These are my privileges

Towards the end of last year I was hit with a couple of uncomfortable truths. My immediate reaction was to balk at the suggestions and defend myself with what I thought were righteous assertions. The first, that I as a British Asian woman had the right to feel suspicious of Muslim men as a result of the hounding I had been subjected to my entire life and secondly, there was no way my age could be considered a privilege because I had spent most of those years running away from my complete lack of said privilege. I also hadn’t completely got to grips with my cis privilege and didn’t know how to react to a trans woman of colour attacking me for alienating her. I didn’t know what I had done wrong and felt it was unnecessary. But I was willing to learn. And the reason for this is because I respected the people highlighting these issues with me and I wanted us to feel equal.

I did not want to rubbish the opinions of the people I respect even if my immediate reaction was one of disagreement. It was one of my new found intersectional friends who pointed it out to me. It was easy to reject his analysis because he was a university educated white male and it felt a little bit like control. His manner was unforgiving and he sounded like all the other men who have ever told me I was wrong. I was distrusting of this guy because he felt a university education was not a privilege. Lacking a formal education myself, I disagreed. But then another of my fledgling friends said the same thing. We were from similar backgrounds so when she said it, I had the realisation that I couldn’t ignore this, I would have to tackle my prejudices. I had to realise the world for the vast space that it is. Taking into account the meta narrative, the way in which ethnic minorities and in particular, Islam is portrayed was a good start. We are socialised into feeling a certain way about a group. Growing up, a community of a few hundred Muslim men made my life a misery. Add to this the monstering of Asian men and Islam, especially post 9/11 and it’s hardly surprising I would feel this way. I could not hold billions of people responsible for the community I belonged to. And I should reject the world as it is presented to me by the ruling classes. The predominantly white ruling classes.

The privilege of age was one it took a while to get my head around. I feel like I’ve only really been alive for a couple of years, savouring the little things that make life worth living is a relatively new thing for me. Up until the point of my breakdown I was merely surviving. I resisted the notion that I was privileged just because I’d a few more years on this earth. But then, watching my young friend and the ways in which she is ignored, undermined, caricaturised and only because she was 17, I began to understand what she meant. I made a promise to myself that I would make an extra effort to hear what she had to say, actively giving her a platform before others. It’s difficult because the hierarchical structures we have in place are entrenched in our way of thinking, because we have life experience we are ‘older and wiser’ but this isn’t necessarily true. We can always think and feel a bit better. We do not know everything.

When a trans woman of colour found me on Twitter and flew into a rage before we’d even been introduced, my immediate reaction was one of fear. I didn’t understand what was happening and I was really working on the whole privilege thing so couldn’t understand why she was so angry. I was afraid that I had done/said something but could not recall anything obvious and this worried me. Had I been abusive or dismissive and not noticed? I asked my trans* friends and they explained that as white trans women, life was difficult enough, being a trans woman of colour made you invisible. I was reassured that I had said nothing wrong. I worked at understanding her reaction. I’d been through life feeling as though I didn’t exist and I had been that angry too. To the outside world it might have seemed misplaced but not in my mind. Why couldn’t anyone see me and make it better?

It is your white friends that give you an idea of what it is to feel like a whole person. For a system to work you need compliance. If, from birth, you are treated as less, you will believe it your whole life through. I know I did. It’s why I remained in abusive relationships. It’s why I went out with white men who openly treated me like a brown trophy. It is my white (thoroughly human) friends who made me aware of this. The ways in which we are treated, the things that are said to us are simply intolerable to people have been brought up free (read: white). My friends show me when I am being subtly manipulated or treated in a substandard way. Of course when I am routinely stopped at airports I am instantly aware of how I am being treated differently.

I have always felt the power structure and even though it’s not been in my best interests, I have been somewhat resistant to it. The white saviour men have been washed out of my hair. The white friends who are proud to be British show themselves for the colonial masters that they are.  I was that special Asian, the one white people warmed to “you’re not like all the others”. I had a raging distrust of my own kind; I believed what they said in the papers. Y’see, in this country we get a wave of immigration and all the immigrants that came before are eager to show how they’re not like those work shy scroungers. Britain is at its best when it’s dividing and ruling. And I totally bought it for almost 30 years. I liked being a white pet and enjoyed the privileges it afforded; less overt racism than my peers. My Asian peers didn’t like this; I was accused of wanting to be white.  Luckily for me, I have a conscience and it was only a matter of time before it dawned on me that I was just like the rest and in denying this, was a question of my own integrity.

