful rugs and private bedrooms (not private apartments, mind you… who are we kidding, I still live in San Francisco). Now, I’m getting mood lighting. Now, I’m getting Armani boxers pulled down, and manscaping.
One photo in particular, is one of my favorites I’ve ever received. Taken from mid thigh, it’s a tasteful upshot of the bottom of the shaft all the way up to the head, with a tuft of tissue paper placed in anticipation on his stomach. His shirt is pulled up to crop-top level, and gloriously, part of his face is peeking out from the right side of his glorious dick. This was not a hastily taken photo, it was a carefully staged shot that had taken an extra layer of dexterity, most likely a timer, and care. I was absolutely delighted. It meant he cared! And more than that, it meant that he cared about what turned me on.
These dick pics hit different during quarantine. They aren’t a taste of things to come, but a careful and vulnerable exploration of what that man things I would find attractive. There was no text that accompanied any of them that told me exactly what holes he wanted to shove himself into, because gross. Rather, they were tentative offerings of themselves, saying, ‘this is how I see myself, this is what I like about myself, and I hope that you like it too.’ They are feminine, and thoughtful in a way they never were before.
In a world in which many guys will ask girls for nudes, no matter what, and have the nerve to get annoyed when girls don’t comply, it’s been nice to be on the receiving end. Maybe in some ways quarantine is the great equalizer. While I’ve sent a number of nudes myself, I no longer feel the pressure to do so, and I almost always ask for compensation in the form of a dick pic. With ample amounts of time at home, the men in my life have no excuse except to finally, carefully, pose. I wanna see the family jewels, boys.
When the pandemic ends, who knows if I will see dick pics in the same way again. Will they go back to the drunken and frenzied, aggressive and unwanted photos of before? I hope not. I’ve grown to love these dick pics for their nuance and care. Let’s create the space where men can send a sexy nude, where they can be the object of desire. I want to sit back and see.
The Whorticulturalist is the mother of this magazine. She is a sex-positive blogger and creative who enjoys rock climbing, dancing, and camping. In her spare time, she’s probably flirting.
Mothering During Covid-19
A really lovely and uplifting essay about mothering while sheltering-in-place, and creating space for love and healing in the midst of a pandemic.
“Shame, guilt, and white western standards of productivity were things I needed to cast out long before becoming a parent.”
It was December and I was due back at work in a few weeks. I didn't have childcare covered and I convinced myself that I was ready to balance the dual responsibilities of my job and a newborn baby. In reality, I had no choice. My maternity leave was almost over and I couldn't live on State disability assistance alone.
In February, I secured childcare. My daughter began to take naps and eat solids. I felt all the Black Girl Magic dust flowing over me. She had a safe space while I found comfort and freedom at work. On Mondays, I would leave staff meetings thirty minutes early. We were usually home in time for dinner, a story before bed, sometimes followed by prayers if she wasn't already sleeping. This pattern continued every week. Weekends consisted of walks with friends and laying out in the sun. I changed diapers in bathrooms without changing tables, drank coffee with one hand and supported her head on the other while she chugged back breastmilk. I finally felt like I had reached my stride. I even traveled without her for the first time. I felt at ease. I wasn't worried about her safety or eager to return home. It was strange interacting with others without her. Everyone assumed how I would feel, and in fact, it was the exact opposite. Within a week of my return, California was ordered to shelter-in-place. I spent the first few days of this experience daydreaming about what it would look like when we were back in the office and my routine afternoon pattern of dodging traffic in time for pickup.
It’s always challenging balancing work and family. Given the severity of the virus and it's spread, I felt even more stretched with the weight of anxiety and fear. I have, however, had a lot of time to reflect on parenthood. As the days turned into months, I sometimes found that I didn't know when to stop working and found myself ignoring the one person that mattered the most, my daughter. It was at this moment that I realized that I needed to make a change and acknowledge my new reality.
