A gender diversity audit of the New Statesman's home page

Disclaimer this post is not an attack on the New Statesman as i v enjoy that site & its coverage of feminist issues. It was prompted by a reader's comment about how it over-represents women's issues, which I also read as over representing women's voices and experiences.

Last week, some of you may know that the New Statesman dedicated some time to talking about men.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/staggers/2012/05/lets-talk-about-men

Unfortunately interesting articles about masculinity and men's roles were hijacked in the comments by MRA types. But it was one comment in particular on the linked article above that caught my eye. It was from one Robert Taggart and said:

'This all makes an interesting change...
From talking about Women and their interminable 'problems' !'

Hmm, I thought. Does the New Statesman really spend all that much time talking about women and our interminable problems? And what are our interminable problems? Male violence against women and girls? Gendered nature of poverty? Cultural femicide? I mean, they're quite serious problems and although they get an airing on the New Statesman I wouldn't say the content was overwhelmingly biased to these issues.

But you know me - never one to trust a hunch. So I've spent a productive evening going through every single article featured on the New Statesman home page just to see how much space is given to women, and our interminable problems.

This isn't an attack on the New Statesman. It was just prompted by that comment. I read the website a lot and love the blogs.

Here are a few points to understand about my quick audit.

I came up with the following categories to measure gender diversity:

About 'women's problems' written by woman/women
About women's problems wrtten by man/men
About 'men's problems' writen my women/woman
About men's problems written by man/men
About non gendered issues, written by man/men
About non gendered issues, written by woman/women
About non gendered issues but focus is on man/men
About non gendered issues but focus is on woman/women
Article is illustrated by man/men
Article is illustrated by women/woman
Article is not illustrated
Article quotes men/man
Article quotes women/woman
Article is illustrated by mix of people or no people
Men and women are quoted in the article
There are no quotes in the article
The article doesn't focus on men or women/man or woman
No named author
No named quotes

I then looked at every article featured on the New Statesman home page at 7pm on Tuesday 29th May. If an article was linked to twice I only counted it once. There may be some errors where I forgot to count a 'no quotes' or 'no illustration'. Easy to miss!

I measured my categories as follows:

In the women's problems section I included: sex industry, representation of women, VAWG, women's poverty, child care, gender pay gap, feminism, women in conflict, women's health

In the men's problems section I included: masculinity, men's rights, health, men's unemployment, paternal rights, violence against men, representation of men

I counted as non gendered issues: economy, Leveson, global warming, Jewish history, UK politics, global politics, reviews, crime, migration issues, science and tech, business news,media, world affairs.

People who the article could be focusing on included: politicians, media types, judges, leaders, film directors, writers, scientists, business leaders, musician or other cultural types, interviewee who is a member of the public

So! What were the results?

Well, unsurprisingly, Robert Taggart's belief that the New Statesman talks too much about women wasn't true. Although none of the home page articles actually talked about men's problems specifically, men were dominant as writers, as quoted sources, as topic of the article and most articles were illustrated by men. Of the few articles illustrated by women one of them was a group of Playboy bunnies. No men were pictured in a sexualised manner needless to say!

THE RESULTS!!

About 'women's problems' written by woman/women                2     
About women's problems wrtten by man/men                           0
About 'men's problems' writen my women/woman                    0
About men's problems written by man/men                               0
About non gendered issues, written by man/men                      43     
About non gendered issues, written by woman/women            21     
About non gendered issues but focus is on man/men               38     
About non gendered issues but focus is on woman/women       9     
Article is illustrated by man/men                                             31     
Article is illustrated by women/woman                                   10     
Article is not illustrated                                                           4     
Article quotes men/man                                                        35     
Article quotes women/woman                                               11     
Article is illustrated by mix of people or no people                 25     
Men and women are quoted in the article                                1     
There are no quotes in the article                                           12     
The article doesn't focus on men or women/man or woman    19     
No named author                                                                    9     
No named quotes                                                                   5    

As you can see, over twice the number of articles are written by men. Nearly four times the number of articles focus on men rather than women. Men are illustrated over 3 times more than women. And the same number applies to quotes.

