Activist and lawyer Ekin Baltaş’s personal and political reckoning with her friendships as a part of her feminist identity: “Yes, I’ve been a feminist for a long time, but how did I treat the women in my life?”
Ekin Baltaş / Çatlak Zemin
If my last piece, which was published on Çatlak Zemin, had not been a “manifesto of unhappiness of her own” this article would not exist today. It was because of that story that I wrote this, and it was because of what that story made me think about. First and foremost, I must say this section is far too intimate. Despite the fact that I had been writing consistently for a few years, I stopped because of what I termed a “emotional wasteland.”
As anyone who has something to deal with knows, when you let go of that thing, your belief that you can do it begins to diminish over time, and your power to suppress the occasional “do it” voice within you begins to increase. After not writing for a long time and getting used to the ease of expressing my thoughts on Twitter (moreover, I don’t have to think much and I can get instant feedback) returning to writing was an important decision for me. Instead of grumbling about this or reducing it to personal criticism, after thinking about unhappiness and happiness for a long time, I said to myself, “Put something substantial and consistent.” I was ecstatic after finishing the piece and having it read by a few individuals I trusted. Because I had little faith in my abilities, I needed affirmation from everyone that it was alright.
At the time, it was the beginning of March. I distributed the article to a number of locations. When I objected to “suggestions” on how to write in exchange for this thrill, I received no response. There’s no need to go into great detail about these events. The subject of this article is the result of this for me; it was as I expected. When I went to bed at night, I started to think about this and first destroyed my stumbling self-confidence with long sentences ranging from “you can’t write, admit it” to “I’ve humiliated myself” and then I started to stomp on it. To my friends who asked about the article, I glossed over it like “I gave up on that article, I can’t deal with it.”
In the end, I accepted that the article would not appear anywhere and went into a corner. It took me exactly three months to accept this. Although it reminded me of a “very fragile ego” that it took so long, in fact, it was all about the interregnum period that I entered in the field of writing. Then I woke up one morning and decided to send the article to a few more places. And now it’s available. Hundreds of women I know and don’t know praised and criticized me. The major reason for writing this piece was because a woman who read it again told me, “I think the last sentence of the essay softens the content, but I’m not giving suggestions, just a note of caution.”
When I read this, something that corresponds to so many life experiences (I can make a 20-item list right now) popped up inside me. I repeated several times; “Just a note of caution” She used a set of words that didn’t exist, because she respected what I wrote, because she knew it was a woman’s handwriting. Even though she didn’t know me at all. I thought long and hard about the attitude I encountered until the publication of the article, the criticism I received after it was published, and the enormously different impacts the two had on me. This article prompted me to jot down the questions I had for myself, my environment, and my life as I was thinking about it. We are feminists, socialists, anarchists, or whatever; we have convictions, truths, and conclusions. So, were these statements shaping our beliefs, or were they our small actions, such as a gesture or a grin, or the millions of codes we never considered while going about our daily lives? Were we really seeking to see the traces of the “barbarian” world’s ideals in our own manner of relating that have been with us since we were born?
That’s how I started to review everything. The feeling of safe space that I feel when the opposite is done in an issue that affects my self-confidence, self-esteem and self-belief so much and which is not at all vital, made me ask; yes, I’ve been a feminist for years, but how have I treated the women who have passed through my life?
Let me begin by asking if I continued to sit at a table where a lady was being pulled to shreds. Have I been more tolerant of the treatment of women by my close male friends than strangers? Have I been silent in the face of exploitation of a woman’s work, or, more accurately, have I exploited (sorry, mom)? Had I been in a relationship with a male “in spite of” a woman? Have I carefully picked my words, for example, and have I constantly reminded myself that her decisions, her life, her relationship, and her body are all hers? Did I enjoy being at the forefront of the community, or did I care to open up space for other women? Did I find it normal to talk about my ex’s new girlfriend? Had I stayed in where women’s hierarchical relationships were established and remained a part of it? Or had I favoured the ladies I liked, or did I ignore the things the system had taught me for those for whom I had no feelings or who meant nothing to me? Did I honestly stake out a claim to the mistakes happening in front of my eyes and criticise myself when I look back? Or did simply being a “feminist” make my good and moral deeds sufficient, while my flaws went unnoticed?
I have varied these questions a lot; I answered yes to some and no to some, I concluded. There is a big gap where theory is not worth life, where assertion does not adapt to life. We all know that “life knows no gaps.” And this gap is much more wearisome than we imagine when it comes to women. When we do not fill it with the values that we stand by, it is inevitable that this gap will be filled with the ones we are against. Yes, life knows no gaps! That is why “Woman is home to a woman” requires more than a slogan. A real set of ideas, even a contract; a contract by which we are tied in every element of life, reminding us that we are (also) products of this society, and by which we can be bound should we stray.
When the world whispers “forget about it and do it” to our ears; that is, to something that will keep us on the ground of feminism when we are angry with that woman, when the other makes a mistake, when the other’s dress is very bad and none of these are for a single reason; a deeply driven stake that we can cling to when the wind is blowing too fast. The experience I mentioned made me realise the damage caused by not considering how the way a sentence, a look, a judgment or a silence can be loaded with meanings for another woman. So, I made a “friendship contract” between women to remind myself of my role in a society where the system treats women horribly and to keep going when the wind picks up. Not through knowing, sharing, loving; but “friendship” as a political relationship that forms the basis of human ties and respecting those who are not like us, standing side by side with those who are not like us and try to understand.
The stories diversified as I constructed them in my head. I’m not talking about anything as simple as reacting to an abuser. To hold everyone responsible (including myself) for how they treat women in their life. As Sara Ahmed says, “feminism is a homework,”, to work on my homework every day, to question the ways that being a feminist has opened up for me and my place on this path in the moments/spaces where I am first the subject and then the object; therefore sticking to my own friendship contract.
Source: Çatlak Zemin