So much of my identity as a Black Queer Caribbean woman was defined by my work. I hate to admit it, but I didn't want to be seen as weak. I felt that admitting that everything wasn’t going well would change how others viewed me as a mother and a person. The feelings and thoughts are more about how the world views me rather than how I view myself.
See, parenthood called me to take more risks. I was being asked to ground myself in a new way. I can no longer bury myself in work or the expectation of a tipsy weekend brunch. I needed to take care of myself. I spoke a lot about self-care as a radical act but didn’t live into this until recently. Shame, guilt, and white western standards of productivity were things I needed to cast out long before becoming a parent. At many points, I hit a wall. I felt alone, anxious, and scared. While I was grateful for my job and the support of friends and colleagues, I struggled to find balance. I knew that I needed to confront this for the sake of my daughter.
I began to make a word of the day a daily ritual. The same word has been on my fridge for the past two months.
P-A-T-I-E-N-C-E
I need to be patient with myself. I need to be patient with others. Every time I don't feel unhappy or ashamed, I allow myself to acknowledge the feeling instead of pretending it doesn't exist. I give myself a few moments and then I cast it out. I name the thing that does not serve me. When I'm leading staff meetings or a webinar that will be recorded and shared with others, I take a deep breath and say to myself. Cielo will be recorded in webinars and attend Zoom meetings “This is your life. [Insert negative feeling] you do not serve me. I cast you out." This isn't a perfect practice. It is, however, something I'm committed to for the rest of my life. I've found this to be empowering. I relinquish control of things I can’t change. I want my daughter to see me at my best, but I also want her to see me when I’m frustrated and don’t have all the answers.
I don't think there is ever a going back to what was, even if some parts of the puzzle fit. The more I cast things out, the more I can grow deeper into a place of liberation and freedom.
Here are a few lessons I've learned:
1. Breathe. Sometimes when I feel off-balance, I stop in the thick of it and begin to take deepbreaths. This provides clarity and a moment of relief.
2. Laugh. I often find myself in the middle of a teething baby’s cry. This has brought me a lot of joy.Laughing is medicine and often contagious. She will begin to laugh and for a momentthe world stands still. We laugh together.
3. Get lost in something. Do something. This moment and activity aren’t about perfection or mastering a craft. Takethe space to disappear into the thing and become one with it.
4. Connect with your brave person. I’ve always been the friend you go to for advice. The pandemic and mothering havetaught me to connect more with others. I don’t have to perform with my brave person. I can breastfeed without shame or sit in moments of silence.
5. Food is an act of radical hospitality. Be kind to your body.
Jodie Geddes is a nationally recognized restorative justice practitioner. She uses her New York and Jamaican upbringing as a source of inspiration and storytelling. She is also the co-author of The Little Book of Racial Healing.
We Need To Abolish Cancel Culture
Has cancel culture gone too far? Can we find a middle ground?
At this moment in time, we need to start shifting how we understand the function of cancel culture. I feel that cancel culture is an important part of keeping those who don’t technically owe us much working in the interest of the public. While that is important when it comes to talking about micro and macro aggressions we need to be more discerning about the difference between harmful and shameful. These two concepts have to be differentiated if we hope to continue cancel culture.
What is Cancel Culture?
Getting canceled is a vibe check for celebrities. Cancel culture was birthed at a time where people realized that they both wanted their ‘influencers’ and celebrities to represent their political beliefs and understood that silence is complicity. It first hit the mainstream when people started trending hashtags to call out and shine a light on the racist, homophobic, and sexist comments and actions of huge Youtube influencers. “#______isOverParty”, went from being this new fangled uncertain fad to being a huge movement that aimed to stop or at least reprimand these pseudo-celebrities.
Many hoped that these twitter sessions where everyone entered into a frenzy posting and reposting videos and screenshots would ‘end’ their targets’ careers but it has yet to be widely successful. Some influencers like James Charles seem almost impervious to cancellation but others have had severely quieter careers post-scandal.
