fight like a girl!

introduction

This is your self-defence manual; your London Underground map to
womyn-positive self-defence in a danger-filled world of
patriarchal pitfalls. The fourth wave of feminism is here, and
after civil rights, consciousness-raising experiments,
splintering affinity groups, scholarship and reams of
literature; the age of direct action for gender trouble and
equality and against global patriarchy and sexism is here.

Fight Like A Girl is a compendium of ideas for empowering
ourselves and our sisters. 
These ideas are also intended to inspire you to your own
actions.  The womanual comes (so far) in six sections as follows:

1) Raising the standard 
2) Fighting Rape
3) Feminist Frontline - against sexist media & advertising
4) Swinging Sisterhood
5) Guerrilla Girls - art for the post-patriarchy
6) Self-Defence 

Anyone with a zine, website, interest in making flyers etc. is
encouraged (@nti-copyright) to reproduce any or every part of
these writings. Any more ideas for adding to the list under
past, present or future sections; or if you have comments or
want to make general connection here is the info:

Laura 
PO Box 23272 
London,  SE14 6XD UK 
xsynthesisx@ekno.com, 
http://connect.to/synthesis

One basic thing to keep in mind is this: PROTECTING OTHER WOMYN
IS SELF-DEFENCE AND SELF-DEFENCE IS PROTECTING OTHER WOMYN. 



fight like a girl part 1) 
raising the standard

VISIBILITY
Whether you are a feminist activist sporadically on your own or
as part of a well-resourced, organised group; visibility is
always extremely valuable. Various liberation movements from gay
rights to indigenous rights have found that visibility is a
major first step in fighting oppression. When people can ignore
you, or are simply ignorant, you don't stand much of a chance.
Even negative coverage can in the long term contribute to your
overall goals. As Harvey Fierstein said, 'visibility at any
cost'. 

ANONYMITY 
Visibility does not have to mean going about with a big neon
sign over your head saying 'homicidal lesbian terrorist'. In
fact, a movement can often be more effective when the proponents
remain totally anonymous; especially when there is some illegal
activity is involved or if you live somewhere like post-Thatcher
Britain where every cop has a camera and every activist
potentially has a file on them somewhere. 

GRAFFITA
A single action is magnified when it is part of a larger
struggle and one way of indicating this is with recognisable
calling cards. Anyone who lives in a city will be familiar with
these tags that misguided boys like to leave on bus shelters and
streetsigns and once you recognise a particular tag it gains a
place in your consciousness. Of course tags are pretty pointless
when they have no understandable meaning behind them, but
political tags like 'ALF', once people become familiar with the
meaning, give the movement a place in the consciousness of the
people who see them popping up all over town. 

So when you go about smashing patriarchy you might find it
useful to use a symbol, acronym, name etc as a calling card.
Almost all of the billboard improving I've seen has been done by
lesbian feminists who include two entwined signs of venus (??)
which goes a long way in quickly summing up some of the
sentiments behind the graffiti. There is also of course the
circle-A sign of venus, the bicycle with signs of venus for
wheels (on car advert billboards) etc. Some already existing
acronyms and signifiers include: W.A.R. (Women Against Rape),
M.O.N.S.T.E.R. (Mobilising our neighbours and sisters to
eradicate rape), Guerrilla Girls, H.A.G. (Hell-raising Anarchist
Girls), Feminist Frontline, Lesbian Avengers etc. 

Whatever you do to smash sexism, remember you will achieve even
more when you make it clear where you are coming from. If you
deface a billboard with an alcohol advert that makes a joke out
of date rape for instance, let people know that it is not just
alcohol you are attacking!  


fight like a girl part 2)
fighting rape

Fighting rape has never been straightforward and probably is
more confused than ever now that people like evolutionary
biologists are trying to tell us that rape is a natural urge in
the human male. But we know better than that; rape is a violent
result of patriarchy and a reality in our communities and the
community level is a good place to start protecting ourselves. 

