Unspeakable Things

It’s about saying no and expecting that no to be respected. It’s is about owning your own capacity to consent, and exercising it actively, again and again – not just in sexual terms but in political terms, too.
Because when we are done hating ourselves and hurting each other, we can get on with asking for what should be ours by right.
Neoliberal patriarchy gives us choice, but not freedom. No choice in an unfree society can be a truly free choice. The choice between this boss and that, the choice between marriage and penury, the choice between shame and self-denial, the choice between degrading work and debilitating poverty, all of these choices are meaningful, but they are not the same as liberty. Feminism and radical politics are about demanding more than a choice between one type of servitude and another. They are about insisting on our right to live with dignity, our right to shelter and sustenance and learning and the means to take care of one another.

cope with the intimate terrorism of neoliberal patriarchy we’ve got to work on giving fewer fucks. We’ve got to work on having no shame because we need no shame, because none of us do, unless we have hurt another person. We must be comfortable with knowing too much, but never knowing our place.

Here are the worst things you can call a woman: ugly. Slutty. Fat. Bitter. Bitch. Cunt. The worst thing anyone can say to a woman, in short, is that she doesn’t please you. We must get used to giving the answer: is that all you’ve got?

That change in consciousness is coming from below. It’s going to be led by women and queers and outsiders and their allies. It’s going to come from ugly girls. Fat girls. Girls who aren’t thin enough, rich enough, white enough. Girls with thick thighs and bellies that wobble and voices that carry – that resonate. Girls who are fucking angry. Girls who fuck for money. Old women. Trans women. Single mothers. Low-paid workers. Sex workers. There are so many ways to fall off the plinth patriarchy erects for the ideal woman. Eventually you’re going to have to decide if you’re going to wait to fall, or if you’re going to jump.

If we are to realise a greater collective humanity, we must learn to see one another as human beings first.

Gender oppression is part of a structure of social control grinding us all down, keeping us docile, making sure that men and women everywhere question power as little as possible.

Revolution begins in the human imagination. They can come for us with clubs and dogs but as long as we continue to dream of different ways to live, different ways to love and fight and grow old together, they will not win. There is power in the communities built by exiles and outcasts. There is power in the societies of broken kids growing up to change the world, and when it comes down to it we are all broken kids, fucked-up girls and lost boys just waiting to be found. We find each other in the unwatched spaces, the secret places, for as long as they last. We have the tools to build a better world in the wreck of the old one.

Beyond Happily Ever After, outside the single story of how life, work and partnership ought to be, love has always been free. When the fairy tale ends, the pages are still turning in the long, hard saga of human love, and there is always another story left to tell.

And in that running, what I found was that outside fairy tales, love happens all the time.

Women and girls in particular must summon the courage to devote the best efforts of our lives to something other than LoveTM. The idea that we have no control over who we love and what we do about it is one of the most disempowering things girls are ever told. Loneliness is a fearful thing. But a life lived grasping for another person to make you whole is just as fearful. If you see yourself as incomplete without a partner to be your ‘other half’, you will always be lonely, even in a partnership. It took me twenty-seven years to truly understand that just because you would give up every dream you ever had to see one special person smile doesn’t mean you should.