Tag: Me Too

Vale Sinéad O’Connor

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This hit hard today.

Her voice was a clarion call. Utterly ethereal, raw, sublime.

A life-long seeker, exploring spirituality and studying religions from around the world; she changed her name to Shuhada’ Sadaqat, but will forever be known by her stage name, Sinéad O’Connor.

Catapulted to global fame with one song; she used her fame over and over to highlight issues close to her heart and Irish upbringing. The way she was treated for this was awful, but she kept going, kept marching. If you’ve not seen it, please watch Nothing Compares. When you’ve watched that, listen to Universal Mother. It’s an album that will break you open.

‘Here we go again, another angry woman.’

‘Get back into the kitchen.’

‘Who do you think you are?’

As we know now, she was right. The Catholic Church were consistently hiding abusers, constantly moving people around, intimidating and squashing complainants, hushing things up. Not just in Ireland, but globally.

After Saturday Night Live, the salacious, vitriolic bile written about her was unbelievable. Sinéad spent the rest of her life being hounded by the press. Which, sadly continued today with articles being written about her mental health, her marriages, her children. Do better.

Her foibles made her human. Her voice, her back catalogue, with lyrics so delicate you could miss their depth and weight. Her strength to live her life in authenticity, is what I want people to remember her for.

Picture Credit

Fade In

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You may have seen my Instagram post yesterday about me adapting my novel One Last Hundred Chances to a screenplay. I’m working on it very early each morning, or very late each night, sometimes both.

I’m in a coaching program at the moment, we were asked to choose a project for a 30-day project sprint. Every time I asked myself what I needed to do for the project, I came up with the same answer. I had to adapt the book. There was no way around, or about, it. I had to go through it, one scene at a time.

I’m not going to lie, holding the stories in my head the first time was hard. I was worried if I’d be strong enough to do it all again, intimate partner violence isn’t the most light-hearted of things to articulate. But, I kept coming back to the people that shared their stories, the reason why they shared their red flags with me in the first place.

“I want people to see what I should have seen happening.”

The book was for Erika, who’d have been cross if I didn’t finish the book, but the adapted screenplay is for the survivors. I don’t know what will happen to it, my aim at the end of the project sprint is to simply to share with people I know who work in TV and movies and ask, “Do I have something here?”

I’m re-writing, pulling the story apart and re-building it. I’m learning from the mistakes I made in the book and finding my voice louder than ever before. I was so proud of the book, but already I’m glowing from the work I’ve put into adapting the screenplay and I’m a way to go yet.

When you’re ready to leave

I want other people to hear something Ronnie says to Hazel and think, “That sounds familiar”.

I need people to see Ronnie losing his shit over a cup of coffee; or to watch Hazel being persistently worn down so insidiously, she doesn’t realise what is happening.

I really need people to see that even if you ask someone who’s hurting you to leave, they won’t. They will twist and turn the words you use against you, until you don’t know whether you’re coming or going.

I really want people to understand that it can take months for victims to be able to break free. Be patient with your loved one, but be there unconditionally, because when they jump, they’re going to need you.

If you’re struggling relating to a parent, I want you to see Freya’s story and know that you’re not on your own either. That version of coercive control is deliberately in the book, because everyone has an opinion on giving family members another chance.

We need more people understanding that coercive control and intimate partner violence often escalates. But by the time it gets physical, victims can be so entrenched they are more petrified of what will happen when the police leave, than asking for help. “Why don’t you just leave?” is not helpful when you don’t have access to money, car, food, and your life as you knew it is gone. The only thing giving you sustenance is the person abusing you.

The cover of One Last Hundred Chances by EE Grant. A couple from the 1990s are arm in arm, looking out to sea. The tag line says, 'How may times will you forgive?'

This song by Tina Arena has been running through my head the whole time, When You’re Ready.

The screenplay of One Last Hundred Chances is for you. I’m writing from my lion’s heart, sharing the tiny spark in all of us that keeps us going.

