March 20, 2012

That's Enough Politeness – Women Need to Rise Up in Anger

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/08-0

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Politeness is a habit that what's left of the women's movement needs to grow out of. Most women grow up learning, directly or indirectly, how to be polite, how to defer, how to be good employees, mothers and wives, how to shop sensibly and get a great bikini body. We are taught to stay off the streets, because it's dangerous after dark. Politeness, however, has bought even the luckiest of us little more than terminal exhaustion, a great shoe collection, and the right to be raped by the state if we need an abortion. If we want real equality, we're going to have to fight for it.

Like the suffragettes and socialists who called the first International Women's Day over a century ago, women who believe in a better world are going to have to start thinking in deeds, not words. With women under attack financially, socially and sexually across the developed and developing world, with assaults on jobs, welfare, childcare, contraception and the right to choose, the time for polite conversation is over. It's time for anger. It's time for daring, direct action, big demands, big dreams. The men who still run the world from boardrooms and government offices have become too used to not being afraid of what women will do if we are attacked, used and exploited. We must make them afraid.

Deeds, not words. Fewer business lunches, more throwing punches. Of course, there will be consequences. Those large armed men aren't just there for decoration, and the suffragettes who had their breasts twisted and their bones broken in prison 101 years ago knew that full well. But they also knew what we must now begin to remember – that the consequences of staying quiet and ladylike are always far more serious.