I also found that a lot of white people will never see you as anything but brown. They are actively encouraged to be proud of their empirical heritage. Like rape, war, genocide is easily forgiven when Britain is so ‘welcoming’ to the people of its former colonies. Mind you behave how they want you to though. You are not allowed a culture, an opinion without it being heavily scrutinised for terrorism. Someone called me a fool recently for saying the white man I had been engaged to was racist. He laughed at me once when I came down wearing a pair of mismatched pyjamas. He thought it was a ‘very Asian’ thing to do. HOW? The white brain thinks all of your quirks are attributed to the colour of your skin. Never mind the fact that he was in my bed, he pointed out every little thing that made me Asian. The hair on my body, the time I rubbed his feet, the bond that I had with my family; ALL ASIAN. When you are that obsessed by someone’s race, it is fair to say you might be racist. Especially when you think having an Asian fiancé is winning one back for the team. Well, those Asian boys love a bit of white meat, it’s only fair. If I hadn’t been seriously mentally unwell at the time, I wouldn’t have given him a second look. I don’t regret it though, he taught me a lot about this world.

I’ve had many a white person challenge the racism I have experienced in the past week. They’ve been looking for the P word or the N word and because they haven’t seen any evidence of it, I must be lying and using the race card. Racism and prejudice is not limited to language but rather the way in which we’re made to experience the world. It’s how they make us feel. There hasn’t been anything unusual about the manner in which I’ve been ridiculed or challenged. It is word for word the same as it has always been. Remember it is not your intention, but how you make somebody feel. If you have any respect or love for your critics, you are willing to change or at least think about it from their angle. My anger and my reactions have come as a result of feeling deeply disrespected and unwanted.

The onus is not on me, the oppressed, to make amends.

Whatever you do, don’t make a mistake, and NEVER trust a cister

Helen Lewis once storified a set of tweets but left out the connecting bits that made a bit more sense of my very senseless allegations of racsim against Mary Beard. She reassured me at the time it would be deleted because unfortunately I am a spoonie and take 3 different meds that can have an affect on the way I’m thinking some days. She acknowledged my health. She acknowledged my apology. She also left out some of the tweets which was part of the argument I had with her when she first published it. The published set of tweets look they’re from somebody deranged (any yes, I’ve totally been there) and because of who she is, she can now undermine ANYTHING I have to say about feminism. I made one mistake that didn’t even fucking concern her and she can now use it against me when she PREVIOUSLY SAID SHE WOULDN’T.

Don’t you think I felt humiliated and enough of an idiot on discovering my own mistake? I dunno about Helen but I try not to be a shithead about things. If I hurt someone, I apologise. If I need to learn a lesson, I damn well will. But Helen doesn’t believe in restitution. She’d rather hang me in the stocks and leave me there forever.

Just because you’re having a hard time accepting your immense fucking privileges, how can you then use them to shit on someone far less privileged like me? I wish I had your platform Helen, I fucking do.

Leave it up for all to see Helen, don’t be the bigger person even though society knows your name over mine. And you know the privileges that affords. If people want the truth they can read it here.

In my world, we make up for when we did wrong and resolve conflict with respect. I thought I had done so with the person I’d hurt but apparently it was Helen Lewis who deserved to be so pissed off about it. Not lovely kind Mary who accepted my apology and should never have had to deal with what I said to her. No Helen, this is all about you. Sigh. It’s really not though is it?

Don’t hijack this to cover your anti intersectional sins.

You can make an example of me all you like, you’re still a shit feminist.

There’s no point in online feminism if it’s not intersectional

Since we’re looking for the least privileged woman in the world I’d like to nominate my mother. True, she lives here in the West and has never gone hungry (well, at least for no more than a coupla days) but I think she’s somewhere near the bottom and a good a place as any to start.

My mother was born in a village in Kashmir. She was the fourth of 10 children and 1 of 8 girls. Her father was a community doctor and so earned a reasonable enough wage but with that many children they were never what we might think of as well off. So much so that Granddad worked hard to save enough money so that he could give his daughters a decent enough dowry. The plan was to marry them off as soon as they hit puberty thus lessening the burden on the family as a whole.

She was barely 16 when she was packed onto a plane ready to begin her new life in Great Britain. She had barely enough of an education so that she could read letters sent to her in Urdu by her mother, my nan. She was just a child. But one my grandparents couldn’t afford to feed. And so she was palmed off on the first willing man to take her on. My father was 10 years her senior and didn’t want to get married. Or at least he did, but not to her. He was in love with a woman of mixed heritage and his mother, my paternal gran was determined it wouldn’t happen, she hadn’t brought her boys to this new land only for them to mix it up. She and my grandfather had a way of ensuring their children did as they were told, mainly through violence and coercion. My great grandparents had been Muslim scholars, feared and revered by the community in Pakistan. They had a reputation to protect and this came at any cost. My grandparents were the product of an extremely insular and strict manifestation of Islamism. As a child I heard my paternal great grandmother was beaten to death barely a few months after the birth of my granddad’s younger brother. This, because she had sat on her brother’s bed, whilst he lay recovering from an illness. It was too much for great granddad’s male ego and honour. “That’s just the way they did things” was the reply I got when I protested my family legacy through tears. “I’ll show them,” is the mantra I’ve had my whole life. I will be a feminist for all my foremothers; I will take back what was stolen from the women who came before me. A life, namely. An education. Bodily autonomy. Sexual freedom.

