Dear Nadine Dorries

Dear Nadine Dorries,

I don't make a habit of listening to you usually (because you associate yourself with the Conservative Party, which in turn associates itself with arseholeness - and arseholeness generally angers me, and anger sorta interferes with the whole incense-stick-burning/ peaceful meditation thing I have going on at the moment), but just lately some of your comments and opinions about other women's uteri have been trickling through onto my Twitter feed. I can't help but feel that you are alluding to my uterus, Nadine, what with me having one and everything. And so I thought to myself: Hey! Maybe Nadine would care for a formal introduction!

This is my uterus:

Cute, isn't it?

When my gynaecologist told me that I have "a heart-shaped uterus", my initial reaction was, "Aww, that's sweet." But apparently, having a "heart-shaped" (or "bicornuate") uterus isn't all that sweet, as Mr Gynaecologist eventually explained to me, after I spent a solid two minutes sitting on (well, squatting over) the hospital toilet emptying my raging bladder. "No, no," he said to me. "You iz fucked." Well, those weren't his exact words, but his expression was pretty grave as he told me that my chances of carrying any future bambinos to full-term were very slim and likely to be littered with complications, and my risk of miscarriage significantly higher than most women's.

I wasn't too fussed at the time. Y'see Nadine, I was 15, my biggest worry was if I would survive my GCSEs and whether my new set of hair straighteners were any good, and the only reason I was there having my uterus scanned in the first place was to ascertain why it always hurt so sodding much, and why it insisted on bleeding profusely for four months straight without any kind of interval, eventually resulting in a kitchen floor covered in blood, me almost passing out from the pain and my mama having to call for an ambulance. My uterus hasn't given me an easy time of it over the years, and I don't expect it to let up any time soon! As I near the grand old age of 24, with my uterus persisting in being a pain in the arse (sometimes literally - do you ever get period cramps in your backside, Nadine? Hurts like a bitch!), and with kindly doctors urging me to consider "starting a family" earlier than I may have otherwise planned (y'know, in case the first few handfuls of pregnancies don't work out so well), the reality of my possible predicament becomes ever-increasingly frightening. I don't know if I want children, truth be told. Yes, I want them, but I don't know if I want to endure a whole bunch of miscarriages in the later stages of pregnancy before I might, just might, finally get one. I've never coped so well with disappointment. I mean yeah, sure I'll think about it and see if I can get my vagina on any decent sperm before I make my decision, but at this moment in time, I'm pretty protective of what goes in my uterus. It's bad enough not having any say in the presence of big juicy clots.

And so, Nadine, I ask you kindly to please reconsider your views on my uterus. Y'know the uterus you just met, like two minutes ago, and will probably forget all about in about half as much time? My uterus and I would be very grateful.

Laterz!

Martha

The Role of Men in Feminism

I have a hard time finding a man happy to identify himself as "feminist" or "pro-feminist", or even a man happy to admit that he sympathises with the feminist plight. When the floor opens up to feminist discussion and I raise my hand and proudly declare, "Yo, feminist right here", here's what I usually get: I get eyes rolling; I get genuine surprise that I, a woman though I am, identify as feminist, followed by eventual "Oh, that's cool... I guess"; I get banterous "But everyone knows men are better than women" or "Oh, so you hate men", and sometimes I get legitimate disgust. So when it's this much of a struggle to get men aboard the whole idea of feminism, why should we, as women, subjugate, isolate or reject the voices of those men who do actually sympathise with us? Well, I'll tell you why:

I want men to be interested in feminism. I don't really care about semantics, and whether a man chooses to identify as "feminist" or "pro-feminist" is really beside the point, so long as he is supporting the cause - but most importantly, supporting the cause in a practical way. The whole point of feminism is to fight against the fact that the gender "female" is viewed and very often treated as inferior to the gender "male", and acknowledging that this, frustratingly, manifests itself in various ways. It manifests itself economically: women overall still earn less than men. It manifests itself in crime: women are still overwhelmingly victims of street harassment, sexual assault and domestic abuse. It manifests itself in the media: the sexualisation of girls who have barely hit puberty, and the objectification of women who are only viewed as "tits" and "arse", and not as "human being"... But you've heard this all before, guys, I know you have. So how about this:

It manifests itself in language: the worst thing you call a person, a "cunt", is just another word for the female genitalia, after all. It manifests itself in the assumption that men should be the breadwinner and women should look after the children, and it manifests itself in the judgement that is passed of a man when he answers the question "What do you do for a living?" with "I'm a dad". It manifests itself in the pressure a man feels to be "macho" or strong. It manifests itself in the very idea that to be female, to have female traits, to be in any way associated with anything female, unless you're either a) protecting her, or b) shagging her, is a negative thing.

It is not a negative thing to be female.

Nor is it a negative thing to be male. But the sad thing is that we as a society have come to associate supposedly "female" traits with weakness. "Stop being such a girl" as opposed to "Man up"; "You throw like a girl" as opposed to "Grow some balls". We live in a world where women and men are disempowered by the disempowerment of women. If we want equality - yes, equality; I'm not talking about a world governed by misandry - we need to start promoting the female gender as the amazing, strong and beautiful entity that it is. This doesn't mean that we need to slam and shame all men at every given opportunity, but it does mean that we need to be honest about our experiences without worrying about offending or upsetting those men who have never hit or sexually assaulted a woman, or shouted "SLAG!" after the woman who refused to give him her phone number. Men, we are aware that you are not all rapists, that you don't all wolf-whistle or cat-call, or truly believe that a woman's place is in the kitchen making you a sandwich. Men, we like some of you. A lot. Maybe we even love some of you. But please, we need to love ourselves, as well.

We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half.

