Amidst the Feminist Fog

by Andrea Pantazi

TW: rape, torture, war in Ukraine

The recent headlines about the rapes of Ukrainian women by Russian soliders have shook me to my core. Headlines such as “In the war on Ukraine, rape has been used as a weapon” and “Russian rape in Ukraine: 'You can tell from their eyes'” include stories from women of all ages coming forward about how they were raped, humiliated and tortured by male soldiers in their own homes.

and Bucha devastated, with the bodies of dead civilians lining the streets, shocked me. I saw homes that looked just like my grandgirls who looked like my little cousin lined up in hospitals with bandages covering their little limbs, women wearing clothes with the same fabrics and patterns as my aunts’, describing their experiences being raped in their town’s cellars with a dozen other women. stop thinking of whether Putin’s troops would stop at the border with Romania or continue to attack into my family’s home country. I’m ashamed to say it took this connection for me to feel this level of empathy. I felt a type of horror that stops you in your tracks. I feel this outrage in my gut and tingets shallower and I want to hide. But life seems to go on. Why do I not see others also stopping to catch their breath? Do they feel the same and are just better at hiding it? How many more mass rapes and femicides will it take to feel that outrage?

Growing up, the few queer characters I saw on screen described their understanding of their sexuality as something they knew right away. But I didn’t. I mean, I knew I liked women. When I was nine, I made a book dedicated to Selena Gomez, with pictures cut out from magazines that I neatly glued got a computer, I made my background a collage of Santana and Brittany kissing. So yes, I knew I liked women, that’s for sure. But exactly which label was most accurate is something that I no longer spend long evenings thinking about. I no longer journal for hours on end, in an attempt to decipher every interaction I’ve had with another per- labels were something I latched onto because they made communicating my queerness so much easier. But now, having grown into a - tive than helpful, and letting go of them has helped me develop my newfound comfort in my non-labelling queerness.

Hello I am article continues on page 6 things, like how a man can ask stupid queswrong thing. I could talk about my friend’s professor saying her essay was good but to not let “feminism cloud her judgement”.

I could talk about how one out of six women have been the victim of rape, about how more than 20% of Black women are raped during their lifetimes, or how somebody isonds. I could have a damn clock put up in Times Square to tick down the seconds until the next rape will occur, and still nothing revolutionary would happen.

I could talk about my own personal experiences with sexism. About how I can’t go to Albert Heijn in a low cut top without being whistled at. About how in a club I can’t walk through the room without a man’s hands wrapping around my waist, my breasts, as if they exist for the sole purpose of his enjoyment.

The label of “feminist” has become dirty, associated with an untamed wildness young girls should learn to do without. Truthfully, it becomes hard not to bend over and accept defeat. It’s hard to study so many historical waves of feminism in my textbooks, only to look up today and see things are very much the same. It’s disheartening to see a week of a “feminist perspective” in my politics courses, and then go back to male-oriented theories directly after.

Honestly, I am sick of reading beautiful feminist articles and revolutionary research papers. I just want to be able to walk down the street with the same empty-headed cockiness of a straight white man. I want to take up space in the world the same way I see my male friends do.

And after all this, all the hard work to change the idea of natural male dominance, all the voices shouting the same message, all the headlines detailing rape and assault from around the world, all the lives ruined and lost, the pattern will still continue. is the point?

Allow yourself to feel this outrage. It can be sparked by anything, big or small, fueled by a headline or a personal experience. Bursts of passion are intense and powerful but realistically short-lived. However I ask you to let them fuel you. Sexism lives in all of us in so many minute ways we have learned to ignore in our day-to-day lives. I ask you to not let these seemingly small things go, but woman you love. What seems minute to you contributes to the larger forces which invisibly run our lives. These narratives when unquestioned make massive atrocities, such as the rapes in Ukraine, become merely an inthan a direct attack on humanity itself.