Proving that, on this day at least, men are being well represented by the New Statesman (and all the other news outlets) and women's problems, voices, faces and stories are, where they normally are - i.e. not very present.

Robert Taggart - take note.

Diamonds, dresses....but no directors?

There’s something very 1950s and 1960s about the coverage of the Cannes Film Festival this year. Whilst the men get down to the serious business of directing the films nominated for the awards, the women are busy looking gorgeous in expensive dresses and diamonds. Of course, there’s nothing new or strange in this attention to the dresses of the rich and famous – I for one am not immune to the appeal of these gorgeous frock concoctions. But I feel there is something retrogressive when in 2012 we are still looking at women in dresses, and listening to men about their directorial qualities. 

This year’s Cannes Film Awards have failed to nominate any women directors for an award (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/may/20/cannes-women-andrea-arnold-row?newsfeed=true). Meanwhile, a man who anally raped a child and subsequently has avoided justice for nearly 40 years is feted, celebrated and called a genius for what is basically an ad for Prada (http://www.guardian.co.uk/fashion/fashion-blog/2012/may/22/prada-roman-polanski-cannes?newsfeed=true). The lack of women represented was of course reflected in the Oscar director list – another awards ceremony that has managed to award eight gongs to said child rapist whilst only finding one in its collection to give to a woman director. 

Why is there still this blatant inequality when it comes to the representation of women in the film world? In fact, in the arts world full stop? The typical response to this question is the usual drone about how the films nominated for these awards are chosen on merit and that positive discrimination is a bad thing. But that isn’t what we’re arguing. It’s a total straw man to any debate on representation. No-one wants positive discrimination. Of course we want films to be judged on how good they are. We’re not stupid. 

But something is going wrong. The industry is steeped in inequality that means a fair playing field of what is ‘good’ and ‘worthy of merit’, and what isn’t, simply doesn’t exist. Merit is gendered. Greatness is gendered. The canon is gendered. Because despite the amount of good women-led films out there, none of them are considered to have ‘merit’ by what continues to be the male-dominated industry that is so sunnily encapsulated by Cannes.

In 65 years of Cannes, Jane Campion is the only woman to receive the Palme D’Or. Are men so much better at making films that this inequality makes sense? I don’t think so. 

Where do we start to unpick the gender bias that means women are so badly represented by an industry that millions of us love, and millions of us fund? I think we can begin with the fact that the film industry is so male-dominated. I believe that this leads to a climate where films that get the green light reflect male stories and male interests. A prejudice against women creators persists, the belief that whilst men are equipped to tell women’s stories (e.g. D H Lawrence in books, Tate Taylor – director of The Help – in films), women will always and only tell women’s stories. In English literature, for example, VS Naipul recently claimed that he is a better writer than all women writers ever – including Jane Austen – because men write about universal things, and women just write about the petty and domestic (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/02/vs-naipaul-jane-austen-women-writers - having read A House for Mr Biswas I disagree!). 

But this pigeon-holing of women’s creativity is nonsense. And of course, the film industry itself knows this is nonsense. Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker was a man’s story about men, directed by a woman. And it’s brilliant. But this belief that women are ‘the other’, whilst men are universal is persistent and does, I believe, lead the industry to distrust women’s stories and women’s narratives. And this is something reflected across our entire culture, where ‘human’ is male and therefore the human experience is male. 

This prejudice neatly fits into another belief – that women are placidly happy to watch stories about men, where men do all the talking and all the action, whilst the ladies stay shh or are reflectors of the men’s ego. Meanwhile, the theory goes, men aren’t happy to watch films where we women get to have a go at speaking and having conversations. And because the industry’s assumed audience is male, and because male is seen as the universal, men’s films and men’s stories get made and get told. It’s the same again with literature – this belief that men won’t read books by women whereas women will read books by everyone. 

It’s such utter nonsense. 

Because as we well know, when a film does tell women’s stories or reflect women’s interests, it explodes and does well. Mamma Mia is one of the top earning films ever. I’ve not met anyone – man or woman – who doesn’t love Bridesmaids. 

