Time For Women To Wake Up Again
As it is International day for Women I am obliged, as a member of the human species, to play my part in this day of feminine fenestration. Come on wake up and have a good day because you are worth it. No matter that you Western worthy women care little or nothing about the real inequalities and the real abuses of global women you must still wake up and have a good day.
I first became interested and quite active in the so called Liberation of Women movement in the early 1970s when at the University of Warwick in the UK. I was privileged to attend seminars with the original Female Eunuch, the famous Germaine Greer. I did respect her knowledge of literature and the places of the woman in literary life and it was she that really introduced to me to Frankenstein and Mary Shelley. It was Greer that helped me make connections with the early years of female liberating writers. That is about 300 years of active womanhood in both the arts and politics.
Then I got a bit lost. I could not quite connect with close up portraits of the genitals of Greer as splashed over a big two-page spread in the middle of a magazine. After all I had seen between the legs of a woman before so what was the big deal I asked myself. Ms Greer began to lose my interest. Then during the early 1970s when Greer was involved in a rather nasty scandal concerning evicting poor tenants out of rented homes in London I began to question even more. It seemed to me then that land prices, market value and profits were often more important to the liberation movement as any protest against inequality or oppression.
So I began to question any Day of Women prefering to always look at the context of the market and poverty and oppression. Lo and behold I saw and felt the oppression of menfolk too. From coal mines through to war games and from violence through to general servitude. I began to see this all as an issue of class more than an issue of gender. I began to see all this inequality in terms of the power elites and the structures of power. In later years I think I can say that I tried to support the liberation of women but only through this wider context. I was happy that I found many other women that helped me understand that I was not alone in this wider connective sense.
So I found myself in conflict with the majority of the up and coming female eunochs but, thankfully, in tune with the vast minority of liberational womenfolk.
Today, it seems to me, that this International Day for Women is a bit like that Mary Shelly book. The Promethian creation of Dr Frankenstein was mishandled, misjudged and then thrown away to the wilds to suffer. In fact this story has been so much abused that many believe that Frankenstein was actually the ”beastly” Promethian creation that is to be called a ”monster”. Today few hear those desperate cries and those painful groans of suffering that were the result of mass hype and media. But the Frankensteinian ”monster” ran away rather than have his genitals splashed all over the middle pages of a magazine. The ”monster” cried out for dignity but was never going to get it. Somehow this story from Mary Shelley seems prophetic in terms of the last few years of the liberation movements for female-folk.
Nobody can say that there is anything wrong with cosmetics, fashions and sex in themselves. Indeed let us all play about with our short lived lives and enjoy it all as we can and must. Yet when such themes become so strong and so central to female eunochs I can only shake my head and walk away. Where are the real and really significant women that will struggle to find a political-economy and a related culture that really supports humanfolk? When will this Day of Women be strong enough to protest against the structures of real power that helps create such inequalities and even suffering for all in a global world?
Perhaps my only hope is that the minority of women who support liberation for all and will make this public for all to see will grow. In this sense I come here to praise ”Modernised” woman not to bury her.
As an afterthought I think I can sense that sometimes any social movement needs to sometimes make one step ahead and then take two steps backwards before it may start again and really move forwards again. For me I have returned to the traditions of a Mary Shelley. Wake up to Mary Shelley traditions today. That really is worth it.
