cracking the back of the darkness
to spill out the anger, spill out the secrets, leech out the poison of a life lived across boundaries borders blood lines, languages, of a life lived in war zones, in waste lands

giving my self space to speak and the silence to think, finding ways to restructure and rebuild

I really dont want to talk about the weekend yet so i wont

i had a really nice time wednesday night tho, I went to a birthday thing for one of my feminist friends and it really reinvigorated and rebalanced me,

So anyway I've been thinking about this for a while and wanted to hash it out here before I wrote about it on my political blog.

So i started reading theology and decided that for this year I would only read theology by women because I've had theology by men forced on me my whole life and its much easier to access and is really the default position, because men are still seen as the default position

So i was thinking about that and I think I will expand that to all areas of my life, all my books that I read this year will be written by women, there is still to much of a divide in the number of women that get published compared to the number of men, especially in the things that I love to read (geeky lit crit theory, political analysis and poetry) and people do still assume that male writers are both more knowledgeable and more objective than women writers.

Also all the music I listen to and the gigs I go to will be by women performers, all the films I watch will be directed by women.

I wish i could take that further and have all the sources of news I access to be owned and controlled by women. But there are so few sources for this that if i want to know what is going on in the world then I need to keep an eye on mainstream news media

doing this is a a way of supporting women, the more people that listen to and read womens words the more space women will have to say their words. and also for myself it is a way of affirming my own worth as a women, that if other womens voices are worth listening to then so is mine,

I don't even know how easy I will find this,some of my favorite poetry is written by men, some of my favorite singer/songwriters are male, but if i just say that and leave it there there seems to be an assumption that women can't be as good as my favorite male poets or my favorite male singer/songwriters.

1)We hate men
2)we think all men are rapists
3)we think women are worth more than men
4)we sit around whining and not trying to make things better for ourselves or other women
5)focusing on women and wanting women only spaces makes us sexist
6)if we talk about oppression we have been on the receiving end of as women we are "tarring all men with the same brush" or "bashing men" or "reveling in our victim status"
7)were anti sex

for me feminism is about ending opresion, all opression, it is about giving women a voice, education, saftey,political power, equal pay,reproductive choice, bodily autonomy,it is about learning and teaching that women matter, it is working for the right of women everywhere to have independance and self determination.

It is about giving us a space to talk about rape, abuse and violence and put it in a political and social context not just a personal one.

It is about supporting other women and bulding strong powerfull relationships that matter.

I liked this film, it was good and solid and I like Hillary swank, but it wasn't really a great film, I would watch it again but it didn't really excite me. It did contain rather too many cliches, such as the "white trash"/working class person who beats the odds and succeeds through sheer grit and holding to a dream, the woman who wants to succeed in a mans world and the only person who can possibly help her do that is a cynical embittered taciturn old man, and the wise black man character.

the relationship between the two characters was kind of a cliche as well, being a substitute/surrogate father daughter relationship, but maybe it was more an archetype than a cliche and I personaly got quite a lot out of it.

It did make me think anyway. I don't really understand boxing, I don't understand why people want to do it, to deliberately hurt other people and lay themselves open to being hurt, and I'm not all "well women should be able to box too!" because I don't really think anyone should be boxing. My feminism is wrapped up with pacifism and for the same reason I don't think the feminist movement should be fighting for a woman's right to fight on the front line but should be fighting for a world where nobody has to be on the front line

anyway the end of the film really made me think a lot
( Cut for spoilers )

from http://www.abuseofpower.info/WomansCreed.htm


We are female human beings poised on the edge of the new millennium. We are the majority of our species, yet we have dwelt in the shadows. We are the invisible, the illiterate, the laborers, the refugees, the poor.

And we vow: No more.

We are the women who hunger—for rice, home, freedom, each other, ourselves.

We are the women who thirst—for clean water and laughter, literacy, love.

We have existed at all times, in every society. We have survived femicide. We have rebelled—and left clues.

We are continuity, weaving future from past, logic with lyric.

We are the women who stand in our sense, and shout Yes.

We are the women who wear broken bones, voices, minds, hearts—but we are the women who dare whisper No.

We are the women whose souls no fundamentalist cage can contain.

We are the women who refuse to permit the sowing of death in our gardens, air, rivers, seas.

We are each precious, unique, necessary. We are strengthened and blessed and relieved at not having to be all the same. We are the daughters of longing. We are the mothers in labor to birth the politics of the 21st century.

We are the women men warned us about.

We are the women who know that all issues are ours, who will reclaim our wisdom, reinvent our tomorrow, question and redefine everything, including power.

