Fight Like A Girl

Clementine Ford

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786073648
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

'This rallying cry will persuade you to battle for true equality' Stylist An incendiary debut taking the world by storm, Fight Like A Girl is an essential manifesto for feminists new, old and soon-to-be. Online sensation and fearless feminist heroine, Clementine Ford is a beacon of hope and inspiration to thousands of women and girls. In the wake of Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo campaign, Ford uses a mixture of memoir, opinion and investigative journalism to expose just how unequal the world continues to be for women. Personal, inspiring and courageous, Fight Like A Girl is an essential manifesto for feminists new, old and soon-to-be. The book is a call-to-arms for women to rediscover the fury that has been suppressed by a society that, despite best efforts, still considers feminism to be a threat. Urgently needed, Fight Like a Girl is a passionate, rallying cry that will awaken readers to the fact they are not alone and there's a brighter future where men and women can flourish equally – and that's something worth fighting for.

–1–

BIRTH OF A FEMINIST

‘Of course I believe in equality…but I’m certainly not a feminist.’

Such was the catch cry of my late adolescence, and it was just one of many sadly ignorant views on the world that I offered to anyone who would listen. As a teenager coming of age in the late 1990s, I had multiple explanations for my belief that I was Not A Feminist, and it will come as precisely zero surprise to you that none of them were particularly earth-shattering or well researched.

When I thought of feminism, I thought of a tired old movement filled with irrelevant ideas and even more irrelevant women. They didn’t understand that the world had moved on. It wasn’t the seventies anymore! Women were allowed to shave their legs and wear make-up and look like women, dammit! It didn’t mean they were being subjugated by patriarchy, it just meant that they cared about looking nice. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t think we were living in some kind of utopia, a post-feminist paradise that sparkled with the reflective shards of a thoroughly shattered glass ceiling. I had been a loud and opinionated child and, with the exception of a stifling period of time between twelve and sixteen, I was a loud and opinionated teenager. Had I been a boy, this would have been considered acceptable. But I was a girl and, even worse than that, I was a bolshy one. I had already felt the sting of judgment and approbation that came from having opinions while female, and even if I didn’t have the tools or skill to articulate what was wrong with that just yet, I could see that something definitely was.

Despite being a feminism-denying adolescent, I was still interested in the disparate treatment of men and women. I bristled each time domestic chores were handed down to my sister and I while our brother was given leave to play and explore, our femaleness apparently carrying with it a greater capacity for cleaning things. Why was there still this sticking point that assumed certain jobs were just the realm of girls? That we were ‘just better at those kinds of things’, as if we’d emerged from the womb only to look around at the mess, rip the obstetrician’s rubber gloves off and get a start on scrubbing the blood off all the medical implements and washing out the sheets?

As the cracks of sexism started to appear at home, the outside world also began to change. An undercurrent of danger was slowly rearing its ugly head. I started to hear warnings about ‘being safe’ and to experience the unsettling feeling you get when you realise someone’s looking at you. On the streets and at school, I became aware of the lingering threat that circled girls. The men who yelled crude sexual taunts and those who simply stared, both executions resulting in the slow and steady shrinking in on oneself that begins with the budding of breasts and never truly goes away.

Still, I did not call myself a feminist. Because even though I knew that women still suffered from inequality, I managed to convince myself that this inequality was a different kind of beast to the sexism and misogyny that had raged throughout the course of human history. It was sexism – but it wasn’t sexism-sexism.

And so I continued, stockpiling examples and experiences of injustice that would later prove too heavy to bear anymore in silence. I was a camel crossing the desert, and I was starting to feel the rumbling strains of thirst.

There would be few people who haven’t heard of Harvey Weinstein, the former industry heavyweight who used his power to make or break careers as a weapon against women and whose downfall marked the start of an international conversation about sexual harassment, abuse and the subjugation of women worldwide. In 2017, an article published in the New York Times brought long standing whispers and allegations of his abuse to the public’s attention. By the end of that year, he had been accused of sexual assault or indecent behaviour by at least fifty-five women. The allegations ranged from appearing naked before them and requesting a massage to openly masturbating and, in some cases, rape. He was also accused of using his position of power to emotionally manipulate and abuse the women around him, particularly those who relied on his industry support. The testimony of Salma Hayek’s experience with the mogul while making Frida left no doubt about the lengths Weinstein was prepared to go to bully the women he had power over, nor is it possible to ignore the impunity with which he felt entitled to act. Some people would call him a monster, but ascribing supernatural traits to him is too easy. The truth is that he is just a man, and that is far more frightening.

