I’m out of tolerance, out of patience and out of compassion. I’ve had enough and want to go crawl under a rock for the rest of my days.
My voice here doesn’t make any difference to anyone, no-one reads, no-one listens and nothing changes. I just end up covered in the shit I’m wading through and the stench of it fills my world and poisons my life.
Enough, I need to go hide.
Fed up with blogsome, not really blogging here much anyway and thinking about moving over to someplace else. Not fond of blogger either - any suggestions? Or shall I just quit and go away?
I’ve been reading this: Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, bell hooks.
If we start from the position that Patriarchy exists and exists to control human beings by favouring the men and boys and devaluing the women and girls then surely it stands to reason that the deconstruction of patriarchy will affect males more than females.
Anyway, back to my thinking… Men stand to lose more if/when patriarchy fails or is deconstructed. Men will fight however they can to preserve the patriarchy that favours them, that they gain power and control from. How much they would gain is open to interpretation, but women stand to gain everything. So we are opposed.
But should we be?
Surely this patriarchy that we live in, that controls us also controls our brothers, our sons, the fathers of our children, our fathers? Surely it controls and boxes and defines the men and boys in our lives just as much as the women and girls?
Now, feminism has an image of man hating, hairy separatists and I don’t like that. I don’t hate men, just what they do and the power and control they use over women. It’s not even about me, although my experience does colour my beliefs, as I’m sure it does most people. So, bell hooks has me thinking that although Feminist is a label that does describe my political beliefs and stance, it does neatly underpin the thinking and where I’m coming from, it also doesn’t take everything into account.
I have loads more thinking and exploring to do but I think I’m going to be an Eco-Humanist/Feminist and try to look at the future as a bright place where everyone has an equal footing in the world, where women and men are all free of patriarchal control, where our sons and daughters can all be who they are without constraint. Ok, it’ll take generations, maybe grandchildren then… or even great-grandchildren, but it’ll happen. As part of that vision I can see a place where a true respect for our planet is tied with a true respect for every individual human being as well as the overall ecosystem.
It all goes together for me.
In the meantime there’s loads of change to make happen….. Time for another mug of tea I think, and some chocolate…
Some days you watch the world with utter disbelief.
Some days you sit and see and reality hits you, repeatedly, like a sock full of sand.
Some days life beats you so hard that you end the day so punch drunk that you can’t care any more.
Some days the evil that men do is so huge that you can’t see a way round.
Some days are bleak.
Some days drain you, sap you and eat your soul.
Some days words are not enough.
Some days you look around you and see this world for what it truly is and you see the scars of what we have done torn deep into the core of our being.
Some days the wounds of simply living are raw and bleeding.
Some days you can’t feel the life around you.
Some days the constraints and controls set on us are more like a gallows.
Some days you can’t hear other voices, only meaningless noise.
Some days friends are too far away.
Some days the futility of doing anything other than stopping is overwhelming.
Some days you can’t even gather enough energy to care if you wake up tomorrow or not.
My kids love the film Horton Hears a Who. For them it’s a simple film about an elephant in the jungle trying to save the tiny people of Whoville, while being chased by other jungle creatures.
But there is a deeper message.
Horton is the only creature with the imagination and vision to believe the microscopic (invisible) people of Whoville actually exist and he is convinced that "A person’s a person, no matter how small." He rescues them and tries to take them to a place of safety despite the ridicule of his fellow jungle creatures and he is persecuted and hounded into admitting that Whoville doesn’t exist, after all that is the only way he can return to jungle society.
But he won’t. He stands firm, alone but firm and he is caged, imprisoned and isolated until he admits he is wrong - which we know he isn’t.
When faced with annihilation the people of Whoville finally believe their Mayor that they are in danger and unite, raising their voices to scream into the wind, "WE ARE HERE!" Together they are just loud enough that the jungle children can hear them and they are saved in the end.
Last week I was here, with Witchy and several thousand other women and we shouted many things but regardless of the words we used we screamed "WE ARE HERE!"
WE ARE HERE!
We are human.
WE ARE HERE!
We will be heard.
WE ARE HERE!
We are women, we exist, we are strong and we are LOUD!
WE ARE HERE! WE ARE HERE! WE ARE HERE! WE ARE HERE!
WE ARE HERE! WE ARE HERE! WE ARE HERE! WE ARE HERE!
I’d like to try something. Yesterday this blog had around 200 hits/visitors. I know some of those will be repeat visits and some will be bots, and some will be trolls. But to the rest of you I issue a challenge. We need to shout together and be heard.
Go to your own blog and post up the words "WE ARE HERE!" and then comment here to say where it is, or link back. Then get your readers and friends to do the same. Just how far and how loud can we make this go?
WE ARE HERE!
WE ARE HERE!
WE ARE HERE!
WE ARE HERE!
WE ARE HERE!
Do not put me in a box.
Do not make me conform to your patriarchal rules.
Do not define me with your labels.
