-but words- what are they? Can they give
A trace of breath to thoughts yet while they live?
No- Passion, Feeling speak not- or in vain-
The tear for Grief, the groan must Speak for Pain.
Wordsworth ‘Harmodia’ II. 21-24
Why we still need feminism. This guy isn’t even a minority- people like this are absolutely everywhere.
While I was moaning to my lovely, patient boyfriend (becoming embarrassingly self-aware of the hole of self pity I’d dug myself that day), he said something that reminded me of something that I’d lost sight of:
“Mais, I’m not sure that feminism should be something that makes you so angry”
He didn’t mean the anger and injustice which, by necessity propels the movement. He didn’t mean the rage and sympathy felt when you learn for the first time about the results of the systematic oppression and abuse of women across the world (FGM, Child marriage, illiteracy gap, wage gap etc). Of course not this kind of anger is one of the fundamental pillars of feminism; righteous anger, just anger, necessitous anger. Sometimes we need other people to be angry for other people- the voiceless and the isolated- or how would anything ever be achieved?
He didn’t even mean the (equally valid) vexation and frustration felt on a local level; the kind provoked by day-to-day contact with LADs, sexist lecturers, white male politicians who make decisions about the bodies of the female populace, people who think feminism ‘doesn’t need to be an issue’, and countless other provocations that women encounter every, single, day.
No. He meant that these types of anger should not be allowed to DESCEND into a spiral of dejected resentment. There is nothing productive about this kind of displeasure. Nothing will change if we allow apathy to grow and rot within us.
Sometimes, yes, you look at all the things above, and it can be overwhelming. You see more absurd politicians banning women from serving lunch in the Hague, you see another rapist walking free and then to top it off your (male) friend dismisses women-only taster sessions at the campus gym as grossly sexist because ‘it’s not fair, you can’t ban me from the gym just because I’ve got a dick’- once again bringing everything back to the astonishing fact than men have penises. The natural response is to order a large pizza, run back to your hovel and lament at the god-damn institutionalized patriarchy and how everything is shit and will always be shit.
But, to do this is to ignore and undermine everything that feminists (that’s you too!) have changed for the better, and will change for the better in the future. It is okay to sometimes feel dejected and overwhelmed by the general world shiteness, but in the battle towards the deconstruction of the patriarchy, to give up is to let it win.
So, the rest of this post is going to be devoted to a few things that I’ve seen in just the past week that reflect the tanglible good work and progress that feminism is making across the world and hopefully re-jig a bit of motivational joy and sunshine.
First of all, although all of the articles that follow have a positive stream, I will just state a trigger warning for anyone affected by FGM.
Since I’ve been at university, FGM has been a matter of increasing relevance and interest. Before the new year, no one talked about FGM, there had been no prosecutions in the UK since it had been made illegal in 1985, and Doctors and teachers were woefully unprepared and uninformed to spot and deal with cases in their vicinity.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/25/michael-gove-schools-female-genital-mutilation
In February, thanks to the change.org petition begun by Fahma Mohamed, Micheal Gove pledged to write to and help prepare headteachers to deal with FGM in schools.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/21/fgm-female-genital-mutilation-men-charged
Then, one month later, the first convictions for those guilty of committing FGM in the UK were charged and sentenced. Such events, though slow in coming, mark the beginning of the end to this abuse of human rights and culture. After reading these articles, I spotted something even more positive:
The work of this woman and others like her, such as Dr Phoebe Abe, show how change can happen, even when something seems so awful, and so entrenched, that even making a chip on the surface of it can seem impossible.
(Follow this link for an insight into Dr Phoebe Abe’s extraordinary work- making a difference when no one else would http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3985708.ece)
The next article is from one of my favourite blogs feministwednesday.com, and again it shows in a very different that just when you think change cannot even be approached (have that one male ‘feminist’ friend in mind) is when the biggest differences happen.
http://feministwednesday.com/why-i-was-wrong-about-feminism/
This article is a couple of years old now, but I’ve put it in because I remember reading about this when the definition changed, and thinking it was incredible. I’d never thought of domestic violence in terms of emotional abuse though it seems obvious now, and I reckon that many women experiencing domestic violence hadn’t either, but now they have
So it’s half one in the morning and this turned out a little longer than I’d planned, hence the many linkages rather than erudite descriptions and reviews, but I hope all this lovely info has resulted in inspiration and motivation, and dispelled any lingering dejection that likes to accumulate on a Thursday afternoon when the weekend still seems far away. When you consider the sheer scale and scope of the institutionalized patriarchy, and consider just how many faucets of life it trickles it’s noxious blue glue into, it can seem overwhelmingly unfair, and unchangeable. But I think these articles (and the multitudes of blogs, twitters, and youtube channels that so many inspirational feminists run) show how, even when something seems immovable, change, if it’s wanted enough, is always possible.