And, as I say above, women are very good at telling men-focused stories. Wolf Hall? The Hurt Locker? Your gender doesn’t preclude you from being able to tell a story in another gender’s voice. But we live with this belief that it does…well, for women anyway. 

A further irritant is that even if it was true, and women’s stories were always concerned with ‘women-y things’, then so what? It shouldn’t matter, and the only reason it does matter is because the women’s experience is seen as ‘less’. I mean – it isn’t like male creators have a huge gamut of stories either. Coming of age here, war there, explosion-car-chase-monster over here. It is because we value men’s stories and culture more than women’s that we create this false dichotomy between what has ‘merit’ and what is ‘petty’ or small. 

The questions lie in how we decide what is great and good, and who is doing the deciding. To give another literature example, a lecture on Christina Rossetti during my university years always stays with me. In the 1960s, I learnt, there was only one edition of Christina Rossetti poetry. She was ‘woman-y’, she was ‘other’, and she wasn’t ‘great’. Then – feminism came along. Now there are dozens, she’s on the school syllabus and she is considered one of the leading Victorian poets. This clearly shows how our idea of what constitutes ‘great’ and ‘meriting recognition’ changes. Rossetti was just as marvellous a writer in 1965 as she was in 2005 when I had that lecture. But the canon only decided she was that good when perceptions on women’s writing and ‘herstory’ began to change. 

The future of our culture has to start including women – in film, books, arts and music. When we value women’s creativity, when we recognise that women can write the universal, and that women’s experiences are valid and matter, when we stop believing that men won’t watch or listen to women, and women can’t write men… then change will happen. We’ll have more films by women getting funding. We’ll stop thinking of women as a genre. And women’s work will be truly valued on merit, because women’s work will be truly valued. 

But what can we do? I feel like I’ve been writing this article over and over, with cultural femicide continuing and the straw man of ‘positive discrimination’ always raising its ugly head. 

Well, I try to represent women writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians. My activism started with Ladyfest – a celebration of women’s creativity. On 4^th June I’m co-curating an event at the Cube (https://www.facebook.com/events/363818227009424/) that profiles women activists, artists and singers. I’ve edited a book that brought together women’s stories and published a book about the forgotten role of mothers in fiction (by Carrie Dunn: http://crookedribpublishing.wordpress.com/our-books/.) I buy women’s writing, I watch women’s films, I listen to women’s voices. The (soon to be re-named) Orange Prize, Bird’s Eye Film Festival, London Feminist Film Festival – all of these events celebrate how amazing we women are at being creative, at getting creative. 

So as well as a complaint against the sexism at Cannes, this is a rallying call. Let’s get out there. Let’s create. Let’s celebrate and profile women’s creativity. We need positive action to change these perceptions, and we can all play a role in doing that. What will you do? 

Ladyfest Bristol 2012

A proud veteran of Ladyfest Bristol 2007, I'm thrilled to be able to share with you the details of the forthcoming Ladyfest in our city - organised by some wonderful feminists.

See you there!

* MUSIC * ART * FILM * DJS * COMEDY * POETRY * WORKSHOPS *

Early bird tickets go on sale April 15^th for £20/standard tickets retail for £25

What?

Bristol Ladyfest is a cultural festival running on 7^th and 8^th July, with a pre-party on 6^th July. It’s designed to showcase women in the community who contribute a valid and significant amount of work to the art and entertainment industries. 

Profits from the event will be split between four charities, all of whom make an invaluable contribution to keeping the streets of Bristol safe:

Womankind + One25 + The Well + Rape Crisis

Tickets

Pre-party tickets: will retail on the door, for more information check out our FaceBook page

Early bird tickets: ending Tuesday, retail at £20 exclusively from DrunkenWerewolf

Weekend tickets: will retail at £25 from May 15^th or if earlier when early birds run out. This will get you full access to all of Saturday and Sunday’s events. Please note that spaces at workshops will be limited and to ensure entry to popular events you must arrive at the venue early. Vendors will be announced in due course on our site.

