It’s been quite a week to be a woman. Monday: International Women’s Day. Tuesday: the mainstream and social media hatefest when Meghan the Duchess of Sussex speaks about her experiences. Wednesday: Sarah Everard’s body is found. Thursday: Sarah is blamed for her murder, because she was out of her home in the evening. Friday: a serving police officer is charged with her murder. Saturday: women taking candles and flowers to hold a vigil for Sarah are kettled, hauled off a bandstand and arrested. Sunday: Mother’s Day.
Women have been sharing their stories of harassment, sexual assault, stalking and male violence on various social media sites. It’s been gut wrenching to read. The #NotAllMen hashtag has been trending, echoing the All Lives Matter method of dismissing the fears and anger of a brutalised group. It’s 2021. Women are still being expected to limit and modify their lives to avoid being raped and murdered; and blamed if they don’t. Male football fans are allowed to celebrate in public without enforcement of Covid rules; women commemorating a murder are not. The Health Minister says nurses will accept a below inflation pay increase because “husbands or partners” will bring in a wage. The Chancellor of the Exchequer thanks “mums” for juggling work with home school, and we don’t get the impression that he is doing this to challenge the unequal domestic burden women still disproportionately carry in the majority of homes.
My feminism becomes angrier and more entrenched as I grow older – and with age, more irrelevant and invisible in debate. I am afraid for my daughters, growing up and becoming independent in this society, and I am angry that I have to fear for them. I won’t change the world by recording my rants in a blog form, but it may give me some emotional release, as well as giving my partner a break from the receiving end. In a world where women’s voices are systematically silenced, and we are still expected to take a back seat to men who are making such a pig’s ear of running things, writing can feel like a radical act. This is the start.
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