it’s not that difficult to rile me up pre-coffee in the mornings, but few things have had me seeing red like the article i read this morning, where the IAAF (the governing athletics body) have decided to completely strip the current women’s world marathon record holder of her achievement. that’s right: back in 2003, Paula Radcliffe ran the London marathon faster than any female has ever run 26.2 miles… but that’s no longer considered the world record.

why, you ask? what could have possibly come to light to require such a drastic move? what did Paula Radcliffe do? what rule could she have breached?

well, none. it’s just that the IAAF have decided, with the benefit of eight years of hindsight, that it was too easy for her – because it was a mixed race, you see, and she *got to run behind a man*. that was clearly an unfair advantage. and so they’ve taken that record away.

“you know that race you ran 8 years ago, where *you ran faster than any other woman in the world*? that race that has defined your career and your international standing? … PSYCH! not a world record! ha ha!” -IAAF

also: if you want to set a world record and you’re a woman? from now on, you’d better find an all women’s race to do it in, because otherwise it doesn’t count. so New York, Boston, London, Chicago, Berlin marathons? no need to do your best there anymore, ladies. apparently the IAAF think you just breeze along to the finish line… because obviously the men will have already done all the hard work of pacing the race.

(but wait: the men in a race have male pacers, don’t they? why yes – yes, they do. but for a woman to have a male pacer is unfair.

huh??!!?)

i suppose i shouldn’t be surprised by this unbelievably transparent bid to completely discredit women’s achievements out of hand. after all, this is *what the patriarchy does*.

the other day, the king of saudi arabia decided to allow women saudis to vote (four years from now). how very fucking beneficent of him, eh? women all over social media were hailing this as some great achievement. but let’s be clear: it’s not. what it is, is a male dictator who has decided to let women be just a millimetre less oppressed than they were yesterday.

this is what the patriarchy does. it sets the rules. it changes them at whim. it giveth… and then it taketh away. it is always reminding us who’s really in control. it keeps women off balance, and hungry, and grateful for every crumb they are thrown. after all, 2012 will be only the 8th time women have even been allowed to race the olympic marathon! shouldn’t we still pleased as punch about that?

no. no i’m bloody well not. i’m tired of having to fight tooth and nail to simply be *less oppressed*, and i’m tired of the two-steps-forward-one-step-back dance that’s designed to serve as a constant reminder that no matter how far we advance, we are still, and will always be, behind. it is a methodical form of continual humiliation to remind us that we still have to have our rights and achievements accredited by men in order for them to truly count.

so even if you run the fastest marathon in the world, it means nothing unless *they* decide it means something. the message here, ladies: as in the rest of life, no matter how hard you work, no matter how hard you fight, you’ll always just be seen to be chasing a man. and don’t you dare forget it.

5 people like this post.

Unlike

every year at this time, I am strangely grateful to no longer be living in the US. the intensity of media saturation reliving the horror of September 11, 2001 becomes to much to bear, even from afar. and to what purpose? to milk the emotion that lays buried just beneath the surface? to stimulate fresh tears, renew the deep ache of grief?

who does that help? what does that serve?

we said we’d never forget. and I think there’s an immense collective fear that somehow we possibly could. that allowing ourselves to view it as a historical event, rather than an existential keening for our loss, somehow dishonours the dead. or more pointedly, dishonours our sorrow.

in a country of 300 million, you could ask every person where they were, and they’d tell you. but there are not 300 million stories about that day. there is only one story. no matter where you were, the one unifying experience during that morning was not sadness, or even shock – we hadn’t yet had time to process anything. it was fear.

fear of things and people unknown falling out of the sky. fear of unsuspected places blowing up. as plane after plane went down, and we all rushed home to be with family, the fear was omnipresent. not knowing where to turn, or when the next explosion would come – our nerves were frayed wires touched in rivers of adrenaline.

for most people, that kind of untrammelled, all encompassing terror is a once in a lifetime experience. for most people, nothing before or since has caused that kind of invasive abject fear, penetrating their lives and brains. everyone wants to share where they were, what they were doing, because it forms part of the collective national story. it means that even in our stunned and silent horror, we are less alone.

people who’ve experienced a deep trauma often experience flashbacks, as the mind struggles to process the enormity of it. and in many ways, this is what we do every year on this day, now. we grapple, we relive, we share our scars. this is what our nation does now, as we try to cope.

but being caught in an annual feedback loop also keeps us trapped, psychically, there in the moment. our inability to modulate our fear, the rampant panic that flooded our entire country that day, means that it continues to spill over into the rest of our lives. we live in a state of heightened alert that prevents us from ever getting enough distance to process what happened. so we guard against the forgetting, we hold tight to the sorrow.

ten years later, we are not coping well.

the government, the media – they all work to keep us there. that fear is useful for winning elections, for attracting viewers, for manipulating public sentiment. and we allow it because we are afraid of forgetting, we are afraid of getting emotional distance. we are afraid that allowing ourselves the space to be less fearful, less sorrowful, will mean *it didn’t matter enough*.

back when i was in the depths of depression as a teen, i cut at my wrists. it was an internal distress made visible – can’t you see how upset i am? this is how much i hurt inside. this is something i can point to, to show you how much i feel. the memorials and the tributes and the sea of flags every year serve the same purpose. this is how much we hurt inside. it was such a monumental event, that we still need people to see our scars. we need to make our pain, our fear, our grief visible. this is how we quantify what happened to us.

but eventually, with time, i learned to demonstrate my emotions in different, healthier ways. and i know that as a country we can too, if only we begin to trust ourselves to deal with the hurt, to allow ourselves the distance to begin to heal, and set ourselves free to do so.

4 people like this post.

Unlike