“This hurts!” The Devastating Truths Rising Up in a Week for Women
By: Anita Phagura
Tags: Women, Speak Freely, Racism, Injustice, Current Events

Image: Nappy.co

Trigger warning: Racism, Suicidal Ideations, Mental Health, Sexual Abuse, Murder, Male Violence, Police Brutality — If you’ve lived this week in the UK, this won’t surprise you

I’m hurting and I’m not ok. I know I’m not alone. Women are hurting and we are not ok.

This week being a woman in the UK has felt impossibly hard, emotionally triggering and mentally exhausting. The irony is not lost that this was also the week we were celebrating International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day. Truth is it was so hard because of that, the juxtaposition of celebration, of empowerment and the choices to challenge, with the stark realities that women are so far from equality, and that our experience by many is simply denied.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love International Women’s Day. Last year I was part of several events, and filled with fuel and fire to make an impact, to celebrate, connect and to empower. It was just before we went into lockdown, and of course that changed everything…

I was triggered before we even got to International Women’s Day

Already before the events of this week, I was triggered by the narrative and line ups of some international women’s day events. Ones that told women to stop holding themselves back. Not this year, that narrative is tired.

STOP blaming women for structural equalities!

No not this year where women are suffering disproportionately due to the pandemic measures. When more women have lost their jobs, been furloughed, or been on the front-line at risk without adequate pay. When more women have felt the burden of working from home, with household and caring responsibilities. When more women have struggled financially, and with their mental health. More men have also committed domestic violence against women. Many of these outcomes which are often worse for women with mental health challenges, physical disabilities, and women who are Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (with differences between these groups). That’s nearly all not down to women…

The second trigger for me was the homogeneity problem of the line ups for the events (and to be honest clubhouse rooms , especially the ones claiming to promote women) — everyone looked the same, and, spoiler alert it wasn’t like me as an Asian Woman. Again something I might not have noticed or thought too hard about in previous years, but the conversations arising this last year of #BlackLivesMatter and of Trans Women, it felt ever more important to not exclude these women.

How can this be an event to celebrate *all* women when only one type of woman is included on stage.

Where are the Black women, the Asian women, the women of other ethnicities other than White? Where are the trans women? The women with physical disabilities? The ‘other’ women?

Disclaimer — This was not all events, but it was too many of them and those I was invited to.

I live by the motto:

If you are not invited to the table, invite yourself or create your own.

So I had plans to do just that, in my own community, a Misfit Mela of women and other genders too, with different intersections talking about the important topics we need to. I also wanted to honour and celebrate my clients who are women changing the world in their own way. I knew these events were needed, especially this year.

But actually I didn’t attend a single event or create the event I had in mind.

Exhausted from the year we’ve had where gender and race inequalities are quite frankly amplified, with outcomes getting worse. I know the conversation and the theme #choosetochallenge IS so important, but it isn’t just one day. I have these conversations all year round but on this particular day, this week, this month I was done.

I felt the guilt, because I have women who work with me, follow me, alongside other genders, including men, who want to make a difference, who I have a duty to to show up for. I felt their eyes on me, waiting for what I was doing to empower women…. And I did little that particular day.

International Women’s Day Arrived

Of course it was also the day most kids went to school in England.

Our gift I suppose from the Prime Minister on International Women’s Day, an urge to get back to our ‘normality’ and do all the tasks and work that were had built up when the kids were at home. The fatigue of the last few months and the year hit me, and so many other mothers.

On one hand women were being celebrated, on the other one woman was publicly being torn down.

By tearing down this one woman, those people, including other women, they have been tearing down the rest of us.

The one woman dominating the news — Meghan Markle

By saying they don’t believe her about her lived experience of racism, they don’t believe me, and they don’t believe my friends, family or my global sisters.

By saying they don’t believe her about her mental health and feelings to commit suicide, they don’t believe me, and they don’t believe my friends, family or my global sisters.

Ok so most of us are not a duchess but we could see ourselves in her experiences, especially women of colour, and I know this is even more true for many black women.

We had experienced these things too, and to know that doesn’t go away, and even gets heightened to life-threatening levels when you get your happily ever after, when you make it, even when you’re bloody royalty was a heart-breaking reminder of the far-reaching pervasiveness of racism, sexism and misogynoir — the discrimination specific to black women.

We were still reeling from the backlash that Meghan Markle and those that stood with her faced… when our world was knocked again by another woman making the news

That woman was Sarah Everard.

The the same week, in the UK, Sarah Everard is missing and we find out she was attacked and killed.

She was *just* walking home.

Not that that makes it ok for other women who weren’t but are still attacked. No matter what she was doing and who she was doing it with, she didn’t deserve to be unsafe.

A man, a police officer no less, has been arrested for the crime. (Note — If you are talking about the case, be mindful to not undermine the legal case. He is yet a suspect).

The narrative in response was the predictable about how women need to protect themselves, even a curfew. Baroness Jenny Jones, a Green Party Peer, suggested perhaps there should be a curfew for men. It trended on twitter. The message — No, women are not committing the crimes.

