I’ve been reading Fix the System by Laura Bates – it’s compelling, hard reading and as she notes, much of what it contains will be no surprise to women but will be alien to most men.
I’m not that far into the book and I deeply get her rationale that the vast ocean of very different ways that women are subject to sexism, must stop being seen as a series of incidents (not ignoring their individual impact) and instead be recognised as aspects of the patriarchy and set in a colonial, abelist, economic and social structure. It’s a structure that endlessly recreates itself, making slots for women to fall into and for men to stand over whether or not they like it.
Those words, fix the system not to women seem really apt to me. I’ve been using them a good deal recently in terms of my views of neurodiversity and the NPNPD (normal persons narrow perspective disorder) based society that dominates. It says it values diversity but tbh, I don’t think it actually understands that any other ways of mind can be anything but pathological.
It, the NPNPD is not just a stasis, it’s nothing like so passive. It must fix us or sideline us as our very existence is a significant challenge to it’s own definition of reality. Like the TERF who pleaded with me that the very existence of people who ‘claim to be women but who are always really men’ threatened her whole notion of self as a woman – we were making a mockery of her existence. . which I said was crap.
She couldn’t see beyond the binary of men and women and in that binary, all men are a threat, always. Her whole social construction pivoted on a clear line between one and the other – to move between the two destroyed her model and it was everything to her. In that context, I understood her horror – if we kicked the turtles out from beneath her she will fall forever.
Usually in life we don’t fall forever. And a jump from a belief to questioning that belief doesn’t lead to much more than standing there wondering why you had not stepped down before – the ground is solid and there is more space than there is upon a high horse.
I don’t think men will wake up just like that and just ‘get it’ that the patriarchy is wrong and dismantle it – it’s not an isolated structure, it sits among and intertwined with others and all farm us and shit their food into the hulk of capitalism.
Us neurodiverse lot are going to have to shout though and demand to be heard – we need to put the disorder into our disorders. I am ceasing to be ok with being fixed or ‘failing’ – it’s failing in a society that does little but harm.
Phil Pool - Art and Protest 