What's the point

[MayhapsIAm]

I didn't know where else to post this. I'm a lurker, an unknown, but I'm about to burst with the pain of it all so here some of it is.

I suppose I first discovered I was worthless at 13. I'd had catcalls before then and there were adult men who had made me feel uncomfortable without me knowing quite why, but 13 was the age when I knew nothing I said would ever really matter and compared to the atrocities that women face around the world every day it was nothing. A non thing. But those non things add up.

So, what IS the point? I've fought, in my own private and small way, to stick up for what is right. I've got in the middle of fights to stop grown men from battering their partner, I've asked 'who do you think you are?' when I've seen women harassed in pubs, clubs, buses, trains, supermarkets, at work, walking down the street, in shops. I've stood in the head teachers office and argued about changing the protected characteristics from 'sex' to 'gender identity', I've stood up to the complaints of transphobia made anonymously to my employer. I've lost friends. I've donated and signed petitions. I've done what I can, when I can to defend women and girls and what's the point?

So few people give a shit. At all. I KNOW I'm not wrong. If I'd NEVER read any of the literature, if I'd never poured over the information posted on here by women, if I'd never heard of 'the terf wars' I'd still be confident I was right because I've seen it since I was 13 and we don't matter.

I don't know what to do. What's the point in speaking out? Telling our stories of our lives? So few believe us. We are mocked for our pain, laughed at for being raped, slurred for our thoughts. It's never ending and exhausting.

And the saddest thing for me is I've got it good. I've not had a bad life. I've been raped (didn't report - what's the point), sexually assaulted (didn't report - would have been doing it pretty much weekly from the ages of 13-30 - what's the point), overlooked in favour of younger, less experienced, less intelligent men in my career, spoken over by men who know nothing about the topic (any topic), been mocked for leaking blood onto my jeans, flashed at, followed home, called a slag for being sexually active, called a slag for not wanting to be sexually active, spat at, slapped and it's nothing unusual. When women sit down and think about all the casual throwaway 'show us your tits love' shouts, all the sneaky arse pinching and breast grabbing, the times when they've been genuinely afraid you realise it's insidious. It's so overwhelmingly horrific. Yet I still know I've got it good. Compared to most women in the world I've got it good.

I've cried tonight. I've cried for the women in the world who don't have my privileges. For the women that do. For our daughters who, if they are lucky, will have a life as good as mine. And selfishly I've cried for me. For the 13 year old me pinned to a table in a classroom with her shirt ripped open so a gang of boys could 'have a go' on my breasts. For the 13 year old me who's ordeal was ended by a teacher walking in and pretending nothing was happening, who ignored my tears and reprimanded me for not being where I was supposed to be and I cried for my 13 year old daughter for who the world has gotten worse.

I read JK Rowlings incredibly moving writing and I read the pile on afterwards. I just feel broken.

I'm sorry. There's no point to this post and it's all over the place. It was 4.30am when I started it and it's 5.30 now. (Many bits deleted many times). It's just a rant to people I don't know and who don't know me. The cowards way out. There is no point. It's an early morning glitch that has helped me to collect my thoughts for when my alarm goes off in 15 minutes and I start another day. Another day of quietly trying to make the world make sense when it appears to just fucking hate us.

I hear you OP

It's been a tough week, and I have felt "what is the point" many times. I have been reading and learning from the wonderful posters on this board, and have now decided to de-lurk and try to play my part. I am not brave enough yet to go public (I need to keep my job), but I sign petitions, contribute to consultations and donate to crowdfunders where I can.

Please take time out for you and return when you feel stronger. We can only keep going. The goose analogy is wonderful.

Thank you for every time you have stood up for a woman, intervened in the situations you describe. Even if the particular woman or man or witnesses reacted negatively at the time, in the long run it is so positive. Even if it is decades after, those people will eventually be mulling it over. You impact is not nothing. You may feel invisible but you're not.

I wish I was as brave as you. I'm so afraid to stand up. I've been bullied worse by women, misogynistic women, than men. I wouldn't know what to say and I know the way I said it would be jumped on instantly for being too emotional, too rude, not feminine enough. I stopped speaking out by age 17.

I look at my baby DD and I'm ashamed of the country I live in. It has just all gone so very wrong.

Thank you OP.

I hear you OP.

I cried when I saw Posie's angry-as-fuck video and I teared up yesterday when I read JKR post and I'm not a fangirl - Harry Potter means nothing to me. I felt so strongly that I've sent her a thank you card.

We've been in lockdown for 3 months everything feels strange, uncertain and somewhat out of control, that's adding to the despair and also helping to fuel the madness.

Hold on to the fact that we are right about this.

Even if everyone else spouts the lies it doesn't change the truth that humans cannot change sex, sex is a material reality and women (adult human females) are oppressed on the basis of that reality.

