I live as a feminist, but I’m tired of being so furious all the time
The dilemma Ever since I made the conscious decision to live my life fully as a feminist, it has been fraught with conflict and stress. I’m determined to make a mental note of any discrimination against my gender, to open my eyes and stop editing out instances – on the television, internet, radio and day-to-day life – of women being treated differently to men. I’ve also stopped putting a man’s psychological comfort ahead of my own – at work, in the street, in a queue, at home, in the pub, everywhere. My conflict and stress don’t originate in interactions or arguments with others, but from the mental effort of attempting not to live in a dreamlike state, ignoring evidence everywhere, all the time. What advice do you have so that I can manage the fury of being downgraded daily because I’m female, and at the same time endure women being ridiculed, ignored or simply laughed at by men who just dismiss it as an angry made-up “female” thing?
Mariella replies There’s a challenge! You vividly conjure up the reality of the path you’ve chosen, alert to every slight and misdemeanour and gloves on ready to battle back rather than simply let the buggers get away with it. Believe it or not, despite experiencing the slow, simmering rage brewed up by simply existing in the face of so much obvious injustice, you’ve taken the easiest path. Assuaging male egos and entering into negotiation is a more time-consuming business than being woke to the #everydaysexism that weaves itself into our lives like a jellyfish tentacle, barely perceptible but no less painful when we brush into it.
The fact you’ve raised your alert system to red doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for your sanity or indeed the most conducive way to effect change. Outrage is easy to channel, hard to bottle up and at epidemic levels in so many areas of society that it’s difficult to take a step in today’s world without causing controversy. You sound like you’ve taken the plunge and signed yourself up to the chorus of indignation coursing through our world.
Whether you’re angry about sexism, racism, poverty, Brexit, capitalism or climate change, there’s a fraternity waiting to hear from you. Ragespar for the course, but using your aggrieved sense of injustice to try to turn things around is an altogether less cathartic journey. But perhaps we should all try harder to adopt the latter.
When you’re furious, all you need is a villain (or multiples thereof) to rail against. When you’re trying to change the world, you need to bring people together. That’s the challenge I’m throwing out for your perusal – and I think I might be in good company. Just when I thought Barack Obama had sloped off to the twilight zone of charity events, executive boards and lucrative after-dinner speaking, up he pops voicing the sentiments we’ve all been waiting for. “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically ‘woke’ and all that stuff. You should get over that quickly,” he told the Obama Foundation summit recently. Well hallelujah for common sense.
Moral certainty and intolerance are the vices that drag us into the worst of humanity’s sins. They do not provide the path towards a better future. I say all this with desire for equality, particularly of the gender variety, alive and coursing through my veins since I first learned I was lesser. But generalisation is the mistake we make every time we set about changing the world by making enemies of those who don’t agree with us.
Moral certainty and intolerance are the vices that drag us into the worst of humanity’s sins. They do not provide the path towards a better future. I say all this with desire for equality, particularly of the gender variety, alive and coursing through my veins since I first learned I was lesser. But generalisation is the mistake we make every time we set about changing the world by making enemies of those who don’t agree with us.
They say the definition of madness is continuing to do the same thing while expecting a different result, and looking around at my species it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that we are completely crazy. For millennia, we’ve pitted ourselves against each other like male sea lions trying to resolve our differences by throwing our weight around. It’s time to learn a lesson about achieving progress.
Pitching a programme idea to a TV commissioner the other day, I was told that feminism was out of fashion and diversity was “in”. It summed up the reductionist way that big issues are reduced to titbits in the endless headline-grabbing orgy of our media-led world. As long as we allow basic human rights to be carried only on the bandwagon of fashion and assume that those not repeating our mantra are against us, rather than there to be won over, we will fail in our ambition.
So, my advice is to stop raging. Solutions are not found when we are incensed. Instead of living in expectation of the next slight, try imagining that the vast majority of men want the same thing. It would be a bitter irony if getting rid of the patriarchy was down to those who shouted loudest or threw their weight around the most. We all want a new world that’s far more female-shaped. That dream will only be realised using predominantly feminine qualities, such as reason, patience, endurance and emotional sensitivity. For that we need to be calm, rational and ready to listen, not in a state of rage.
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