International Women’s Day last year, I was featured in the Observer as one of the top thirty radical women to look out for of 2008. I thought it was funny at the time- what have I ever done, I said to me-self..?
A year on, I look back at my life since to feel ashamed but not suprised at how un-radical my life has been. But what is worse, is how I allowed myself to live a life that is not mine and to live a life by values that I despise. But as I return to a position of clarity, I am struck with the insight of how testing life can be in maintaining a life that is true to one’s politics. Having radical politics, is more than reading the literature and attending the protests. Having radical politics means that with conviction, one’s politics run seamlessly through one’s life, as a benchmark, as a vision, as guidance with all the risks that this takes.
I am a radical feminist and an anarchist, yet 9-5 I was an employee, a tea girl, the office skivvy, the young one who does not know what she is talking about. I was a women who said yes sir no sir and stepped in line to work formality.
I was also the girlfriend to a woman who threatened me with violence and manipulated me with suicide, for a long time.
How did I allow myself to get in this situation?
I now know that life has a way of testing us. Learning feminist and anarchist theory does not do away with the conditioning I have had into believing that violence is an acceptable part of a relationship and that one must obey authority or else. Undoing this conditioning is a long and painful struggle of self-reflection and moving forward. Ending an abusive relationship was my way of affirming that violence is unacceptable and saying no to the lesson I was given in the past. Quitting my job was my way of rejecting subordination to authority and again saying no to the lesson I was given in the past.
Oppression works in deep ways. And it takes alot to break free. What helped me was conviction in my beliefs as informed by radical feminism, but more importantly the support of my family and friends. Strangely I’ve found that it has been the mundane and normal part of my life that has given me strength to live by my principles- my family, my friends (largely non-political) and doing normal stuff like watching TV, going shopping and going to the pub.
Over this last year I have learnt the meaning of ‘the personal’ being truely ‘political’ and the importance of drawing synthesis between my politics and the way I live my life. I no longer want to be a closet radical feminist and anarchist, whereby I relagate my politics to the evenings and weekends when I’m not at work. I no longer want to have the division between my ‘normal’ friends and my ‘activist’ friends- I want to be true with both. I want to be able to express my feminist sentiment with my straight friends, my anarchist sentiment with work colleagues, and likewise, my love for sex and the city, clothes shopping, and my latest crush with my activist friends.
When I used to do alot of feminist campaigning, I believed change came through grand actions and protests. I now see that change can occur in ways subtle and unnoticed in the lives of individuals but is just as important. Organising a protest is easy, but challenging your boss because she is a bullying classist bitch, is hard.
I wish to build a life for myself true to my beliefs. I long for the day where I don’t have to switch on my computer to feel connected with other women who feel the same. I feel life would be much easier if I had radical feminists I could call in on and say ‘Hiya, fancy a cup of tea..?’.
5 Comments
April 9, 2009 at 10:41 pm
I feel life would be much easier if I had radical feminists I could call in on and say ‘Hiya, fancy a cup of tea..?’.
I have found that having even just the one radical feminist friend I have in ‘real life’ to be amazingly useful and helpful in keeping me functioning.
April 15, 2009 at 11:46 am
I see a double closet in that we closet the fact that parts of our life are closeted (and from each other): compartmentalisation in several dimensions. So, thanks for writing this, Charlie. It shouldn’t be a ’secret’ we keep from our selves/each other that some of the ‘personal’ stuff can pose the biggest challenge.
April 17, 2009 at 4:39 pm
You make me want to fly over there with some tea herbs from my garden.
It’s my strong belief that most of the changes people make in their lives come less from splashy events than from the daily interactions we have with those around us. Theory has its safe, high-minded place, but living your politics means encouraging folks around you to be better people and not tolerating folks around you indulging their worst selves in your presence.
April 22, 2009 at 11:10 am
Yes, Yes, Yes, thanks for all your comments.
I’m thinking that the feminist movement at the moment is very theory-orientated rather than focus on the ‘practice’, and there is great importance placed on learning about theories that exist ‘out there’ or from the 70s and developing a standpoint as part of a particular feminist ‘camp’, rather than looking inwards to politicise what hurts us in our everyday lives and creating/developing new ideas to underpin our desire and move for change.
I think compartmentalising our lives can be used as a survival strategy, for example hiding feminist beliefs at work just to keep a job, but this ultimately leads to leading a double life and one must question the effectiveness of hiding our radical politics if we ever truely want change. I also think that the dominance of internet communication between many feminists is problematic to creating a safe space in which one can share personal struggles.
June 8, 2009 at 2:18 am
Hi Charlie,
Checking in on you via the Carnival and Sam’s site. I really like this post, because I’m a pretty practical person and I’ve always wanted to be part of a movement that is also a community — where we can do political stuff AND do fun stuff, like watch bad movies and groan at the antifeminist parts.
I’ve also been, I think, pretty lucky to have been able to arrange my life the way I have, so that I don’t have a 9-5 boss breathing down my neck and I don’t HAVE to soft-pedal my politics to coworkers, customers etc — when I do, it is from my own choice to not get into arguments or make others unduly uncomfortable. But I guess I worry that other women might not have the options that I do, so I’d like to hear more about your vision of how more women could not have to split themselves and hide their politics like so many of us do. Honestly, in my experience people at work just thought I was weird for my opinions, but I know that certain opinions, or expressing them forcefully or repeatedly enough, could cause a person to get fired, and what should she do then?
Also, there seems to be a fair amount of feminist organizing and events there, but here in the US, I at least feel extremely isolated, and part of the reason why internet interaction has become so important to me is because I really don’t have many other outlets, many other ways to connect with women of any kind of feminism, let alone women with radical feminist politics. I don’t really believe in the social service model so volunteer work is often frustrating, and all the feminist organizing I’ve tried to do has fallen apart in various ways. So I’m kind of stumped about where to go from here.
And frankly a lot of the ‘old’ stuff from the seventies seems still blindingly relevant to me and HAS helped me, motivated me to create a greater congruence between my principles and how I live. It’s always a work in progress, but I don’t see how learning about what women have done in the past and figuring out what we think might help is not focusing on practice.
I look forward to hearing more from you.