The exposure of Weinstein was followed quickly by that of Kevin Spacey, who was accused of decades’ worth of abuse against male colleagues and industry crew members, including at least two rape attempts against teenage boys. Brett Ratner, James Toback, Louis C.K. and Danny Masterson were just some of the high profile names to follow. By January 2018, over one hundred men working across a range of powerful industries had been either accused of sexual harassment (or worse), or gone so far as to step down from their positions after admitting that allegations against them were true.

The floodgates had been opened. Women’s testimonies of harassment and abuse began pouring out – first from the entertainment business and then far beyond that into the lives of average women all over the world – something began to shift. The #MeToo campaign (launched ten years ago by Tarana Burke, a woman of colour and an activist living in New York) resulted in a stunning outpouring of voices that echoed 2014’s #yesallwomen phenomenon. It led to the formation of Time’s Up, an activist organisation spearheaded by women (most of them women of colour) in the entertainment industry invested in bringing positive change for women everywhere who experience abuse and harassment in the workplace. According to statistics compiled by Time’s Up, almost half of working women in the United States say they have experienced workplace harassment, with women who work in low-wage service jobs especially at risk. Most women never report it.

And really, who could blame them?

In 1991, Susan Faludi released Backlash, an eviscerating text outlining the persistent retaliation of patriarchy against the advances made by women’s rights activists throughout history. Backlash may be close to three decades old, but the phenomenon it charted is as present today as it was back then. Even as the numbers of women empowered to break their silence with #MeToo increased, so too did the counterclaims against them. There were accusations that this was about attention-seeking and notoriety; that the silence breakers were ‘in it for the money’, as if the praise received for pointing fingers at men is only outstripped by the financial windfall a woman receives for doing so. Of course, neither is true. Exposing the sexual deviance of men – particularly white, straight, cis men with the kind of power that underpins their abuse in the first place – has always held far graver consequences for the victims speaking out. It took decades for Weinstein to be properly punished for his behaviour – but when he was still considered a kingmaker, it was women who either spoke out against him or rejected his advances who ended up having their careers destroyed.

Even those of us who weren’t exposing men at all but simply talking about our multitude of experiences of being a woman in a male-dominated world were ridiculed for being ‘too sensitive’. The distinction between sexual assault and ‘clumsy sexual attention’ was wilfully blurred, with all too many people (including a much publicised line-up of prominent French women, because never let it be said that the patriarchy hasn’t done its job properly on us) willing to believe that this was about criminalising normal sexual interaction – as if millions of women around the world had declared war on flirting. Men wondered out loud in comment pieces if this meant they were no longer allowed to hug women in the workplace (as if the loss of this privilege presented a horrifying form of discrimination). The term ‘witch hunt’ began to be used more frequently, because of course people bending over backwards to defend men against charges of widespread abuse of power would have no problem co-opting a period in history where many thousands of women were murdered by their communities for stepping outside of the status quo and challenging male power. It felt like every time a brave woman spoke out, a thousand angry opponents would line up to malign her as an attention-seeker jumping on a bandwagon for money, fame and the opportunity to ruin men’s lives.

Because of course that’s how people responded.

Women learn early on about the backlash, and we adjust our behaviour accordingly. There have been long stretches of time where I’ve been silent about the pain I was in – the fear of not being good enough, not pretty enough, not small enough, not compliant enough, not enough enough enough. I have moved through the world desperately trying to figure out how this unwieldy body, with its unfeminine heft, loud voice and lack of physical fragility, could possibly fit into one of the tiny little boxes allocated to women. For all the progress we’ve made, we still live in a patriarchal system that ultimately values cis-heterosexuality, whiteness and masculinity. To be a white straight cis boy in this environment is to experience a degree of privilege beyond the rest. It seems to me that boys who conform to this are given the universe in which to carve out their identities, the promise of infinite space for them to expand into and contract upon. Girls are allowed only enough room to be stars, and we must twinkle, twinkle if they want anyone to pay attention to us.

Because as reaffirming as it is to see the rise up of women around the world finally banding together in a definitive ‘mad-as-hell-and-not-gonna-take-it-anymore moment’, the fact is we still have so far to go in actually getting people – men, mainly – to listen. The year might have ended with TIME Magazine awarding its Person of the Year award to the #silencebreakers who made 2017 an uncomfortable time for sexual predators and sexist assholes, but it began with the inauguration of a man who proudly boasted on tape about grabbing women ‘by the pussy’ because ‘when you’re a star, they’ll let you do it.’