Yay for feminism!
I didn’t even know this was a thing. Disgusting. I will never know what it’s like to be a woc living/working/ studying in a predominantly white environment, but if I can help create ANY awareness about the discrimination and racial stereotypes these women (and obvs men) fight on a daily basis, then I will. I have white privilege, a thing repugnant in itself, and I promise to try, though education and protest, to change mine and others mindsets away from the inherently racist culture in which we live. For we are inherently racist. As we have been conditioned to be submissive/dominant according to our sex, so we have been conditioned to view the world with whitewashed eyes where ‘light is better’ and white is ‘sophisticated’, and, as with any issue of discrimination, awareness is the key to change.
by Amna G Riaz
I often hear this term ‘acting white’ being thrown about amongst people of a black or minority ethnic background (I will use people of colour or PoC from now on). Or the term ‘bounty’ or ‘coconut’ is used to describe PoC who in their words ‘act white’. These terms are pretty self-explanatory with a little imagination or if you are a PoC and have been called one. But for those who are unaware of the word or meaning I will explain now. ‘Bounty’ is the name of the chocolate bar many of you are aware of, the chocolate representing the colours; therefore in street terms ‘Black/or Brown on the outside and white from the inside’. Same applies to the coconut. I’m being British centric here in the use of the term but of course I recognise that this…
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You could literally spend years studying time and how we measure it. Like, even the things that we think are of as ancient and everlasting are not. Even rocks. The oldest rock on Earth, found in the Canadian Shied is 4.031 ± 0.003 GA, one GA is a billion years, so that rock is over 4 billion years old. The oldest rock ever found on the surface of the earth is dated at 4.6 billion years old, and it comes from the moon. These are rocks from before our planet even formed. Galaxies and planets would have been and gone before our planet was even round. The oldest Galaxy that we have spotted is 30 bn light years away, and is 13.1 bn years old. THINK of the civilizations that may have evolved in that expanse of time!
The oldest religions surviving on earth are Vedic Brahmanism (which emerged into Hinduism) and Judaism (which is pretty much the same). Judaism can be traced to the Bronze Age, when God told Abraham to be a father of the people who were to be special to God, Vedic religion’s origins are so obscure and ancient that it cannot be traced back to one person or moment in time. I don’t understand the origins of religion and the relationship between ancient civilizations and the Bible. Why would God have waited until the Bronze Age to introduce himself to his Creation? Would he have created the Neolithic man and the other versions of pre-historic man first? What came first Eden or the Neanderthal? Where did Adam and Eve go before Homo-sapiens developed? Or are these pre-man species simply part of the animal Kingdom, and by the time Adam and Eve had the Fall they had just…. disappeared?? Why would God have allowed pre-historic notions of religion and sun-gods and animal-spirits to these obviously sentient beings? I don’t know anything about the origin of man and religion in the East, but I don’t know how you can look at two ancient, persevering, major world religions side by side, knowing that they were a product of human emotional and physical development, and say that one is the correct description of man and the other is not.
Whenever I begin to doubt my atheistic perspective I remember how traceable religious ideas are. I remember that the Bible is a book, and it can be interpreted. Almost every statement has a reason that it was written, every attitude a purpose, every word a very human author. When we read a work of fiction, we can question the author’s motive for writing it. Is it rhetoric? Catharsis? Are they trying to persuade us to think a certain way or is this a personal exploration of a theme? The Bible was written and complied by men for the preservation of Christianity and as propaganda to encourage the destruction of paganism and pagan values, or any other religion it encountered. It’s aim is to make the reader feel safe in the face of a dangerous natural world by providing answers about where we came from and where we are going. Until I read a sentence which cannot be interpreted in that way I can never see myself having a faith. Why is the statement that Jesus is the Son of God and he sacrificed himself for our sins a more reliable sentence than ‘do not have sex outside of marriage’ and ‘don’t trade in temples’ (paraphrasing here) when they are all written in the same book??
