In these dishonorable times, I cheer at the rise of the Women’s Right’s Party, and immediately join. How could I not – I founded the NZ Women’s Political Party thirty years ago, meaning I had a tiny hand in dislodging Mr Muldoon from his truculent perch. I am a kuia manuhiri wahine pakeha.
My body was born overseas but I was created here.
As a Woman, I acknowledge reaching the age of Crone, becoming an archetype: wise woman or witch. I claim both.
I am proud to have given birth to four new lives, proud for walking the path from deeply heterosexualised teen to lesbian feminist activist, proud to have founded the NZ Women’s Political Party, proud to have written a feminist future fiction novel which prefigured the internet, proud of a dozen other things gifted to me by feminism.
Above all, I am proud to be made politically acute by feminism.
Looking with that focus shows a world shaped by long years of global patriarchy, itself in flux because of successful feminist activism. One of the most heartening of thsse is shining a naked light on sexual predatory actions by handmen of the patriarchy, forcing organised religion to admit its sleazy habits. Another is that previously ignored women scientists now have been named and honoured; and another is, on a recent fine cool night in Aotearoa, a stadium of elated women cheering a ball game between two all-woman teams.
As a ‘woke’ Woman, my alarm bells are always at the ready, especially to changes in the language. Ask Māori about the effect of having their mother tongue ripped from their mouths.
Those bells clamoured recently when in English, my mother tongue, bureacracy successfully made changes I could not agree with. In bureaucracy, we are no longer ‘women and men’, we are ‘persons’. But words are boats which carry meaning. I agree I am a person, but that I am a Woman is much more relevant – and important. Anything, even a human-looking robot, can be described as a ‘person’. But only a Woman can ‘grow’ a new human.
Being Woman is both terrifying and splendid. Being thirteen and seeing blood in your knickers is terrifying, as is learning you can now get pregnant.
Finding warmth and peace with a Man and knowingly creating a new life is frequently splendid, sometimes terrifying. Holding the new Life you have created is definitely splendid, unless the babe is the product of rape or incest, those two proofs of dishonorable male inadequacy.
Birthrates are falling across the globe. That means a falling tax take at a time of soaring costs in caring for our Old. Couple these with other facts such as 30 million Chinese men having no hope of finding brides in their homeland, and our future looks like the sci-fi stories we’ve created. Westworld, for example. On these and many other hard-to-ignore facts, bureaucracy plucked essential meaning out of one of our most important words – Woman.
Challenges in our increasingly technological future will largely fall on women, there’s no doubt about that. The parlous condition of our blue home means that clean water and nourishing food are under threat, and who is it all over the world who daily supplies these to the children?
Women need strong legal political voices. Because ours is a world where women are still being denied a future of education and choice, as in Iran, where our right to abortion is snipped away, as in America, where young women having an evening out are drugged and raped by a pair of scumbag brothers running a Christchurch bar.
Words are boats which carry meaning. English has one word which says ‘future,’ which says ‘babies’, which says ‘peace’. That word is Woman.
The Women’s Rights Party graciously thanks Sandi Hall for contributing this piece.