I wasn’t planning on writing this but these thoughts woke me up this morning and wanted to be expressed, so here I am honouring them.
Today is International Women’s Day and I am sitting with Sara Ahmed’s concept of the feminist killjoy, a term used to describe someone uncomfortable with the normalised yet deeply damaging systemic issues of our society, someone who recognises the patriarchal, racist, classist, ablesist etc systems that exist that feels the need to name the uncomfortable and the unsaid. To bring into the room the systemic and historical ghosts that continue to haunt us in the present. We are the ones who know that ‘Oh, there she goes again’ look far too well, familiarised through the eye rolls of our families, our partners, our friendship circles and our work. Over these last few months, millions of new killjoys the world over have been born. Gaza has further awakened so many of us to see how all these insidious systems of oppression, death and exploitation that all pray to the altar of capital above all else, are linked to our very own lives under globalised capitalism. It’s not ‘easy’ or ‘nice’ to always be the killjoy but those of us who are, also know that to name it is to love. I always find Eric Fromm’s description of love (which was also the definition borrowed by bell hooks) as helpful North Star: to love is “the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth."
In the awareness facilitation training journey that I’m on, we are taught to work with disruption because in disruption lies transformation. We do our work by sitting together in groups and letting the ghosts come into the room, naming them and hearing each other out. Everything is allowed except physical violence, taking into account that the most marginalised voices have been forced to be silent or told that their anger is unacceptable. In the belief that hearing their feelings as they are can change us and bring about new relational consciousness. I am always moved by this work and really believe in its world-changing capacities. Many say that being able to be just simply heard and listened to is where the healing begins. This means that those who are unwilling to get uncomfortable, who are ‘conflict-averse’, who are unwilling to name and hold the tension are also closing themselves off to deeper connection and deeper transformation. Tension and pressure are how we alchemize, this is how we turn garbage into gold
To truly love women is to care for ALL women, including those in Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, The Congo and everywhere else where women are oppressed. To truly love women is to be invested in undoing systems that value some women’s lives over others. This International Women's Day, I don't want to see any more empty words and any more meaningless campaigns. It’s time to put our money, our time and our hearts into something bigger than us. It’s not our fault we have been conditioned by a system that forces us to constantly betray our own humanity in service to capital because to heal from these myths of separation that have been instilled in us we all need each other. After all, the word for peace in Hebrew is shalom, which also translates to wholeness. To love all living beings is to also love all parts of ourselves. Healing is wholeness and wholeness is healing.
May we find our way back to each other, because there is no us and them, there is only an us.
In killjoy solidarity,
and the dream of a Free Palestine,
Naomi xxxx
❤️🫶🏼
in killjoy solidarity for sure! x