We have an election taking place in the UK next month. Having written last week about my lack of trust in politicians, I was asked if I would bother voting.
Yes. I will. I’ve voted in every election I could since I was 21.
A friend at university displayed a poster declaring:
‘However you voted, the government got in’
It’s not just alienated youth who might agree with that sentiment. I’ve long been a supporter of proportional representation – even though, if current opinion polls are accurate, we would end up with more MPs from Reform than the Green party. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68079726 Despite all the flaws of our democratic system, I cherish the fact that I am able to vote. 100 years ago, most women (and many men) in the UK did not have that option.
As part of my preparation for the essay I need to write for my final MA submission, I’ve been revisiting feminist works from the 1960s and earlier. My novel is set in the decade from 1960 to 1969. This was the era of mini skirts and the Mini car. The contraceptive pill became available, the Beatles were topping the charts, and President Kennedy announced the intention for people to land on the Moon. It was a time of massive social upheaval – including in women’s expectations of what they might do with their lives.
I was studying for O Levels (precursor of GCSEs) and A Levels during that decade. In English Literature we studied the poets of the first world war. I was immensely moved by these poems, and horrified at the snuffing out of so many young lives in the trenches. My wider reading took me to Vera Brittain’s ‘Testament of Youth’. At the time I found her autobiographical account of working as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse inspiring.
My novel calls for the female protagonist to encounter feminist ideas, and I decided to have her meet someone who lends her Vera Brittain’s book. Which has led to me re-reading it to remind myself of its contents. To my modern eyes, the extended description of her first love goes on far too long, and she exhibits the snobbish and colonialist attitudes of a typical girl from her social class at that time. Leaving that aside, the story of her political awakening and adoption of a pacifist philosophy is still inspiring. Vera Brittain stepped outside the expectations hemming in a young woman of her social group.
I have described myself as a feminist since my late twenties. The book that inspired me to really question the ideas I had grown up with was Marilyn French’s ‘The Women’s Room’. I gave my mother a copy of ‘The Female Eunuch’ by Germaine Greer shortly after it was published. As a lecturer in psychotherapy, in the early 2000s I taught a unit on Gender and Sexuality. I thought I had a good understanding of feminist ideas, but it has been a revelation reading some modern theorists, female, male, non-binary and queer, exploring how gender limits possibilities for everyone: women, men and those who refuse a binary classification.
My elder son asked to work part-time when his first child was born. The request was refused. Would it have been granted if asked by a female employee? Women are still judged by their appearance. Homosexuality is punishable by death in some countries. Afghan girls can no longer attend school. Being a feminist means being prepared to stand up for human rights. People’s rights to choose what happens to their bodies. The right to make love to any freely consenting adult. Having the freedom to dress as you please without being labelled a ‘slag’, ‘gay’ or ‘raghead’.
Bloomer-wearers and Bow Street Police
Can the UK Parliament deliver those rights? Not really. Multinational companies shape our reality as much or more than any government. And I will still go and cast my vote – if only to honour those who campaigned so hard to make sure I am able to.
Thank you, bloomer-wearing suffragettes. And thank you to those - male – MPs who supported the passing of The Representation of the People Act in 1918.