Glenda Simms, Contributor
TALLULAH BANK-HEAD is reputed to have said "It's the good girls who keep the diaries; the bad girls never have the time."
Bankhead's 'bad girls' might have been involved in activities that were 'irritating' to any society that invested much of its energies in honing 'good girls' to be the appropriate wives and mothers.
According to Sophia Findlay Laidley's account in the July 5, 2004 All Woman section of the Daily Observer, feminist Marcia Gillespie addressed the first anniversary luncheon of the Women Business Owners and "left behind the burning embers of feminism" as she rallied the women in her audience to stop being 'nice' and become 'bad girls'.
Bankhead's and Gillespie's 'bad girls' are diametrically opposed to each other in the kinds of activities that define their 'badness' but they have much in common in that if they take their mandates seriously, they will have very little time "to write the diaries".
Ms. Gillespie, according to Laidley, challenged "a formid-able" group of Jamaican women to rethink their ideological framework and the practical approaches that are prerequisite to achieving the required societal changes if women are to escape the lingering negative effects of their socialisation under an insidious patriarchal system.
The real challenge for these women who cheered for Ms. Gillespie is not just to reflect on the strength of her ideas and the relevance of her exhortations, but for every woman to be introspective and to examine the very nature of the society in which she makes her living.
BODY POLITIC
As a first step, every woman who listened and 'heard' needs to take seriously the definition of feminists as 'bad girls' who must be irritants in the 'body politic'. They also need to understand the current 'backlash' against the ideology of feminism in all societies in the 'global village'.
Sarah Gamble, in an essay entitled Post Feminism, argues that in a society which largely defines itself through media-inspired images, women are easily persuaded that feminism is unfashionable, passé and therefore not worthy of serious consideration.
It is therefore heartening to see real enthusiasm for Marcia Gillespie, a woman who unapologetically defines herself as a feminist. This committed woman must have jolted the usual position of so many Jamaican women who are very proud to declare "I am not a feminist, but ..." or those who sometimes say the "darnedest things" such as "I am a feminist but I still like men".
It must have been refreshing to listen to a woman who has always been clear in her definition of feminism, and one who has not deviated from the vision of a world based on justice, equality and peace.
Gillespie's steadfastness in her world view is passionately captured in so many of the wise words that she has shared with her readers as she tackled some of the most difficult social and political issues in the editorials of Ms. Magazine over time.
PALE MALES
In 2000, Gillespie realised that whatever the outcome of the national election in the U.S.A., the country would still be governed by the 'Pale Males'. Within this realisation she said to her readers, "If we must have a bevy of pale males vying for our vote let's at least insist that they cut the moral platitudes and show some real balls."
In the summer of 2000, while world governments and non-governmental organisations met at the United Nations to review the progress that had been made on women's equality issues since the 1995 Beijing World Conference, over 40 women were assaulted by male hoodlums in New York's Central Park. "The women tourists and locals, some teenagers, others adults, some alone, others with female friends or male companions were surrounded by groups of men who heckled, restrained, sexually molested, robbed and beat them."
In trying to make sense of such senseless acts, Gillespie asked in the August/September 2000 edition of Ms. Magazine, "How seriously does this society take violence against women?"
THE WORLD'S BEST BAD GIRLS
Obviously, when Ms. Gillespie challenged Jamaican women to be "audacious, bodacious, assertive and bad", she is hoping that we will revisit our ideas about the role of women in the social, political and economic revolution that is badly needed in our country.
She is also challenging us to move out of our comfortable prescribed spheres and make a difference for the majority of women who have not had our privileges. Indeed, Ms. Gillespie has defined her politics, and has demonstrated that she is a "bad girl" who will not be forced to be "the lady" who whispers, blinks her eyelids and pretends that she is either brainless or brain-dead.
For those of us who are prepared to yawn and return to our slumber because we can't be bothered, we need to be reminded that while some women of the world have the luxury of revisiting feminism and assessing their real position in the overall human development patterns, other women are still struggling to get to 'first base'.
A recent Reuters report out of Addis Ababa carried in the July 6, 2004 edition of The Gleaner serve to remind us that by and large women are "still second class citizens in Africa, denied equal status with men in marriage, work and property and at unequal risk of AIDS from perennially straying partners."
Sisters, within our understanding of the global connections between the powerbrokers of the world and the realities at the local level, many of us might have no choice but to become the world's best 'bad girls'.
Dr. Glenda Simms is Executive Director of the Bureau of Women's Affairs.
