Why I want International Women's Day to "do one"
Contains mild swearing and extreme doll mutilation
To celebrate International Women’s Day (and give myself a week off so I can focus on writing the next book), here’s some recycled feminist sass! I’m reposting this piece from 2 years ago, just after I came to Substack, when I had only 775 subscribers. There are now over 6,000 of you, so I’m guessing some of you didn’t see it. Enjoy!
Listen, no one asks to be born a girl. It just happens. You can like it or lump it, as my mum used to say. She thought it was a good thing where I was concerned because she was left labouring in a hospital corridor for refusing to sign a form agreeing to my circumcision. She thought genital mutilation of newborn babies was a bad thing, go figure. But she refused to consent to having my penis snipped, and despite her intransigence on the paperwork, I arrived just as the doctor was going off-duty and was a girl, and everyone went, phew, no foreskin.
I didn’t know I was a girl. I was just me. My brothers were three years older, and we were all the same-but-different. You know? We all had different names, and we all looked a bit different, and they were older, but we were all just kids.
How do you know when you’re a girl? You know when you’re about four, and someone buys you a doll. I can’t tell you how vile this thing was. Big plastic face, hard plastic body, spooky eyes, black nylon hair. A ‘baby’, apparently, but it looked nothing like a baby. Anyway, what did I want with a baby? I was four. I rejected it straight away. And mum was embarrassed because it was a gift, and the visitor was still in the room. Apparently, I was supposed to cuddle it? I can tell you it was not cuddly. It was hard and cold and didn’t even bend at the elbow. Bits of it just stuck into you. I was told I had to give it a name. I called it Horrid. My mum apologised to her friend and named it Jane. While they were talking, I took Jane out onto the patio. I cut her hair short and stabbed out her eyes with a pencil. But I was still angry. So I pulled out her arms and legs, and set fire to her. Though I got into trouble, that pile of melted plastic is one of my happiest memories.
If ‘Jane’ was the first time I realised being a girl was annoying, it was not the last. My brothers got Matchbox car sets for Christmas. They were incredibly fun. They had loop-the-loops and all sorts. I wanted a Matchbox car set. I got colouring pencils. (Top tip: I sulked so hard on this issue that eventually, the next year, I also got a Matchbox car set.) Then my brothers were in a gang. I wasn’t allowed to be in their gang because I couldn’t throw a stone accurately enough to hit the ‘P’ on the ‘Cycling Prohibited’ sign. I practised for hours, but there was something seriously defective about girls’ arms. I don’t know why. Annoying. Even more annoying, because my brothers and other boys (I was getting the hang of this separation thing now) could say sneeringly, ‘Because you’re a GIRL’. Being a girl was an insult. And I was a living embodiment of that insult, and there was damn all I could do about it.
I wanted to do Woodwork and Metalwork at school, but wasn’t allowed, because I was A GIRL. GIRLS had to do cookery and needlework, which I had already learned at home. They made me make a pillowcase, but I could already make my own trousers. They taught me how to boil an egg when I could already bake a Battenburg cake. I wanted to make bookshelves. But no. I was a GIRL. I started writing (mostly about all the things that were annoying me). When I was fourteen, I won a prize. My mum called me in to show off in front of her dinner party friends, and then my stepfather said, ‘The creative urge in women is only really about wanting babies. As soon as you have babies, you won’t want to write.’ If I were a fourteen-year-old boy, I maybe could have punched him in the face. But my defective girl arms were as good at punching as they were at throwing, so I just went away thinking, ‘I’ll show him,’ and that pretty much fuelled the next thirty years of my writing career. And then, dammit, if I didn’t start turning into a WOMAN! Which is, honestly, even worse than a girl.
How do you know when you’re a woman?
When you can’t walk down the road to buy a loaf of bread without men saying rude things about your body. When people laugh at you when you say you want to be a computer programmer. When you can’t take that shortcut because of the flasher. When you bleed through your clothes in public. When you’re buying a computer with money you saved for months, but the salesman ignores you and talks to your boyfriend, and they just get really chummy as the boyfriend relays all the tech spec stuff you just told him, which he doesn’t have a clue about. When you can’t go running in the daylight because men make humiliating comments. When you can’t go running at night because it isn’t safe. When you’re left out of statistics, medical studies, clothing design, and car safety tests (see ‘Default Male’). When you’re with interesting people, and you want to talk about interesting things, but for some reason, because you have a womb? am I getting this right? you’re expected to go into the kitchen and make food. When you have to deal, once a month, for years, with pain so strong it makes you pass out in the street.
That was the eighties and nineties. And in Britain. I had it easy, not living in Iran or any of the hundreds of places where women are ground even harder underfoot. It got better for a bit. And now it’s getting worse. A lot of people are saying bad things about feminism, and sneering at women for wanting to be treated with a basic modicum of respect.
Feminism comes in many stripes (not all of which I agree with), but the underlying principle is this: one half of the population should not be subordinated by the other half based on something they had no say in. Women are not support animals. We are not Nature’s servant class. Feminism is, in the words of Mary Shear, “the radical notion that women are people”. If you would not argue for slavery, do not argue against feminism.
I want International Women’s Day to “do one” because I’m sick of being reminded of how far we still have to go (in this country, and even further worldwide) before women will be considered equally valuable human beings, whose words, wishes and needs are as important as men’s. Despite our defective arms, and our annoyingly attractive curves. Despite our ability to express a range of emotions besides anger. Despite our miraculous but unasked-for ability to grow a brand-new human being inside our bodies. Which makes us, let’s credit it, responsible for the creation of the whole of the human race.
Happy International Women’s Day. Show some respect.
Make a gal feel loved. Press the heart! And also…
Hear hear!! Beautifully put as always 👏🙏
Wow, thank you for resharing. Such a powerful post, and so many true points. Things really feel like they’re getting worse. I wrote a piece about International Women’s Day too, and while I was writing it, I felt both angry and sad about the lack of real improvement. Sometimes it feels like we’re going backwards, and that makes me so nervous, especially as the mom of a girl. The only thing we can do is keep fighting, supporting each other, and raising our voices whenever we can.