"I don't walk
into a situation wanting to disrespect anyone, so if people are offended, then
they're offended by the values contained within the content of what I am
saying. And if you're offended by my values...well then f*ck it! You're
supposed to be! I don't want misogynists to like me, I don't want people who
hate black people to like me, I don't want people who are fronting to like me.
It's taken me a long time, but I'm learning to embrace it, and to realise also,
that a negative reaction can also be a positive measure of your impact"
Lebo Mashile
I can remember the exact day I became a feminist. It was the
same day I met the One in Nine Campaign, a feminist organisation
that also works with survivors of gender-based violence. They had approached
the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) to collaborate on a case. CALS approached us to work on this case with One
in Nine and so off we went on a mini-road trip to Rustenburg.
It was a Thursday morning and I got into the taxi and headed
straight for the back. We all introduced ourselves and it wasn’t long before
there was a very interesting conversation going on. I can’t even remember what
it was about but I remember being moved. I tweeted “Sometimes you meet people
and just being in their presence shifts something”. I just remember thinking,
wow, these women are so smart and conscious and interesting….they are so
interesting. I too want to be smart and conscious and interesting. Of course
this was the beginning of the end for most things heteronormative in my life.
There is something about becoming a feminist that calls for a complete revamp
of your life. The seed is planted and one day, nothing but the seed of feminism
is growing. It’s like a weed…or rather a super plant that cannot fully grow if
everything that breeds patriarchy is not destroyed.
I recently attended a 10 day feminist school organised by the One in Nine Campaign and at the end of the first couple of sessions
we were encouraged to write down a question or 5 that emerged from the session.
Someone’s question struck me. They wrote “why is feminism so painful”. And I
was like YES!!! Why is it? And I thought about it for a while and boiled it
down to a similar but more specific question…”Why is consciousness so painful”
My girlfriend and I liken feminism and becoming a feminist
to the Matrix and taking the blue pill, or is it the red pill? Either way,
becoming a feminist requires seeing the world through a completely different
set of eyes. It’s like visiting a new world, except it’s the old world. And
it’s pretty and liberating and exciting, but it’s ugly.
I can also imagine though, that becoming a feminist, is hard
for everyone around you, everyone who knew you before you became Neyo. I say
this because lately I have heard a lot of “I don’t even know who you are
anymore”, “you’re just going through a phase, I know the real you”. And I would
be lying if I said it didn’t annoy the shit out of me. In a very recent
trivialising of the feminist I have become, I was a little more than annoyed, I
was hurt. Hurt because I was tired of people demonizing the person I have
become and glorifying someone that was a little more palatable and a little
less abrasive. But I am a big big believer in process and things not happening
in a vacuum, “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” school of
thought and I realised that as hard as the change has been for me sometimes, it
must be equally as hard for those who knew me, or at least thought they did.
Before I became a feminist, I was a very avid “non-feminist”.
Those girls, unknowingly, who believe feminists are angry man-bashers who take
everything too seriously. I volunteered at the kiddies ministry at my church. I
wanted to get married and have 3 little boys. I believed in husbands being the
heads of the household and wives having to be submissive. I believed and wanted
all these things. In what must feel like overnight, I have become a very proud
and some would say radical promoter of feminism. I no longer volunteer at the
kiddies church (which has nothing to do with the kids and me not wanting to
volunteer, but more to do with how open the church is to having a openly
feminist and queer female leading their kids) and I still want to get married,
but my ideas about the marital roles of husbands and wives – or in my case
wives and wives – are very different. I
can see how the people who knew me before this transformation might feel duped
and perhaps invalidated, not only by the changes that have gone on in my life,
but by the things that I write about these changes.
I don’t often take the time to think about how becoming a
feminist has impacted those around me, those I have loved and who have loved me
back and I think it would serve me well in the future to be aware of, and
sensitive to this. But to reiterate…
“If you're offended by my values...well then f*ck it! You're supposed
to be! I don't want misogynists to like me, I don't want people who hate black
people to like me, I don't want people who are fronting to like me."
I have spent a really long time fighting change. I have gone
to therapy because the ways in which I was changing were freaking even me out.
It’s been difficult, it is still difficult. But this is my life now. If you are
offended…fuck it, and depending on your level of outrage, fuck you!