But my mother, now divorced and estranged from me, still suffers. We don’t speak because I am alien to her. From a very young age, I believed my emancipation would come from allying myself with the white feminist. I wanted what they had. As a very small child this meant the freedom to dress as I wish and associate with boys. That’s as far as my struggle got through my teens. But as I got older, I continued to behave as my white peers did and this widened the gap between my mother’s hopes for me (she really wanted me to be an air hostess) and my desires for equal rights in a man’s world. She won’t speak to me because she is afraid of what I have become. She won’t give me the opportunity to explain I did this for her.

As soon as I was old enough to hit the men back (15), I dragged my mother away from the community she knew and set into motion the process to divorce her from my father. During this time, I gullibly confirmed to the white workers who were trying to house us in temporary accommodation that the men in my family were savages, bringing with them the patriarchal controls they had back home. When fleeing domestic violence the local authority has an ‘interim duty to accommodate’ and as I rolled out the reasons we were presenting as such, it suddenly dawned on me, I was lucky to be alive. Domestic abuse, child sexual abuse, poverty, homelessness, religious/cultural demons, immigration issues (read racism), disability, isolation, self-harm, eating disorders.. This was not an exhaustive list but my small family had been victim to them all. Sure, I had internet access at the time but I didn’t see it as a privilege, more of a necessary escape. That’s a very silly thing to say Sadie. And it is your privilege that allows you to think like that.

I wish my life had been a little easier. I wish my mother had the right to an education so that she was self-sufficient and might have kicked my dad to the kerb with her dignity intact. But she didn’t. After 20 years of unfaltering duty, irrespective of the abuse she suffered, my father granted her a divorce and gave her £6000 for the trouble. That’s how much she was worth in the end. Her body ravaged by pregnancies she did not consent to, her children traumatised and displaced. She put the miserly amount he’d afforded her towards my younger sister’s nuptials. Because, despite the living hell she’d endured, she was still afraid the community would judge her for her unmarried daughters. This is also where I fell short in my duties as a daughter.  I don’t believe in marriage and who could blame me? But my mother doesn’t see it like that. The patriarchy has controlled her life since forever and although she suffered as a result of it, it still governs her thoughts, she doesn’t know any better.

If I’m a bit mean, frankly, it’s because I’m fed up. Suzanne Moore blocked me on Twitter a little while ago. I can’t even remember what for but I was reminded of it when I tried to RT the fuck outta her tweet asking for James Delingpole to admit he’s a misogynist cock. I joked that it was a shame because even though I had my issues with her, united we would stand in the face of patriarchy. I’m assuming it got back to her because later on that evening I was able to RT with abandon. Why couldn’t Sadie Smith leave well alone? By writing her piece all she’s done is pander to patriarchy. Hell, she even admits to wanting to behave like a misogynist. How is that EVER ok Sandie?

Could it be that privilege allows you some control? The privilege of having a voice or a face that fits so that you can use a platform whichever way you want. “Feminism is not bullying and beating up other women.” Haven’t you done exactly that, Sadie?

As a result of my life, I take pills. There are the ones that keep me on an even keel and the ones that work directly on my spinal cord and brain. When I accused Mary Beard of racism, I was horrified and immediately apologised, but I was made an example of when privilege politics go wrong. I’d unwittingly caught the tail end of a Twitter storm and was held up as an example of ‘stupid’ intersectional feminists using the race card at will. I wish I had the privilege of a clear, sharp mind. I wish I could pick the days when the fog takes over; I could plan my life a bit easier.

If I’m mean or angry, couldn’t you at least try to understand why? That’s what we intersectional feminists do. We understand that some of the stuff that happens in life has profound and lasting effects on people. None of us ask to be born for if we did, I’m sure we’d all tick the white cis gendered box. Nobody would choose an existence where you are overlooked/beaten/murdered for the colour of your skin, or choose to be disabled or *trans.

It’s just how we were born and all we mean to ask is, why am I not as worthy as you?

He Said (TW)

HE accused my 16 year old virginal mother of maliciously impregnating herself.

HE demanded she abort but changed his mind on hearing two heartbeats instead of one.

