Difficult Women

A poem for IWD

Last week, Australia’s Prime Minister* called activist Grace Tame “difficult”, and feminists nationwide woke up from their two year slumber.

Suddenly everyone was racing to claim the title of “difficult woman”. Ring lights on, cameras ready, the carefully styled Instagram posts rolling in from people who’d had absolutely nothing to say when Tame was being savaged by the Murdoch press for opposing the genocide Albanese was helping to arm. Where genocide is concerned, many of these women are not just very un-difficult - they’ve been overwhelmingly silent.

But the moment the discourse landed on familiar, photogenic ground, there they were, ready for their close-up. Very brave. Much feminism.

“Difficult Women” is about what happens when a political movement gets so thoroughly swallowed by capitalism that it can no longer tell the difference between liberation and a content opportunity. I’m releasing it today in honour of the founders of International Women’s Day, working women of the socialist labour movement who were fighting against the tyranny of capitalism, inequality and economic oppression.

These were not just “difficult” women, but unrelenting and visionary ones. They organised, they protested and they fought without apology. Their commitment sparked actions across the globe, and was ultimately the instigator of the Russian Revolution in 1917, when Russian women walked off the job to protest a war that was killing their families and starving them all. The women who built this day weren’t angling for a seat at the table, or approval from oligarchs and political puppets. They understood the table was the problem, as were the people who feasted at it.

We need to return to the kind of intentional feminism that rejects neoliberal values and fights for those most harmed by them. Feminism is not about slogans and palatable identities that can be worn at will. If your version of being “difficult” doesn’t include protesting the use of militarised force against civilians historically subject to the worst of US-Israel violence, then you’re not doing anything to deserve the label.

This is not a condemnation of women. It’s an invitation to stand for SOMETHING, and to live up to the legacy of those who put everything on the line to challenge power and oppression. We cannot be more offended or outraged by a man’s labelling of a woman as “difficult” than we are his enthusiastic complicity in genocide and imperial violence. Albanese has co-signed the deaths of tens of thousands of women and children in Gaza and now more in Iran. That is where the focus of our rage has to be, not on whether or not he thinks Grace Tame has become “difficult”.

Be more political. Be less comfortable. Be the kind of difficult that actually costs you something.

*Anthony Albanese, known as “Albo” to most in accordance with the unshakeable laws of Australian society, which dictate all men must be christened with a colloquial nickname in order to minimise their behaviour)

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