Spoiler: It’s a dystopia
Writing fiction allows you more freedom to write the whole truth,
without holding back, writes SARAH DAVIS-GOFF.
Walking home in the dark, earphones in as usual, hoping this will dissuade anyone from talking to me. A man is walking towards me; we are alone on the street. He opens his arms to me, smiling, saying something. I shrug and point to my earphones and he shouts, his mouth tilted right up to the sky, “ignorant bitch”. I pelt towards home, but not straight there, in case he’s following. This is not an uncommon experience, of course – most women have had something similar happen them, probably more than once.
As a writer, I love putting words together to try and create something, or talk about something, to make sense of the world around me. Though I usually write fiction, I wanted to conduct a little writing project; I thought I’d spend a month writing down everything that happened to me that I perceived to be sexist. Here’s what I found…
On Sunday, I buy coffee and a pastry and the papers. I start at the book reviews, tallying as usual how many women reviewers are published, how many books by women reviewed – sometimes there are none at all. I did find a piece though on how two of our radio stations don’t have any female presenters.
“They are not only looking to attract a male audience, but kind of signalling to that male audience that this is a space where you’re not going to be forced to endure too much equality stuff,” a university lecturer is reported as commenting. “Furthermore,” the article concludes, “many producers privately say there aren’t enough good female presenters…”
A man, Tweeting from a professional account, calls Róisín Ingle a bitch and in the same breath accuses her of name-calling. A writer Tweets an email she got from a man telling her
that her writing isn’t worth the money he paid for it, and demands that she give him editorial feedback on his graphic novel. Also on Twitter: a writer who told me once that he doesn’t read women writers, and does not see why he should. When I marvelled about his assertion to friends (it was not a secret, I thought, when he told me, loudly, in front of other people), they mentioned it to him. He’s still angry with me, which I like.
I go to my sports club: the class is taught by a man who has commented on my hair, on how I look “fit”. He sent me a Facebook message on Valentine’s Day a few years ago. It said nothing but “Happy Valentine’s Day”. I loved this gym. I trained there for four years and it’s the first time in my life that I feel like an athlete. I loved the sweat and the technique, but most of all the creative, forceful expression.
I stop going. I cannot go because I know how one man in there looks at me, and I had so loved it being a place in which I was not looked at in that way. I thought I was being looked at like a fighter.
Instead, I join a regular gym, with a pool. I go to swim and there are three other people at the pool, three men. They do not swim themselves; they sit on couches and chat together, watching me. They don’t get out of the way when I need to get past them, but they stop talking.
It’s around this month that important men in Hollywood are accused of sexual assault. It is becoming very clear to me that if there is one such instance of harassment or assault, there are many, and I’m worried.
I’m worried because, of course, it happened to me too. A dark corner, a late work night, and suddenly a person I know in business
“This country is not the same for women as it is for men. I do not know how to make it clearer.”
has his hands on me; my ass particularly – I knew he liked my ass – in both his hands, hard. It was aggressive; it felt practised. It went on for a long time, somewhere between five and ten seconds. Count them.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
It is a long time. I was shocked for some seconds, and for those other seconds I tried to get away, and then I did get away. For all of those seconds, I felt that he was demeaning himself, rather than me. For all that time, I felt shock and disgust and I felt unimpeachable, impregnable.
That’s another tough thing about experiencing sexism; you’re not just experiencing it in the moment, but it causes you to think back on all those other times it’s happened to you. You have to do a lot of re-living of traumatic moments, as a woman in Ireland. It’s hard not to bring that trauma forwards with you, to re-evaluate it according to new experiences.
I argue with my father and brothers about misogyny. I’ve argued with them since I was a kid, but they can’t hear what I’m trying to say. This country is not the same for women as it is for men. I do not know how to make it clearer.
I finish writing the piece when the month is up and it’s pages and pages long, much longer that this piece. It is much too long to make sense or be interesting; I edit. Then I edit again because I am frightened of being sued.
For me, writing non-fiction that feels true is hard; I want to write about the things that are important, and it’s hard to pull all that authentic detail, to hold back.
But in writing fiction, you can have a character who does not have to pull her punches. You could write someone who never quit her training. I’ve always been fascinated by dystopias, but it’s only dawning on me now that women have so much in common with people living in one. We cannot trust those things that are supposed to hold a society together; our government, health services, the law or justice systems. We suffer under different rules than the other half of the population, and when we talk about it we’re not believed, or not listened to. It is hard to go outside sometimes.
In writing fiction, I can at least create a story that makes some sense. In writing my dystopia, Last Ones Left Alive, at least we all start on the same page.