James Charles is the poster boy for the post-scandal comeback. He has been through multiple racism scandals, public feuds with celebrities, botched eyeshadow palettes and transphobic comments. Most infamously after leaching millions of subscribers in what most Youtube drama channels call “Dramagedon”, he came back with a better reputation than ever. The young star has been canceled time and time again and yet, he comes back to the same subscriber base as before.
While cancel culture came for beauty influencers at first, it expanded to other influencer communities and then into celebrity stan culture. Now it has set for itself not only loftier goals like tackling the global capitalist framework as a whole, but also smaller ones like ending the casual racism we see amongst our friends and family members.
One major debate in these kinds of activist subcultures that actively call for the cancelation of these pop culture figures is where does the line fall between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation?
What is cultural appropriation?
Appropriation is what the Kardashians do every other week. It is all about taking aspects of someone else’s culture, especially an aspect which they themselves are shunned for, claiming it as your own (often profiting from it), and being praised for it.
It can also be a different combination of these things, maybe we don’t claim it as our own but we fail to give credit to its creators. Or, more commonly, we take something that is general like a hairstyle with deep cultural significance, and wear it as our own.
Celebrities are constantly being canceled for appropriating culture. Most of the time we think of the appropriation of Black culture but as Asian and Latinx activism grows we are becoming increasingly aware of how many companies and people continue to profit off of their cultures as well. But our friends and family don’t have the clout required to shift huge cultural narratives, their Instagram posts aren’t breaking the internet, and no one is going to call out cornrows (insert your aunt’s name here) braids.
So, if your friends and family who stumble on to other cultures aren’t appropriating them, what are they doing?
What is cultural appreciation?
Some might conflate this lack of ability to shift sociocultural narratives with appreciating a culture, but just because your friend only has 100 followers on Instagram doesn’t mean that her appropriation of box braids isn’t wrong or harmful. So then, what is cultural appreciation?
Appreciation is about respect, honoring tradition, and sharing in a cultural experience. The most classical example of this debate about appreciation and appropriation is the difference between Angelina Jole wearing a hijab and Kim Kardashian wearing braids. But this comparison isn’t perfect, because there is no way to wear box braids to show reverence or honor a tradition. Black hair is culturally significant but you don’t need to wear our hairstyles to access our culture.
When non-muslim women wear hijabs (in a respectful manner) it is to access that culture. In countries and contexts in which you have to wear a hijab, wearing one is not about disrespecting them. But that doesn’t say you cannot appropriate the hijab, it just means that we need to be more discerning of non-hijabi non-muslim women who don one.
This still doesn’t answer the question of your friend or auntie who is wearing another culture for style.
Where is the middle ground?
I like to call this a cultural disappointment.
Why is the cultural disappointment important?
Cultural disappointments are the small acts that are harmful and hurtful that the people we know partake in. It’s that white friend who went to the Caribbean and came back with cornrows or your black friend who bought those handbags shaped like stereotypical Chinese take out boxes and the chopstick hairpins. It the little things, that take us back because they make us feel betrayed and unloved. It is so hard to watch people you love so openly disrespect you and your race, but we also have to understand that that doesn’t always warrant being canceled.
Something a lot of people have been calling for in the midst of the protests and massive calls for social justice is for more and more people to call out their friends and family. And while that is undoubtedly an important part of the fight for social justice, we can’t simply go around canceling everyone we know for their mistakes.
The reason we need to hold celebrities accountable through tweetstorms is that they have the ability to sway the narrative. Moreover, they don’t have any real incentive to do better unless they see that their fanbase (read as income) are ready to desert them. But our friends and family do owe us something, and when they are willing to listen to their POC friends and hear their stories, then there is no need to cancel.
When they post and do things that contribute to appropriation, we have to be considerate. To do better, we need to reform and maybe even abolish cancel culture.
We need to reconstruct it because there is a gap between being malicious and willful in the way one steals from other cultures and being unwitting and ignorant. We can’t possibly all be so willfully racist and conniving and I am willing to be that the majority of the people you regularly hang out with aren’t being malicious, they just don’t know any better.