HE read the Azaan into my ears and shaved the baby bird down on my head.

HE said to speak against my elders meant I was evil and a slap on my 3 year old face would rectify this.

HE said I couldn’t wear shorts cos my five year old legs were too tempting.

HE said I could not play sport cos the shape of my vulva was on display.

HE said a bike would damage my virginity.

HE said to speak to boys was confirmation I was a slag

HE said I mustn’t speak to the white kids cos then I was just as bad as them.

HE said I must learn this alien language and chant with perfect enunciation and THEN God would love me.

HE said if I refused I would burn in Hell’s eternal fires.

HE said the angels on my shoulders would weigh my heart against my deeds and then I would be judged.

HE said I was mother’s daughter which of course was proof that I was a slag.

HE said that I purposely lost the £5 I was supposed to give to the mosque.

HE watched in delight as my family slapped me in front of him.

HE said I was the best in my Arabic class. Maybe that’s why HE would slap me across my developing chest. Maybe that’s why HE would run his hand along the length of my thigh.

HE said I wasn’t the pretty twin but more academic instead. My puppy fat was confirmation of this.

HE said I was an ‘earthquake’ a ‘bulldozer’ and ‘the Himalayas’ when my body went through the first change.

HE said I was hairy and ugly and a bit mannish with my deep husky voice.

HE said I would burn in Hell-fire for wearing my fashionable cross.

HE said someone ought to teach me a lesson for eating the wrong kind of meat.

HE gave me a glare when I ordered my alcopop and the look that said he’d see me later when I questioned the pint in his hand.

HE responded he ‘didn’t remember’ when I said I would make him pay for what he had done to me.

HE blamed it all on my fantastical teenage head.

HE laughed as he fought us children off and away from our mother.

HE thought it was funny when we sprang to her defence.

HE said I would burn in hell when I challenged God and spat that he really didn’t exist.

HE said he’d have to teach me a lesson, I said “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough”.

HE yelped in pain when I bit him on the nose and it hurt when the punches rained down but inside I was smiling because I had finally hurt HIM. HE was getting weaker.

Or I was getting stronger.

HE tried to knock down the door to my safe place and I called the police on him instead. HE was told to leave or HE would be going to jail so HE did but HE never let me forget this.

HE tried to kiss me when I was just 15. HE told me no one would believe me if I ever told the truth.

HE said he’d heard I was a slag so HE thought HE’d give it a go.

HE found me with some of my innocence intact and proceeded to chip away at what was left.

HE would cry and beg forgiveness for attempting to penetrate me without my consent.

HE used me, pushed me around, and turned all my friends against me.

HE told me I wasn’t pretty enough to be his main girl. HE said it was my own entire fault.

HE said his mother was a ‘vessel’.

HE would ‘share’ me one day with his friend. HE didn’t even deny it when I said that it was rape.

HE knew I was broken and that’s the only reason HE made any impact at all. If I saw HIM now, I would laugh in his face.

HE would promise the world but never deliver.

HE would tell me I was the prettiest girl in the room but at home he’d treat me like shit.

HE said I was mediocre and I’d never be anything but a girl from The Rock.

HE said work was more important, his friends were too and I would just have to like it or lump it.

HE said I was a slag, a whore and all the other things too.

HE said I was only good for a shag.

HE said my illness was all in my head. The mind being a powerful tool.

HE said he wouldn’t pander to me any more (there was pandering?)

HE would let his friends intimidate me.

HE didn’t bat an eyelid when some of them rubbed up against me, at full mast.

HE said I was lying when I disclosed advances from one of his other freak friends.

HE made me feel unsafe and uncared for.

HE denies it to this day. (There’s a pattern emerging here)

HE said he loved me but that wasn’t enough. HE said God’s love meant more.

HE said I was alright now I was on the ‘white side’.

HE said now he’d tried Asian, he’d never go back.

HE said he was only joking when he called me a slag and would apologise every time he’d say it but this wouldn’t stop him from saying it again.

HE tried to force me to do a job he thought would be good for me. A nursery nurse to his SAC.

HE said I was silly for thinking I was a feminist because I didn’t hate men.

HE said for us to be together, I’d have to follow him wherever his career took him.

HE didn’t like it when I said no.

HE would snarl and shout and make me feel small.

HE would scan my entire body for rogue solitary hairs and grimace as if they were the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen.

HE kept company with people who thought of me as nothing more than a Paki.

HE didn’t like being challenged. One day HE simply refused to pick up the phone.

I sold the diamond ring HE gave me.

HE said I wasn’t in any physical pain, despite the two operations I’d had on my back.

HE said I should think before I speak, my life’s woes were none of his business. HE just didn’t want to know.