We have worked now for decades to name the details of our need, rage, hope, vision. We have broken our silence, exhausted our patience. We are weary of listing refrains on our suffering—to entertain or be simply ignored. We are done with vague words and real waiting; famishing for action, dignity, joy. We intend to do more than merely endure and survive.

They have tried to deny us, define us, defuse us, denounce us; to jail, enslave, exile, gas, rape, beat, burn, bury—and bore us. Yet nothing, not even the offer to save their failed system, can grasp us.

For thousands of years, women have had responsibility without power—while men have had power without responsibility. We offer those men who risk being brothers a balance, a future, a hand. But with or without them, we will go on.

For we are the Old Ones, the New Breed, the Natives who came first but lasted, indigenous to an utterly different dimension. We are the girlchild in Zambia, the grandmother in Burma, the woman in El Salvador and Afghanistan, Finland and Fiji. We are whale-song and rainforest; the depth-wave rising huge to shatter glass power on the shore; the lost and despised who, weeping, stagger into the light.

All this we are. We are intensity, energy, the people speaking—who no longer will wait and who cannot be stopped.

We are poised on the edge of the millennium—ruin behind us, no map before us, the taste of fear sharp on our tongues.

Yet we will leap.

The exercise of imagining is an act of creation.

The act of creation is an exercise of will.

All this is political. And possible.

Bread. A clean sky. Active peace. A woman's voice singing somewhere, melody drifting like smoke from the cookfires. The army disbanded, the harvest abundant. The wound healed, the child wanted, the prisoner freed, the body's integrity honored, the lover returned. The magical skill that reads marks into meaning. The labor equal, fair, and valued. Delight in the challenge for consensus to solve problems. No hand raised in any gesture but greeting. Secure interiors—of heart, home, land—so firm as to make secure borders irrelevant at last. And everywhere laughter, care, celebration, dancing, contentment. A humble, early paradise, in the now.

We will make it real, make it our own, make policy, history, peace, make it available, make mischief, a difference, love, the connection, the miracle, ready.

Believe it.

We are the women who will transform the world.

so I tend to be over ernest, and everything i do/read/watch/listen to has to be important, has to matter has to teach me something or help someone else and I was thinking about this and I was thinking what book i wanted to read and i just thought

fuck it. What I really want to read in these dark days is watership down,

I come back to that book over and over again, such a complex mixture of invented myth and with the air of early twentieth century anthropological study along with the great hero archetype. And i know that landscape, i know it to my bones, geographically the setting is both very similar and very close in in distance, in the general scheme of things, to the place I grew up, so I know that, chalk and flint, steep low slung hills and farmland, winding lanes, copses and spinneys, the river Test. The landscape we grow up in shapes our psyche, is part of who we are and that landscape is a part of me.

So anyway my copy of Watership down, is so old the pages are falling out, so i bought a new copy with the gift token interfaceleader sent me for christmas and I'm really looking forward to it being delivered

is to love and be loved

so I was listening to Displaced and November by azure ray by azure ray because they are beautiful and the lyrics really calm me when I'm stressed about my depression

( relevant lyrics )

and they remind me of the second year of uni, when I was so sick with depression that stringing a sentence together was a mammoth effort and walking across a room was like climbing a mountain, and it was a horrible awfull time, but what those songs bring back to me was how much I was loved how much love and support and care was given to me by six beautiful people who, not incidentally are the only six people from uni that i still have regular contact with and consider an important part of my life. so I was thinking how lucky I am to have awesome people in my life even though I am difficult and sometimes really hard work, and then I was reading my friends list and I saw one of those people who supported me when I was that sick had writen this and I thought it was just awesome it totally reminds me of how I feel when things are good, an that I can build my life around myself, It reminds me of the feeling I get when the depression clears and I feel strong and focused and in love with the world

Remember you can stand-up and walk out

i forget this, I forget this too often, it isn't that I want to walk out, but the flip side of knowing you can walk out but you don't is that you choose to be there, and I choose to be here, and I need to be more proactive in choosing how my life works and what I want to happen in it.

This is your life, remember, remember what you warned yourself against.

this is something I have forgotten to do of late. I will not bow to the gods of mediocrity or worship at the alter of the status quo or as Runrig say trade all that fire of living,
For the fickle and the bland

I need to remember or relearn how to live honestly, vibrantly and passionately


yo Suzie, love you

I dont live my life half as well as i should, i procrastinate, i flit, i try and do four things at once, I spend far too much time on line, i dont read as much as I should or as much as I used to, i dont make myself concentrate properly. I dont engage with my friends as much as I should

and I'm thinking this is a dumb way to live my life, with just a little more efort, concentration and streamlining I could get so much more from my life.

