On Getting Up
First published on November 06, 2024
This is part of a running series. Read the previous Wonder Chronicle: On Halloween
Almost exactly 13 years ago, I lay on the ground, eye level with the boots of a group of Egyptian riot police who had beaten me and broken my left arm and right hand, and then sexually assaulted me as they pushed me between them.
“Get up now or you will die,” a voice said to me.
There was no one else there but me and the riot police because after beating me, they’d dragged me to a no-man’s land between the front line of the protest near Tahrir Square where I’d been, and their front line several metres away, outside the Interior Ministry.
Who was that voice? The Divine Being? My Guardian Angel? My drive to survive that loves this world, in all its fuckery?
I don’t know.
I do know that with a broken left arm and right hand, I did get up.
Today, I urge you to keep your ears peeled for the voice telling you to get up.
Rage.
Be sad.
And get up and fight!
Whether Trump likes it or not, this is the day my voice is telling you that there is joy in that fight.
It is the joy that June Jordan describes in her 1976 poem I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies:
I will no longer lightly walk behind
a one of you who fear me:
Be afraid.
I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits
and facial tics
I will not walk politely on the pavements anymore
Rage. Be sad. And get up and fight! Whether Trump likes it or not, this is the day my voice is telling you that there is joy in that fight.
It is the joy that Nawal El Saadawi describes in her novel Woman At Point Zero:
“They said, ‘You are a savage and dangerous woman.’ I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous."
Feminism is a daily revolution.
It is not a coat I pull out of the closet whenever a man has been a shit to me, and it is not a keepsake I remember once every four years as the entire world – not just the US – holds its breath in anticipation of the fuckery that awaits after the polls close.
When so many people around the world pay more attention to the U.S. Presidential Election than to elections in their own country, it is imperative that we pledge allegiance to fighting fascism wherever we are.
That we declare our independence from patriarchy wherever we are.
White supremacy, misogyny, genocide, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism, and a host of bigotries will not disappear, regardless of who occupies the White House for the next four years. And feminism is how I fight them all.
Feminism is not easy or nice; it is fire and a fight. I am not playing; I am here to destroy.
I want to be free. That is a daily demand.
To be free, I practice Feminism in 3D: Defy, Disobey and Disrupt.
Everyday. Not just every four years.
Get up. Become a menace to your enemies.
My goal: that you are found by wonder.
My wish: that you intensely live.
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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. Her latest book is an anthology on menopause she edited called Bloody Hell!: Adventures in Menopause from Around the World. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
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