Do not force me to accept your limitations.
Do not constrain me either politically, emotionally or literally.
Do not impose your boundaries on me.
Do not make me who you want me to be.
Do not tell me what I can and cannot do.
Do not limit my dreams.
Do not enforce your domination and desires upon me.
Do not expect me to blindly agree with you.
Do not bombard me with your misogyny, bigotry and prejudice.
Do not accuse me of your misogyny, bigotry and prejudice.
Do not accuse me of intolerance while your own intolerance flays the skin from my back.
I need only a very few labels unconditionally and those are my name and the words "friend" and "mother". All else is irrelevant and slides like washed off dirt.
I am myself and that is enough.
Have you ever tried to talk to someone who refuses to listen or engage? Someone who latches on to a single argument and refuses to discuss in a productive way - even if you don’t agree, a good discussion can often be had.
Have a watch, it’s only 30 seconds long.
So, as a semi regularly blogging, kinda leaning towards the radical, feminist I find myself, on frequent occasions, having discussions with people about my politics……
I’m a fairly open person and like to chat and explore, usually over a large mug of tea and in a reasonably amicable way. I don’t want to argue or be beaten about the head with a poorly presented repetition of the same old stuff just said over and over and louder and louder as if that makes it more true. I’d get more sense talking to my kitchen sink, or a jelly teddy bear …. Well, at least I can eat him if the trumpets thing gets too much.
But what about a march for men who are victims of domestic violence?
(Bring on the Trumpets…)
But what about the sex workers who enjoy what they do?
(Bring on the Trumpets…)
But what about the nice porn, it’s not all nasty….
(Bring on the Trumpets…)
But porn use/paying for sex/abuse of a women is my choice, you can’t infringe my human rights…..
(Bring on the Trumpets…)
What I do in my own home is my business….
(Bring on the Trumpets…)
But don’t you see that….. (insert spurious argument intended to divert attention from that actual point) …..
(Bring on the Trumpets…)
Patriarchy? What patriarchy? I see no patriarchy, said the woman with the blindfold on and her hands cuffed above her head so she doesn’t even have the power to remove the blindfold and truly see that the trumpets are only there to hide the sound of women being abused, raped and murdered every day, to hide the sound of control and of domination and of repression.
Quit with your bloody trumpets and quit trying to excuse what is happening, quit trying to make it look like you choose to be squashed and diminished. Just quit, just take off the blindfold, hear beyond the trumpets and really see what is being done to you and to women all over the world.
Are such things done on Albion’s shore?
The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake’s prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today.
We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness - the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.
We are so fast asleep that we don’t know who we are any more. Are we English? Scottish? Welsh? British? More than one of them? One but not another? Are we a Christian nation - after all we have an Established Church - or are we something post-Christian? Are we a secular state? Are we a multifaith state? Are we anything we can all agree on and feel proud of?
The new laws whisper:
You don’t know who you are
You’re mistaken about yourself
We know better than you do what you consist of, what labels apply to you, which facts about you are important and which are worthless
We do not believe you can be trusted to know these things, so we shall know them for you
And if we take against you, we shall remove from your possession the only proof we shall allow to be recognised
The sleeping nation dreams it has the freedom to speak its mind. It fantasises about making tyrants cringe with the bluff bold vigour of its ancient right to express its opinions in the street. This is what the new laws say about that:
Expressing an opinion is a dangerous activity
Whatever your opinions are, we don’t want to hear them
So if you threaten us or our friends with your opinions we shall treat you like the rabble you are
And we do not want to hear you arguing about it
So hold your tongue and forget about protesting
What we want from you is acquiescence
The nation dreams it is a democratic state where the laws were made by freely elected representatives who were answerable to the people. It used to be such a nation once, it dreams, so it must be that nation still. It is a sweet dream.
You are not to be trusted with laws
So we shall put ourselves out of your reach
We shall put ourselves beyond your amendment or abolition
You do not need to argue about any changes we make, or to debate them, or to send your representatives to vote against them
You do not need to hold us to account
You think you will get what you want from an inquiry?
Who do you think you are?
What sort of fools do you think we are?
The nation’s dreams are troubled, sometimes; dim rumours reach our sleeping ears, rumours that all is not well in the administration of justice; but an ancient spell murmurs through our somnolence, and we remember that the courts are bound to seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and we turn over and sleep soundly again.
And the new laws whisper:
We do not want to hear you talking about truth
Truth is a friend of yours, not a friend of ours
We have a better friend called hearsay, who is a witness we can always rely on
We do not want to hear you talking about innocence
Innocent means guilty of things not yet done
We do not want to hear you talking about the right to silence
You need to be told what silence means: it means guilt
We do not want to hear you talking about justice
Justice is whatever we want to do to you
And nothing else
Are we conscious of being watched, as we sleep? Are we aware of an ever-open eye at the corner of every street, of a watching presence in the very keyboards we type our messages on? The new laws don’t mind if we are. They don’t think we care about it.
