Take your patriarchy and shove it
Elder woman holding sign saying “I can’t believe I still have to protest this fucking shit.” Source: All Posters, which does not give name of photographer.
Ten years ago exactly, I wrote a blog that began “Take your Women’s Day and shove it,” a sustained and sweary roar of rage. Turned out I wasn’t alone in my fury not only at the appalling waves of violence crashing down on women, gay/trans individuals and children every minute of every day in this country, but at the gall of the state and big businesses for their oily insistence that for a month, women should be patronised on top of being brutalised.
My piece struck a collective nerve, becoming the most widely read thing I’ve ever written. It crashed the server of the hosting website (BookSA, now BooksLive, founded by the peerless Ben Williams), brought demands for print, online, radio and television interviews, was parlayed into a fundraiser for Rape Crisis (making it the most useful thing I’ve ever written), gathered a host of new contacts and friends into my life, and was the subject of published academic linguistic analysis on swearing. (I used “fuck” a LOT.)
That piece was fuelled by the kind of rage that far from being blind, was the only logical response to seeing, squarely and clearly, how badly (and UNJUSTLY) women in SA were treated, and how utterly pitiful, even insulting, state (and corporate) responses were when asked for even the most meagre resources to ensure our constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Ten years ago. And things are quantifiably, demonstrably worse for women everywhere. MUCH worse. Cue screaming. If not actually fainting with horror.
Where to start? From a global perspective, ten years ago, I could not have imagined that presumably sane Americans would vote for someone as morally reprehensible and misogynist as the Orange Hairball (much less to the highest level in the land); that the Brits would be stupid enough to vote for Brexit (and to install in government a clique of remorseless, greedy, power-grubbing elites whose shirts are only one shade paler than brown, with their open belief the poor should be punished for their temerity in daring to exist). I wouldn’t have believed that the Taliban, a violent brutal bunch who consider women less than livestock, would be back in charge of Afghanistan, that a malevolent and power-mad patriarch would start another war in Europe, only 70 years after Nazism was supposedly defeated for good.
I could not have imagined that we’d spend a whole decade letting our grievously damaged planet, our ONLY home, drift ever closer towards the rocks of destruction. Or that a handful of monstrously selfish locusts individuals wanting bigger yachts would still be pushing the “growth is good and fuck the planet and our children and their children” economic model. I cannot believe that the insatiable desire for excessive wealth, more than any one individual or family could use in a hundred lifetimes, is not yet recognised as one of the most powerful, distorting and dangerous mental illnesses there is. (And yes, this is about gender: guess who suffers disproportionately, every time, as a result of climate catastrophes, war, food insecurity, low pay and unpaid labour?)
Right here at home, I haven’t even started on the piles of women’s bodies heaped up in every corner, in which I include all the women and girls whose opportunities for a dignified and meaningful life have been stripped away by obscenely unequal access to education and health care. I felt a faint flicker of hope when Uncle Jacob of the zipless trousers was ousted as President, but that optimism was quenched long ago – of a zillion examples of the continuing decline of the standing of SA women, there’s our cloddish Minister of Police announcing that a woman is “lucky” if she’s raped by only one man and not a gang – right at the start of Women’s Month. Which, in this country, always seems to start with an extremely overt spasm of femicide and rape.
And then there’s the pandemic, which has worsened all the inequalities of this already staggeringly unequal society, has hit women and children hardest, and still NO ONE SEEMS TO FUCKING CARE. A friend with a meaningful project aimed at preventing GBV by integrating men as well as women tells me she cannot raise funding from businesses because “domestic violence is seen as controversial and might damage the brand”. (Yes: WTAF.)
As for the overturning of Roe v Wade. Words fail – or rather, there are not enough words.* Six years ago, I watched with disbelief as the Hairball openly and childishly mocked a journalist for his disability, announced on TV that if Ivana wasn’t his daughter, he’d “date her”, bragged about his pussy-grabbing habit – and his audiences lapped up the cruelty and depravity, crowning him with the Presidency. That’s when I saw the end of Roe v Wade coming, but it’s been no less of a shock. It fits right in with the return of Roman-circus and witch-burning levels of sadism everywhere: what do you call insisting that a ten-year-old bear her rapist’s child? A doctor presented with a woman haemorrhaging from an ectopic pregnancy having to get the hospital lawyer’s permission to save her life? And don’t think this won’t embolden the misogynists right here who make it as difficult as possible for women, especially those who are poor and less educated, to get abortions to which they (still) have a legal right.
I am sick TO BLOODY DEATH of it all.
