Shiny Happy People - we've been saying it for years

Long before Shiny Happy People came out, we were speaking up.

 

 

When we spend 30 years speaking out against oppression, gently trying to disentangle women from the yoke, watching with rising concern the compromises women make just to stay safe and to dodge penalty, when every gain is so hard fought, when basic equality meets resistance and dismissal at every turn ... and we see, in the halls of power, people elected, people who epitomize and endorse the very abuses and doctrines we have struggled against for decades ...

Then we can take a lesson from women, and from all people of colour, and from indigenous people, and all people through history who have ever experienced oppression and injustice, and Maya Angelou comes strongly to mind ...

and we say ...

We know this feeling. We have been here before. 

When you said, he's teasing me and they said, oh don't be silly. 

When you said, he's hurting me and they said, he just likes you. 

When you said, he harassed me and they said, you need to learn to forgive. 

When you reported the harassment and they suspended YOU from school, as well as the perpetrator, instead of just the perpetrator. 

When you were told you couldn't play on the boys team, even though you were the second best player, because you were a girl - and there was no girls team. 

When the police came, but they said, "But Mrs Pearson, what did you do to provoke him?" 

When you really thought the courts would understand, and you carefully followed your lawyer's instructions - but they found in favour of your ex. 

When you tried to articulate the abuse and its impact on you and your children, and they said, "Is that all? That's it?"

When you knew you'd get the promotion because they'd assured you all along that you had the best credentials, experience and performance, but he got it, after only a few months with the company. 

When the pastor listened compassionately, then gently counseled you to go home and work on building his self-esteem and on submitting to him in the little things. 

When your eldest goes to stay with him, and then suddenly, no longer wishes to have contact with you again, and you see the child of your heart being moulded into a replica of the man you escaped. 

When, to your horror, decades after you thought they'd stopped blaming rape victims, they actually asked your daughter what she was wearing. 

When you announced your pregnancy, and you lost your job, but they said it had nothing to do with your pregnancy.

When you reported the harassment and the outcome was, YOU got demoted or retrenched or transferred, and got branded as a "trouble-maker".

You know this feeling. The disbelief. The heaviness. The utter exhaustion. 

The feeling of being mad at yourself for resorting to resignation. 

But there is also something older, and deeper, and stronger. 

There is a resilience. There is an assurance. That the truth IS the truth even when liars have the platform, that justice will not fall in the streets forever, that there will be a dawning, a morning. 

So familiar. Old turf, on an old path. 

Still, we rise. (Thank you, Maya).

Nevertheless, we persist.