Down With Dishcloths

Early last year I went to hear Sara Ahmed speak about her new book, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook. In a city that rarely whoops (Edinburgh restraint) I was astonished to hear American husting-style whoops as Ahmed took to the stage, though perhaps they were more subversive than joyful. We were served up a rare smile as Ahmed angled the mic to speak. At that point I didn’t know it was a rare smile, but ninety minutes later I realised her smiles were rationed. It’s a serious business being a feminist killjoy.

And what is a Feminist Killjoy? I soon learned. In the way of some other countercultures, Ahmed has reclaimed the word used to slap her down (“You feminists are such killjoys! Why so po-faced? It’s only a bit of banter,” etc., etc.), and she has repurposed the would-be insult by owning it. Her retort is, ‘Yes, we are killjoys because that’s what we need to be to have you sit up and listen.’

I am dubious about reclaiming slurs, to charging an insult with a new energy and pointing it back at the original finger pointer; it seems to dismiss the need for education, seems to say: Impossible to embark upon open discussion and understand each other, so I am going to up the ante and cook with the eggs you’ve pelted at me.

From the floor, someone asked: ‘Do you mean it literally, or is there joy to be had in being a killjoy?’

‘Both,’ was Ahmed’s machine gun answer. ‘Though the literal is the more important.’

She stressed the need to slaughter one’s joy for the cause, to execute the difficult (moral) decisions even if it feels like cutting off one’s fingers, like she did a few years back when she resigned from academia in protest of it being rotten to the core, full of lip-service gatekeepers who do not live what they preach. For this, I admired her principled stance.

Some might say Ahmed is working to heal the ‘mother wound’, not just her own, but everyone else’s. That’s one big mountain she’s climbing.

The mother wound – if it’s new to you – is said to be inflicted by the misogynistic world we live in. I grew up in an Ireland up to its neck in misogyny, drowning in it, drinking up its toxic messages that are only now being (gradually/painfully) worked out of the belief system, but not before the wound of matrilineal pain has been inadvertently passed down generations. Obedience, self-sacrifice, self-denial, self-abandonment, being good and nice and proper: generations of women have been taught to behave this way and we expect it of the women coming after us. We are handed these beliefs in the same way we might be given a valuable heirloom to act as custodian, not question their substance and worth.

Sebastian Barry, in Old God’s Time, has a serious, gloves-off go at not-so-old Ireland and its treatment of the female of the species, its propagation of the mother wound. He makes the term ‘killjoy’ look daintily apologetic.

“The special place of women in the home. That got her goat. McQuade and de Valera, priest and president. With lawyerly Vim she would scour it all out. Mount a challenge to it. In honour of her mother and all the mothers. Fuck housework. Down with dishcloths. Let’s have raging, ragged, ruinous, riotous, ravening, rabid women. Real women. None of these man-made fucking women.” Old God’s Time, Sebastian Barry.

Apologetic. I have something to say about that too. I know a woman who was working towards telling a builder she wasn’t giving him a small contract for renovation work on her home because (a) his quote was too high and (b) he couldn’t do it for months. Being nice and good and all things womanly, was feeling guilty about potentially offending him (they live in the same town, and she would see him from time to time), and when she pressed ‘send’ on a carefully worded, much-anguished-over text message (one that I insisted did not begin with the words “I’m sorry but…”), he came back thirty seconds later with a thumbs up emoji. He didn’t care; the concern had been all hers.

‘I need to be more male’, was her conclusion. I don’t know about that, but women certainly need to be less apologetic, in our business dealings especially. Clear, polite and direct, and not using the word ‘sorry’ when there is nothing to be sorry for. No need to wring out all the niceness or the smiles or the how-do-you-dos, but weed out a good clump of them; communicate more clearly and please, please eradicate the meaningless ‘I’m sorry’ that is the punctuation preserve of women.

“‘But there are no men here,’ said Mrs Wilkins, ‘so how can it be improper? Have you noticed how difficult it is to be improper without men?’” The Enchanted April, by Elizabeth Von Armin.

What a simple truth. The Enchanted April (I recommend it) was published in 1922, and here we are, a hundred years on, continuing to hold ourselves to different standards: be decorative and decorous, be good in ourselves but not too good at things, shine but not too brightly, and go and wash those dirty dishcloths.