HE said he understood my request for an open relationship but then changed his mind.

HE was either my lover exclusively or a therapist shagging some random girl.

HE has been standing over my shoulder, breathing down my neck before I was even born.

HE defines my role, my character, my options and my path.

HE’s not allowed into my life anymore but still, he lingers.

HE’s on my TV, on my street, in my dreams.

HE is always the same; it doesn’t matter what colour he is or how tall he might be.

HE is patriarchy and HE oppresses me.

The Atheist Delusion

I was 5 years old the first time I entered a mosque. As with every other situation in my young life, I wasn’t given a choice or informed about this new experience, I was simply led to this new building and I did what I was told to do. I learnt Arabic and Urdu, I wore a burqa and I memorised the last 30 surahs of the Quran. I didn’t exactly pray 5 times I day but my early years were spent in preparation for this. Even when I was asleep I would dream that one day I would do a pilgrimage to Mecca and all would become clear, I was somehow chosen and enlightened and my faith would get me through this, my living nightmare, because God knew and only He could make it go away.

My grandparents were staunch Muslims, or at least their definition of it. When I think about some of the cautionary tales told to me as a kid and how hungrily I lapped them up, I am amazed at myself that I am now a ‘non-believer’. Hellfire was a common feature. For the first decade of my life, I believed I had an angel on each shoulder, documenting all deeds good and evil. I was told we had to cover our hair was because otherwise Satan would urinate on it. I was told I couldn’t cut my hair because our religion forbade it. There were a million and one reasons to control every aspect of my life and I guess this is why I rebelled.

One of the first things to occur to me was the number of non-believers destined for Hell. I couldn’t understand why God, all knowing and omnipresent would condemn a large portion of his creation to destruction, in this way. What a waste of His time.  And if they merely existed to serve as reminder to us, the Chosen Ones, of how we must not stray, well, how is that even fair? Born to die for our sins. That’s just weird isn’t it? And the worse my life got, the more my innocence was chipped away, the less afraid I was to challenge God and seek answers. If it was God that created me then He created this desire for the truth and I didn’t believe God to be so tempestuous as to admonish me for needing to know. Anyway I was angry, he’d made me a girl and apparently girls weren’t worth a helluva lot.

I left my faith at the door of the last mosque I would ever attend. Aged just 10 I’d had enough of the Imam and his inappropriate use of my body. I was glad to be free. I would endure weeks of hurtful comments and physical abuse because I’d rejected my teaching, my family were none too happy about this. I was expected to memorise the whole of the Quran and bring praise on my family but I’d done the opposite. But I didn’t care. I was beyond all of it.

As an early teen, I’d sneer at the Muslim boys. I’d happily feed the little racists group about how I was more in control of my life as an atheist (though it was many more years before I would actually feel this way). That period of my life reminds me of Richard Dawkins. Smug, free, privileged, hurtful, bullying. I had this new found feeling of superiority, I’d cracked the God code and I was gonna laugh at everyone too stupid to figure out the truth. Except, I was a kid and I grew out of that phase. I met more people and realised the world was too big a place with too many different shades of everything to just conveniently slap one label on them all. I met Muslims I actually liked! And get this, Catholics! And all the other religions and ways of life. Because people, all the people on this lonely planet, are full of good and bad. Being atheist doesn’t give you a get out of jail free card, like somehow you can’t be hateful and controlling because it’s righteous hate and control, check yourself and your privilege and take it down a notch or ten.

Muslims slaughter their animals by slitting their throats? That’s common practice in non halal UK abattoirs. Yes, the animal is stunned first but stunning isn’t always accurate and are you telling me those animals don’t know they’re going to die? (Watch the series Kill it, Cook it, Eat it). And how dare one person killing and eating an animal tell another person their method is not to their liking? They’re all killing and eating animals, why is one worse than the other? Is it so convenient to tell half a truth to a sycophantic audience? It’s downright dangerous and he knows this.

I don’t like Richard Dawkins because he is just as bad as the fundos with their beards. He is in a position of great power and he uses this to control. How dare he try and define trauma for victims of sexual abuse? I’ve never heard a single survivor use the word ‘icky’ to describe a sexual violation. They haven’t just trodden in dog poo; they have been physically/sexually harmed. He is the voice of patriarchy and patriarchy is white and middle aged.

I don’t want him to speak for me.

Fem Bloc needs YOU

Fems, gather round. We’re growing and we need to realise this.

This comes as no surprise when we consider the world around us right now. Rape, child abuse, rape culture, domestic abuse, ableism, transmisogyny, racism, classism; these methods of control are contaminating the lives of more women and children then we ever believed before. We’re focused on them though; we’re beginning to use the right labels. We know we are not alone.