Revisiting, #MeToo

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Cover of Tarana Burke's book, Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement

I’m reading Tarana Burke’s Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement. It’s not an easy read; but the interviews Tarana’s been giving have told me, the book is a necessary one. It’s also a book that Brené Brown said in their conversation on Unlocking Us, “You start reading as one person, and end as another.”

I’ve archived my personal blog, but have been ruminating on cross-pollinating some posts to this website. On my walk this morning with Tarana’s words ringing in my head, and indelibly across my heart, here’s the first post I’m re-sharing.

Any posts I add to this website from my personal blog will be labelled ‘Revisiting’.

Originally published on 17 December 2017.

As we approach the festive season, it doesn’t matter what people wear, how they act or what they do. If they look uncomfortable, leave them alone. If they say ‘No.’ leave them alone. ‘No’ is a complete sentence, it does not mean ‘Convince me’. Don’t be one of those people who gets so drunk they think it’s funny to lurch, lean, grope, manhandle or even vomit over someone else.

– On the tube in London, a day trip up to go shopping. Probably the Circle Line as that swung past Victoria. I feel a hand on my bum, it brushed past it at first, then slowly crept round to touch it (me) properly. I grab hold of the hand, hold it aloft and ask “Does anyone know who’s this is? I’ve just found it on my arse”

– On the dance-floor in a variety of clubs, the rooms are hot, dark and people are rammed together. It would be an unusual weekend of clubbing if one or other of my friends didn’t get groped. Note to all you youngsters; talk to the club staff and bouncers, get to know them, be nice, polite and friendly – they’ll help you out no end. Until then, wear trousers as much as possible so you don’t get an attempted fingering on the dance floor.

– Drunk Portsmouth football fans on the train home after winning the FA Cup, smoking and drinking on the train. I’ve sat in the front carriage deliberately as when I get on the train at Waterloo, it’s nearly evening. The drunk fans start heckling and abusing me. Knock on the driver’s door to ask for help as I can’t walk past them out the carriage. He looks past me and does nothing as ‘I’m just the driver’ I ask about the guard instead and get told he’ll message him. No help arrives, heckling gets worse. Do I get off and wait for another train loaded with more drunk fans, I knock on the drivers’ door again. Ask if should I pull the emergency brake? He said if I did ‘It’s not an emergency sweetheart’ so I’d be fined. When I raise an incident form with South West Trains, I get told that “For the safety of their staff, the guard and driver chose not to approach the men on the train”. Luckily the Police were more sympathetic. Yes I should have called 999 (or 000, or 911).

– ‘You can’t refuse me, don’t you know that you stupid bitch.’ Yes, this did end up in One Last Hundred Chances

– ‘Come and take these notes, but write long-hand, I want to look at your legs.’

– ‘It’ll only take a minute, no-one will know.’

– ‘For a good-looking girl, you can look awful. You really should wear make-up every day.’

– The primary school swimming teacher who’d ‘check’ on how the girls were doing getting changed afterwards.

– That until I’d had counselling, hypnosis and EFT I couldn’t bear people breathing in my ear, but the smell of Brylcreem can still make me want to vomit.

– I’ve also lost count of men who think it’s funny or that other people won’t mind if they get their penis out in public. “Is that all you’ve got?” usually works well, or “Do you do that in front of your mother?”

enough is enough

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We know it is ‘not all men’.

We know that he was a ‘just bad un’ in the Metropolitan Police force.

This is endemic and it has to stop. Politicians have to stop pissing about diluting rights and step up, because the cuts you’ve made to services and the lack of action is causing violence against women worldwide is at a crisis point. But when every single woman you know has either been verbally, physically or sexually assaulted; when do you say – this has to stop?

When it affects your family? Because someone in your family will have already been followed and made to feel uncomfortable when they were out shopping or walking.

When it affects a friend? Because your friend would have already laughed awkwardly at a joke about what they were wearing, saying, doing. When your friend tried to get away because she felt uncomfortable, they would have already been told to ‘lighten up love’ or ‘it might never happen’ or ‘frigid cow, can’t you take a joke?’

