Still I Rise

I have been seeing a therapist coming on 3 years. That’s how long I guess it takes to fix a breakdown. I’ve had cognitive behavioural therapy to unwrite the pathways in my head and process life in a way that means I won’t just stop breathing. I used to do that quite frequently and without realising. It’s only when my head would swim or I’d get hit with pangs of nausea that I’d notice I’d been sat holding my breath. The resultant sensations would make me want to self-harm and that was my life for a couple of years until the therapy started to take hold.

After the Mary Beard incident, I was really excited to see my therapist. I wanted to tell her how well I’d coped. Coping is something I’ve been learning to do. Years of being silenced, of being disbelieved left me unable to deal with the most basic of situations. Without therapy, the mistake I’d made would have finished me. I would not have been able to admit that I had done something wrong because the toxic shame that feels like internal bleeding would have rendered me incapable. Instead I would think of all the worthless valueless things I’d been called and would take it as confirmation that I must be those things. I wouldn’t have thought to apologise because I would have believed that my apology would be of no consequence and instead would be used against me as a sign of weakness. I really believe this is why Caitlin Moran finds it so impossible.

But I did apologise. Admittedly I experienced the initial gut churning realisation that I had made a monumental mistake but I also knew that I could overcome it. I understood that I could learn from this. I acknowledged we all make mistakes, sometimes catastrophic. It is how we deal with them that makes all the difference. I’m not infallible. I do my best to empathise and I want to understand everything, that’s why I have this need for transparency. So I steeled myself for the fallout. I hadn’t, however, banked on being made an example of when privilege politics gone wrong in a move orchestrated to discredit our progression as intersectional feminists striving for equality for all, not just the white cis commentariat.

I apologised to Mary Beard because I had offended HER. I wasn’t ‘called out’; I was jumped on by someone with their own nasty agenda. Weeks of being shown for the bigots they are and the first time once of us slips up, it’s time to take us all down. I didn’t wait for someone to point out my mistake, I realised it myself and did what I could to make amends. First and foremost, I immediately apologised on Twitter. I also blogged it. I started following Mary because I wanted to learn more about her, and she followed me too. I wanted to learn from this experience. I thought about it many times in the weeks to come, that old cringe that creeps up on you just as you’re about to fall asleep. But it also made me think of how I’ve always felt uncomfortable calling out racism, because of the way it can be turned back on us. In this instance I’d got it so very wrong. But it reminded me of the time a workmate would sing “there’s a brown girl in the room” whenever I’d walk through the door. Or the white ex-boyfriend who told me it didn’t matter how much white people allied themselves with non-whites, most of Britain is the Daily Mail variety. In doing so he’d further compounded the paranoia that brown people like me feel whenever we are in white company. It could be anyone.

Helen acknowledged that I had made an error due to ill health. She would have made this decision because, before the incident that day, I had actually been tweeting the pain I was in. I have a spinal injury and complex PTSD. There was no excuse for my false allegation which is why an apology was made in full. Understanding privilege does not give people the right say and do what they like but it does give people some idea as to WHY something happened. And it provides the platform for respectful discussion. It doesn’t take away the harm perpetrated which is why I wanted to ask for forgiveness. I didn’t do a Caitlin and block my critics, I listened. When the brain fog takes over I try not to succumb to it. I want to understand and compartmentalise what happened and so I take it apart. I realised then that Helen was going to make a show of me. But I also knew it was a very tenuous link she was making and that I was an easy target. This isn’t the first time I’ve been scapegoated. In fact, it is a part of my disorder!

To randomly come across a Storify that I was assured would be deleted was disheartening to say the least. I didn’t understand why it was back up. I thought it was underhanded and kicked myself for trusting someone who had clearly wanted to vilify me. Why was it still there? Only I couldn’t ask Helen because she’d already blocked me. Through dribs and drabs of incoherent tweeting, I saw that she was unhappy about a blog I’d written. I wracked my brain thinking about where I might have offended her. I’d mentioned Mary in a couple of blogs but no real link to Helen anywhere. And then, I saw someone mention the post “There’s no point in online feminism if it’s not intersectional”.