Note all events are subject to change and Bristol Ladyfest does not take responsibility for artistic license.

Who?

Friday 6^th July: LIPSTICK ON YOUR COLLAR pre-party @ Bristol County Sports Club, Colston Street

Saturday 7^th July: GABBY YOUNG // RACHAEL DADD // THIS IS THE KIT // SHRAG // THE HORN THE HUNT // HYSTERICAL INJURY // SHE MAKES WAR // ROZI PLAIN // STRAYLINGS // RITA LYNCH // DRUNKEN BUTTERFLY // MARY EPWORTH @ The Fleece, doors 5pm - late

Sunday 8^th July: various events across the Stokes Croft area from 10am, including

-          A screening of Dreams of a Life and other films at No 51

-          FGM’s Silent Scream, Naomi Smyth’s Invisible Circus: No Dress Rehearsal and other documentaries with Q&A sessions at Art House

-          Workshops for safeguarding and understanding modern feminist issues

-          Classes on creative writing, music making and dancing

-          Exhibitions and zines by Rachael Dadd, Laura Kidd, Annie Gardiner and more

-          Open debate at The Canteen

Sunday 8^th July (evening): WHAT THE FROCK presents: Women in Comedy, 


Rosie Wilby/ Elf Lyons/ Zahra Barri / O'Shea & Ogilvie.
 

We also have a fundraising event this Sunday 20th at Start the Bus, featuring The Jelas, Poppy Perezz, Morbison, Jemima Surrender, Stevie Parker and Big Wave. There will be discounted weekend tickets for sale there at £20.

Don't presume

I don’t watch Question Time anymore. I’ve got better things to do than to watch lots of often ignorant people being given a national platform to air often ignorant views. But I checked Twitter last night when I was reading my book (These Old Shades fact fans) and saw that the panel were indulging in some pretty disgusting victim blaming in terms of the Rochdale case that was sentenced the day before. Comments ranged from the ‘girl surrendering their innocence for a bag of crisps’ to how we need to give girls ‘values to keep themselves safe’ and the ridiculous suggestion that we should put a ‘curfew’ on girls (what happens if the rapist is at home ey? But don’t let facts get in the way of your victim blaming – oh no!). The people that no-one was talking about of course, were the perpetrators. The men who sexually exploited and raped those girls. You know, the men. Who chose to commit these crimes. 

I took to Twitter and wrote: 

‘Rape is caused by some men choosing to rape and abuse women and girls. That's what causes rape. That's what we need to talk about #bbcqt’

There were a few re-tweets but then the responses came – responses where people helpfully informed me that men are survivors of rape too, and did I know that women can be perpetrators? I explained that I was tweeting in the context of the BBCQT discussion – especially in regards to the curfew comment. 

But the episode made me angry. Because I feel so strongly that the accusation was that because I care about violence against women and girls, and because I pointed out that the elephant in the room in the discussion about VAWG was the men who committed the crimes, then it meant I immediately didn’t care about men survivors or women perpetrators. That I’m ignorant, and that someone had better inform me pretty quickly and patronisingly of my ignorance. 

And so now I am going to tell you why that accusation is untrue, and why that patronising telling off is not only offensive, but potentially triggering.  

Like everyone in the UK, I know women who are survivors of rape and domestic abuse. I say ‘like everyone’, because 1 in 4 women experience this, so the chances are someone you know is a survivor. I also know men who are survivors of various forms of abuse and assault. A woman who I know very well was quite seriously sexually assaulted by a woman, and a woman friend of mine was in an abusive relationship with another woman. 

Finally, I have experienced two identical ‘unwanted sexual contact’ from a man and a woman. The incidents were exactly the same – I was pushed against the wall in a club and the other party stuck their tongue down my throat without my consent, before pushing me back and walking away. 

