Challenge Accepted
Words by Eva Rose Addinsall
Image by Virginia Blaisdell via Pinterest
I’ve been walking for forty-two minutes. The people around me aren’t technically strangers; they’re the people I used to make coffee for and bump into in bookstores, sit next to in restaurants and make eyes with on the tram. They felt close.
We were all connected by something, even if it was something small. Now though, when I’m outside for the sunniest hour of the day, it feels like there are worlds between me and anyone I walk by. Everything is so insular. I don’t know these people.
I wonder if the woman scrolling and drinking coffee on the battered couch out the front of her terrace has a similar feed to me? I wonder if she read the news this morning and saw that the police responsible for killing Tanya Day will avoid prosecution? I wonder if she saw Jacob Black’s family doing a press conference yesterday, telling the world that he might never walk again? I wonder if she saw parts of Beirut devastated and ruined? I wonder if she posted a black and white photo for the women in Turkey?
I wonder if she knew it was for women in Turkey?
#challengeaccepted
But what challenge, exactly?
Chances are, if I opened the gate and sat down on the other side of the couch, we’d have a lot to talk about. We would feel inspired, defeated, scared, saddened, enraged and powerful — all stimulated by, and directed at, similar things. Naturally, we’d start talking about ourselves. About our own lives. Then, we’d find more to talk about —more inspiration, anger, sadness, power. I would learn, and hopefully I could offer something too, something she would want to dig deeper into. We would create movement. Not a movement, necessarily, but some movement. A shift.
A shift in thinking doesn’t have to be seismic, it only has to create space for futurity. For poiesis.
This is what consciousness raising is all about: imagining a better future, creating something new out of what was there before. The Personal is Political; an essay published in 1970 by Carol Hanisch and handed around by, and within, the Women’s Movement, became the unofficial slogan of second wave feminism. It helped to illustrate – through conversations and through sharing – the political, economic, social, spiritual, emotional and physical violence committed against women’s bodies everyday. These conversations forced the personal and domestic struggles of marginalised and oppressed bodies into the public sphere, into discussions and onto the streets, into the papers, the boardrooms and the Parliament. It was this kind of shift in thinking that helped the world to understand family and intimate partner violence as systemic and cultural, rather than a personal problem. A family matter.
The pandemic has severed the connection between our public and private lives so drastically that they rarely ever come together, the only place for them to meet is on social media. We’ve definitely dragged hidden things out into the open over the past few months. We’ve rallied together, had conversations and many of us have started to do some deep work in unlearning and consciously destroying patriarchal, colonial and capitalist thinking within ourselves.There’s a cultural shift in the air. There’s consciousness raising happening. We are performing meaningful action, we are applying lessons learnt, embodying feminist and post-colonial praxis.
I felt something when I saw hundreds of black and white photos for #challengeaccepted – I felt the collective fear and anger from the women in Turkey and around the world, sparked by the understanding that these photos could be their death notices and the words their eulogies.
From 2008-2019, at least 3,185 Turkish women were murdered by men. The photos were an international reaction to protests happening in Turkey demanding the conservative ruling Justice and Development Party to recommit to the Istanbul Convention, which employs policies and strategies aimed at preventing domestic and family violence, prosecuting perpetrators and protecting survivors. It was to gain momentum, get petitions signed, and get donations in. So much meaning got lost in this space though. Many people didn’t even know why the photos were appearing. I think that the real challenge we need to accept is to perform these acts of solidarity and protest, yes, but also to think about what we need to do, everyday, to end violence against women. To dismantle the structure it’s built on. And as Audre Lorde says - the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
There have been many countercultural waves throughout history, and I like to think that they are all a part of one ocean that we can draw from, create in. We can build on the progress of those that came before us and learn from their mistakes. If social media is going to be our tool, at least for now, we need to make it radically and fundamentally different to the master’s house. What made space for the personal to be considered political was trust, compassion, and humanity. Deep listening and understanding. Intuitive knowing. Transformative recognition. We have to carve out spaces where this kind of connection is possible. Where we can learn from and challenge each other, but also hold each other, support each other, otherwise the shifts that are happening won’t amount to much and we’ll burn out, forget, and stop trying to dismantle the house. These movements will disappear; become singular acts which made us feel good for a moment but didn’t become a way to survive. A way to live.
There is a shift. We are consciousness raising, we are learning. We are searching, coming undone, falling apart, and building ourselves back up into something new and something better. We have to keep imagining, inspired by art and wonder and nature and each other and the past, that there are new tools and new houses to live in. The revolution isn’t an event, it’s a countercultural system, we have to live it and believe in it and create it. I want to live in a house where black lives matter and are celebrated, where women’s bodies aren’t politicised, objectified or murdered, where Indigenous sovereignty is recognised and where our environment is treated as our mother. I can see it, and I believe in it.