These ideas of God, Humanity, Heaven whatever are so small, there is something so much bigger and it is time, and eventually all these ideas will be swallowed up in it along with everything that we have ever said, thought, or made.
One by one Asher Monopoli threw all of her cosmetics out of the window. First Shampoo, conditioner, purple shampoo, toner with added teatree and aloe. Then regrettably some expensive moisturiser with exfoliating crystals. Then primer, glittery eyeshadow, plain eyeshadow, brown eyeliner, black eyeliner, normal Vaseline and red-tinted Vaseline all plummeted the three floors down from her apartment to land in front of bemused, but pleased, tweenage girls on their way home from school. She hesitated at the de-tangler, then shrugged and launched it out with the rest. If she couldn’t get a brush through her hair then she’d just cut it off in the morning.
When everything was gone excepting plain soap, some E45 and a tube of toothpaste, Asher closed her bathroom door, ran a bath, got in and cried. She was sick of her reflection. Always looking back at her, telling her whatever she didn’t want to hear that day: ‘Jesus you’re ugly, and you smell, clean your teeth.’ ‘What the fuck did you do to your eyebrows? Being a Cara Delevigne wannabe isn’t going to make him want to fuck you more.’ ‘Ohhh yeah, Spanx, those pretty little g-strings aren’t gonna cover up them belly rolls.’ Kneeling up in the bathwater, she leant forward so that her nose nearly touched the slightly cloudy water in an absurd posture of desperation, and deeply regretted everything.
It shall attempt to be funny and sad and probably be suitable for ages 13-16.
have you ever stood upon a precipice? Felt on the base of your back a gentle pressure,
which, at any moment may push your Body into that void and Purple pit
into which you strove to no admittance Into which
you slipped no glance and attempted only to
supress with the Weight of your thoughts
the Darkened tendrils that taunt you
off the edge but yet reaches out
Shadowed and unfamiliar arms
so you may hope that when
you fall the Clawed hands
may only Catch you.
Nobody’s gift,
immortalised In a glut of ink,
unwrapped so, it breathes –
unclothed it is art; unclothed, inhuman-
a symbol of freedom encased in charcoal
for any purpose but the one
she’d sat for.
This may meander.
Miley Cyrus made news this week with a carnival-like stage performance at the MTV Video Music Awards that included life-size teddy bears, flesh-colored underwear, and plenty of quivering brown buttocks. Almost immediately after the performance many black women challenged Cyrus’ appropriation of black dance (“twerking”). Many white feminists defended Cyrus’ right to be a sexual woman without being slut-shamed. Yet many others wondered why Cyrus’ sad attempt at twerking was news when the U.S. is planning military action in Syria.
I immediately thought of a summer I spent at UNC Chapel Hill. My partner at the time fancied himself a revolutionary born too late for all the good protests. At a Franklin Street pub one night we were the only black couple at a happy hour. It is one of those college places where concoctions of the bar’s finest bottom shelf liquor is served in huge fishbowls…
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This is going to be my all new grown-up blog for any complete articles/criticism/poems/responses I manage to trawl out. This, is tumblr mark two, a page for thinking and sharing without any of the procrastination or fanfiction. This space is mine, and, unless otherwise stated, I’m going to write everything that is written here!
A note on the header, Anecdote Of The Jar by Wallace Stevens is one of my favourite poems. It represents everything I like about literature and everything I try to achieve in my own writing. I don’t know what category or genre it falls into, or even what it really means. You could say the poem is significant for its socio-environmental messages- conveying the corrupting and all consuming nature of man, or, that it is significant for it’s sparse, minimalistic nature, parodying the Romantic’s attempts to fuse themselves with nature through art. I love it though, for its complete ability to convey VASTNESS. A sensation so juxtaposed with the modest nature of the poem that it is all the more remarkable for existing. You can almost sense the ‘slovenly wilderness’ being hemmed by the inconceivable greatness of a jar at once of the ground and “tall and of a port of air”. This imagery melds beautifully with the beat and dusty location of Tennessee, and you realise that the jar couldn’t be anywhere else. Further, the particular use of ‘dominion’ injects a hallowed sense of eternal vastness that can only come with religious experience, the effect being that the reader in this instance create a cathedral of space for the jar, elevating the vastness to something almost holy- or at least greater than us.The whole poem is a gorgeous example of imagism, where no unnecessary words are poured onto the page, but each semi-nonsensical sentence is carefully constructed to portray an exact image and sensation.
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee
deamalum 