Yes, All Women – International Women’s Day 8 March 2016
Because every day is International Men’s Day.
Yes, All Women
Because ‘Not All Men’ exists,
And ‘Yes All Women’ inspired ‘Yes All Women Jokes’,
Jokes designed to perpetuate and denigrate.
And self-proclaimed feminists and allies will repeat ‘Not All Men’.
Refusing to understand.
Believing in some way that patriarchy is the act of individuals
Instead of a system of political and social suppression
That has subjugated women for hundreds of years.
Restricting men, from the zenith.
Imprisoning women, from the nadir.
Feminisation is bad.
Masculinisation is good.
We are all in Animal Farm.
Because still the gendering of everything,
Leads to the valuing of nothing.
Female is less, male is more.
Cis is best, trans is poor.
White is good, any other colour is bad.
Insult a man by emasculating him.
Insult a woman by emasculating her.
‘pussy’, ‘bitch’, ‘slut’, ‘whore’.
Homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia,
Racism, sexism, ableism.
So many isms, all divide, all oppress.
And Yes, All Women intersects.
Because 1 in 3 teenage girls* will experience domestic violence
At the hand of their boyfriends.
And think it is deserved.
Because those are the relationships not ‘othered’, despised, rejected.
Straight is okay, straight is not ‘gay’.
Gay is so ‘GAY’.
Because we are electing people who believe gays caused the floods.^
And that disabled people should be sterilised or aborted.
And that marriage between same gender lovers is somehow
Destroying traditional marriage, which has only existed for
A few hundred years anyway. In the UK.
Because skin colour should not disenfranchise, yet it does.
Because our government says Female Genital Mutilation is illegal
Yet in 20 years no prosecution.
Instead deporting mothers and daughter to suffer greatly.
Deporting to a risk of FGM and legal rape union,
(or forced marriage as it is known)
All the better to hide it with.
Pass the buck.
Pass the pain.
Ignore the responsibility.
Let down by the government and the ECHR.
And because I know my white face will be listened to
More than the women of strength such as Leyla Hussein
Hero of the anti-FGM movement.
Because terms such as ‘honour killing’ and ‘sex trafficking’ are used.
Softening the truth of the misogynistic abuse.
Not sex but rape trafficking.
No honour, just religious or familial murder.
Acts of violence against girls and women who did not comply enough.
Stoned to death.
Lashed.
Beaten.
Forced to give birth, legs shackled.
Constant threat of death.
Children begetting children.
Females slaughtered for their sex.
No hope, no education, and murdered for the thought of it.
Valued only for their womb.
Because sex education is all about the physical
And nothing about informed, enthusiastic, updated consent.
And the majority of the how-to comes from pornography.
A pornography increasingly homogenised into ‘same’.
White, nipped, tucked, bleached, shaved, plastic.
Vaginaplasty.
Labiaplasty.
Plastic and plasticised.
To be other is to be fetish, not mainstream.
Not being white, able-bodied or straight is deviant.
A deviant sexuality therefore wrong.
Creating fear, entitlement, expectation and pain.
Where there should be strength.
Pleasure.
A clear ‘Yes’ and a respected ‘No’.
Because a third+ of all people in this country believe
It is in some way the woman’s fault.
Her responsibility, her provocation,
That causes her rape and her victimisation.
Women and men, combining to perpetuate.
To further the pain.
To remove the right to self-autonomy.
To make it not real, not scary.
Blame the victim, avoid victimisation.
And because and because and because.
Because of course not all men, we know that.
But yes, yes and yes
YES.
ALL women.
© Tina Price-Johnson 17 June 2014
^ UKIP – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-25793358
^ UKIP – http://www.kentonline.co.uk/gravesend/news/gravesend-ukip-candidate-geoffre-a57680/
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