I don’t talk about her at all. In fact her name is tagged on the post but I don’t specifically mention her. I do take objection to the author of the Mean Girls post though. In a debunking of her outrageously misogynistic piece in where she admits to wanting to behave like teh menz, she wrote some very damaging things about the feminist movement. It is my right to debunk a piece which is given a platform like the New Statesman. Did Helen take offence because she was the one who published it? Whatever her reasons, how can she justify republishing something she said she would take down because of the circumstances of that particular day? Am I not allowed to have an opinion now? If, in the future, I am racially abused, can you all discredit me with this one example of when I got it wrong? I’m not super human; I will probably make more mistakes. But I will damn well try to understand why they happened and how I can prevent them from happening again.

Why aren’t we allowed to learn and grow from our mistakes? When is it ever ok for a woman in Helen’s position to falsify a set of events and present them in a way that will encourage people to abuse me? There’s a set of people eager to point out how stupid I am and also the ableist bunch who think I am lying about my health. Or if I’m not lying about my health, then I should refrain from having an opinion. Move over Harry Potter, I need your cupboard under the stairs.

This is why we’re doing the intersectional thing folks. We’re giving those people you wanna shut up a voice. I’ve had enough of silencing. That’s why I’m ok with Helen leaving her skewed version of events up. This incident has strengthened my belief in the cause more than ever before. These are the people we are fighting. They are not our allies. If they were any good at feminism the last time round, i.e. including women like my mother and trans women like my many wonderful friends, we wouldn’t still be in this shit heap of a patriarchy.

When the patriarchy attacks my female critics, they have an ally in me. When their allies attack me, they call me a ‘cunt’. My feminist critics make an example of me.

WE ARE NOT ON THE SAME SIDE.

Dredging up a 3 month old incident is not good journalism, it’s desperate.

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.

Shame of Spitalfields

Pride of Spitalfields is the name of the pub where Meow Meet – a gathering of like-minded individuals’ crazy about communism and cats – took place. There was a planned pub crawl but as the night went on, we settled and occupied the back quarter of the pub. Being with kindred spirits aside, I felt myself on full alert having clocked the various leering geezers dotted around the bar. Very early on in the evening a large skinhead attempted to woo me with his American accent all the while slurring how much he liked the cat on my dress, his eyes fixated on my breasts. After we’d done a good job of ignoring him, he sloped off.

I felt safe. A mixed group, I was friends with many of them and since we’d been out together and tackled patriarchy effectively before, I felt reassured I could just be. With these righteous men and women I felt free. Except patriarchy was more brazen that night. I caught the bald American through the corner of my eye, as he left his table to walk past me for the loo. He stroked my shoulders and back whilst I was sat on a stool between two of my friends. Shocked and utterly grossed out, I told the group what had just happened. When he came out of the toilet, one of my beautiful sisters pointed at him and said “how dare you touch her? Don’t fucking do it again?” Far from being embarrassed he’d been caught out, he leant in to her and asked her to slap him. In an attempt to distract him, I asked if he was American. When he replied yes, I said “figures”. Well, then he called me a “fucking cunt”. When the rest of our group stood up, he crawled off, mumbling expletives.

Shaken but proud and empowered, I told one of the barmaids what had happened. I was happy when she immediately said she would not serve him anymore. She also said he had been aggressive but they couldn’t throw them out because there were only three women behind the bar. However, I was just pleased that she’d acknowledged what had happened. Shortly after, the man and his friends left. One of them even apologised to one of the men in our group. We were able to enjoy a few more drinks before the second incident of the evening.

Sat on my stool at the side of the table, somebody grabbed the back of my neck and pushed me down. Alarming and distressing, yes, but I also have a spinal injury. I’ve been told never to attempt to touch my toes. I have to think of my every movement before I make it. I am having an MRI in three days. Livid, I shot up and shouted at the man. I can’t remember what I said; I was too frightened and angry. Other people in the bar started shouting at me, how it was funny it was always the same girl complaining, how our stools were in the way of the path to the toilet and my blood ran cold. I asked the older landlady whether they were saying I was making it up and she matter of factly nodded yes. I didn’t exactly want to burst into tears and start rolling off all the other times I hadn’t been believed but that’s what happened. Like a collage of all the other times I’d been violated but made to feel like the evil scheming temptress I must be. All of it poured out as the mascara gushed down my cheeks. I’d had a drink but the pain is always the same and I react in exactly the same way. Triggers, emotions so strong and so embedded because of careless caretakers and patriarchy; that I try and keep a lid on. For years, I slapped a smile on it until the corners of my mouth hurt so much from smiling, they’d quiver. Now, I cannot.