So for people who don’t know me, who know nothing about me, to have the gall to come over and tell me that men are survivors too and women are perpetrators too? How dare you? How dare you make the presumption that I don’t know this, that I don’t care about this, that I haven’t experienced this? How dare you? How dare you presume to know anything about my life or my experiences? What gives you the right to tell me what I do and don’t think, without even asking me if I know, if I’ve heard, if I’ve felt? 

There are two further points I want to make here. The first is that we need to take more care when we talk to each other online. We need to understand and respect context, so that when we start commenting back or accusing people, we know what they’re responding to in the first place. And we need to think more. Think about what that person might have experienced. Think about where they might have come from and consider whether our retort – perhaps witty or wise in our heads – could actually hurt, or trigger. I need to do this too. I’ve spoken out and regretted it later. We all need to try harder. 

But my final point is that I’m still not going to apologise for calling out the fact that the people who committed the crimes in Rochdale were men who chose to rape and sexually exploit girls. Because that’s what happened. And of the 80,000 rapes against women and girls in the UK every year, the one thing that the perpetrators have in common is that they are men who chose to rape. They didn’t have in common ethnicity. The common factor wasn’t that their victims behaved in certain ways, that they wore short skirts, or were outside, or inside, or drinking or wearing jeans. They are men who choose to rape. 

And speaking this truth that doesn’t mean I don’t care about male survivors. It doesn’t mean I’m not concerned about low reporting rates triggered by worries of homophobia, not being believed, being thought ‘unmanly’. Or that I don’t think we need a drastic re-assessment on ideas about masculinity to ensure that no survivor feels this way. It doesn’t mean I don’t find prison rape jokes abhorrent, or demand to know why rape in prison is so widespread. It doesn’t mean I don’t think men survivors need support and helplines and care. 

It doesn’t mean that I don’t count the woman in my list of ‘unwanted sexual contact’ incidents. 

But it does mean I understand that when we talk about rape culture and victim blaming, we’re overwhelmingly talking about male violence against women and girls. These are the crimes where we seek to lay blame on the victim and survivor, whilst the perpetrator is safely ignored. It’s when we talk about women that we demand curfews on our freedom, it’s women who are forced into a life of fear and it’s women who are blamed when violent crimes are committed against us. The fact that when we try and talk about this we are instantly made to talk about something else just shows all the more how we as a society are refusing to recognise that male violence against women and girls is endemic.

So next time you decide to take it upon yourself to explain to me that men are survivors too and women are perpetrators too, don’t. I know it. 

Men who hate women

This is a quick post on the conviction of nine men jailed for raping, trafficking and sexually exploiting girls in Rochdale yesterday: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/09/rochdale-gang-jailed-exploiting-girls?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

The nine men convicted yesterday of trafficking, raping and sexually exploiting girls as young as thirteen did not commit their crimes because they were Asian, as some parties or news outlets would have you assuming.

They committed their crimes because they were men who chose to traffic, rape and sexually exploit children.

Contrary to the reporting in the Guardian of judge’s statement yesterday, it wasn’t that ‘ in some cases "those girls were raped callously, viciously and violently".’

Because all rapes are vicious, callous and violent. 

These girls weren’t raped and sexually exploited because they had ‘chaotic lifestyles’ including being in care. They were abused because these men chose to abuse them. 

And these girls continued to be abused because when, four years ago, one of them came forward to the police to report the crimes she had suffered, she was deemed ‘unreliable’. The police and the CPS didn’t pursue the case. How many girls were harmed in the remaining four years? How many girls were harmed because the system refused to believe the testimony of a young, abused and traumatised girl? 

This case is not about ethnicity. This case is about the men who choose to abuse women and girls. Those men are identified not by the colour of their skin, the country they were born in, their class or job or status or family or wages or music taste. They’re identified by the fact that they are men who hate women, men who choose to exploit and harm and rape women and girls. 

We need to change the conversation when we talk about cases like this. We shouldn’t be talking about race for starters. We should be talking about how we live in a society where violence against women and girls is endemic, is increasing and is ignored. So far this year 3.3 women have been murdered every week as a result of violence against women and girls. Rates of domestic violence have increased since 2010 (http://eoin-clarke.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/domestic-violence-soars-25-in-first.html) and on average 80,000 women and girls are raped every year. 

