I want to be agressively feminist

[terresdebrume]

(Look at me starting to crosspost non-fic things from tumblr!)

And I know it sounds strange when you put it like that but here’s the thing: most kind of political/social inclusivity is perceived as aggressive.

People think allowing women who wear a hijab to not be harrassed or stigmatized for wearing it means forcing all women ever to wear a hijab. People think giving same-gender couples the right to marry means taking away different-genders couples’ right to have a “real” or “meaningful” marriage.

Here’s the thing though, it doesn’t. My freedom doesn’t start where yours end. If you’re my friend and you can’t enter cinemas because you’re in a wheelchairs and they all have steps in, then I’m not free to go to the movies with my friend, and the only way to change that is to make sure you can acess the cinema. If you’re my friend and you’re forbidden (either by law or by social censure) from practicing your religion freely, then I’m not free to know you as you would be if not for the pressure of society. The solution to that is to make sure you can be the religious person you would want to be.

I’m so tired of the discourse that say “you don’t know what real opression is” or “if you let [muslims] have their way, in ten years you’ll get thrown in jail for being a lesbian”, as if I don’t know that there are terrible people in this world–as if I don’t know, already, to live in a place where the general discourse either forgets or outright negates that I exist.

I’m tired of being told “better is the enemy of good” because the more I hear it, the more I realize what it really means is “stop reaching higher”. “Stop wanting us to change, to move, to do better.” No, we’ll never be perfect. That doesn’t mean we can’t work to get closer.

There are terrible people in this world.

There are people who bomb public places, people who go into primary schools to shoot toddlers, people who rape and torture and kill other people because they can and that’s the kind of things they want to do with their life and power. And then, there are the terrible people we all know, who say that because the world is mean and unfair, you have to just roll with the program and become jaded, self-centered, cruel.

I think that’s bullshit.

I think if we want to make the world better, we need to be better first, and that doesn’t start with waiting for others to change their behavior, it starts with changing mine. It means recognizing my needs and my privileges and doing what it takes for the first to be met while I strive to hold myself accountable for the seconds. It means making sure the power I have doesn’t just serve me but those who need it, too.

So yes, I want to be agressively inclusive and accepting.

That doesn’t mean I want to be naive. I’m not saying we shouldn’t punish those who commit condemnable actions or that we should pretend that, say, calling a terrorist a monster is in itself wrong. What that means is that I want to trust people to do better. To work together, and make things better.

That means I want to do what I can to work at the root of problems. It’s not enough to say “let’s put all the suspected terrorists in preventing captivity”. First of all, it’s a disgustingly slippery slope that could land many, many more inocents in prison than actual terrorist (which would put said innocents in the perfect situation to become actual terrorist). And secondly, by the time someone’s far enough to be considered a potential bomber, they’re already a threat. They’re already a danger.

What I want is to make sure they don’t become a danger, if at all possible.

The irony here, of course, is that I’m against violence, physical or otherwise–of all the things I strive for, “do no harm” is pretty much at the top of the list.

But nowadays it feels like “do no harm” is heard as “agress those who have the power and don’t want to move”…and while I can’t say I’m happy with this reading, I’m ready to embrace it. If people think trying to be respectful of others is a radical, agressive act then, man, am I ready to become a radical, aggressively feminist being.

I’m not perfect. No one is. I’ve fucked up before and I’ll fuck up again and that’s just life, but if I’m going to fuck up I want it to be because I let my good intentions get the better of me. When I fuck up, I want it to be because I wanted to be too good rather than because I didn’t want to move at all. Because I believe that the best way to get people to be nice and respectful toward me is to do my best to make them feel like I’m going to be nice and respectful toward them first.

That doesn’t mean I’ll tolerate everything. Contrary to what I’ve been told, there’s no such thing as being “too nice”. When people do shitty things to you and get away with it without trouble you’re not being nice, you’re being exploited, and that’s on them, not you. There’s no such thing as “too nice” because too often it’s used to imply you should have been meaner, but that’s false. It’s the people in front of you who should have been nicer, who should have been called out for their cruelty, who should be the one who feel the shame and guilt of it. Not you.

And if having this as my main guideline–if refusing to let go of that belief makes me a radical then baby you got yourself a new extremist because I’m not changin my mind on it anytime soon.