Understand that there are more options than cancellation and that you would do more for the fight if you chose to educate your friends and family rather than alienate them.
Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley
Catcalling Chemo Cuties
An amazing essay on the experience of getting catcalled while undergoing treatment for cancer.
“They believe they should want to visit the edges where things have overgrown and become irregular, but they want to know they’ll be able to leave. ”
For the first time in months, I was left alone to try to walk the couple blocks to the grocery store all by myself. Basement level blood pressure sat me on the curb after only a hundred feet while I prematurely sweated through the same early gift cooking my ovaries into barren, Venusian irrelevance. On the way home, I thought about how embarrassing it would be if I passed out right here in the street. I didn’t pass out, though, and things aren’t all bad: I got to have a little treat on the walk back.
Standing and conversing on the sidewalk on the way to my apartment were two gentlemen. They wore jeans and shirts like everyone else, and only barely appraised my approach with light eye contact. These days, I am easy to size up. The shining of my bald head has turned to window glass; an absent minded glance allows even the least discriminating of observers to gather All The Information They Need.
Sometimes I wonder if my eyebrows have been replaced with the documents my oncologist and surgeon mail me recapping our conversations. As I passed, one of the men standing there on the sidewalk enthusiastically let me know, “I still think you look sexy!” The thought on the front of my brain was of course being amused that damn, people really will catcall anyone at any time. Even a bald wheezing dumbass who hasn’t Finished Physical Therapy but craves the crispy-fried rock-bottom prices of Cheep Chicken Monday isn’t immune.
Of course when analyzing intent and meaning, word emphasis matters, so I am delighted to point out it was impossible to discern. This leaves us some possibilities to be enjoyed: maybe the comment was backhanded, a kind of “I still think you look sexy, even though—and I don’t need to tell you, toots—no one else does.” Or maybe he meant “I have watched you walk to the grocery store many times, beginning before your cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy, and while I haven’t said anything lately, I still think you look sexy.” We will never know if he was expressing unrequited admiration, assuring me “I know you do not think I am sexy, but I still think you look sexy.” More pressing than these problems of identifying emphasis, this guy made me wrong which of course I hate and now I am supremely irritated. Not an hour before deciding to attempt to walk for chicken I had just been explaining on the phone to my friend Kerri how I have begun noticing (or lost the ability to ignore? who cares(?)) being “othered” by people in public due to my visible sickness. I am counted among the “sick” now. One may now only experience me by wading through and temporarily diffusing into the gossamer sticky “cancer” mythos which emanates from and surrounds me. People remember being children and they remember adults telling them how their face might Freeze Like That and while it isn’t the same thing, they can’t be too careful. They also remember how wild animals can be unpredictable, and so it is best to enjoy them from a safe distance. People know that isn’t really the same thing, either. They believe they should want to visit the edges where things have overgrown and become irregular, but they want to know they’ll be able to leave.