These men raped and exploited these girls because they hate women. And because they could. And because, for so long, we let them.  

Crooked Rib publishes 'Mothers in Fiction: the marvellous, the mean and everything in between' by Carrie Dunn

Renowned feminist writer Carrie Dunn’s collections of literary sketches of the relationships between mothers and their offspring is a must read for fans of fiction and feminism, and for anyone who is, or has, a mother.

Dunn takes the reader on a journey through literary history, visiting Mrs Capulet, Mrs Bennett, Sue Bridehead and Mammy Walsh along the way. Her well-observed portraits bring to life this often-neglected relationship, as we rethink our attitudes to the marvellous, the mean, the flighty and devoted mothers that populate our favourite books. 

“This collection of portraits is a joy to read. It was a great opportunity to revisit some of my favourite novels (as well as discover some new ones) through the mother characters that we often miss, or take for granted, or fail to appreciate. Whether it’s the horror of Mrs Reed in Jane Eyre, or a new way of looking at Pam Jones, this book took me on a journey through literary history and introduced me to its key players in a new and refreshing way.”

                                                                                                            Sian Norris, blogger

Dunn notes that throughout history, mothers have been silenced or ignored by literary criticism, or else their motivations and actions have been dismissed as trivial. Her book aims for us to take a second look at the role motherhood has played in literature, and demands that we re-evaluate and question our often negative reactions to mother characters – from Mrs Bennett’s superficiality to Mrs Capulet’s abandonment of Juliet. She examines how sexism or male bias in literary history has led to condemnation of mothers in fiction whilst failing to recognise or evaluate the social and cultural norms of the period that influenced or shaped these characters. Do we judge and ignore literary fathers in the same way?

The portraits Dunn paints in her book are very funny, very knowing and sharp. The 20 short sketches take us on a literary journey of 500 years of literature’s mums. This book is for anyone who is, or has, a mother, and for anyone who loves great reads.

Buy your copy here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/carrie-dunn/a-brief-history-of-mothers-in-fiction-the-marvellous-the-mean-and-everything-in-between/paperback/product-20091594.html

The Light Bulb Moment: My chapter

The book launch of the Light Bulb Moment is only two weeks away (where has this year gone?) and so as a little taster I'm going to share with you my chapter from the anthology. 


The event features contributors to the book reading their chapters, followed by a panel discussion on the future of feminism, featuring Natasha Walter, Zohra Moosa, Chitra Nagarajan, Mara Clarke and Anna van Heesvijk. 


You can buy tickets here: http://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/3451/festival-of-ideas-the-future-of-feminism/


Anyway, here's the chapter:

Finding my sisters

Siân Norris

Considering it was my idea to put together this anthology telling the moment we became feminists, I have found it extremely difficult to discover and tell my own. Was it, as I often joke, the influence of watching Maid Marian and Her Merry Men on TV as a child, with its outspoken female lead who ruled the roost of men? Was it when I was 16, and my friend Nadia lent me The Whole Woman, a book I devoured and then parroted for years, until as I got older I began to question some of the things in my feminist bible (notably the transphobia and her comments on female genital mutilation). Was it my feminist teachers at school and university who encouraged me to write essays on Djuna Barnes, Katherine Mansfield and Jean Rhys whilst everyone else was doing Joyce and Milton. Was it my early activism in the anti-homophobia movement and the influence of having two mums, a dad and a step-mum?

It was, of course, all these things. As well as organising Ladyfest Bristol 2007, writing a feminist zine and blog and ultimately co-ordinating a feminist network of a few hundred women and men.

But the more I thought about it, the more I put my actual, lived and activist feminism down to a period in my life of depression; and the decision I took to stop it, to move forward and to be happy. And I think a big part of this for me was in learning about and discovering sisterhood.

