#nosgbv Futility

I had promised myself that I would blog everyday. I make this promise on a regular basis and too often, do not get to keep it. But I am proud to say that I do not give up and I persist and start over and over. So it is today. Yesterday, I was just too tired to post. Today, I am too blank. Or maybe, not blank but just saturated with things that I have said too often. 

After today's event, as we sat around talking, we egged each other on listing all the challenges to ending gender violence. Each challenge was more complicated and underlay the previous one. How do we do this? This is an impossible task. 

The sense of futility pervades this little promise I have made to myself to blog. What difference does it make? No one reads this blog anyway. And if they did, what difference would it make?

The longer I do this, the harder it is to answer the question about what difference it makes. Because it is clear that nothing makes a difference. Most of what we do is simply surface work--even when we change the law, it is just work on the surface. Beneath the designer vocabulary and the expensively, exquisitely* perfumed posturing, we are just the same-old, same-old products and pawns of patriarchy. 

Cynthia Enloe's book about the resilience of patriarchy leaves us thinking about the ways in which we are complicit in reinforcing patriarchal values and misogynistic ways. Yesterday was Women Human Rights Defenders' Day and today is South Asian Women's Day. What did I do to mark either of those in a way that at least casts a puny pebble at patriarchy? Not much.

I tell myself that we are all working ants and if we keep our heads down and just move along, someday, some ant, somewhere will reach our destination. I remind myself of the Gita--do your work. Or for that matter, Voltaire--cultivate your own garden. 

As I write this on the 6th day of Prajnya's 2022 16 Days Campaign against Gender Violence, my fatigue and sense of futility drain me. Perhaps, I actually have nothing to say that matters. 

*Thank you @syrinje for reminding me of this exquisite word.