“I was bitching the point that people no longer register me as what I called a “viable sexual adult.” I’m now included in the same category we place children and the elderly. ”
People whisper when they speak to me. Sometimes they avoid eye contact, and sometimes they make eye contact but pull their lips weird in that way that absolutely, universally means “sucks to suck.” When I was talking to my friend Kerri on the phone—less than an hour before The enWrongening—I was bitching the point that people no longer register me as what I called a “viable sexual adult.” I’m now included in the same category we place children and the elderly. Treated as one of the protected rather than a protector. The way we perceive other people’s power and position is tied to how we perceive their sexual viability. How we assign worth to others is, in part, based on how we perceive their sexual viability. A person’s perceived attractiveness, fertility/virility, willingness to engage in sexual behavior, and their appearance factor into conclusions we draw about their appropriate level of power or position within a group. Now that chemotherapy has made me infertile, what does that mean in terms of my perceived usefulness? An awful lot of people are going to an awful lot of trouble just for me, and I can’t be bothered to fulfill the most basic biological request. I bitched and bitched about these things, and here this guy lets me know he still thinks I’m sexy. Do I not get to have ANYthing?? I wish I had asked him any question after I politely thanked him (which I did, because I liked his tone, and hey, he did correctly identify me as a person who hasn’t been hearing “sexy” so much as I’ve been hearing the greatest hits: “The Doctor Will Be Right With You,” “When Was Your Last Period,” and “How Are You Feeling Today?”) because there’s marrow to be sucked here and, as you can imagine, that’s about as precious a commodity can get. If I had my way, he would have explained the “still.” Clarifying, “you mean I’m still sexy, even though I’m wearing a blue dress?” I would have liked to have asked if “I’m still sexy, even though I’m under six feet tall?” What is my sexiness in spite of? He’d get to fumble through avoiding saying “even though you are sick.” Ultimately, his catcall is acknowledging the natural/appropriate/expected reaction to my being and person is one that is patently unsexy. Me being sexy is something to point and stare at now, and qualifying my sexiness with “still” drives the point home that I currently, visibly Have A Condition. That’s the answer to the question of “still.” He means “you are a person living with a condition which doesn’t allow sexiness.” Probably I would also have liked to have asked “why did you think that, in my enfeebled prostration, I would at all be concerned as to whether or not you still thought I looked sexy?” This is an easy one. Healthy People love to tell me how they feel about things. Healthy People love to tell me about me. It is not surprising a Healthy Person believed I was interested in hearing his opinion on whether or not I’m—believe it or dont!—still sexy. If I had thought of it, I could have even asked him why he pegged me as a person who needed to be paid a compliment. I don’t remember walking down the street projecting dejection or anything, either; the scent of lilacs was on the breeze today.
My money’s on it’s this thing people have been doing to me since becoming someone who Has A Condition: Cheering Up. People are very concerned with the evolution and status of my relative cheer levels. People NEED me to be cheered. The man on the sidewalk assumes I need someone to fill my Cheering-Up Cup because Having A Condition must be just god awful. What a perpetual slog, eclipsed in its shittiness only by its constancy. He was throwing me a bone. Brightening a cancer-person’s day by letting me know aloud I am still sexy.
Beaumont Sugar is an essayist, poet, and painter based in Anchorage, Alaska. They live with Penelope and Waffle, their wife and cat. More of their work can be found on Instagram at beaumontsugar.
Are Short (White) Men Okay?
The short answer is no, but why and how are we meant to deal with it? Let’s talk about that. It’s a joke...kind of.
Are Short (White) Men Okay?
We all know a short guy that just seems to be perpetually in the middle of a tirade. Usually about their obsession with the “elitism” of women or expressing this or that opinion from their self assigned role of ‘devil’s advocate’. They all seem to have this common characteristic that comes with the sense of manufactured oppression that they place upon themselves - they are just cantankerous.
So when I ask the question ‘are short men okay’, we can already be sure that the answer is:
No! They are not okay!
After months of back and forth with many many short (usually white) men, I am officially over it. I have argued with short men over every idea under the sun; whether or not religious freedom is important, if we should say ‘eat the rich’, and why marijuana is apparently not only a gateway drug but also ‘severely dangerous’ on its own. I have literally had one of them tell me that he didn’t believe I, a black woman, had ever experienced racism! All of this had led me to the conclusion:
They are angry and it just isn’t my problem.
I have decided for myself that I am simply no longer arguing with short men in my DMs. And if you are a woman, particularly a woman of colour, particularly a black woman I sincerely encourage you not to as well.
Short men are preoccupied with this sense of masculinity that is rooted in patriarchal power. Power that stems from a long and ‘proud’ history of stepping on women, black, indigenous, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ communities. Much like capitalism, the patriarchy doesn’t like us!
The grounds on which any short (usually white) man and I enter into an argument are irrevocably different and it is exhausting. Arguing with people who are willing to question your human rights for the sake of “playing devil’s advocate” is tiring, it’s debasing and it’s wholly unnecessary.
