Lonely Intersectionality

Lately I’ve been feeling very lonely in the intersection of so many minorities so I wanted to share this piece with you.

I’m a female bodied, disabled, queer person of colour and sometimes it feels like it doesn’t matter how hard I try to surround myself with allies, I’m always having to fight to take up space in my tiny corner. The queer spaces in London are often very white and it makes me feel lonely in a place that I want to feel at home.

So here is a piece made of that feeling.

Georgia Abortion Laws

The ridiculously flawed science used to backup the #heartbeatbill makes me so furious. The suggestion that a detectable foetal heart bill means we are killing tiny baby with a tiny heart is totally false. At 6 weeks there are cardiac cells spontaneously beating as they do in a Petri dish. They don’t resemble a formed organ yet. I’m sick of #pseudoscience being used to oppress people.

The Trapped Feeling of Assault

I doodled this in my teens in a state of panic and I wanted to share it because working on strategies to manage my panic has been a difficult work in progress ever since.

In my late teens I was assaulted on the tube and ever since I have battled with the automatic trapped-prey panic when any man stares at me too long on the London Underground. I’m pretty sure I’d like to make some art specific to that at some point but it’s still a little too raw to do so. So here is some art from a time when panic ruled me much more strongly.

Wordless

Today it felt a lot like my words were useless. I’d love to share the entire situation with you but as it involves minors I think it would be inappropriate. Here is a wordless painting instead.

Internalised Patriarchal Low Self Worth

I wanted to share this song because I’ve been having trouble accepting my own self-worth in romantic relationships lately, despite years of copious emotional strategising to deal with it.

I wrote it in 2014 after a painful breakup that I had blamed entirely on my own unworthiness. I filmed it in this location especially because it’s the spot that found me desperately trying to fuck my way back into the relationship with some ‘please don’t leave me, I’ll be better’ sex in the middle of the night.

I think the cause is in no small part to do with the fact that I have spent my life swallowing the patriarchal platitude that tells me if a man doesn’t love me it is because I have failed. I should change to be more worthy.

So fuck that and here’s to more strategising. I’m committed to feeling my own self worth.

I'll fight the patriarchy tomorrow

Today I really needed some rest so I took some by my childhood lake. I can fight the patriarchy tomorrow

Continuing to paint my breasts

A continuing work in progress. It felt good to continue working on it after a hiatus because it’s a bit of a declaration of my intention to stop trying to fit in, to toe the line of what it means to be a respectable woman in western culture.

I’ve been told so many times in so many ways that if I just learn to play the game I’ll be more successful. By my teachers when I spoke my mind to often, by my family when I wore ‘immodest’ clothing, by my lecturers when I stood my ground about my disability.

The thing about playing the game is that it is set up for cis-straight-able bodied-white men to succeed. Not me.

I want to stop trying to toe the line because doing that props up the success of those people and not my people, the ‘minorities’.

Am I Delusional?

Yesterday was a bad day. I went to a job interview. If you’ve been following my posts you’ll know that full-time work is both terrifying for disability reasons and increasingly necessary for financial reasons. I did not get the job and I’m beginning to feel rather sad and hopeless.

I wanted to share this song with you all because it was written a year ago when I was battling with myself about the same issues, terrified that freelancing would cause financial ruin and I still haven’t solved my problems or answered my questions...

Disability - Calling in sick

I am out of spoons. A cold has triggered some of the more horrid bits of my disability. I’m weak and it’s hard to get up. This doodle is the extent of my capabilities in the current moment. I wanted to share a state that I usually hide from people.

I am out of spoons

I am out of spoons. A cold has triggered some of the more horrid bits of my disability. I’m weak and it’s hard to get up. This doodle is the extent of my capabilities in the current moment. I wanted to share a state that I usually hide from people.

Non-sexual Nakedness

I was raised to believe that a naked female body is an object of sex and therefore shameful outside of a sexual context. Ironically, it has been the wonderful folk of the London kink scene that have started to show me otherwise.