When it affects your sister? Because your sister has already been leered at in public. And now arseholes are putting tiny cameras in changing rooms and bathrooms, because leering at us in public isn’t enough for some people.

What about when your daughter has to have a tracking app on their phone active all the time, only wears one earphone, carries her keys in her hand as a weapon. They try not to walk at nigh;, but if they’re on a zero-hour contract and need to eat that week, they might not have the money for the bus if they get called into work a late shift, or the money for a taxi, an uber or a lyft. Even then, they could be locked into the back of the car and taken, drugged, abused, killed.

Please, as a male, link together that when you don’t call out behaviour in a bar, or in a chat group, or online because you are scared about what could happen to you; you have to multiply that fear for being a woman. Multiply that fear again for being a woman of colour. Multiply that fear again by being gender fluid or trans.

Intersectionality is a fairly new concept, but the data points are growing. If you are a straight, white, male, good for you. You’ve hit jackpot in this patriarchal, sexist, racist, misogynistic society. The chances are you are probably teflon coated, because you have an army of cronies who will vouch for your ‘banter’. You probably think the law and rules don’t matter to you, because there are a buffet of people in suits who will line up to defend your actions; while dragging the name, reputation and image of your victim through the mud.

If you’re a person who identifies themself on the LGBTQI+ spectrum, or is a person of colour, anything you do just to live in this world will be taken and used against you. Twisted as being corrupt or harmful to ‘the poor children’. Expressing yourself through make-up, ew! Wearing and having your hair, inappropriate! Falling over and hitting your head on a wall in your cell, you’re drunk and we won’t take adequate care of you; in fact we’ll drag you over your bed by one arm damaging your body further. Rainbows, that is the devils work. We must protect the children!

Although the churches and institutions will close ranks and protect the people in power to protect their reputation first.

It is not all men, but it will take all of us to stand up and call it out. To say ‘that is not ok’ and to be strong, resolute and not back down in the face of adversity. Because, we’re done.

We’re done with this bullshit.

We’re done with women being told what they need to do to protect themselves, instead of men being told to not be arseholes.

We’re fed up of being scared all the time.

We’re tired of being told we need to look like plastic dolls with our hair extended, lips blown up, false nails, fake-tanned orange skin, eye lashes extended, blue-white teeth, dieted to the bone, but with breast and butt implants, and don’t forget your need to draw your eyebrows on if they’re not up to expectations.

I want to go to the gym, do my work out and not be expected to arrive in full make-up. Or to have to fend off people who want to ‘spot me’. Or tell me that I’m doing it wrong, ‘here let me correct manhandle you’. Or film me.

I want to go for a massage without the workers there having to put signs up asking you to leave your underwear on.

I want to walk listening to an audiobook with headphones in both ears.

I want to feel safe to try clothes on or use a public bathroom, without having to check there’s a camera in the cubicle or hiding under the toilet seat.

I want to run to the shops without make-up on and not be told ‘you like tired today love, have you tried putting some make-up on’.

I want to be able to concentrate on something when I’m at work or out without being told to ‘smile’.

I want to be heard in meetings the first time I speak, not to have what I’ve said repeated later and then agreed upon as a good idea.

I want men to be able to stand up against a bully and be cheered on, not to feel scared that they’re going to get hit, knifed or shot.

I want everyone at any training session or match for any sport who falls over to be able to take note of what happened to them, without being yelled at to ‘get up you girl’.

I want professional male soccer players to stop falling over and pretending they’re hurt to get an advantage. You’ve got enough of an advantage.

I want trans people to be able to compete safely in their chosen sport.

I want men to feel their feelings and be brave enough to ask for help, instead of thinking they need to toughen up.

I want men to do household chores when they see dishes need to be done, not because they’ve been asked to do them. Because you are supposed to be an equal in the relationship, not a delegate.

I want people to be able to trust that if a police officer shows their ID, they know they are in the police force.

I want organisations and politicians to stop hiding their money in offshore accounts, so everyone can afford to go to the doctor, dentist, a good public school.

Times Up.