In the anthology that inspired this book, Click, one of the writers says that feminism was her consolation prize for surviving an eating disorder. I feel the same way, except that my form of self destructive behaviour wasn’t around food, but self harm. Self harm is lonely. It is about struggling to deal with emotional pain, so turning that pain on to yourself to try and control it with a physical pain. I cut my arms and legs with shaving razors from the ages of 16 to 20, with a few gaps in between. I don’t know now if I could really articulate what the emotional pain was, if I even understand now what it was. But I know that it was real and it was big, even though now I can’t really name it. And the only way to make it manageable, to make it small, was to turn it into a physical pain.

During one of these bouts of depression I wrote the following story. I can still remember the anguish and the anger that fled out of my pen and into the A5 ringbound notebook on my lap, in that freezing cold room I lived in in Dalston (this was 2005 guys, before the hipsters moved in). I wrote it after having been sexually assaulted on a bus by a man who leaned over and grabbed me and tried to kiss me: 

“The bus is making me feel sick. Everyone is playing a game of musical chairs that they haven’t told me about. Every time it jolts to a stop, everyone seems to get up to swap seats, and I’m just left sitting here. The man behind me is talking about the weather.
This is the most awful bus journey. It is worse than the one with the woman talking to me about her boyfriend who used to beat her up, or the one where the man tried to kiss me and I had to push him away hard.
It jolts again to a stop and it is my turn to leave the game. I walk fast down the street, it’s dark, and each time my foot hits the pavement I jump that it is someone else’s. My whole life I have been afraid of the no one behind me on the street.
My key sticks in the lock, but I battle it open. The living room is crowded with lived in mess. There’s drinking, but I go to bed instead.

My body slides down, sinking into the valleyed mattress. The covers are heavy, but I’m not warm. I daydream about a mattress that I don’t sink into. That doesn’t collapse along with me. My room isn’t dark, but it’s peaceful. The water pipes gurgling remind me of my childhood. Being afraid of the witch that lived in the boiler cupboard.
Next door, I can hear my housemate having sex. She has thoughtfully turned the music up, but all it does is emphasise the fact that there is another noise to cover.
The mattress is swallowing me. My back is melting into it in a sticky mess and I can’t unglue myself. My legs have stopped working. I grab the top of my left thigh to see if it is still there. I think maybe it is. I imagine my hand is yours. Whichever one of you.
My fingernails are dirty.
It’s disgusting. I know I should clean them, but you can pretend they’re not.

Sometimes, when it starts to go this way, when it gets to feeling that my bones collapse; I can feel every filament in my body. I can feel my brain moving against my skull, it is creaking, and when I move my eyes, I can sense the scraping of them against the sockets. I feel it in my neck. I can see every little pore in my lungs open up. I can track the blood rushing to all the drought-ridden places in my body, I can hear it squealing. I can feel the cells’ pain when they split and break and crack into two parts. I can feel a tension under my breastplate every time my heart remembers to try and convulse.
It makes me wonder what my body looks like to an outsider. How it feels to the hands that grab it and to the tongues that smear it. What it is in my body that inspires such strength in another, that triggers that burst of love and steals that loss of control, and what it is in my body that defies all that, so the hands scuttle away like little crabs.
Slut body.
Sick body.
My body.
It belongs to all of you.

It isn’t that no one cares. It is that no one cares enough. And the hands that grab and touch, and the lips that grab and touch, push me away and I fall back on the mattress that swallows me up. Gulp.
Lying in bed, my body shrinks to the size of a pin. My legs retract and my head and my arms are pulled in and I lie there, a pin. I’ll prick your prick your prick pricks me.
But it’s changing. Now my body crumples in on itself, and I crinkle and crack and all that’s left is a piece of dirty newspaper, with two hands kneading it, and I can see my mouth in its folds. Or is it more than two?
The hands pull the paper flat, and suddenly I’m white and clean and smooth and plain. I lie there still and blank, and you can write me, as you will.