The problem is patriarchal masculinity is unattainable because they aren’t ‘tall enough’ in any conventional way. They aren’t intimidating or foreboding, two quintessentially male characteristics. Short men don’t pose the same apparent threat that other men do, and somehow this upsets them.
Since you can’t just assume that they are capable of harming you, they assert themselves with arguments. But these arguments aren’t about things like pineapple on pizza or if chicken soup is cereal, they all have to be about my rights. It is always about assuming this or that right-wing opinion. They will assure me that they are either just thinking it through, exploring the ‘other side’ and that it should upset me. But it does.
I am tired of my body and freedom being a thought experiment.
These men throw their weight and opinions around the shut you up. Not because they necessarily believe what they are saying and not because they care about these issues. They do it to keep the women in their lives well aware of the fact that they are no different from the other stereotypically macho men that they know.
This phenomenon lives on social media, where they don’t have to deal with the real world emotional or sociopolitical repercussions of their actions. Where they don’t have to take these things into consideration and where no one else can see how little they care. These men don’t take these arguments seriously, and they certainly don’t take you seriously enough to not bother you with their petty feuds.
If you are like me; here are 5 tips to help you free yourself from them and live a happy, healthy life:
Stop responding with arguments
When they swipe up on your story with their hot take on why eating the rich is an oppressive statement, don’t dignify them with an actual thought out response. Google is free for everyone and they can find out why their opinions are bullshit there.
Suggested alternatives are:
No ❤️
.
Okay.
Or just leave them on read
2. Don’t let them live in your head rent-free
None of them are paying you to think about them so don’t!
It’s easier said than done but honestly the second you stop thinking about and entertaining their ideas when they are not there you feel so much lighter. There are so many better things to let live in your head like the strawberry dress or your dinner plans. Free up space for what makes you happy.
3. Let them argue with themselves
If you can’t quite bring yourself to give up arguing, send them in circles. Usually, their arguments are flimsy and the only things they have going for them is passion and a complete disregard for facts. When you approach the argument don’t aim to express yourself, rather aim to allow them to really read what they have just said. Then at the perfect moment hit them with the: “So you agree (insert whatever leftist idea they just argued against)”
4. Understand that none of this is really about you.
Dissociate yourself from these arguments as best you can. None of this was ever about you, they would argue just as much with Siri if they could. The simple fact is that you are kind of interchangeable in this equation.
5. Just block them.
We often forget that this is an option, but you can simply block them. Ghost them every chance you get. Remember that you don’t owe people who don’t value you an explanation for why you are cutting them off. It’s okay not to be sure of why something offends you, but it is not okay to ignore it for the sake of not having a rationale.
Finally, if you are a short man reading this and you feel hurt. I can’t really do anything other than say if the shoe fits wear it and by all means feel free to change it. No one can save you from your own fragile masculinity but you, so get on google and figure it out!
Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley
We’re Supposed to be Stronger, So Why Do I Feel So Weak?
“How do we heal the divides, how do we acknowledge the pain and the hurt that women have to carry, while making space for men who are trying their best to resist the patriarchy and the violence it enacts on the women they want so badly to care for? ”
The patriarchy has scarred us all, and sometimes when I am hanging out with my female friends, we like to compare them. We talk about one of my friends, who is afraid of ride shares, because one time an uber driver came back to her house to harass her after she refused to give him her snapchat info. There’s a friend who doesn’t drink anymore, because ten years ago she was blamed for her own rape because she had five beers at a party. There are friends who avoid walking around late at night, who are afraid to be alone in the same room as their bosses… or their professors. There are women who have physical scars, from times that abusive partners grabbed them. There are friends whose scars are invisible, but just as tangible, in the ways you can hear the hurt in their voices, from the way they post loving tributes to their mothers in May, but never ones to their fathers in June. The ways that the patriarchy has harmed us criss crosses our bodies, like the ragged lines from lying down in the grass for too long.
