Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Raintime Thinktime

Here we are, all rainy: the first proper rain since lockdown. The birds are yelling with glee, and the plants in the back yard are displaying specially happy shades of green.
The inept splodge is back at work and I won't be able to watch news broadcasts again until he's gone. In between emails from very stressed students, I'll be trying to finish my book in the next couple of weeks.
The more research I've done the more horrified I've become at the layers and complexity of the structures in society that push women downwards.
At a certain point in my life, I think I am simply going to burst.
Anyone like me would do so.
There are so many of us!
Smiling when you're being insulted because to admit what is happening would break you.
Putting up with toxic relationships, because of your fear (note the 's' there: it hasn't just been the one). Knowing that in the workplace you have to work five times as hard just to stick where you are, and not slip into the pit.
The entire framework of society is set up to make us feel worthless unless we are (a) breeding or (b) caring. These two energy sapping activities, if we are embedded deeply enough in them, will prevent us from thinking or doing anything that might enable others of our gender, and ourselves, to dig ourselves out of our prisons.
It would be amazing not to be a feminist writer.
Just imagine!
I could write about the music I love just because I love the music, like male writers can!
I wouldn't have to think about the imbalances that go on behind the scenes, the sexist lyrics, the women who take their clothes off to sell their music because they know that's what men like.
I wouldn't have to have an opinion about Madonna!
I could be a song writer and producer without ever having to think of it as a battle!



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