Oppression has a way of seeking a scapegoat. We’re reminded all the time of how appalling those other people are with their women. But we know this is not the whole truth. The statistics tell us that 1 in 4 British women will experience rape or sexual assault in their lives. I’ve worked with and befriended 100s of women, spoken to women about the women in their lives and we have come to the grave realisation; more than half of our sisters have experienced unwanted sexual attention. Projects like Everyday Sexism only confirm what we already know. But we cannot forget those who do not speak about their violations because of slut shaming and guilt. And what of those who do not understand their own bodily autonomy and believe they are there to be used? Bodily autonomy for women is not the norm, it is the exception.

Haven’t you had enough? I have. Don’t you wanna smash kyriarchy in? I do.

Will you join us and help our intersectional feminism grow?

Fem bloc needs you. This wave of oppression is intolerable; every single rape is a trigger for us all. We’ve tried talking to them but they haven’t listened; the dominator has minimised our experiences, and told us how to feel. Fems, aren’t you angry?

This February 14^th, a billion women will rise from all the corners of our earth. 1 in 3 of our sisters across the world will experience domestic/sexual violence in her lifetime.

“One billion women violated is an atrocity. One billion women dancing is a revolution”.

http://www.onebillionrising.org/

Visit the website and see whether there is an event near you. Alternatively, if we have enough members for fem bloc, we can start our own event.

Fem bloc is intersectional. We are working to make activist spaces safer for all self-identifying women. We have a right to protest and change our society without fear of attack. For many on the left, socialism is a movement dominated by men and it is simply unacceptable that these self-proclaimed messiahs are able to use their activist spaces to control all women through intimidation and sexual attack. Fem bloc hopes to address this and safer spaces travel with us, wherever we might be. One Billion of us will rise and from there, we keep on marching. Every march, every protest, every rally, it is nothing without a feminist presence. We want to eliminate oppression in all its forms; any other way just won’t work. Intersectional feminism will succeed where other movements have failed. Because it is inclusive.

Mark International Women’s Day in your diaries. Let’s protest against ALL OF PATRIARCHY. White men, black men, brown men and all the other shades that don’t get as much of a mention. Men who rape, intimidate, control and abuse. Perverts, paedophiles, sociopaths from every race, colour and creed. Bosses and big brothers, accidental sperm donors and the menz in parliament especially.

The struggle continues but it gets easier the bigger we get. Let’s take Safer Spaces Solidarity from our virtual safe space online and make it a reality for all women.

(Email saferspacessolidarity@gmail.com if you would like to become a member of Fem Bloc)

Street Harassment and Ramadan: A Solution?

With a foot in both worlds, life has been utterly confusing. I am: yet what I am, none care or knows. I am British; I am British Asian, with Pakistani/Kashmiri ‘roots’. I was born a Muslim (though I’ll die none the wiser). I am aware the effect the colour of my skin has on the atmosphere and I resent the ways in which I must try harder. But it is with considerable thought and painstaking investigation, I have come to the conclusion; at first glance, I am a woman.

Eid Mubarak to those completing Ramadan. Very soon there’ll be food and gifts of money, people who have narrowly avoided each other all year will embrace and they will savour the moment, joy and unity overriding any bad feeling. Everyone is cleansed and revved up for another year of good deeds (Inshallah). I watch from inside my ‘local community’ but am very much an outsider. I grew up in this neighbourhood; I walked these streets in a hijab once upon a very long time ago. But I don’t now and make sure everyone knows it. Not by thrusting it in people’s faces, just by being myself. I’ve noticed people twitch around me a lot. Seemingly my bare calves are too much for the brain to compute. But I don’t care and I wear them with pride. Sometimes I don’t even bother shaving! But even I get a little respect when they’re all too hungry and humble to fight.

I love Ramadan. Everyone and I mean EVERYONE slows down. They say please and thank you. They call on each other to share food when they eventually soothe their grumbling bellies with sticky sweet dates, a little salt and some milk. Food is communal and people trip over themselves to host an evening. There is a togetherness, simply not enough strength to fight or waste energy thinking about pointless things. Because the community looks inward and is there for each other, it becomes difficult to deviate. Perhaps this is why, during the month of Ramadan, I feel safe. I don’t change any part of myself but the community around me lowers its gaze. For one month of the year, I am free to walk the streets of my local area without strange, hostile men breathing down my neck. Street harassment is virtually zero.

