Theory vs. Practice

I’ve been hibernating.

I’ve always been a big reader. I read in the bathtub. I read until the wee hours of the morning. I read when I walk down busy streets. This voracious need of mine was encouraged by university, where I studied philosophy and history, and some weeks was assigned a thousand pages of reading. Every couple of months I order a whole bunch of books off the internet and take a ton more out of the library and curl up and don’t emerge until someone prods me, eyes blinking, into the sunlight weeks later. As you might have guessed, I’m interested in feminism. So this recent book hibernation has included such works as Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape by Susan Brownmiller, Sisterhood is Forever edited by Robin Morgan, and Ain’t I a Woman: black women and feminism by bell hooks.

I’ve learned a lot. But it’s gotten all tangled up. Robin Morgan wrote in her original foreword to the Sisterhood is Powerful anthology that once you become a feminist activist you start to strip away the layers of denial and blockages you’ve put up to shield yourself from the barrage of hatred that’s directed at women from people and culture on a daily basis. I’ve lost my shields. Conversations with some family member have become fraught. The news ain’t better. I basically have to not read ANYTHING on the internet. Walking down the street alone wasn’t really all that fun to begin with. It’s not that I’m afraid all the time. It’s that I’m fucking angry or sad all the time. And that isn’t a helpful way to live myself. So I’ve retreated to the world of books. Reading the feminist theory was a way to stay connected to my activism, or so I thought. But here’s the thing about theory. It takes you out of what is actually going on with women. I’ve been working way too much with my head lately and not enough with my hands. Reading the theory doesn’t make me want to do anything. It makes me want to NOT do things. I retreat; I don’t engage.

This is coming back to me with sharp relief because my last shift at Vancouver Rape Relief is this Sunday. I needed those hours. Because what you find working with a dedicated feminist group is not just the strength to go out and face that barrage of asshole verbiage, although it does do that. But what I’ve found after these past months working with VRR is laughter, community and even joy. Yes I have to take rape crisis calls. Yes the house is a transition house for women who have been abused by their partners. But what I find again and again is that I come out of that house in a better mood then when I went in. I feel energized; I do have the will and the courage to tackle what we face as women. Better than that, I have other women to do that with. We are doing it! (bloody tiny piece by bloody tiny piece). You feel incredibly connected to other people when you volunteer. When you become an activist in your community you meet people who urge you to do things. There are events to go to, conversations to be had, and there is always someone who needs a helping hand with something. This activity focuses and energizes my mind.

What do I get from hibernating with these (wonderful) books? New tools to analyze the situations yes. Especially sexist, racist, and homophobic tendencies within myself. These books certainly open my horizons. But no connections. And no real spur to act. It’s all within me. Academia and my love of reading have too often instilled in me the will to write, to think, but not to act and to do. I want to use my hands and my feet. That’s what volunteering at Rape Relief has given me. The will to march with other women on cold, rainy days. To speak up publicly, not just on the internet. To not focus on the big picture or sweeping generalizations but see real, concrete, physical, wonderfully complex women. To see a woman as a woman and not a category. I would recommend bell hooks or Susan Brownmiller to anyone. But the lessons I’ve learned from some of the women from Rape Relief are a hundred times more valuable. The theory informs my practice of feminism, of course. But the real life practice is what makes any of the theory useful. Real life interaction with women yanks this woman kicking and screaming from her bed, her library card, and her pile of books. My feminism cannot just be what I think about the world. It has to be what I do in the world. I keep coming back to this quote from Gandhi: My life is my message. My words are less important than the philosophy I embody. Thinking is not enough for me anymore. I love to read. It still makes me happy. But hibernation is not healthy or helpful for me. The time of hoarding books to myself, and hoarding my time and energy for myself, is over. It’s time to give and give and give of what I’ve learned and what I am.

Psst: Talking about doing in the world. Us Canucks are having an election. Please check out Earnest and Jest for insightful political commentary. And if you’re Canadian, do something in the world and VOTE VOTE VOTE. (Er…that was not meant to be an instruction to commit election fraud.)