The truth is still the truth even if no one believes it.

It's been over 6 years since my eyes were opened to this monstrous shitshow and there have been more days than I can count where the despair means it all seems utterly pointless but things are changing, it's unbearably slow, but they are changing. If you need to step away to recharge then do it - there are others who will step up until you're able to rejoin the fight.

It will take time to turn the genderist tanker around but I can't live with myself if I don't try and play a part in stopping it, even if sometimes it seems hopeless.

Also feeling shocked and upset at the way people are responding. Feeling totally disillusioned with the left.

But if it helps, I'm on Reddit and here and there I'm seeing posts pop up by people who are thinking about what JK is saying, and are starting to question the rhetoric, even people from the trans community. It's progress.

She notes that while we aren’t allowed to call ourselves women anymore, it’s still fine for men to be men.

It's always women who have to adapt, make room for others. Men just get to carry on regardless. Now we don't even get to have our own spaces.

I was really upset by a series of tweets from a trans person/trans ally (not sure which) on the 'people who menstruate' issue about how triggering associating being a woman with menstruation can be for abuse survivors, yet how many times has it been said that women are transphobic if they don't want a lady dick near them in changing rooms etc because they were abused/raped?

OP, it's all not for nothing. I confess I was woefully asleep on this and many other feminist issues.

The actions of you and others like you have woken me up. It may not feel like it today, but more people are waking up, and I thank you for your part in my awakening. It is worth it.

OP - you described a sadly familiar feeling. I read the jkr letter with tears in my eyes and thought, finally they will see the truth. Then nearly every online news outlet writes an article about jkr and transphobia.... not ‘alleged’, not “here’s exactly what she said, some consider it transphobic....” but dictated as fact without evidence that jk is transphobic. Forbid that they taint themselves with balanced reporting or allowing the reader to use their own brain. And so it goes, women who speak for women’s rights are binned off as bigots - in the same bin as Rolf Harris and Colston’s statue, nothing to see here

But my copy of “my body is me” arrived today and cheered me up so much, amidst work, covid, potty training, home schooling and the 100 other things women have to plan, consider and care about, I will continue rearing my girls to know they are worthy as they are, that they deserve to feel safe, that they don’t have to fit anyone’s stereotype. Although I don’t believe there’s anything to be gained by joining or encouraging the Twitter mud wrestling, I will fight in all the appropriate, persistent, democratic ways I can to improve the world for women and girls. A quiet movement, from the unglamorous, essential things that women take care of, not for our own pleasure or comfort necessarily but because it’s the right thing. No flippin glitter or unicorns. And if men aren’t even prepared to stop and listen to women, then they can jog on too.

George Eliot is absolutely the best - i've said so for years, thanks for that wonderful quote.
Oh, and Rufus - I don't think they're quite the same, but Swans also fly in formation, and keep in touch through the amazing sound their wings make - so the swan emoji might work

I had a small win today. I emailed my child's school a couple of weeks ago to point out that their equality and diversity policy (and several other school policies) were referring to incorrect protected characteristics. Head teacher rang today to say that the policy had been updated and also rolled out to the other schools in the academy group.

Keep on keeping on everyone.

I hear you op.

FWIW it’s one of the positives to come out of lockdown.
My teenage dd can walk without having to endure all the sexist, mysoginistic crap from males day in , day out.
I’m also glad we now social dustance very glad. Nothing at all to do with germs or covid no. It’s down to the fact that the perverted scum won’t be able to try and sit next to my teenage dd in public,yeah!
How disgusting that it has taken this to stop dirty perverted twats from thinking they can ask her to move her bags so that they can sit next to her on an almost empty bus.
I already no bones about it.
I’m glad makes gave to now keep their distance and justify why they are out in public.
During lockdown it was amazing who non of these males dared to shout abuse. Amazing how they can control it when they are being watched.

I’ve also started staring back at men in a “what are you looking at?” Way.
They can be vile and I say this as a married woman and my husband is fully aware of my stance and in total agreement. It makes him feel sick when I recall the harassment I’ve suffered.

Well done MujeresLibres !

One time, when my then partner had thrown me across a room, and I'd had to wait until the moment I could make my escape, to get to the door and unlock it and get out before he could get to me, that time I ran down the street in bare feet and pyjamas it was winter) and all along Great Western road, crying, a total mess.

Two women approached me and asked if I was okay but I couldn't speak, I was utterly wrecked, near hysterical. They walked behind me the length of the road. Anybody who knows Glasgow knows how long that road is. They didn't push me, they didn't do anything but hover at a little distance, behind me but there, all along, until I got to a friend's house. They waited until I got buzzed in.

