March 9, 2024
Both sides brought large speaker systems and screamed
I didn’t observe International Women’s Day in a public platform sort of way. (I did re-watch Hidden Figures with my family, however. Would recommend.) This was not a conscious choice, but when I opened Instagram yesterday morning and the first post I saw was a woman screaming about all the people not included in her feminism, my brain said Nope. Nope. Instead of posting about feminism on the 8th of March, instead of yelling about my politics, I’m striving to embody those politics every day of my life, to live them. Which is more subtle than a soapbox. It occurred to me that it’s been a long time since I posted anything on social media about abortion, which makes me uncomfortable. Embodying politics instead of screaming about them is not the same as staying quiet and being polite, but sometimes it looks the same. Maybe even the effects are the same, which is counter to the way I want to live my life, but all of this introspection has come about because I’m not convinced that yelling gets great results either. Also, as no doubt many are thinking, there are just three people left on the planet who don’t know my stance on abortion anyway. I have nothing new to say on the matter, just as I have nothing new to say about International Women’s Day, about women matter, why intersectionality matters, why feminism is necessary, why a world that’s good for women is good for everyone. I am so tired of reciting the same slogans over and over, the way the repetition comes to rob the words of meaning. The way they mean something when we first hear them, when we first say them, but then we cease to think about what those words mean, and then we cease to think altogether. The absurd theatre of it all, rather than anything substantive. “Both sides brought large speaker systems and screamed duelling chants at each other.”
I keep returning to this, from Rebecca Woolf: “It is in our best interest as a species to hold each other up through the complexity of our feelings instead of pushing each other down. While this moment demands ACTION — and I believe it does — it is also necessary for people in mourning to feel validated in their grief. All the energy being spent on attacking and unfollowing and disparaging each other online can and should instead be spent validating our own feelings and giving ourselves the space to move through them. Denying ourselves the time and space to do so will result in resentment and emotional constipation. (I am seeing this happen with people I know in real time.)”
“All the energy being spent on attacking and unfollowing and disparaging…can and should instead be spent validating our own feelings and giving ourselves the space to move through them.”
Woolf wrote this in the aftermath of October 7 2024, but I think it applies to everything. And yes, “validating our own feelings and giving ourselves the space to move through them” sounds very airy-fairy ’90s Oprah, and maybe some would argue that this is actually inaction, inertia, but are large speaker systems and screaming duelling chants (and self-righteous contempt) any more productive?