RECLAIMING THE STREETS
Find out where in your neighbourhood women have been attacked
and leave feminist graffiti as a warning to other women and/or
to rapists (eg. 'Women Against Rape', 'Dead men don't rape',
etc). 

If you have a local minicab/taxi service that is run by & for
women/gays then help promote them. 

RAPIST-BASHING
Thanks to a sexist legal system and various other social
pressures, most rape does not result in punishment for the
rapist. Furthermore, the people who do successfully prosecute
their rapists are almost never hailed by the media as victors as
are the prosecutors in say, murder or libel trials. It is up to
us to change this course of events. 

Terrorising perpetrators has proved very successful in animal
rights campaigning and terror tactics are well worth using
against rapists. Find out where your local rapist lives and
works. Ask his employers how they feel about employing such a
person, follow the rapist around intimidating him with silence &
glaring or chanting and pointing. Fill his car with something
smelly, throw tampons at him, leave graffiti in his
neighbourhood, be creative! If he is on trial, taunt him when he
enters and leaves court. Never let him be at peace; you will
break him eventually.  Make sure that successful prosecutions
end up on the front page of your local mainstream and radical
newspapers.  

SISTERHOOD
When you are going into a potentially dangerous situation eg.
going out late at night alone, let a girlfriend know where you
are going and when she should check that you have returned
safely. 
Look after other girls - if you see a woman on her own (eg.
walking through a park, standing outside a club) don't leave her
alone/out of your sight. 

Don't be ashamed to ask for / offer companionship if you or
someone else is going into a potentially dangerous situation. 

SMASH SEXISM IN ALL ITS FORMS
There is a radical feminist slogan that says that, 'Every wolf
whistle ends with a rape'. You don't have to take that literally
to know that if we don't let people get away with sexist shit in
the long run this contributes to the fight against violence.
Some of us remember from our schooldays that when some boys were
being mean we would call them on their shit. Lots of boys never
left the playground and still need to be told off. The 1980's
backlash against feminism & women's liberation has made many of
us afraid of speaking up when faced by sexism - nobody wants to
be called a 'moody bitch with no sense of humour'.  Fuck that,
I'm an uppity woman and a warrior queen in the revolution to
overthrow patriarchy! Most people have never thought to question
the patriarchal norms we live in, show them a new point of view
and you will eventually win them over. 

RAPE IS A PEOPLE'S ISSUE
When women want to speak for ourselves, we should be able to do
so without men always trying to put their twopenn'orth in. But
let's hope that in the 21st century we can sometimes work in
mixed groups without gender roles creating a hierarchy or
silencing women's voices. Rape survivors are all sorts of people
and male rape survivors are arguably more silenced than female
rape survivors. At present, there are very few mixed
support/activist groups for rape survivors and there should be
more.


fight like a girl part 3) 
feminist frontline - against sexist
media & advertising

ON THE STREETS
Feminist Frontline is in the spirit of the Animal Liberation
Front and anti-nazi activists - underground cells of direct
activists ridding the streets of sexism - but in a fun &
creative way. FF particularly concentrates on sexism in the
media & advertising. I won't here go into the misogyny of
Hollywood, the body fascism of the fashion industry, the
sexploitation of advertising etc. Either you are bothered by
these things or you are not, you feel these are relevant issues
or you do not, and you feel that it could be fun to fight them
or not. The FF standpoint is, obviously, to go after media in
all its forms where it is not womyn-friendly.