The older I get, the more aware I am of the increased burden of trauma and pain that I carry from men who have harmed me. And I’ve slowly surrounded myself with more and more with women, separating myself from men because I find the constant energy needed to support them emotionally, to educate them, to comfort them when they feel guilty for hurting women, exhausting. I see the separatism happening, and how my female friends avoid spaces where men might be, simply because it's easier than having to deal with the onslaught. And I see men frustrated, lonely, feeling bitter because they are trying to have genuine relationships with women, but don't know how, or are met with a cold and defensive front. How do we heal the divides, how do we acknowledge the pain and the hurt that women have to carry, while making space for men who are trying their best to resist the patriarchy and the violence it enacts on the women they want so badly to care for?
As I've gotten older, the pain goes deeper, and it's hard to find places on my body or on my heart that haven't been scarred. I read memoirs by women who I see as stronger than me, about the ways they rose up and overcame, and were able to use the pain and trauma inflicted on them to have transformative experiences. I listen to feminist podcasts where women confidently and openly talk about their sexual trauma or abusive relationships one minute, and then next they are talking about their stable relationships, their children, or their successful nonprofits to help women in situations like them. I wish I could be them, and I feel guilty that I am not. I see how they've taken their pain and used it as a tool to grow stronger and I wonder why I can't do the same. Instead of rising up against the tyranny and ever present violence I find myself getting whittled down.
The skills I've learned as I've gotten older have saved me from more and more trauma. I've learned to say no, to set boundaries, to not settle in my sexual or romantic relationships. I've learned to identify abusive tactics and gaslighting. I can recognize and avoid narcissists now. I regularly stand up to male coworkers who downplay the contributions of women, or ask us to make their coffee or debate men in my writing group when their fictional depictions of women are sexist or objectifying. And maybe it's because I've done so much of that labor to build up my defenses that it hurts even more when I find men who still slip between the cracks.
“It feels like every time I reopen myself, I feel more tired, and more broken. ”
Less than a week ago was one of those instances. A good and close male friend of mine confessed to me that he had purposefully broken one of my boundaries to find out information about me that I had specifically told him I wasn't comfortable with him knowing. I was hurt and in disbelief. We had been really close, and while I had been open and honest with him about everything, there were details and specifics that I didn't want him to have. I felt bamboozled and betrayed, but more than anything, I felt stupid. I kicked myself for being vulnerable, for being too trusting, when it was he that broke the boundary. The pain was acute, as I found myself in a familiar place of deleting things off the internet. I buried myself, anonymized myself, and hid even deeper than before. I felt cheated out of a friendship, and angry that I had left myself open to exploitation.
I am tough, because years of living in a patriarchal society as a mouthy, outspoken, and angry feminist has made me that. But every time I am harmed by a man, it seems to take me longer and longer to bounce back. I wonder if it's because I'm becoming more jaded or cynical. I wonder if it's because I'm more careful about the men I allow into my life, and so when they do hurt me, it hurts more than I can imagine. It feels like every time I reopen myself, I feel more tired, and more broken. I am less able to have frank and open conversations with men about feminism, I am less willing to give them my labor. My friend and I would chat for hours about sexism, about how men need to be better, and with petty intent, he deceived and betrayed me.
I have to be open because it's a necessary part of being human. I need to be open because I want to love and be loved. I crave being vulnerability because trust is essential to healthy human relationships, and so I have to risk the hurt and betrayal of potential partners and friends. And while that can happen with anyone, I find myself time and time again having to defend myself against men.
Photo by Sofia Garza
How do we break this cycle? Male friends of mine complain that it's hard for them to get close to women because the systematic trauma of sexism and patriarchy has permanently closed some women off to believing that they can trust men. But the burden of being vulnerable and open cannot just rest on women, to 'put themselves out there' and do the labor of being fragile, when men aren't doing the labor of becoming better at being caring and respectful.
I think this is what I am going to examine. For now, I believe it's too late for my friend. I lack the emotional capacity, and frankly, the will, to try and fix his need to exploit female vulnerability. But I'm still learning, and maybe next time, I will have the strength to rise up and out.
Reap what you hoe.
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