#MeTooBut

Yes #metoo. But…

I don’t want to add to

more polarisation.

I want masculine and feminine,

free of exploitation.

I don’t want more shame,

or more shaming.

I want clear feminine anger,

but without more blaming.

I don’t want women

to feel it’s their fault.

I want all of us to work out

Just where we’ve been caught

In dominant cultures

Where sex is a commodity

And intimacy commands a price

In our free market economy.
I don’t want to forget,

to let the men off the hook

For the entitlement they claimed

and the liberties they took.

I want to hear their stories,

to know about their choices

Where they felt fear, and shame,

Why they didn’t raise their voices

 

To speak up loud and clear

if, to them, it felt wrong.

When ‘the lads’ harassed a woman,

Why did they play along?

 

It’s all been such a game

With no real winners.

We women aren’t all saints

The men aren’t all sinners.

 

I too have been complicit

in accepting the status quo

I’ve kept an ancient silence,

been afraid of my own ‘no’.

 

It’s time, wake up, wake up,

my sisters and my brothers

Let’s out the beasts that stalk us

The traps we lay for one another.

 

Fierce compassion unearths a gift,

like rubies, beneath the rubble

If we don’t name our collective pain,

Our legacy will be trouble.

Catherine Pawson, 2017

Photo by Dineslav Roydev on Unsplash