That was almost twenty years ago. I've never forgotten it. I like to think of the women who might be hovering behind us, in the dark, waiting to see we get home okay.

I’m another lurker. I am breaking my rule of never posting on the internet because this week has broken me too. I work in the wokest industry and I am frightened by the young women I see and hear who seem to have internalised so much misogyny. They call themselves cis with such a self flagellating sense of original sin. And they’re itching to find a sinner to point the finger.

The misogyny against JKR fills me with despair. I think almost fondly of the misogyny of my youth - at least I was “allowed” to argue against it. Now if you say anything out of step in the wrong circles you immediately become a non person. And EVERYONE KNOWS. Everyone knows their mother is a woman. I always thought the greatest trick the patriarchy ever played was to make God the creator our “Lord” - when every single person is made by a woman from herself. I always thought an honest church would be one where we sat and contemplated a big vulva over the altar.

But no there’s worse, we are assigned a sex at birth, totally randomly by a midwife who spends her entire day watching babies coming out of vaginas so is obviously terribly confused about how sex works.

And there’s the trap. They delight in tearing apart JKR, the “privileged white woman” because her immense wealth and privilege means it’s okay to use misogyny against her. Only that kind of privilege gives women the platform to be heard. But if they use it to speak up for vulnerable women and girls, the fact they’re privileged enough to have a platform in the first place makes them inherently unworthy. Only the women who’re not privileged enough to have a voice are worthy. Of course you never see the same people curious about what female prisoners or women in shelters think and want. It’s enough that they know how Voiceless women ought to feel. If they’re the right sort.

And I get so fucking triggered because the gaslighting reminds me of my own abuse and it makes me feel crazy and I hate feeling crazy. I do not undress in front of any man except my partner. It is a simple normal healthy sexual boundary. And men know fine well that the boundary is there. That’s why they’re always trying to violate it. That’s why there’s the demand for revenge porn and upskirt shots. And any trans woman who goes into a woman’s space without every single woman knowing the score and consenting has no concept of women’s boundaries. They have no respect for women. No empathy. Which of course was JKR’s point and I hate seeing people I know and thought might be okay agreeing with this snide misogyny.

Anyway OP solidarity. It does make me feel a bit less crazy to see this stuff affects other women just as deeply. And maybe some day I’ll win the lottery and buy a church and we’ll burn some incense and put a fertility goddess above the altar and only people who believe that sex is real can chill out there and heal from all This bloody misogyny.

@ScrimpshawTheSecond: I like to think of the women who might be hovering behind us, in the dark, waiting to see we get home okay.

That's a lovely, comforting thought. Thank you and thanks to all the wonderful women on here.

Take a rest and come back even stronger, knowing there are millions of us at your side.

I know how you feel op. I've been there. But I think about 10 years ago when hardly anyone even knew what was going on. 5 years ago when only a handful of women spoke out, the media only reported one side of the story and nobody else cared. Things are slowly changing, more people are speaking and freaking JK Rowling has our back. That is amazing.

OP, I feel like the past few days have broken my spirit a little bit.

That deflated feeling after seeing the JK pile on - it actually made me cry.

It does feel like it's a particularly bad time for women at the moment and I totally get it.

It's brought lots of things up from my past with regards to 'casual' sexual abuse I have endured.

Being fingered in the middle of a packed dance floor when I was 17 by some random bloke I'd never met but had the audacity to have a dance with. I was asking for it right?

Having my breast felt by someone who was an authority figure and being told I was a liar by a bunch of old men when I was 15. And begging my mum not to tell my dad because I was so ashamed of MYSELF!!!

The men you don't know who tell you to 'smile'

And we're told to be kind. Put up and shut up.

I think I need a couple of days to get my head together and then come back fighting for us women and for my daughter and the females of this world who know that SEX MATTERS.

Hope you're okay OP 🙏❤️

The people who know that sex is real are in the majority, and think this is just somethings that's happening on Twitter. Give people time to process whats happening; the vitriolic abuse is putting a lot of people off. They just haven't all spoken about it yet.

Thank you for posting this, Mayhaps.

As is already evident on this thread, you speak for so many of us.

But, as is also evident, we support each other and keep on.

Misogyny and sexism has doubled down in response to women gaining ground over the last century, and it now looks uglier than ever. At the same time, though, the women’s liberation movement has been te-invigorated.

Patriarchy was never going to go quietly, and I think the full on war on women by the “woke’ will get uglier yet. But we keep fighting back, and our numbers are growing by the minute.

MayhapsIAm thank you for this thread. I hope you feel the support of all the women who are feeling the same sort of hopelessness - yet... it’s not hopeless. I watched the news today (yesterday now) and JKR was there - an attempt at ‘balance’ was made but I genuinely feel her message got across. I’m a little more hopeful.