FIND YOUR VOICE, THEN USE YOUR VOICE

Sometimes I’ll be watching a show with a homosexual couple as the focal romantic component of a show and see how they interact with one another – how one of them stays at home, while the other works.

My mind then meanders to how heteronormative that dynamic is. Then my eyes roll themselves at my mind for being so annoying, with even knowing words like heteronormativity and how ultimately alienating using those big words is, when you are trying to get your point across to those who need to appreciate concepts like this. So, where does that leave me and what does it have to do with my ramblings this week?

Well, I spend a lot of time trying to reconcile what my beliefs are made up of and how best to articulate my ideas. Articulation not for articulation’s sake but to foster a dialogue or engagement that allows for emotional and intellectual growth.

In this day and age, social media and the digitisation of all communication means for people like me – who communicate better when they write as opposed to when they talk – this is perfect. It means I can edit my thoughts if I put them across clumsily or even delete them if I don’t feel they serve to elevate the conversation.

Of late I have been doing a lot of reading and scrolling, not even bothering to type something to delete anymore and I think that’s because being offended by bigotry is exhausting and a girl is exhausted! I remember a time when I always had time to set someone straight, explaining patiently, often haughtily and sometimes dismissively why no one has patience for their pandering to systemic abuses. Then I woke up one day and I was simply too tired to bother.

I do believe that a large part of that is due to the fact that whether you or others are comfortable with it, you become a pseudo spokesperson for social injustice. It’s encouraging and exhilarating to feel heard, to carve out a voice for you and to lend eloquence to discourse that quite honestly doesn’t deserve it, because oppressing people for who they are shouldn’t require the patience of the oppressed.

While all this is happening you realise one day that you’re tired, people start tagging you on upsetting posts so you can weigh in, people mention you in their comments so you can agree with them because this is a viewpoint you hold. But life is going on and all of the energy you put into that, into being a social media revolutionary is being taken from the same reservoir that sustains the other facets of your life.

So you get tired and the vultures waiting to pick at the carcass of your opinions will not waste time in calling you a ‘social media feminist’ or accuse you of misleading women as an entire demographic. Ignore them.
You cannot fault people for being drawn to your ideas and how they are expressed but you can be tired.

You’re allowed to get tired and to refuel because the truth of the matter is, until the resistance to bigotry is systemic; the bigotry will always have room to flourish. We just all need to consider how we lend our voices to wiping out the ridiculous societal behaviours around the treatment of women, gender-based violence, homosexuality, the assumed diminished humanity of the underprivileged, racism (covert and otherwise), misogynoir and classism.

I just typed these off the top of my head and I am exhausted, what a tragic state to be in when you want to talk but you get choked up by the enormity of the task. You get choked up by realising that this world is made up of hierarchies, all different in their functions but imperative for keeping the world in balance. A balance that depends on your subjugation.
Do you know what happens whenever I realise that the systems meant to oppress rely on women like me getting tired? I get incensed. I start using my platform and my voice to stir something in somebody who will read my words, to be a catalyst for conversation that will hopefully lead to change.

Which brings me to the various roles we all need to play to bring about this change; some people are natural organisers (I am not sure of those people), they know how to bring people together, so we can move together in one overarching purpose. There are those who know how to foster intergenerational dialogues, there are those who are skilled at using the arts and other creative avenues to make a statement and every last one of us is important.

For those who are like me, whose calling is to stir the conscience and awaken consciousness through the written word, we need you to write, write when you’re angry, write when you’re happy, write when you’re celebrating something and especially write when you’re tired.
 
 

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