12 days of Christmas, but make it feminist!

You know how in the famous song her true love gave to her a lot of shite (too many birds for my liking)? I am here to show you the "gifts" that the system gives us on these days!

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

I feel like I need to start with a disclaimer, assuring everyone that I don’t hate Christmas. There are a lot of aspects that I actually really enjoy about it… but… if we are honest, if there is a time in which a lot of things that really upset me show up in festive outfits and tunes, it’s Christmas!

I have come to the conclusion lately that the more “magical” something is supposed to make us feel, the more it has the capacity to hide a lot of problematic behaviour and uphold privilege. Patriarchy loves to dress up as “lovely community” and “family traditions” and bring all the friends to the table: savage capitalism, racism, ableism, homophobia, classism, transphobia, guilt…

So, I decided to do 12 small rants posts about it, in which I will shine a light on a problem and figuratively (although might actually really do it in my own house) scream “j’accuse!” at those issues.

Some of the things you will agree with and you will join my anger eagerly, maybe you actually scream “moi aussi, j’accuse!” at the end of it (not required, but highly recommended). Some others might make you do that thing that my father does, the look of “this time you have gone too far”. I invite you to stay for the 12 of them! and please comment and share, tell me about the ones that drive you nuts so we can make this our very own tradition!

Apparently the 12 days of Christmas are from the 25th to the 6th of January, but by then it will be too late to avoid them, so I am going to give myself permission to make it from the 12th to the 24th. By Christmas day you will see, in full light, all the patriarchal nonsense dancing and prancing. If not in your own house, in the social media of people that you follow. You will know it is happening in your street.

It was originally be called “patriarchy gave to us” but I know that some of these 12 gifts won’t come solely from the patriarchy so I (reluctantly because I love to blame things on patriarchy) changed it to the system. The system that is part of the fabric of our society and once you start scratching you can’t not see.

I am excited about this! You might think that I am the grinch, trying to ruin everything fun for everybody. And who knows? You might be right.

See you the 12th!

PS.

A good tradition for me is to watch this Classic Miley Cyrus re-interpretation of “Santa baby” (I know, let’s not go there yet…) and remind myself that we can change things, one Christmas carol at a time!