You draw me a face of the wide eyes of your ex, while You and You put on the big lips of the girl you’re in love with, and of course there’s You who paints on the cute smiling cheeks of the girl that You are in love with still, whilst You let me keep my nose, to remind you that it is me you’re using, but You lengthen my hair and give it a new shade to suit a generic fantasy. Then I’m ready for all of you. And I lie here for you all, I’m hidden, I’m curled under my flat stomach and I love you all and I love you all and I think yes this is it this is it this time surely one of you will stay. But then you collapse on my breasts and then you rumple my hair fondly and then you stand up. My eyes behind her wide eyes are blinded. You lift the white sheet with its attractive additions and go back to who they really belonged to all along. You leave me my nose and my flat stomach.

Anytime you want me to, I can make you happy.
There’s nothing I won’t do, just to make you happy.
And you all know it.
And you all know it.

So you can leave me with the safe knowledge that I won’t.
So you can go back to the real wide eyes and the real big lips and the real cute cheeks and the original better, bigger, brighter mix of parts, and know that you can always come back. Lay a clean sheet over the crushed blood and bone on my dark dark dirty sheets and re-draw me to make you happy.

It’s good to be here.
It’s some kind of bliss.

But you know and I know that my bed isn’t enough. You are all frightened to admit it, but I know that you all know. So although I lie here in wait, it is no surprise to me when you don’t come back.
I lie here in wait for the next time you need attention and flattery.
And for you, I lie in wait for the next time you argue with her and need some comfort.
Whilst you know I lie in wait for you for when you want to feel good about yourself and your power over me.

The longer I wait, the more changes you all need to make to the paper. Soon you must close your eyes when you come; to make sure you don’t catch sight of my real face behind what you paint over it and I fake it oh and I fake it ah and I fake it don’t stop and I fake it that’s right and I fake it harder and I fake it faster and I fake it yes!

Anytime you want me to, I can make you happy.
There’s nothing I won’t do, just to make you happy.”

I decided to use this piece of writing to tell my story because writing it was my light bulb moment. I think that despite having always called myself a feminist, despite reading Greer and writing academic essays on gender and mouthing off about all sorts of feminist subjects; despite all of this I hadn’t been acting like a feminist. I had been careless with myself and I had been careless of other women. I had let patriarchy in through the cracks of my book-ish armour and not only had the result left me unhappy and struggling; it had also left me silent on the subjects of how men were treating the women around me, as well as how they were treating me.

Years later, when I thought about this period of my life, I remembered a man I had slept with laughing about how he had pulled this woman, had sex with her and then left because he realised how ‘ugly’ she was. At the time I remember thinking this was awful, but not challenging it.

After I wrote that story, I realised that I couldn’t call myself a feminist if I continued to refuse to treat myself with respect and failed to treat other women with respect. So, a few months later, I stopped self harming. I stopped sleeping with people that I didn’t want to sleep with. I stopped reading celeb magazines and joining in their mocking of other women’s bodies. I stopped judging what other women were wearing, or saying or doing. I started to treat the women around me as sisters. I realised that I wasn’t going to like every woman I met, but that wasn’t what sisterhood meant. Sisterhood, in a feminist sense, meant seeing a commonality with women, and a commonality in the way patriarchy harms us.

This didn’t happen over night of course. It was a process of years more consciousness-raising. But it started then.

           

Some say that the concept of sisterhood is an outdated one. But I disagree. Sisterhood was my saviour. Now, many years later, I am surrounded by sisters in the feminist movement. Of course I owe my change in confidence and happiness to lots of other things too, including counselling, friends, family, boyfriend. But my feminism, my strength in my sense of sisterhood and community – that’s what started the change. I saw that I had to wake up to how women were being treated, and how I was complicit in patriarchy’s project. And that feminism and sisterhood could make my world a better place. So, slowly, I started working within this feminist sisterhood to ensure that the pressures of patriarchy that hurt me would not be around to hurt my one-day daughters.

Now that I am a fully-fledged feminist activist, sisterhood is even more important to me. As I learn more about global inequality and how patriarchy impacts on women and men in so many destructive ways, the need to reach out to women across the world has become vital. The fight against patriarchy isn’t just about fighting the ways in which it hurt me. Being part of this global community, this global network, gives me the strength and enthusiasm to keep going, to keep fighting. Together, a better world is possible.

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