Daily Dose: 127

Feminism in 3D: Defy, Disobey, Disrupt

Logo: Sheyam Ghieth

As we mark five years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, reflect: how did you learn to emerge? Did you let go of “normal?” Did you honour the ways you were scathed? I refused to emerge as if unscathed. We all should be scathed; we all should refuse to be the people we were at the start of the pandemic. Eight members of my extended family died, as did the father of my Beloved. A pandemic, like revolution, does not happen overnight and it changes everything, regardless of how stubbornly you hold onto “normal,” and insist you remained unscathed. That “normal” was the abnormal that ushered in the global.pandemic. I shaved all my hair off soon after the pandemic started. It was my way of preparing to emerge, again, scathed and in recognition of the immensity of this time. It was one of the ways I was cutting up my return ticket to “normal.”

Filming and editing: Robert E. Rutledge