One of the things said to me by the patrons of that pub was that we should just accept it. Accept what? Being groped? Being leered at? My body does not belong to the public. It is mine and it is fragile. If anyone touches me without my consent, I will shout and scream blue murder.

When I finally calmed down I learnt the man who’d grabbed my neck had also groped one of our teenage comrades (her account). The guy was in his 50s. One of my friends hugged me as she said she’d challenged one of the younger barmaids as to whether she’d been harassed more than a coupla times in one evening and she said yes. The landlady responded there was little they could do with their customers of old. And there, patriarchy is atoned. Capitalism is what makes the misogo man’s world go round.

I can’t keep it in any more. And I know there are many others like me. I’m not going to get quieter as time goes on; I’m going to get louder. And if aggression is what they understand, I might have to do what is required of me.

I think if someone touches you without consent, you should be allowed to hurt them back without theirs. That seems a fair exchange.

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?

When will the media afford victims the dignity they deserve?

I’m struggling to understand why shit nugget Ken Barlow has made such a big splash in the news. Don’t get me wrong, his comments regarding victims of child sex abuse were repulsive and alarming when he suggested that the perpetrators ought to be ‘totally forgiven’ (anything you’d like to share, Ken?) but let’s just stop and back up a minute. He’s a soap actor. I’m not the biggest fan of Corrie but I dip in now and then when I need to zone out, perfect for a bit of mindless white noise. And that is where I want to see Ken, where I can laugh at him for his swelled sense of self and how he coulda been somebody. I don’t want to see him in a paper IRL, or care for his opinion much. I am not questioning why Ken thinks like this (that’s easy: patriarchy) but why the media allowed him the platform to say such a thing. And it’s not just him.

When the Savile news broke we were told by many journalists how they’d always had suspicions (and in some cases hard evidence) of the systematic abuse perpetrated by him. The world was rightfully enraged at these revelations and decent people asked the question why, if so many people were aware of what was going on, these incidents were never reported. One had hoped that this would be a tipping point and victims of historical abuse would feel safe and positively encouraged to finally tell their stories, victims would seek the justice they had been denied. But instead we were subjected to an onslaught of entitled slebs spouting seriously twisted and damaging rhetoric around the definition of a victim and the very concerning message that victims should just let it go. Jeremy Irons believes that young victims of sexual abuse have been encouraged to play the part of a victim, failing to take into account the profound physical/psychological effects non-consensual activity has on a person. He added that he loved touching people and that any self-respecting woman would tell him to fuck off if she minded. Has this walking/talking dildo any concept of ENTHUSIASTIC CONSENT? What kind of sadistic personality feels they can touch and take without EXPRESS CONSENT? Germy Irons makes my skin crawl, in that he thinks like a perpetrator. He seeks to pleasure himself without a second thought for the person he may be violating.

I would like to believe that the media is exposing these ball sacks for the sickos they are and by giving them the front page they are in fact condemning their words but it’s not just the luvvies. Journalists have these kinds of opinions too and worryingly, have the opportunity to express the same dangerous thoughts with more frequency. A while ago, Brendan O’Neill wrote a disparaging piece on victims who he believed were ‘making a spectacle of themselves’ by disclosing horrific abuse perpetrated against them by members of the Catholic Church. He also asked what the motivations for revealing past abuse could be. Erm… Closure? Victims often suffer post-traumatic stress decades after the incident. PTSD can be severely debilitating. By speaking through our experiences we can process the information in a safe way so that our bodies are not fighting against us when we are triggered. Why didn’t he know this? Or did he? What was his motivation for silencing victims in this way? What motivates the press to publish one misogynistic prick after the next on how it’s all the victim’s fault for being such a victim? This type of discussion renders people who have been subject to crime unwilling to identify as a victim because it leaves them vulnerable to ridicule and therefore in limbo, unable to reconcile the trauma with fact, doomed to feeling misplaced shame forever. How utterly inhumane.