This is where the ‘East’ is beating the ‘West’. Our media consistently portray Muslims as savage to women, executing them and subjecting them to abusive tribal practices (FGM) and for the most part, they’re right. Women are subjugated in horrific ways, in many parts of the world they are considered subhuman and treated as such. But I’ve struggled my whole life trying to understand what makes the West so brazen as to hold the East up as an example when here, at home, the struggle for equality is reversing so rapidly. There are worrying levels of domestic abuse, many cases going unreported. With the burqa as the universal symbol of oppression, we bear more to show how free we are, but then we are violated for revealing too much. Millions of women march to highlight the absurdity of street harassment in our developed world, but it doesn’t affect the everyday sexism we are all subjected to. In the East, a strange man can beat you for showing your hair or wearing nail varnish. In the West, strange men will invade your personal space, threaten you with what they’d like to do to you and maybe even touch your breasts or backside, depending on how packed the train is. Once, in a club, a man grabbed my groin. When I responded by throwing him back and screaming blue murder, a crowd formed and it was me that was hushed. The girls, they pulled me away, “it’s not worth it, leave it be, what can you do?”

Among women there is a general feeling of resignation, that they cannot fight patriarchy because it is too strong and too violent. It cannot change because that is how men are designed, they can’t help themselves. Except, Ramadan is a clear example of how whole communities have the ability to change and in a very short space of time. They can be less ‘rapey’. To me, Ramadan is an exercise in how patriarchy can be affected. And it makes me even angrier when I come to the realisation that patriarchy actively chooses not to change.

Imagine a UK where, for one month of the year, we own the streets. We can keep our earphones in, safe in the knowledge that our community will not allow any harm to come to us. Perpetrators would be dealt with, abusive behaviour simply not tolerated. It’d really be something, wouldn’t it? Imagine if we managed it all by ourselves and not just because God said so.

Many happy returns Ramadan, can’t wait for next year.

The First Obstacle To Equality

“I don’t want to say anything cos they won’t believe me.” A sentiment almost exclusively owned by women. Whether disclosing rape or thinking of telling our pals their boyfriends are womanising scum, we fear repercussions on speaking the truth. There was an incident in which we were victim, we were hurt physically and/or emotionally, we know what happened wasn’t right. Yet it’s instinctive to bottle up and withhold justice for ourselves because we know, society will simply not believe us. What makes us so unbelievable?

Bro code, an unspoken agreement between men that their woman is their property and brothers must not risk the woman coming between them. Yes, she is damn fine and tempting but don’t fall for her, instead, give that big man chest a primal thump and a knowing look; “bros before hoes”. They will believe each other before they believe you, in some misguided solidarity with the brotherhood irrespective of the offender’s track record. Whereas, a woman; her reputation, her previous record says everything there is to know about her morality.

Do women who have had sex always tell lies? Jane Clare Jones asks for the Guardian.

“In the patriarchal playbook, a woman’s moral virtue is synonymous with … well, her virtue. Good women are chaste and pure. And the others – those who express their sexuality in ways not sanctioned by church and state, those who are sexual at all – are quite simply not to be trusted. They seduce and entrap. They’re dirty and diseased. And, above all, they are deceitful and duplicitous. If they want to moralise, they should, as Rogozin told us in his second tweet, put their pants back on. And if they refuse, nothing they say is to be taken seriously or believed by anyone. A simple sexual slur, and, as if by magic, a woman’s word is instantly devalued, divested of authority and discredited.”

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/13/women-sex-lies-pussy-riot-madonna)

This makes sense. Rape victims, sexually assaulted against their will have actually had non-consensual sex. Despite the fact that they did not agree, potentially fighting off the perpetrator with every bit of strength they had, men will instantaneously believe they must have brought it upon themselves. “They love it really.” By the mere fact they own vaginas. If she wasn’t doing a good job of keeping her vagina shut, i.e. sewing it up so it’s not a “gaping pocket” or covering herself so that she looks just like any other Dalek, then she must have been “asking for it”. How patriarchy has twisted the way we view women, their bodies sexualised even when breastfeeding their infants. People are disgusted by the most natural act of them all. Because, well, it’s private, for a husband’s eyes only. Only on humans though, we are more than happy to guzzle back billions of gallons of other animal’s bodily secretions, quite happy to munch on the reproductive efforts of birds. Females, whichever species, are to be gorged on, to satisfy male bellies and sexual urges. It’s their only function. Do you know what human breast milk smells like?..Isn’t it time you found out? Why don’t we talk about it? Is that why breasts are so sexualised? Is it also why we push sugar laden formula milk on people who can’t afford it, because breast milk smells so.. womanly? It smells as it does so that visually impaired newborns can recognise their mothers. It’s NATURAL.

