Some Thoughts
So today is International Women’s Day.
A day to celebrate all things ‘women’.
And this year, more than any other, it has made me think about being a woman in the UK, in the year 2023.
I am very proud to be a woman, but I don’t conform to the gender stereotypes of what that means and I never have. I have always been my own woman, as are all the women I know.
And I am very proud to celebrate women and all our achievements.
I was born in the 1970s and grew up in the 1980s, which gave me some truly amazing role models – including Madonna, Vivienne Westwood, Debbie Harry, Sigourney Weaver, and Lois Lane, to name but a few.
They showed me that I could do anything and that a woman doesn’t have to fit into what society deems as womanly or feminine.
But here we are in 2023, and is it just me or does it feel like we’re going backwards?
All over the world, it seems that our hard-won rights are under attack, even more so if you are a person of colour, are LGBTQ+ or have a disability.
Yesterday, I was talking to a friend about the fear-mongering in the media surrounding trans women and how it is bringing our trans friends into even greater levels of danger. And as we were talking, I felt overwhelmed with a sense of sadness and anger for where we are now.
A sadness that the world of hope and forward momentum seems to have stalled, along with those possibilities that I felt growing up.
We went on to talk about our fears, particularly around our personal safety.
I passionately explained:
That my fears are the genuinely real fears around my complete lack of safety that I feel living in this world every day.
That I feel such mistrust in the various bodies that are supposed to protect us, especially the police. The dread that calling the police could be more dangerous than not.
That my genuine fears are not those whipped up by the media et al, and then purported as being my real fears.
That too many times have I been afraid of being harassed, insulted or touched, and worse. So much worse.
That not once have I been afraid of the hypothetical ‘bogey-person’ trans woman hiding in the toilets that the media would have others believe I am afraid of.
That I can guarantee that I have been in the toilet at the same time as a trans woman – many times – and the majority of them, I wasn’t even aware of their gender status.
That not once have I been made to feel afraid by a trans woman in the toilet (or anywhere else for that matter!) and I have yet to see any proof that this has happened anywhere.
And yet, I have proof in my everyday life of men making me feel afraid.
(But let’s ban drag queens!)
We spoke about how being a woman is to be always in fear: whether you are walking, driving or even in your home. We constantly evaluate our escape routes and are always aware of what could possibly be used as a weapon. In fact, we do it so much, we don’t even know we’re doing it most of the time!
And it’s exhausting.
But it was my friend’s next comment that absolutely floored me.
She said, “We (meaning the two of us) will never live in a world where we truly know safety.”
And I feel that she is right, and it made me desolate. Especially as we are 2 white, CIS women and we feel this way.
My heart breaks for my fellow women that don’t have any of those privileges.
It is wrong.
And here lies the problem with these performative awareness days or months – if they don’t lead to change: real, systemic change, they are nothing more than a distraction. And we have too many of them – many of them manufactured to take away our attention.
So on this International Women’s Day, let’s celebrate what we have achieved.
But, let’s absolutely not forget that we have so far still to go and we cannot allow future generations of women to feel the constant fear that we do.