It’s a long road to quiet shame and I’m trying to teach myself bit by bit, to kick that assumption in the proverbial nuts. That is why I took this photograph. My naked body, non-sexualised, just as it is.
I hope I will be brave enough to be more brazen in future. I want to put together some kind of non-sexual strip performance... watch this space for whatever that may be.

I am afraid to work full time and I am afraid not to

I have a disability called Ehlers Danlos (hello any fellow zebras) which affects my joints and the rest of my body in a bunch of weird and not-so-wonderful ways. At the moment I work freelance part time and some weeks my body can handle that and more but others it just can’t.

I’m currently applying for full time jobs because I’m living with my mum and I can’t do that forever. There are a bunch of other reasons and complicating factors but at the end of the day, financially I need to work full time to live but physically I’m not sure it’s possible. And if it is, I’m not sure how much of me will be left at the end of it.

I’m going to try it out anyway but I’m scared. That’s what this bit of art is about.

Painting my breasts

A work in progress. I’m painting my breasts because since age 12 I have been told over and over in myriad ways that they are shamefully sexual for every day life.

I have a distinct memory of photo day at sixth form college. My male head of year stared pointedly at my breasts, said ‘oh my god’ and insisted I must button up my cardigan for the photos. His facial expression is seared into my memory. It was a confused mish-mash of surprise, embarrassment and amusement. I never figured out what was funny. I was wearing similar clothing to my classmates but it seems my large breasts sexualise everything that isn’t a baggy T-shirt.

This was one of the many times that it was drilled into me that my body was shamefully sexual and I must cover up to make the rest of the world comfortable. It’s been almost a decade and the view that female bodied people should cover their breasts to be respectable is still in the majority.

So I’m painting my boobs in all their massive glory. Fuck everyone who thinks I need to put them away in public to be respectable.

Bondage and Body Autonomy

For this day I wanted to share something that celebrates my body autonomy. I realise that a bondage photo doesn’t make immediate sense but I love the way shibari is an expression of trust for another person with your body. Body autonomy is about free choice, even when you are quite paradoxically choosing to give somebody power over you. It feels freeing. This bit of loveliness is the work of the beautiful Will Marlow at London Alternative Market. Photography by Alan Scriven.

Saying thank you for all of the lovely support

Today I’ve felt so supported on instagram and via messages from friends and strangers. I feel less small. I wanted to make something that reflected that feeling and something that said thank you.
I’m always self conscious about posting music, unsure about whether there’s a right place for it. The love and support I’ve received so far is helping me feel brazen enough to go ahead.

I am hiding from predatory men under my blanket

Today it was sunny in London so I wore a skirt. I was emotionally tired and not feeling resilient enough to have my legs and body stared at all day. I just wanted to go back to bed, so when I got home from work I did and I painted this picture.

I want to share my experience of being a disabled, pansexual woman of colour in this world. I’m hoping it will help me feel less like prey and more like a person. So I’m setting a 100 day goal to do so.

Sexually harassed in front of my students

So today I gave a special Women’s Day themed class to my students, including discussions about #metoo and sexual harassment. Afterwards, outside the school, I was harassed in front of my students. It is such a regular occurrence, that it can literally be used to punctuate a lesson. I felt angry.

I used the rage to finish this second version of my ‘It is my body’ first post. Here’s to using female rage to get shit done.

The inception of 'It Is My Body'

This weekend at a lovely kink club in London, a man decided to touch me once without my permission and then once again after I had already said no. Not only did he cause one of the worst panic attacks of my life, he made me fear dressing the way I want to. He made the outfit feel dirty.

I am so sick and tired of being harassed and assaulted by men that believe they are entitled to my body in some way, regardless of my feelings. I’m sick of being triggered by people who see my curves as permission to treat me as less than human. I am a person and it is my body.

So today I put the outfit back on. With the help of a wonderful friend and badass woman Laura Boulter, I made this ‘fuck you’ post for my new Instagram - ItIsMyBody.

‘It Is My Body’ I will celebrate my body and my ownership over it. With thanks to the badasses who supported me this weekend and the wicked staff at the club that dealt with the guy.