So they forcibly impregnate and take what they can from the female form. Rape it at will. A vessel, it carries through new life, but the womb is pure filth. Full of dirty blood, it smells. In many cultures, they shave off the downy soft hair on small babies, coming as it did from that evil place deep at the core of woman. She must take 40 days’ rest, unwashed and unmade; cleanse herself of all impurity when her time is up. Reintroduce her into society as a born again virgin, God put the baby in there, they have no idea how it came out. Vaginas, they smell bad too. Why don’t we ever talk about semen? It’s not an odourless, colourless gas we can’t see. Boys start off by teasing girls about their periods and how they can “smell when you’re on”. I don’t remember teasing the boys back just feeling utterly ashamed at being afflicted by this curse I thought was going to bypass me, being as I wasn’t like all the other girls…

Nuns. People believe them (unless they too are raped). Mothers who never remarry, sacrificing everything for their broods; they are exalted in my local community. They are however, also called ‘rundhi’ in Punjabi. ‘Rundhi’ means both ‘widower’ and ‘whore’. For a woman without a man (having already experienced sexual intercourse) must be like a whore?

Will you join me in an unspoken celebration of the female form? Not to ogle it and take from it what you want to satisfy your own desires but marvel at its resilience and adaptability, the ability to create life, sewing together all the parts that make a human… Magic, no? And what might it be like to be with a woman who is proud of her body and what it can do too? Not just reproductively but sexually. And if there were more men who knew and appreciated female sexuality, maybe then we’d be happier sharing the truth about when we were violated?

Our bodies are not shameful. Patriarchy is.

East Vs West

(via Facebook ”Anonymous ART of Revolution”)

Monotheism and the War on Women

“..Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you” Genesis 3:16

The Church of England is procrastinating whether women deserve equal promotion to senior clergy, initially proposing legislation that would mean “it would have enshrined in law the very prejudices against which supporters of female bishops have battled so long. It would, they say, create a two-tier system in which not only female bishops, but men who ordained women or who had themselves been ordained by women, would be considered second-rate.” Meanwhile in Afghanistan, Taliban tribesmen are using ‘Sharia’ law to execute women ‘accused’ of adultery. Religions the world over proclaim peace and equality whilst consistently using their beliefs to promote power and control of women.

As someone who was indoctrinated into an Abrahamic faith from a very young age, I have my issues with religion and whether it can ever be considered supportive of the feminist cause. God is masculine. His first human was male. His first female wasn’t designed exclusively of her own flesh and bone; she was created from one of man’s ribs. In another tradition, Eve is described as being the second wife of Adam. Lilith was God’s first female creation, an equal; she refused to ‘sleep or serve under him’ and was banished for knowing her own mind. This version of events is not in any of the holy books. When God is a man (and a blond blue eyed one, at that) and all the prophets, disciples and saints (more or less) are also men, as a woman you face one of two choices. Accept that man is wiser; pure and blessed, and revere him as the creator and administrator of the life force OR open your eyes, revel in your ability to create fullstop and accept you might have been a little duped by the men holding the pens who, 2-3000 years ago orchestrated the abomination that is the subjugation of women through ‘original sin’.

Several thousands of years of being so tempting to poor, pure man that he cannot control his own impulses and only because he is so gullible and naïve; when confronted with an apple, he cannot control the urge to take a bite. Eve might have presented the apple but she didn’t force Adam to eat it. How old is Adam? Small children and perpetrators of abuse often bemoan “they made me do it!” And apparently God, the highly strung sleep deprived parent took Adam’s word for it and grounded Eve! Loving and understanding and forgiving God gave Eve pain. What should be a joyful miracle of creation marred forever more by Eve’s seductive ways. Obviously I don’t really believe this. Evacuating a fully formed human out of your body takes a lot of effort and is going to be extremely painful. Not punishment but rather basic human physiology.

Allegorically, the Old Testament is anti-feminist. It describes to men the punishment they face if they are swayed by feminine wiles. Did Eve nag Adam into taking a bite? Eve is beguiled by the snake, all slithery and penis like. He tempts her and she tempts him. And then because they know it all, God banishes them from Heaven. Desire is bad. Temptation is bad. It’s all woman’s fault.

Without desire and temptation, one is pure and worthy of God’s affection. Except God made each and every one of us horny! Yet men from all over the world don’t seem to want to own their desires. It’s easier to blame the witches and wenches. What is the value of female life when the honour between two warriors of Allah is at stake?

Is this why religious institutions openly defend their rights to exclude their female believers from more involved roles? There is a belief that they will tempt the holy men of the clergy into debauchery by being so pervasive and goddamn sexy?

We recoil in horror and our politicians condemn the slaughter of a woman whose country they want to pillage for all their natural resources. We’re more ‘civilised’ here in the West, we exclude and eliminate women through proper bureaucratic channels. The centuries old witch trials of burning free thinking women at the stake are a distant memory for many.

If we are all equal in God’s eyes, why can’t they prove it?