So fuck the patriarchy. Thank you, I am a recovering academic, I do know that patriarchies are multiple and interlinked and culturally and contextually inflected yada yada. I don’t care: right now, it’s one monster to me, even if it does have many heads. And I want to smash it into pieces and burn it all down.
But while rage is energising and galvanising, my personal battle right now is with deep grief and even despair. It’s a terrible time to be a feminist my age. Four decades of activism, analysis, fighting in the trenches and from the sidelines, marching, protesting, writing, writing, writing – and things have gone backwards. My nephew and nieces are in their early twenties: I intended for them to live in a world where they were at least safe from harm on the basis of their gender and sexuality – and now look.
The many-headed beast, this vile cancer, is entrenched and entangled in every single thing, from tiny to huge things (like the attitudes that put five right-wing fundamentalists – who most expressly do NOT believe in the separation of church and state their own constitution supposedly upholds – in the Supreme Court of the US). I hear intelligent, feminist women saying things like “Did we get complacent? Surely we bear some responsibility? Don’t men have it hard, too?” ENOUGH. This is not about the failure of feminism/s. This is about the flourishing of a profoundly EVIL set of social, economic and political social structures, and they are INDEFENSIBLE. No, there is no “benign” patriarchy; don’t forget I also heard all the late-apartheid excuses about how the separation of races was well-meant and could be a force for good (the words “stability and order” were used a lot).
Yes, I KNOW men are affected by patriarchy too. It might serve some of you, but at a cripplingly high cost. But just this one teeny tiny time, can you NOT make this all about you? Why, when I ask the perfectly legitimate question arising from the MOUNTAINS of evidence on offer, “Why do you hate women so much?” does my inbox fill up with pathetic bleats about how hurt and offended you are? Oh, and don’t tell me “but women also...”. I grew up under apartheid: do you think I never saw a black collaborator?
I have NEVER made any claim for some biologically inferred moral superiority for women; I DO repeatedly ask WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH MEN, who could make the decision TODAY to put down their fists and stop beating the crap out of those who are physically weaker than them – and (this is critical) insist that all their peers do so too. Long ago, I said that if I believed men were biologically (as opposed to socially and politically) programmed for moral inferiority and violence, I’d emigrate to another galaxy. Some days I’m sorely tempted, although given the Bigus Dickus’s who think blowing their ill-gotten loot by wanking shooting into space is a good idea, perhaps there’s a remote cave or jungle that might suit instead. Why should women have to do the hard work of constantly fighting back rape culture? Men, why don’t you FUCKING WELL HELP?**
I don’t know how to end this, because it feels never-ending. Here are (some of) my rants over Ten. Fucking. Years. In every single one, I lament or seethe at how little has changed.
2012: http://helenmoffett.bookslive.co.za/blog/2012/08/08/take-your-women%E2%80%99s-day-and-shove-it/ (what I like about this version is the comments).
And more: http://helenmoffett.bookslive.co.za/blog/2012/08/21/you-can-shove-getting-in-line-too/ And yet more: http://helenmoffett.bookslive.co.za/blog/2012/08/21/stop-the-madness-no-more-toothless-councils-on-gender-based-violence/ And STILL more: http://helenmoffett.bookslive.co.za/blog/2012/08/31/and-finally-adios-womens-month-good-riddance-and-lets-shove-postfeminism-too/
2013: http://helenmoffett.bookslive.co.za/blog/2013/08/08/fuck-womens-day-fuck-it/
2014: http://helenmoffett.bookslive.co.za/blog/2014/08/08/take-your-doek-and-knot-it/
2015: http://helenmoffett.bookslive.co.za/blog/2015/08/08/womens-day-must-fall/
2017: In which my usual rant appeared on my Facebook page. I think: some of my blogs have disappeared from the BooksLive site.
2018: https://www.helenmoffett.com/rants/2018/8/8/failfailfail-a-womens-day-letter-to-the-president
2019: I ranted on Facebook again.
In 2021, I tried being Pollyanna, too overwhelmed by an abiding sense of gratitude after my sister miraculously survived Covid after 65 days in ICU, to write in rage; instead, with the help of local publishers and a generous donor who sponsored delivery, I ran a book giveaway focusing on books by women and on genuinely relevant (as opposed to pink-washed) issues. That was fun.
But you see why I’m exhausted. One good thing, one true thing, though: Rape Crisis is still providing its invaluable services, but is always in need of support. Here’s the link – please hit that “donate” button if you can.
* I need to write a separate blog on this.
** Ditto.