So, today my daughter had a self harming episode. I have just started a new job, with really significant responsibilities. I have also been asked to take on further responsibilities in my volunteer capacity at a Foodbank. I'm actually loving having the chance to use my skills in an outside-the-family arena, but it is an added stress point. I have three other children with their own issues and difficulties. My partner is being petulant and unhelpful and leaves much of the hard stuff of counselling the kids to me because he 'just doesn't do it as well' as I do. I still do most of the housework, of course. I've got a sneaking suspicion that the menopause is making an early appearance too, so my health is a pain in the arse too.
I sound like I'm whinging but there is a point here - I am just beginning to understand what it means to be a woman in a world where everything hangs on you and I am so frustrated that of all the issues women have to deal with, trans-everything is marching in and saying, 'shut up and look at me!'
I lived much of the last twenty years as a fundamentalist Christian, and actively campaigned against feminism as it was presented to me - pro porn, pro prostitution etc.
This might be hard to believe but since I became Catholic, my perspective has shifted enormously and I have slowly begun to understand that feminism is a positive thing, a righteous thing that simply highlights the inequity in the material world that puts this enormous burden on women.
I am weary today, burning with indignation at all the unfairness I see in the world, and so bloody frustrated that so many are still determined to either receive the yoke of oppression themselves or eager to put it on others. I don't want to take anyone else's genuine rights from them. I just want to be afforded the same courtesy, because right now, I am carrying a load, similar to so many women on this planet, and I don't have too much spare to fight to hold on to rights and safety for women and girls.