POTENTIAL TARGETS
Billboard advertisements - spraypainting, paintballing,
flypostering etc.  The creative possibilities are endless.
Patriarchal funeral pyre - of stolen products of sexist culture
such as lad's mags, porn mags, Arkangel cds etc. Hold it in a
public place such as a hardcore festival.
Skateboard shops - spraypaint to those decks showing scantily
clad wank-fodder, tear out adverts in skate mags with similar
images.
Cinemas - 1 in 8 Hollywood films contains a rape scene, and of
course nearly every Hollywood film is rife with sexism &
misogyny. So take your friends to the movies with you and when a
dodgy scene starts up, stand up and give a live commentary on
what is happening. You can demand to see the cinema manager and
get your money back because you don't want to contribute to
people who make films with such negative images. 
'Feminine Hygiene' - Why are we led to believe that our natural
functions are unhygienic? The tampon/pad/douche/feminine
deodorant industry is a male-run conspiracy to rip us off, make
us unhealthy and alienate us from our bodies! Adverts,
supermarkets, dispensers in public toilets are all fair game.  

MAINSTREAM MEDIA - Who needs it?
Boycott all media that is not woman-positive
Don't watch films with rape scenes - it only brings us down to
constantly see ourselves portrayed as victims

FEMINIST FRONTLINE WAS HERE
It is always effective to leave a graffiti tag behind when you
do actions - let them know this was a raging feminist girl who
brought such destruction upon the evil minions of patriarchy! 


fight like a girl part 4) 
swinging sisterhood

DEFENCE
A few months ago the BBC ran a much-hyped documentary-type
programme recreating the life of the Neanderthals. Being a keen
student of human nature, I intended to watch this programme.
Thirty years ago I could expect such a programme to be pretty
laughably stereotypical with dusty old ideas about social
hierarchies and gender roles. Funny how people can just assume
that they know what cavepeople's lives were like and that they
must surely have involved me Tarzan, you Jane sexual
relationships etc. as well as people murdering each other at
every possible opportunity. Surely we wouldn't have such
assumptions from contemporary anthropologists? Guess again. I
read a blurb in a telly magazine where the programme makers were
describing with some glee the incorporation of a rape scene into
the programme. Well of course this was the way sex always
happened back then, so they believed, and so they wanted to show
it. And they were so sodding smug about it! Somehow I still felt
something like a responsibility to watch this rubbishy
programme, but then I thought about the chapter on patriarchal
media in Inga Muscio's world-shattering book 'Cunt - A
Declaration of Independence'. Why should I watch anything that
brings me down? Why see something that degrades, shows, or
represents the degradation of women? 

When I let myself think about it from a healthily self-centred
point of view, it becomes obvious that when I see violence
against women and particularly sexual violence portrayed on
screen or on paper it disturbs me and rightly so. And how
liberating it was to realise that I do not at all have to put
myself through that, I really don't. Now if I know a film will
contain a rape scene for instance I will not watch it. That is
not even on principle but just for simple self-defence and
personal empowerment. All day every day we get bombarded by
patriarchal images that attack femaleness and the more I can
avoid the better for me and the less power the patriarchal media
have over me. It works, I swear. I feel stronger every time I
refuse to witness some form of media that is not pro-woman. We
do not have to see violence against women to know it exists or
to fight it or to know it is wrong. 

Think about it, when we women are constantly seeing ourselves
portrayed as victims it is not surprising that some of us come
to feel like it is inevitable that we will become victims. When
woman-as-victim is all we know, this is pretty likely to make us
fearful when we go out at night. Ironically of course it is the
people who already look fearful and helpless who are most likely
to be preyed on by violent criminals. If a rapist tells you with
his body language, 'I am going to rape you', your body
language and whether and how you fight back can tell him 'No
you won't' and believe it or not, this makes all the
difference. 

But unfortunately filmmakers and the like are usually not
interested in portraying strong women characters. In your
typical mass media entertainment the woman is a pair of breasts
attached to the male lead. The message is sent out to all the
young girls out there who are exploring their identity as
females; a woman is passive, a woman is secondary to a man, if a
man wants to do something it is the woman's job to support him.