Men need to be held accountable for violent crime, sexual assault, rape and murder. They rarely are.

The curfew for men wasn’t a real suggestion but highlighting the need to take action with men rather than women, and highlighting how that would never be accepted… yet the opposite would undoubtedly be expected.

These women were also sharing their lived experiences of rape, sexual assault, fear and violence at the hands of men. It is all women who have experienced the fear, been told how to protect themselves, with most having attacked or harassed. This was important. But it was also triggering and so upsetting.

It is the #Metoo Moment Mark II.

97% of young women said they have been sexually harassed.

Who commits these crimes? It is men. #NotAllMen demand some men, and even some women.

It’s not all men but it’s enough men. It’s too many men.

To say #notallmen it is to dismiss the role of All Men, because women are not the solution here. We’ve tried too hard for too long. Yes that’s you even the ‘Good Guys’

The pain is real.

This week of all weeks, it is slap-bang in our face apparent how far the road to equality for women, for women of colour, for black women is.

We are not represented. We are not seen. We are not heard. We are not believed. We are hurt. We are assaulted. We are killed. And we are still blamed.

I’m done

I’m done with this. A collective pain and trauma is held by women, held by women of colour and held by black women. We must carry this, feel the pain and hurt. But through it all I wonder, and pray, that there is a glimmer of hope?

Hope that it was no accident that these women were highlighted in our lives this week, this week for women, so that we could no longer hide from the injustices women and women of colour experience. Even though there is the backlash it has had the biggest impact to get these issues exposed.

I hope that there is an uprising of women and men saying “I’m Done” — I’m done with the way things are, no more, and not in my name.

Even though many people continue to hide and deny race and gender inequalities, it is a reckoning. It is catching up with them. Let Meghan and Sarah and all the women feeling hurt this week, be a catalyst for change.

I am Meghan. And I am Sarah.

This would have been the end of the article, but as it turned out the hurt was not done. As the weekend came about, it escalated.

It was the first anniversary of the death of Breonna Taylor and protests took place in America

#sayhername

An innocent black woman killed in America in her own home at the hands of police on duty. She has yet to receive justice. The mirror to what is happening the UK was powerful.

It is something we can no longer dismiss as a problem across the pond.

Sarah’s murder and the aftermath is still being discussed. It is necessary, yet questions have also been raised why other women who are missing, assaulted and killed do not receive the attention or justice they deserve too. In particular women of colour, black women.

I hadn’t heard of her case before but Blessing Olusegun went missing on her way home from work experience. She was on the phone to her boyfriend as was Sarah. She was found dead, she drowned but the case remains unexplained. No-one knows what really happened but questions are being asked by some why this didn’t receive the attention and investigation Blessing deserved.

I am Breonna too. And I am Blessing.

We stand together in vigil

Saturday marked a Vigil for Sarah at Clapham Common. It was officially cancelled after talks broke down between organisers and the police. People, mainly women, still attended. In its early stages, it is said and shown to be a peaceful event, with many wearing masks and social distanced.

It should have been a chance to grieve, to hurt and to be angry at injustices together.

I am Patsy Stevenson too

Video footage emerged of heavy handed policing, men rough handling mainly women who said they were just ‘standing’ or speaking at the vigil. More ‘irony’ that their collective hurt was at male violence and a police officer suspected to have murdered one of them.

Another woman emerged in the news as a symbol of this event. Patsy Stevenson, a 5 foot 2 inch woman with striking ginger hair, who was pinned down by several male police offices.

‘She’s an actor’, some cried as they aimed to diminish her experience. As if that was relevant…

It hurt to watch. Police brutality and mistreatment has been discussed by the black community and now it is getting mainstream attention… a question to ask is it because white women are now subject that it is being taken ‘more seriously’?

The women in charge

It’s important to know that the powers that are responsible for the policing, were 3 women: Priti Patel, Cressida Dick and Helen Ball. A series of decisions that led to an outcome of more oppression towards women.

Women too are part of the system that oppress women. I do not see myself in these women but as a woman in my career I can see many times women, and people of colour, had to be a certain way to get ahead in their career. They had to become part of the system to survive.

It didn’t have to be this way.

The week of International Women’s Day closed with Mothering Sunday. Two days to celebrate women in the same week… I wonder if that has ever happened before?

This was a week for women, that should have been a celebration. These women so hurt like us are daughters, sisters, friends, and some are mothers too. This remains a week for women, even if not the one we expected, a week many women are saying “I’m done” with how things are right now. We deserve change. We deserve a better way.

So we need to work to create it, and this is not just down to women.

Say it loud and clear #EnoughisEnough. We are done

Please Share

If you’ve been feeling the emotions, then know you are not alone. Please share this article with all the women, men, non-binary people and other genders who might feel this too.

If that wasn’t you, and even if it made you feel a bit uncomfortable, but this has helped you see it in a different light… even if it just one person this impacts, then this is what we need — please carry on the conversation. I ask you to share this article too, and keep standing with us.