feminish

We can talk about ‘men objectifying women’ or ‘women’s oppression’. We can talk about how we’re hit, raped and exploited; how our work is never done, always underpaid and scarcely accorded the status it deserves.

We can talk about how we’re trapped in our clothes, magazines, make-up and heels; or how we’re framed into self-less, unthinking sex-bodies by films, ads and porn.

And my mind says,
Yes, that is the case. Yes, I see that - I have myself experienced these things. And yes, like you I am angry.

I am angry in my head and I am angry in my tummy - and I am angry with the people and systems I blame.

But do I want to be angry? Do I have to be?

It is true that anger will, quite probably, make me join a protest. And it will, almost certainly, fire me up into outspoken challenges of the status quo. It is my anger that drives me to read and think and struggle to understand why on earth our culture and values and behaviours are like this. And it is my outraged incredulity that, more often than not, sparks me off to post here on feminish.

But what if I want to do all these things without anger? What if I want to stand in the Market Square in Cambridge on a Saturday with the Women in Black, not in anger but in peace? What if I want to challenge the status quo in a simple chat at a party not through force of wit and argument and ridicule, but calm observations and gentle reasoning - in a way that makes us both feel better, wiser - more optimistic, even? What if I don’t want to be incredulous at the world - but instead accept it the way it is and try to understand, open-mindedly and deeply, why it is as it is - in the hope that if I can understand the world deeply, I can understand how it could be different.

Doesn’t my anger in fact stop me from listening and block my understanding? Reading with angry eyes and an angry mind I’m like a vulture, talons ready to seize on my prey: ‘I don’t believe it!’ I yelp and stab at the page. Outrageous. ‘I mean, I mean, I mean,’ I continue, stuttering with fury, ‘How is this possible?!’. Or, if the words are feminist ones, my mind offers its own running commentary: Exactly!, Precisely!, It’s dreadful! - an internal monologue that quite quickly becomes The bastards!, What an arsehole!, Men, God Damn Them!: I am soon thinking thoughts I don’t want to think.

I feel worse when I am angry. I feel sick and I feel aggressive: my thoughts are violent and so are my words.

But it is one thing for the world to be bad, oppressive, exploiting and violent - and quite another for me to be angry and violent in myself. My anger is not inevitable. It may come up by force of habit, it may be instinctive, even, but it is not a necessary consequence of the suffering that is happening out there.

There’s a part of me that does not want to be angry - a part that is certain I can be wiser and clearer and more useful without fury in my belly and outrage in my head. But I also know that anger has brought me to this place of feminish thoughts - it continues to wake me up and spur me on. It’s not easy to let it go.

But, if I want to work for the happiness (the non-suffering, non-exploitation, non-objectification) of others (in this case, women), then I’m sure I need as much calm happiness in myself as I can possibly muster.

So, I’m going to try to give anger up.

Easier said than done, perhaps?

Watch this space…