- Emmeline Pankhurst

 

We cannot empower humanity without empowering the female gender. We cannot let people, all people, be who they truly are - complicated, dynamic, strong and emotional, aggressive and sensitive - without saying to the world, "It is OK to be a woman." And men, you have to let us say it.

 

We are afraid of walking home late at night on our own; when it comes to Reclaim The Night marches, let us reclaim the night. Your voices are overwhelmingly dominant over ours in the media; let us speak about issues which affect us. A couple of years ago, when I was commissioned to write a piece about sexism in football for a feminist website, my piece was dropped because it was felt that a male author's take on the issue was, apparently, "more relevant". This is not to say that I believe a man should be silenced or discouraged from engaging in the feminist movement, but rather that he needs to know when, where and how. Do not tell us that we are wrong, because until you have lived in our shoes and had the experiences that we have had, how could you possibly know?

 

Men, if you are truly supportive of the feminist cause, you have to support it by giving the oppressed voice room to speak.

 

Loneliness Is...

You can live with loneliness, if you live for long enough. But first you have to break through that spell where loneliness is the pair of tights you ladder first thing in the morning when you’re still half-asleep, the coat you shrug on before you step out into the world’s familiar chill, or the blanket you pull tight around you when it’s been two hours and you’re still not asleep. Because that is not loneliness: that is fear of loneliness.

Loneliness becomes you. You wear it like skin, so accustomed to it that when you look in the mirror each day, you are not surprised to see it. You know it, every square inch of it: its temperature, the way it stretches across your bones as you reach out an arm, or folds in on itself as you pull an arm away. You protect it, and panic at the sight of blood, that some alien vessel has dared to infiltrate you. True loneliness is easily accepted, as I had accepted mine.

Love, Church and Homosexuality

As MPs prepare to vote on The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill later on today, I look around me with increasing bewilderment at the very fact that we are still debating this.

Yes, I understand religious folk who quote bits from the Bible about man not lying with man (is it OK if man bends man over, or if they do it standing up?), and who think that by allowing same-sex couples to marry in the name of the Lord, they are somehow devaluing the institution of their own religion. I understand them, but I don't agree with them. Is it not more devaluing to the institution of your own religion to condemn love? Are these not the same people who preach "love your neighbour as yourself"?

I was raised in the Catholic Church, but thankfully under the guidance of an open-minded mother and one godparent who was gay. As a child, I never saw my religion as being exclusive. I went to church and saw male, female, black, white, Asian, straight, gay, old, young, fat, thin, able-bodied, disabled - people of all walks of life. I sat, I listened; I knelt, I prayed; I stood, I sang. And the whole time I did, I did it with a kind of childlike innocence and naivety: There is a God, and He loves us, all of us.

But I stopped going to church at around the age of 12, when the naivety began to slip away, when what I heard stopped being the interpretations my mother gave me, but rather the interpretations I heard at school in the classroom and in the playground, on the streets and out of the mouths of people who didn't seem to understand God as I did. What I heard stopped being stories of love, but stories of judgement. God only loves those who follow these rules.

Well, why? Does God not love those who work on Sundays because if they don't, they won't be able to afford rent? Does God not love the mother who steals £20 from the rich man to feed her hungry child? Does God reserve His love solely for those who follow a book written by Man, originally written in Ancient Hebrew and Greek, most of it based on stories told by ordinary regular men, and then translated repeatedly from Latin to English? Does God only love those who tick boxes, walk out of church on Sunday and spend the rest of their week casting judgement upon others?

I have since made my peace with religion. It is not for me, at least not at this moment in time, but I respect those who use it to feel a closer connection to God, and not a closer connection to a set of rules which they seem to think will entitle them to a place in heaven. But the sad thing is that I feel I have been shoved out of the Church. It is no longer the inclusive, unconditional love I once thought it was - and until it learns how to be just that, it will continue to push out other people exactly like me.
 

Final Message

Final Message

When I’m still, you occupy my mind like a tumour, pressing on my brain and making me grow weak. I drop my lids and see your face floating within the depths of my watery blue eyes. These dark pools are a backdrop to the memory of your face, reminiscent of that night when the stars seemed to shine like a halo around you, and you cupped my face in your hands and kissed me gently on the lips.
“I love you,” you said to me.
But you didn’t.
My eyes spring open in one fluent, startled motion, as if suddenly scorched by the heat from your face. A thousand images of you swirl in circles in front of my eyes, your smile taunting me still. The blur of colours from my ostensibly empty life fuse together to make you, and I blink furiously between the images, trying to distinguish the lesser of two evils, until I feel the memory of you running in tracks down my cheeks.

When I’m running I feel I’m running away from you. Sometimes when it’s late and the road is clear I listen closely to the soft padding of my feet grazing the ground, and I can convince myself that that’s you keeping in step just behind me. If I were to slow down, soon your body would emerge beside mine - then I could turn and look at you and you’d be smiling.
“I love you,” you’d mouth to me.
But you don’t.
Your sweet lies make me mad; my pace quickens and the rush of my feet disguises the absence of a second pair of legs straining to keep up. I can ignore the burning in my chest this flight creates, for I know I made it and it’s within my control to soothe it, to pour water on the flame. I push harder and listen to the furious, determined pounding of my heart, and I tell myself that that’s me beating away your memory.

When I collapse on the ground my heart is still hammering with vigour inside my chest, and I close my eyes and assure myself that it’s the sound of your feet carrying you away. Your footsteps grow fainter, and for one fleeting moment I believe that you’re gone. But then the wind whips past me, scooping hair away from my ears and collecting in my open mouth, silencing me for the moment you’ll whisper some deceiving final message. I can almost feel the weight of you as you lean over my broken body, as your lips graze my wet cheek.
“I love you,” you breathe.
So why did you go?

By Martha Everitt
2006