I'm going to start really engaing with everything that I do, really be in the experience and try not to have my head somewhere else, just do one thing at a time, not say, flick between the tv and the internet, or even not flick between browser windows, obviously doing more than one thing at once is a good thing such as listening to the radio while tidying or reading in the bath but generaly I want to retrain my brain to concentrate in the moment for significant periods of time. Partly this means if i'm going to do something I should try to do it well, thouroughly and for at least an hour,

I'm going to try and spend less time on line because I actualy think this will mean I get more out of my internet experience. I seem to have collected an awesome eljay friends list and I really want to interact with them rather than flicking through pointess internet stuff. Obvioulsy spending more time doing stuff means I will blog more often as well because I will have more to talk about.

Every day I am going to turn my net conection of at five, this means I wont be distracted when I am writing, bloging or writing emails, all which I will then send/post up the next day. It also means I will read more.I guess sometimes i might have it on so I can listen to radio playback but i wont use it to accses the net otherwise.

So in I'm chairing the next feminist discussion meeting and the title is "feminist activism" Partly because there is a real issue in the group that while people turn up to the discussion meetings very few are actually involved in the activism we do and we think its a real issue.

I personally think that as society has become more consumerist and more individual people pick labels for themselves and don't work out what that actually means or what that actually entails. To me "feminist" is not an identity label, it is a principled political position that entails working for change, that entails working with others and actually doing stuff. Talking about it is not the end point its the beginning point. The discussion groups are good and important but if that is all people do I'm not sure they can call themselves feminists.

I'm not really sure how to structure it but I'm going to put forward these questions as discussion points and see what that kick starts

What is feminist activism?
What is the relationship between feminist friendships and activism?
What can we learn about activism from older feminists?
Difference between group activism and individual activism?
How do we radicalise ourselves and others into activism?
What is the place of activism within feminism?

I know that feminist activism isn't just what happens in feminist spaces, I know that. I consider the fact that I'm setting up a women only depression support group as feminist activism and raising strong female children and non sexist/misogynistic male children is feminist activism. And empowering female students. And supporting women, emotionally, practically, financially, politically all this is activism I think, so I think that all feminists do do some sort of activism but I think what we are more concerned about is practical activism that the group can do together.

I also think that if you do activism together, if you know you have a group of women supporting you with the big things then it makes the piecemeal individual activism easier to do I think. I know certainly I am more focused on feminism in my personal life if I have a group of women I can talk about feminism with and who I know are actively trying to change things.


I'm going to use
The womans timeline to illustrate that things change when activism happens.

and

this

and

this,
to start discussions

if anyone can suggest some more links on the relationship between feminism and activism that would be cool.

Something that really, really pisses me off is men expecting women to educate them on feminism and at the same time behaving like they are doing us a favour or its some great benevolent act on their part that they are interested.

I was sorting the emails in the feminist group email account the other day and one of the emails was from a male student basically wanting to come a long and take notes on the group, and interview "key members" for an assignment he was doing.

he prefaced this by saying i hold pro feminism views, although my knowledge is quite hazy at best, how can you hold pro feminist views if your knowledge of feminism is hazy exactly? How can you know feminism (or any political movement) is something you want to support until you know what it is?

Anyway I told him no, he couldn't come and take notes, because we were not guinea pigs, members may very well feel uncomfortable and guarded in what they say if they knew it was going to be written up by someone outside the group, it wasn't our job to educate men about feminism and we were an egalitarian group so we didn't have "Key members"

And he sent me this really rude passive aggressive email in reply, clearly pissed off that we wouldn't cater to his needs. He told me I hadn't understood what he was asking when I clearly had. Ive noticed that the passive aggressive thing is really common as well, it happens a lot online when men post to feminist blogs asking completely inane questions which are totally googleable and then the female posters are like "go find out for yourself" and the men say something like "I was only trying to learn, you should be pleased/grateful I'm interested" Like what does he want a cookie?


Its not that I think men shouldn't be involved in feminism, I think they should, our group is open to men, I just think it is not our job to educate them on what feminism is, there are plenty of resources both online and in book form that they can find to educate themselves.

It has always been women's job to cater to men's need and wants and I'm dammed if I'm going to let that happen in feminist spaces.