It makes people angry when I say I think directors are
irresponsible for showing rapes in their movies. If you see
violence against women onscreen and your heart, your body, your
head tells you that this is very uncomfortable, and I mean
uncomfortable beyond what you need to follow the story, then
just maybe that is because the director is just being
sensationalist. Is the rape from the point of view of the
rapist? What happens to the woman afterwards? Listen to your own
feelings; can you tell if the director is shocked by what is
happening onscreen or are the filmmakers just trying to make it
dramatic and shocking in a cheap formulaic way? Compare the
cold, misanthropic movie Kids with the work of a responsible
director like the Indian biopic Bandit Queen. Compare the rape
victim-as-victim in The Accused with rape victim as hero(ine) in
Boys Don't Cry. In the latter film the woman ends up dead but
nevertheless the viewer does not feel as manipulated and
brutalized as they might after a sensationalist movie like The
Accused. 

RESPONSE
So maybe you don't want to support this sort of entertainment
anymore. As well as personal or organized boycotts, how about a
bit of smart-arse direct action. For instance when one of these
scenes happens in the cinema, why not give a running commentary?
Why not bring a load of girlfriends and march out during the
offending scene and demand the ticket price back from the
manager? If you hear about a new movie, ask people (and it will
sound corny but it's important) if it has positive portrayals
of women or if it has violence against women. This will both
give you information and get the other person thinking more
about what they see/have seen. Anything is better than just
remaining silent forever about something that makes us feel
disempowered. 

A NOTE ABOUT MALE RAPE
As with rape of women, rape of men & boys can be portrayed
responsibly, sensationally or any number of ways but perhaps it
is more likely to be treated as a joke. The reason this article
is about media portrayals of female rape is because it is
particularly relevant to how women feel about themselves. Girls
and women are socialized their whole lives to be victims of
violence. Boys and men are socialized to be perpetrators of
violence. This is why I personally believe that it is empowering
for women to be more conscious about violence-as-entertainment.
Men have different reasons to be concerned about
violence-as-entertainment but that is a topic for a different
article. Maybe someone else wants to write about that? Any men
out there who have been affected by media portrayals of
violence?

OFFENCE
There is nothing limiting about boycotting all patriarchal
media. Most of us already boycott or avoid all sorts of
mainstream media and these days it is not difficult to find
progressive alternatives. Likewise, the world abounds with work
by women. Why not immerse yourself in women's work for awhile?
Listen to women's music, read books by & about & see art by
women, find your local women's libraryÖ There is a lot out
there that the patriarchs avoid letting us know about, so start
a treasure hunt! Better yet °V create your own treasures to
share with your sisters. Organize your own women's art events,
performances, film nightsÖ

The future is female.


fight like a girl part 5)       
guerrilla girls - art for the post-patriarchy

In the previous section of FLAG we were encouraged to look past
the mainstream patriarchal culture to the women's work that it
tries to bury. For the past decade, there have been feminist
direct activists working precisely to point out cultural gender
apartheid and to prop up the work of women. Best of all, they
know that activism can be endlessly creative, exciting, fun, and
challenging to all sorts of people. These are the Guerrilla
Girls. 

Imagine half a dozen women in Gorilla masks descending on posh
art exhibition openings, anti-abortion rallies, and award
ceremonies. The original GGs in the New York City came from
within the arts establishment. They put out posters and adverts
with 'Does a woman have to be naked to get into the Metropolitan
Museum of Art?' This campaign drew attention to the fact that
the arts establishment tends to completely ignore and sideline
women artists (although a great deal of art depicts naked
women). They draw attention to the lack of women directors
getting work in Hollywood by putting stickers with statistics in
the toilets of cinemas and of the building in which the Oscar
ceremony is held. Their sticker and poster campaigns have
addressed abortion rights, conservative politics, racism and
sexism. GG campaigns are characterised by awesome inventiveness
and humour. They have influenced other activist women around the
world and pissed off the establishment. You will have to see
their work for yourself on: www.guerillagirls.com.