Dangerous Women Project joins sexism dots

Aprint version has been launched of the feminist blog, The Dangerous Women Project, which gathered hundreds of essays, stories, and poems mulling over what makes a woman “dangerous”.

I’m pleased to be among them, alongside writers such as Jo Clifford, Irenosen Okojie, Nada Awar Jarrar, and of course, Nicola Sturgeon, who, prior to Donald Trump popularising the phrase “nasty women”, was named “the most dangerous woman in Britain” by the Daily Mail, just as Shami Chakrabarti was by The Sun.

My contribution to the book is a prose-poem manifesto about a speech titled Research Has Shown, which I wrote in response to headlines of the day. Women of the Obama administration, tired of being interrupted, popularised the idea of amplifying another woman’s point in meetings; there was a small ripple of reporting on statistics such as women being interrupted more often than men in conversation.

The piece begins standing firm in the face of this and becomes a celebration of women as innovators of language; I couldn’t keep out the joy and pleasure I feel for words.

The line “fry your vocal in the oil of your choosing” refers to young women being criticised for so-called “vocal fry”, a compressed sound in their speech. Nitpicking the method of communication, of course, is a cheap excuse to dismiss outright what young women are actually saying, but it’s also a way to paint feminine vocal tics (or any other gendered behaviour) as inferior, the same kind of pressure that leads to some people lowering their voice when they want to be taken more seriously and conjure authority.

But I believe women should accept and enjoy what we can do with our voices, in all their variation, as in the line “choose any instrument that pleases you with its sound and feel; luxuriate in your range”. It’s easily my favourite piece to read aloud.

The project introduced to one another interesting women from many different fields – science, arts, the third sector, and many more – each with something to say about the double standards applied historically to women.

It became clear that, for example, the problems facing women in Scottish sport had a lot in common with the problems of women in Scottish academia. The Dangerous Women Project joins the dots.