I know, I know. 10 days is a little unrealistic, so let me first start with a disclaimer – it’ll take us many rounds of ‘10 days’ to get to where we want to be. But 10 days is enough time for enough earth shaking events to happen, and if you need proof, here’s a quick timeline from this month alone:
Sarah Everard goes missing – we are devastated, angry and scared.
International Women’s Day – yay, go us.
Meghan & Harry’s interview – “Meghan is a liar, discredit her”.
Sarah Everard is found – we are devastated, angry and scared.
One year anniversary of Breonna Taylor’s death – still no justice.
Vigil held for Sarah Everard – violent police arrests.
Mother’s Day – yay, go mums.
As is evident, we live in a paradox, but I know one thing to be true – if the patriarchy thinks it can smash us in 10 days, it is sorely mistaken.
This year’s theme for International Women’s Day spoke to me in a way that previous years didn’t. #ChooseToChallenge speaks to the concept that “a challenged world is an alert world…[and] from challenge comes change.” Over the past year, I have taken my voice, sharpened it and learned to start using it with precision.
Speaking out when something has offended, disrespected or disregarded you is a powerful, yet simple tool to start challenging the status quo with. As women, our role in society has been crafted in such a way as to stifle our voices and make us second guess ourselves. It even has the audacity to make us think we’ve “found” our voice, when all it was, was constricted.
As one of our Copywriters, Millie, wrote in her piece on female friendships, having strong sisterhoods and relationships with women serves to empower us and are “essential to healing, growth and joy”. In fact, their mere existence is revolutionary and a threat to the patriarchy, as we are so often pitted against each other.
Social media, it seems, has also clued up on this, with a plethora of accounts dedicated to women sharing their lived experiences and building unshakeable empires that serve to uplift all women. The patriarchy hath no threat like women united.
It is also not lost on me the role that our world, Pink Squid’s world, has to play in all of this. As we know from discourse amongst many underrepresented groups, representation of women of all backgrounds is key to breaking the perceptions of what a woman should look and sound like. In a world where so much is consumed so quickly, visibility done correctly is everything.
So yes, we speak, we build, we represent and we protest, because, as I read somewhere once, we don’t pull up a seat at the table, we bring the damn table.
I have no doubt that we’ll smash the patriarchy in 10 days, and another 10 days, and another after that, and we’ll keep going until we’ve smashed it to smithereens. My sisterhood far and wide – that’s our only option.
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