Monday 2 May 2016

As women FULL STOP. We will have to keep being who we want to be and are.

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One of my dearest friends messaged me the other day on fb, pointing me to a status she’d posted about sometimes feeling ‘bulldozed by men’ – ‘getting frustrated for not being more ‘masculine’'  - and asked for my opinion.

In her reply to my response, considered but scrawled and typo-ridden as I rode to work on the bus – she thanked me for ‘articulating the historical and social context of feminism’ in a way she ‘struggles to'.

My response outlined how if we allow ourselves to change our instinctual reactions to situations based on a gender norm or a environmental push – then we will achieve less than if we push forward (yes push) but with our own agenda and moral code.

I have quite a considered opinion (yes, OPINION,) on what feminism is to me and what it means to be a woman smashing it – earning my own cash and choosing how I earn. Much of that is down to my personality – and a certain bullishness that I have now learnt not to apologise for. My bullishness is not aggressive but is unapologetic problem solving, if there was a problem, yo, I'll solve it, check out the hook while my DJ revolves it. Alongside this, I studied literary theory and am a wild over-thinker so I apply a lot of my own pop psychology and slip into that what I have learned from watching people, and reading about them.  I have confidence in my own thoughts and abilities that if they feel right to me, I roll with them – and you know what? That is traditionally the man’s right – to presume that how he feels is how he can act. That is his right while the women check themselves and slot in alongside.

Ironically, one of the reasons I have been able to get to this place – and see things clearly for myself – is as I can be forthright in the workplace. When emotionally, in relationships with boyfriends, friends, in the dating scene, with my family I can turn to useless, frustrated angry mush. If I allow myself to apply a little of ‘work me’ to a emotional situation, Mary Poppins style, spick spock, no nonsense, no emotion, no gossip, because I’m tired, unwell or just plain exhausted from fireworking energy 24/7 – I can get in trouble. Sometimes the response to my no-nonsense is presumed disinterest or my frustration is seen as unwarranted aggression.

I think the key thing I wanted to say to PSB – producer, business person, dancer, marketer, digital magician, a fiercely intelligent, beautiful, warm, funny, dirty, eyelashed-legend – was that whatever our background, reading, social and political awareness and knowledge of feminism or lack there of – as women full stop, we will have to keep being who we want to be and are. And whilst thanking all those that have helped us get to a point where our response is more likely to be rolling our eyes and gasping in frustration; than crying in the toilet at a hand thrust up our skirt – we still have a right to be frustrated and a right to express that whenever the fudge we like.

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