We have a culture in this country of censuring victims and celebrating perpetrators. THAT is patriarchy. It is power and control. Patriarchy has to remind you at every opportunity that it is in control. When Ray Winstone (there’s another fella who should stick to his day job) made those bizarre comments conflating high taxes with ‘rape’ we were rightfully appalled. But it did make me question the trend for famous men to stick their oar in everywhere (so to speak) and the readiness of the press to publish them. I think it’s a tad optimistic to believe that these men are given a platform because they are being exposed for their outrageous claims. Instead it’s another method of control ensuring victims remain silent and we preserve the status quo. For victims, it is disempowering to be reminded constantly of what they have been made to believe by their perpetrators. That they are unworthy, they are impure. That somehow they brought it on themselves. When the Steubenville rapists were convicted, the media unremittingly reminded us of why we cannot report. Why we should not report. The language they used and the way in which the victim was vilified served as a reminder to us all that we cannot come out the other side of the process intact. Every other thing we do in this life will be scrutinised for evidence of whoredom, somehow all those other interactions contribute to the incident in question. It is never just the rapists fault, the victim is always culpable.

When I recently wrote to a journalist of a local newspaper asking him to revise his piece on a 14 year old victim of paedophilia where he described the act between them as sex, he was more concerned with the fact that I had tweeted his name with the hashtags #smashthepatriarchy and #rapeculture. He denied that he had chosen to word it in such a way and instead blamed the police press release he’d used to gather information. When I emailed back to say that I had deleted the ‘offending tweets’, and would he add a note to explain why the piece had been changed, I was left without a response. He was only concerned with his good name and suffice to say, I won’t be letting it go so easily next time.

What are we to do about our dangerously misogynistic, patriarchal press?

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.

From an angry feminist to the men up to no good (TW)

It’s a simple world where the good man dwells. He has ideas about the role he plays in society and he works hard to maintain the way he is perceived. He loves his children and brings breakfast to his wife’s bed. He talks to other men about their balls because men don’t talk enough about their balls so he seeks to redress this, and for all his endeavours, he expects a pat on the head. What’s the point in being so damn good if nobody notices it?

The Good Men Project falls short at its name. We all know a ‘good man’ or a ‘nice guy’ who is keen to point out their goodness and niceness from the first time they speak to you. They’re so good, EVERYONE takes advantage and they always finish last. They’re just waiting for the right woman to come along and it will have all been worth it. But the reality being what it is, she doesn’t exist to please him (and why the hell should she)? This is when good men go bad. Much like teh menz over at The Good Men Project, good men have an idea of what they need in their lives to enable the good man to flourish from within.

Good men like a good woman. Don’t be angry now wimminz, good men don’t like it when wimminz shout. Or have an opinion for that matter. Actually, a good woman is allowed an opinion because ‘naturally’ that opinion will echo that of the good man. In this way, the good man is free to work out his biceps whilst the good woman is happy to play wifey to her man. It’s not like it’s his fault 1 billion women across the world are experiencing violence or oppression because of their sex. And just because there are billions of men beating and humiliating those other women, doesn’t mean we have to be angry at the other billions of men who are not abusive, we just need to be better at seeking the good ones out. Oh wait, which ones were the good ones again?

To paraphrase: “I was really angry right, cos some men sexually abused me once but I got over that cos these other men do these lovely things for me”. Nondescript men, or decent people, do nice things for other people cos it’s being human. Many men have been nice to me but I tell you what, they didn’t make the pain of being violated more bearable.

Oh, thank you for my perfect birthday weekend nice man, it really made up for that time the mosque teacher slid his hand up my 9 year old thigh. All better now.

Gosh, those flowers are amazing! I don’t think I’m ever gonna think about the time I was gang raped EVER AGAIN. I can stop being angry now; I know not all men are the same. I love all teh menz!

Are you fucking kidding me?

The Good Men Project published this piece in all seriousness. As if sexual violence was the only thing spurring on billions of women to fight against the oppression they face, they found a poor soul with an all too familiar story and a warped sense of her role in a patriarchy, so much so she believes these minor gestures of love and affection (that are her RIGHT and a bare minimum of human decency) are somehow to be commended, and ran with it as their answer to the angry feminist threatening their male goodness.

