What links all women? Sexual violence

What does it mean to be a woman?

There are nearly 4 billion of us after all, living different lives, in different situations, on different continent everyday, how can we claim one thread that links so many people?

One of my greatest joys in life is to be part of the female sisterhood. A group that is not the same, not even very similar often but a group that is linked by some very particular experiences.

Experiences that are part of our fabric as long as we have been treated by the outside world as women. Experiences that leave a particular taste in our mouth, a feeling in our bones, that shape our reality in a way that all women can recognise. 

One such experience is sexism, a reality of every woman in the world, as (apart from the odd matriarchy society) we all live within a patriarchy structure.

The shape that structure takes, the control on women’s lives and bodies it exert as well as the rights of the women within it, all vary but the structure's existence does not. My experience as a white woman in the UK, is not the same as a black woman in Niger but I am able to stand in solidarity with her as my sister.

Every woman in the world shares the knowledge that they are not held to be equal to men, that they are excluded from power within their society, that there are systematic barriers limiting their lives. Not every woman sees this as a problem of course and others deny the facts but it is a fact none the less.

Every woman has experienced having her body regarded as not hers alone, as the property of someone else/of society as a whole, as a barrier other people are willing to cross.

It is estimated that worldwide 35 per cent of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or sexual violence by a non-partner (not including sexual harassment) at some point in their lives.

To be a woman is to fear being one of these statistics, or for many, to become one before you have a chance to even become a woman. This is fear all women live with.

Society tells us to try and combat this fear in various ways. We are told to dress in certain ways, to avoid certain situations, we are taught to smile, pacify and try to follow the rules because every women is told this will protect them from the fear all women carry with them. We’re taught to de-escalate by cutting off pieces of ourselves to feed the wolves. 

Of course men are victims of physical and sexual violence too, but the ever present fear that hums in the background of every social situation, every relationship, every dark alley, every unfriendly stranger? That is the experience of being a woman.

The violence is ever present for women, every day we endure the crossing of our barriers. Every woman is groped, and harassed and touched at some point in her live. In today's reality, #metoo is the norm of womanhood.

When I sat down to write this I did not relish that I would be linking a whole gender together by the violence and pain it endures.

Women can be brilliant, powerful, magical, strong, beautiful, and creative. Equally we can be none of those things. We are complicated, multifaceted, diverse and intersectional.

We are not defined by what happens to us but we are linked by it. Women can find solidarity with each other in this way, white, brown or black, cis or trans, young or old, whatever our nationality or place in society, we are linked. Feminism began as, and must continue to be, the response to this pain. In an effort to be positive we must not lose sight of this aim: to end the violence.

Only through an intersectional fight against this common thread will we be able to, one day, define womanhood through joy not pain.