107 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
107 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
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POWER
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I was yet to feel my own power If power arrived in my letter box
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I'd think it was another catalogue
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But then power found me I was bathing my child I was healing my
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spirit I was working to stop rape technically I was still in
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disgrace male-identified, dependant, depressed.
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Power moved so close to me I could smell cotton and sweat I
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wanted to dance I wanted to exonerate myself I wanted to respond
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for all I was worth
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Undo all my closed bits, shake my hair, move about feel her
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energy and my own strength.
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LYNDA M.RUSHTON 20.3.91 (As previously published in Heartland).
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GIRLS CAN'T DO ANYTHING -by Shannon Adams
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GIRLS CAN DO ANYTHING proclaims a bumper sticker which is a
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popular feature on the rear end of West End cars and bicycles.
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Important though this assertion may be it always prompts me to
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consider how real is the range of choices facing women and men
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in everyday life. Are we truly able to walk through life like a
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supermarket and pop our chosen activities in our shopping
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trolley? Is what stands between us and freedom just a choice of
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which lifestyle to consume?
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I suspect not.
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As a member of a West End group of women interested in anarcho-
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feminism it appears to me that an understanding of power is
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essential in extending the ways in which we can experience
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empowerment and real choice. This power is not a simple door to
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a wide world, a door which women (and men) can open and then take
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their chosen direction. The power oppressing women is not a
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simple glass ceiling preventing career advancement, a ceiling
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which could be shattered to liberate women to become managing
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directors and presidents in turn. Neither is it only that
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violence which might wound us in our home, or that violence which
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could force itself into our bodies. For I perceive us to be
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entwined with delicacies of power which are far more insidious
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than what society does or does not permit women or men to do. The
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power is inside our bodies already. Painting our pictures,
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influencing our words and absence of words, judging ourselves and
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our bodies, and present in our most deeply considered choices.
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And so I do not think girls can do anything, any more than men
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can. Choices are far more complicated.
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Girls could do anything but so many anythings are outside our
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current imaginings, or are rendered impossible in the current
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culture. Even words are unable to frame many thoughts and so
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thoughts are charged with vague sensations. I have a quickening
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of my pulse when I sense the possibility of what I could do. But
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I do not do it because IT does not exist as a choice. IT does
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not have a place. IT does not have money attached to it. IT
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does not have a name. Yet how many of us have similar desires
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and imaginings of relationships and lives less warped by the
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abuses of hierarchical power, less constrained by the demands of
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an economy in which money equals self esteem and success is
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measured by rising through the pyramid of control.
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And so I consider that we must continue to give thought to the
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making of new ways and new choices ,and also to create
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relationships with those who might imagine a world as different
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to this one as we do. Because none of us are pure. None is
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unshaped by the experience of Power Over us, through us and in
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us. Men who chose to become anarchists can no more purify
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themselves of sexism by wearing the ANARCHIST label than they can
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in swallowing a bottle of detergent. Their words grow louder in
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the face of domestic activity. Neither are women suddenly free
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from the constraints of the standard stories of what it is to be
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a woman when they encounter feminism. Our old desires do not
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fall from us like a cocoon. Instead we might hide our impurity
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more closely, or deny our sexism with more sleight of hand.
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Politics and personal change begin in our everyday lives. The
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grand plans which we lay take their first step before we leave
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our beds, in our sexual politics. The shape of our lives is not
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an individual responsibility but a continual feat of choosing
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among limited possibilities and admissible dreams which are
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shaped within the power structures of contemporary Australian
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societies.
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We cannot make ourselves suddenly new. I do not believe in
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mystical rebirths (or I should be dunking myself in the Brisbane
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River) but we might become different parts of ourselves in the
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community of others with similar desires. All of us might do
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anything, among those committed to freedom and change in our
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everyday lives.
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Without support and commitment, it is more likely that we
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struggle individually to make a confined but, possibly,
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comfortable nest, in the corner allowed us. In such corners one
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can certainly not do anything!
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