Feminism exists for more reasons than a good man can fathom, evidently. As feminists we are fighting for bodily autonomy. We are angry for the demands put on our bodies, from puberty through to pregnancy we are controlled by the patriarchy. Our breasts aren’t big enough or they’re so big we tempt strange abusive men into having a go. Pubic hair is more often than not groomed to please the eye of the beholder; we have very little choice over how we look down there. Teh menz invented labiaplasty for those whose vulvas resemble that of a grown woman. I’m not a big fan of porn (ahem) but in the interests of research, I’ve seen the patriarchal ideal shift. Women’s bodies have changed drastically from the 70s to present day, in appearance and also the ways in which they are used. Newspapers and magazines bombard us with images of ridiculously tall white cis gendered wimminz with tans in ridiculous suggestive poses (legs akimbo/shaking a tail feather) and anyone falling short of this ideal just isn’t worthy. We are constantly fighting the battle for the right to choose what happens to our pregnant bodies. Some of cannot be pregnant, some of us will be forcibly impregnated and many more will break their backs working right up to the birth for fear they will lose their jobs in this patriarchal man’s world. And before Junior cracks his first smile, we’ll be leaking breast milk at work, crying in a toilet cubicle, torn between needing to be with our young and needing to work in order to survive. But wait, patriarchy has an answer! You need a manz to provide! He’ll be earning more than you for a start. Even if he beats you, cheats, uses your body at will. Know your place woman; pregnancy is vulnerability and teh menz like the sound of that. Good Men will even do the hoovering, cos they’re good like that. Just keep your gold stars handy and they might even do it again.

“I certainly had a lot of reasons to be angry. I was sexually assaulted”. That’s one reason, Good Men Project writer. Where were your words regarding the systematic control of women in the workplace, the streets and at home?

“The truth is that most men are not rapists.” That is not what my male friends tell me. But then I guess this depends on your definition of rape. Do you mean rape or ‘bad sexual etiquette’?

“Of course, I had a right to be angry at the men who hurt me. But I didn’t have a right to hold all men everywhere responsible for what happened to me. And by being angry, I was shutting down the possibility of love”. I have every right to hold patriarchy responsible for the ways in which it controls women. Unfortunately the patriarchy is mostly made up of men. I am angry but there is love in my life. It surrounds me and supports me. Anger at the patriarchy is one of my redeemable features and shock horror; there are men that get why! And totally dig it.

“For example, my brother steadfastly believed what happened to me and validated..” STOP. Were your experiences more or less validated because he is a man?

“And so did the mac and cheese he made me when I was sad, and the hours of Nintendo-playing we did when I was too down to do anything else.” This is why I love my girlfriends. I don’t need to thank them for providing me with distractions; it’s just how we roll. All of the time, and mostly with little significance.

“He turns up the heat when it’s cold. He walks the dog when I don’t want to go outside. He puts gas in the car.” He basically functions as humans do. Respect.

“Men love survivors of sexual violence every single day” Can you believe it? Have they no shame..? I’m sorry, but what exactly does this line mean?

“Most men are horrified by sexual violence and its impact on those they love.” Unless you’re asleep and it’s the second insertion of the day, you’ve already given consent and it can’t be violent if there weren’t any bruises.

“They want to help, but feel powerless – and afraid to say or do the wrong thing.” They feel this way because they are aware of how big patriarchy is and they know they can’t battle it alone. They stay silent because it’s too risky.

“If we want men to join the movement to end rape and sexual violence, we have to stop talking about all the things men do wrong, and start talking about all the things that men do right.” I know a few honest men who deserve genuine praise. Generally they read, retweet and shut the fuck up. They don’t dare to presume what women need in order to achieve equality. They are there to support us, not take over (take note you fucking good men). They have an appreciation of what thousands of years of subjugation has done to womankind. As our allies, they are happy for us to take the floor.

Unlike the good men and the nice guys who, under threat that the wimminz might take over (we’re a few hundred years off that sonny jim), use every vulnerable/disillusioned woman (who may or may not have listened to angry feminist folk music..)  they can find to undermine our crucial movement.

Feminism isn’t fun and sexy, it’s angry. Fighting oppression and for our basic rights does this to us.

May your anger over floweth and the good man/nice guy fadeth away. A-wo-men.