I dont want to be disabled, I dont want to have to live with joint pain, I dont want to have to plan my day depending on how far i can walk. I dont know what this is, probably its arthritis, but whatever it is it doesnt mater because it hurts and it isnt going to stop hurting, I have had leg pain for three years now and it gets steadily worse. soon enough standing still for any amount of time at all is going to be an imposibility which means I will have to take my crutches everywhere,all the time which is tiring and a pain in the arse because the world isnt designed for people with crutches

1)Rupert Giles has no friends because he is Buffy's fantasy father figure and therefore the viewers

6)the act of rape is a declaration of war by the rapist

2)all of us, however ethically we are trying to live, buy in and sell out on some levels and we should be compassionate about that while realising it is not ideal

4)men who expect women to educate them on feminism irritate the fuck out of me, there are plenty of resources around that they can use to educate themselves with

5)it seems that everyone who RPS in WOW has a character who's an orphan?

6)Internet flame wars are hilarious! I mean really. grow up and discus things in a coherent manner or don't expect to be taken seriously

7)the reason people are threatened by the notion of bisexuality is because it is assumed to be a fluid identity (which it actually isn't, or at least often isn't) and society is designed to work with binaries (which may actually go some way to explaining transphobia as well but i don't know so much about that)


8) Sometimes a body in pain belongs more to the psyche it encloses than one that doesn't hurt.

9)until you loose a form of privilege you will never really get how much more you benefit from it than those who don't have it

I try to stay away from things that are strongly americentric because I really resent the fact that north America as seen as the default position and other places are either not thought about or are tacked on as an unimportant footnote/afterthought but unfortunately American politics does effect the rest of the world and unfortunately for me the people in my government are U.S. government lackeys so:

Ron Paul is a very very scary person and hes running for US president

hes anti imigration and anti refugees

Hes anti welfare

Hes anti-choice

wait did we just get him on all three strikes why yes we did, hes racist classist and misogynistic! And what do you bet we can add homophobia to that little list as well?

but that's not all folks! oh no

hes also anti gun control

To be fair he was anti the war in Iraq but not because it was fundamentally wrong and imperialistic but because it was damaging for America.

Please dont vote for him and ask your friends not to also

So I'm having a long convoluted email conversation with a couple of people about a lot of different bits and pieces and one of them said

I also have issues about the word “rape”, I find it horribly objectifying since it refers to devaluing of property rather than assault,

And I kind of get where shes coming from but I think I disagree, I mean yes when It became a crime to have sex with a woman by force that was because it was seen as a crime of theft that something was being stolen from a father or a husband but language changes and society changes and i think on several levels not using the word rape would be problematic

firstly I do think rape is a kind of theft but theft from the woman, theft of her sense of bodily integrity, of her trust in the world, of her assumption that she is safe, of her peace of mind, and often of her mental wellness. Many women also experience rape as the actual theft of the body, they become detached from their bodies, think of it as something that no longer belongs to them.

But also according to The online etymology dictionary the word rape derives from c.1386, "seize prey, take by force," from Anglo-Fr. raper, O.Fr. raper "to seize, abduct," a legal term, from L. rapere "seize, carry off by force, abduct" which isn't really the same thing as theft, it suggests kidnap more than steal I would say.

Also what word do we use if we don't use rape? I don't think the term "sexual assault " cuts it really because people do not think of forced penetrative sex when that term is used I don't think. And I do think being raped is worse that being other wise sexually assaulted.

Also for many women who have been raped the word itself is incredibly powerful and difficult to say, difficult to claim as an experience and when they can say the word "rape" or say "I was aped" or say "he raped me" that is often the point that healing can begin.

So yesterday we were supposed to be going to see a bollywood musical thing which I was quite looking forward to in a kind of "well I've never done this before, I wonder if I will like it kind of way," but it was canceled because the star was sick which we were quite disappointed about. But we went to see Elizabeth:the golden age instead and oh my god it was amazing in every way possible, cinematography, lighting, acting, scripts. I loved it. It was really talky which I guess a lot of people wouldn't like but I love that, Cate Blanchett is awesome and Clive Owen, Oh my god is he sexy beautiful as Walter Raleigh or what? (I thought he was sexy in Children of men but that film really irritated me and he reminded me scarily of a friend I used to have)

I really liked the subtlety of the relationships in the film (I'm not convinced it was at all historically accurate but the subtlety and the acting out of the complex relationships was excellent)

Something that did really piss me off yesterday was that my legs really hurt so I had to take my crutches and no one gave me their seat on the train I had to stand, which I thought was kind of selfish and rude. Staying ballanced on a train while using crutches is a pain in the arse, Paul stood behind me to steady me but he often wont be there, I guess i just need to get braver about asking people to give me a seat.