One of the many tragedies of the modern era is that this book needed to exist at all. But there we are.
'Nasty Women' contains essays by African-American women, Muslim women, Asian-American women, queer women, transgender women, fat women, disabled women, pregnant women, women born out of previous generations of unconventional "nasty women"; who either suffer from depression and other mental illnesses, are rape and sexual assault victims, are immigrants or whose parents/close-to-extended families are immigrants, or all the above.
Every single experience, every viewpoint, is valid. There is a surprising amount of punk rock love from these ladies, too. One essay is a love letter and thank-you to "problematic" female role models like Courtney Love: That and many of the other pieces made me teary. They are loud, they are persistent, they are righteously mad as hell and won't take it anymore.
This book is a vehicle for their movement; with it they have collaborated together to say, "Enough is enough". For the crime of existing, for not being silent and invisible, for demanding to be paid attention to whilst injustice is happening in every aspect of their lives, they are considered to be "nasty women". Nasty is and always has been a weak, childish, last-ditch dismissal of women's experiences, just like calling them "hysterical", in order to shut them up and shame them. Passion is not hysterics or nastiness in a woman - women's passions and ambitions just make men uncomfortable because they are made to think of them as human beings with rights and needs like everyone else. (White) men's privilege is at risk, and that scares them to no end; never taking into account how much women are scared of for merely existing in certain spaces, and for good reason.
Now more than ever.
Because we now live in a world where an unqualified, anti-intellectual, anti-truth, anti-woman, and all-around dangerous President of the United States has managed to brainwash an entire nation into thinking that white is right; that immigrants are the cause of every problem in America, instead of the providers of how we live; that America is some sacred (meaning: white, industrial) ground not rich in culture and various foreign and religious human identities; that division and fear based on skin colour and ethnic background should be how things are, no questions asked; that health and education are unimportant next to the delusions and egos of white supremacists; that kindness and human decency automatically mean that terrorists win; that hatred, blind hatred, is good; that not caring about anything not affecting you (if you're white and male and heterosexual and cisgender, otherwise you're given no hope) is normal; that rape, abuse and sexual assault are not only acceptable, but are inevitable - just part of the parcel of being born with a penis, so those with vaginas should stop making a fuss and deal with it; that pregnancy and female health organs and concerns - hell, just existing as a woman at all - are disgusting, unnatural diseases needing to be controlled and handled in any way by men, no matter the cost.
Keeping women second-class citizens.
Who no longer have rights to choices about their own bodies.
Consciously and forcibly taking away the rights of groups of millions of people just for existing is inhuman and monstrous. To be blunter, it is evil.
This is the real-life near-dystopia we - and millions of women - are living, now and likely towards the future. America is being run by schoolboys and bullies. And internet trolls.
I don't want to get political - in my experience it never ends well, resulting in hostile shouting and family division and friend fallouts - but everything is political, I realize that now, so I feel I must say something. Given what is happening in the US, and the mess my home in the UK is in as well, silence and complacency are no longer options. This is no healthy, normal way to live. That is how the women who wrote the essays for 'Nasty Women' felt.
And there is so much to be angry about still after its publication this year. Health and education crises, rape and (female) abuse victims are seen as "pre-existing conditions", and a woman is literally being imprisoned for laughing at a male politician. The Margaret Atwood quote, "Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them," resonates truer and truer every day. Thank you, author of 'The Handmaid's Tale'. No doubt there will be more reasons for outcries to come.
'Nasty Women', like a lot of other feminist texts, is fundamentally about one thing: Freedom. The loudest, bravest voice demanding freedom for the oppressed, the marginalized. Surely someone up on that fancy, unearned government pedestal has to listen sometime, right? They can't keep up with the privilege/luxury of ignoring and forgetting millions if not billions of us forever...
To anyone who chooses to read 'Nasty Women' and to whoever has read this angry and meandering review to the end, I leave with one final, radical message: You matter. You are loved. You are cared for. There is hope.
You exist, so you matter as much as everybody else.
Final Score: 5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment