Every March 8, I see sharing on the networks of strong women, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Simone de Beauvoir, bell hooks, by other strong women around me. And every year, the men I meet remain in the background, as if this struggle only concerns my sisters. Worse still, the only ones who deign to mark International Women’s Day share a photo of their girlfriend as if it were Valentine’s Day.
It makes me think of the silence of men when the verdict of the Supreme Court came down. This year marks the end of abortion in several southern states. Their next target is clear: contraception. I swipe my finger on my phone to see the news scrolling on the networks and I note without surprise that only women share their anger. The ones we fuck with. Those for whom we take the pill. Those who unload their pleasure in the small of our backs and in our hard-won freedom. Those who benefit from our abortions to resume their lives as if nothing had happened remain silent.
It is to believe that they are not concerned by this battle which is delivered to us, even here in North. Because in truth, this decision concerns us, too.
It is a war against free women and careerists. Those with passing lovers and a certain way of life. Without apologizing. It’s a war against our place at the big tables in office towers and the boy club. Our way of loving sex as much as men. Not knowing how to cook and not giving a fuck. It is a battle against the pleasure that these women take in their guilt-free sexuality and their independence in this room of their own, of which Virginia Woolf spoke.
It is an attack against the feminists, the intellectuals, the rebellious lovers and the modern witches of whom Mona Chollet spoke. Our body as a battlefield.
It is a fight against all those who lead small and big revolutions in the face of mockery, aggression, slut shaming and to the double standard, to the looks that cross us without seeing us in the meeting rooms. In 2022, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas reminded uninhibited, independent women that this world is not theirs.
And above all, don’t tell me that here, in the North, it’s different. On this March 8, I think back to Anita Hill. To my exes. To my one night stories. I am thinking of Virginie Despentes, for whom the first rule of patriarchy is to exclude women from the realm of pleasure. I am thinking of the return of Julien Lacroix. To the date rape drug epidemic. To young girls who are told to watch their drinks in bars and to boys who are never told anything. I am thinking of the culture of sport, of degrading initiations, of Hockey Canada. I am thinking of the engineer whose assaults were perpetrated quite quickly after all and of the judge who above all did not want to prevent him from traveling.
I think of the men in withdrawal and I wonder if they understand that this battle which is made for women, it also hinders their pleasure and their freedom which they come to seek in the bed and the kidneys of a type of girl that we try to erase. Today, I want to tell men that the fight against patriarchy is also theirs.