I’m really angry

I’m really angry.

I was going to write this post prior to the apparent shock we’re all feeling that a woman was murdered on her walk home.  I’m not even sure why everyone is so surprised.  It’s totally normal to expect women not to walk alone after dark.  It’s a terribly sad story and nice that everyone’s asking what they can do differently.  It seems quite obvious to me though.  I saw one tweet suggesting he’d used his badge to make her feel safe and that, if that was the case, he’d likely done it countless times before this one actually made the news.  If it’s a pattern of behaviour, which it clearly is in our society, why is it not illegal to commit assault, abuse, rape and intimidation?  I mean illegal in the real sense that if a crime is committed there are systems in place to bring the perpetrator to justice.  My own experience of the judicial system in this area is disbelieving male officers siding with the perpetrator and belligerently referring to the crime as an allegation. 

But I was angry before this even happened.  As long as I remember I’ve had an undercurrent of anger, variously attributed to life events and, mostly unfairly, focussed on different people around me but last week I felt it stir.  In a really good way that finally had me feeling a connection between the anger and it’s true source.  This was a brilliant relief after many years of occasionally vaguely recognising its Prescence and thinking about reasons I had to be angry with no real relief or reprieve. 

I had my little epiphany listening to Lucy Ward and Pinky’s ‘Thank folk for Feminism’ podcast.  The particular episode was the first interview with Nancy Kerr who was sharing her own experiences of internalising sexism to the point where she hadn’t even noticed herself holding back and some shame of motherhood.  The internalisation point hit home, as well as some earlier points about how the covid pandemic revealed how much she was overworking as a mother and woman with a career and when her career was paused and she was still overworked with just the remainder.  I feel the same, and the fact that the abuse in the form of overworking to prove oneself in every area of life comes from inside ourselves kind of makes it even harder to bear.  It’s a classic issue of having to be the perfect Mum and not drop the ball at work at the same time.  What is happening that’s causing all of us to feel not enoughness?  Why do we have so much to prove?

I was listening to the podcast following an interview I’d done the previous week on the same podcast where we were discussing misogyny in folk songs and how we can rework the traditional material to bring it up to where we’ve got to in the inequality struggle.  The reason I’d been studying this aspect of folk songs is that, having written many songs about overcoming these hurdles that (mostly) women face, I wanted to look to the folk songs of my area to find other people’s stories and perspectives on the matter.  In fact, I am working up a new project to engage a group of female folk artists and songwriters to collab on finding old and new material with a focus on women, abuse and inequality.  Whilst I am finding the project hugely inspiring and energising it’s throwing up a lot of feelings for me.  I’ve really noticed myself pausing at key moments, rising up to what I want to be doing, and having a lot to think about emotionally.  Needless to say the cumulation of all this work led to my minor anger epiphany. I guess that’s one of the points of art though.  To dig deep and find the connections to share them.  I’d love to make feminism less of a dirty word, I’d love to find a happy way forwards.  However, right now we’re all feeling quite saddened and scared because it’s happening in a very real way right in front of our eyes.