We want to watch you day and night
We think you are abject enough to feel safe when we watch you
We can see you have lost all sense of what is proper to a free people
We can see you have abandoned modesty
Some of our friends have seen to that
They have arranged for you to find modesty contemptible
In a thousand ways they have led you to think that whoever does not want to be watched must have something shameful to hide
We want you to feel that solitude is frightening and unnatural
We want you to feel that being watched is the natural state of things
One of the pleasant fantasies that consoles us in our sleep is that we are a sovereign nation, and safe within our borders. This is what the new laws say about that:
We know who our friends are
And when our friends want to have words with one of you
We shall make it easy for them to take you away to a country where you will learn that you have more fingernails than you need
It will be no use bleating that you know of no offence you have committed under British law
It is for us to know what your offence is
Angering our friends is an offence
It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), the Terrorism Act (2000), the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001), the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002), the Criminal Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003), the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003), the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004), the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005), the Inquiries Act (2005), the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), not to mention a host of pending legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.
Inconceivable.
And those laws say:
Sleep, you stinking cowards
Sweating as you dream of rights and freedoms
Freedom is too hard for you
We shall decide what freedom is
Sleep, you vermin
Sleep, you scum.
Sadly these are not my words, I just copied them.
All due credit should be offered to Philip Pullman
This was briefly an article by Philip Pullman in the Times, but it seems to have gone. I’d like to share it here, with full attribution to the author.
I’m pro-choice, in pretty much everything - the only proviso I put on personal choice is a pagan/wicca one "If it harm none, then do as you will." If it harms no-one else, then I struggle to see a problem. It’s when choice is pressured or removed that I get shouty and angry.
So This news from the USA, and This too - is all good as far as I am concerned.
US President Barack Obama has lifted a ban on federal funding for foreign family planning agencies that promote or give information about abortion.
Predictably the pro-lifers are shouting about it, pleading the old arguments. But as I see it there is no other way. A woman’s body is her own and she has the choice of what to do or not to do with it, and that includes pregnancy and termination of any pregnancy. Women should own their own fertility.
Guantanamo prison "will be closed no later than one year from now."
Wow. I mean, wow. Although I will admit to being slightly concerned over what they intend to do with those incarcerated at Guantanamo. But the process, the interrogations, the torture and the trials are all halted while it all gets investigated. We can but hope for some fair justice for those people in there.
I look round the rest of the BBC news site and at the rest of the world and I despair at the human race’s capacity for harm. I feel like such a small voice screaming into the wind. Other Sunday shouts have been lists of harm, of pain and of loss, it’s depressing.
But for a change, I can look across the Atlantic and smile at the changes happening. Barack Obama will be remembered as the first non-white US President, no matter what he does. So far he’s off to a great start. These two stories are the ones that caught my eye, and as someone who is not a US citizen, has never been to America, I don’t get a lot of what goes on over there. I have enough to get angry about here in England!
I’ve heard/read that Iraq is to be "returned to its people."; that US troops are to be brought home; that the administration is to be more open and that:
Not since the first days of President Jimmy Carter in 1977 has any president concentrated so clearly on cleaning up government and restoring the transparency of its processes to the American people.
It’s big stuff. More over at Women’s Space.
A respected middle-aged art historian at one of Paris’s most illustrious museums, Agnès Humbert was an unlikely candidate for Resistance heroism. But amid the chaos and bitter ignominy of defeat her soul rebelled.
She leafleted, she stickered and she did what she could and she encouraged others to do the same. She fought the Nazi war machine with everything she had and then, when captured, she was forced to work for it instead.
But did she hate the German people? No, after the war ended she changed her direction again but carried on in the same vein.
Agnès threw off her shackles to set up first-aid posts and soup kitchens for the armies of the dispossessed - including, at her express insistence, German civilians…..
…..arguing stoutly that indiscriminate persecution of the Germans would only encourage the rise of ‘another Hitler’.
Agnes believed in people as individuals. Although the masses can be swept along in politics and in fear, each person is an individual and should be valued as such. A individual that is part of a group should not be simply dismissed or labelled simply because of the actions of the group.
We do it all the time don’t we? "You are a member of X Group, therefore you are bad/undesirable and I am unwilling to look at you/get to know you" It’s a generic but we all do it. We classify individuals by the groups they appear to belong to - even when that group membership is unproven. We see someone associating with a group, or a member of a group and we just lump them all in together, completely disregarding the individual. "Oh, you’ve commented on X’s blog therefore you must be her friend and have the same beliefs as her." It may be true but it may not and if we fail to engage with the individual then how will we ever know? If we can’t reach out and keep communications open then are we not alienating? If we can’t recognise and connect with the simple humanity of an individual, regardless of their difference from ourselves, then how can we call ourselves human?
Agnes Humbert’s memoirs, translated by Barbara Mellor, are published as Resistance: Memoirs of Occupied France by Bloomsbury.
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