The election of Donald Trump in November 2016 speaks to the embrace of misogyny, racism and right-wing fuckery that still bubbles and rages throughout the world like a particularly toxic case of flatulence. At the same time as right-wing pundits, legislators and voters were gleefully indulging their mock outrage at the newly exposed (liberal) predatory men in the entertainment industry’s traditionally left-wing enclaves, the number of women who had broken their silence on abuse allegedly suffered at the hands of President Trump had grown to at least sixteen. Trump enthusiastically endorsed Roy Moore as the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, despite the fact at least one woman had alleged he tried to statutorily rape her when she was fourteen and he was in his early thirties. In response to that, Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler likened Moore and his alleged victim to Joseph and Mary – you know, Jesus Christ’s mum and dad – telling reporters at The Washington State Examiner, ‘There’s nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.’

Actually Jim, the age of consent in Alabama is sixteen. Not only is it definitely illegal, it’s also predatory and traumatising. But then, you do seem to put your stock in a story that sees an adolescent girl impregnated by God so I guess your ambiguities on this issue don’t come as too much of a shock.

Moore lost that election, but that was only thanks to Alabama’s black population (specifically its black women). The majority of white people wanted to elect Moore, with 57 percent of white college educated women and 73 percent of non-college educated women casting their votes for Trump’s preferred candidate. These numbers are more or less in keeping with the ratio of white people who voted for Trump (a shit-tonne) compared with his black supporters (tumbleweeds rolling in the breeze).

Roy Moore’s stance on abortion was no doubt considered favourable to the white voters of Alabama. In the age of #MeToo, Republican legislators (most of whom are white, cis-het men from privileged backgrounds) are increasing their assault on reproductive healthcare rights while continuing to remove access to welfare payments and social support systems that would actually help women raise the children they’ve been forced to have. We only have to look back as recently as 2012 to remember Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin sharing his extremely scientific views on pregnancy with a St. Louis television station, stating, ‘If it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.’

But it didn’t stop there (even though Akin’s bid for the Senate did). Numerous states across the country have since tried to introduce heartbeat bills, which effectively outlaw abortion after around five weeks – at least a week or two before most women will even suspect they might be pregnant (and when, incidentally, the embryo is only the size of a sesame seed). In 2017, a minimum of forty-five bills aiming to roll back hard won abortion rights were introduced to state legislatures across the United States. In Idaho, Senator Dan Foreman announced plans to sponsor a bill that would classify abortion as first-degree murder, making both the recipient of the procedure and the healthcare provider performing it both liable for prosecution. A similar bill was presented to the Iowa State Legislature. A blanket bill was introduced in Michigan to defund Planned Parenthood entirely (only around 3 percent of its services are the provision of terminations, meaning the success of this bill would, among numerous other things, remove access to the contraception that might prevent the pregnancies in the first place.) And numerous bills were sponsored that sought to outlaw Dilation and Evacuation Procedures (D&E), which would effectively outlaw abortion in the second trimester (gestational weeks fourteen to twenty-six), one of the implications being that women who’ve suffered late-term miscarriages would have to wait for nature to take its course and deliver a dead fetus, an inhumane assault that poses great risks not just for their mental well being but also their physical health.

And this is just in the legislature.

The impact of rape culture has also continued to be felt over the last few years, both in how the behaviour and presentation of girls and women is policed to evidently ‘protect’ them from the raging desires of boys and men and in the devastation caused by some of those ‘raging desires’ themselves. Schools across America have come under fire as girls have fought back against regressive dress codes that sexualise their bodies while providing little to no expectation for male self control. Judicial rulings around the world continue to draw from the victim blaming handbook, with altogether too much concern shown for the perpetrators of rape (most usually when they are white and considered pillars of their community.) In Utah, Judge Thomas Low described a Mormon bishop as ‘extraordinarily good’ after a jury found him guilty of ten counts of forcible sexual assault and one count of object rape. In California, Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Brock Turner to a paltry six-month sentence (he was out in three) after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman besides a dumpster outside a fraternity party. In offering a character testimony, Turner’s father said he should...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Author’s note
• 1 Birth of a feminist
• 2 Ready for my close-up
• 3 Real girls
• 4 Like a virgin
• 5 A league of their own
• 6 Are you my mother?
• 7 The belle jar
• 8 Women against feminism
• 9 Man-hater
• 10 Hate male
• 11 Dicktionary
• 12 The good guys
• 13 When will you learn?
• 14 It’s okay to be angry
• 15 #MeToo
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright