Woke
A Guide to Social Justice
Titania McGrath
CONSTABLE
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Constable
Copyright © Titania McGrath, 2019
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-47213-083-9
Constable
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
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50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
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www.littlebrown.co.uk
Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won.
Nelson Mandela
It’s not a smile; it’s a lid on a scream.
Bet Lynch
My poetry is uncompromising.
My instincts are profound.
I am feared by the powerful.
I am adored by the oppressed.
I am truth.
I am Titania McGrath.
Titania McGrath
Contents
Introduction
My Struggle
Fuck the Patriarchy
The Tyranny of Facts
I, Victim
How to Prod a Shepherd
The Human Condition
Suck My Hashtag
White Death
My Culture Is Not Your Goddam Prom Dress
Cultural Appropriation
The Scourge of Whiteness
My Angry Vagina
Why I’m No Longer Talking to Men About Feminism
Ecosexuality
Brexit and the Rise of the Fourth Reich
A Little Boy’s Brexit
23 June 2016
Brexit: A Haiku
Pussy Power
Wedlocked
Towards an Intersectional Socialist Utopia
Ode to a Homeless
Meghan
I Am Womxn
Dead Fairies and Front Holes
Islamofeminism
The World Must Not Be Peopled
Toxic Masculinity
Menstruators
A Vegan’s Lament
Freeze Peach
The Androcaust
Clockwork Fascists
Comedy
Mummy
I Am Titania McGrath
Conclusion
Introduction
God is a black Jewish lesbian.
Derek Jarman
I was born woke. My wokeness is innate. It flows through me like a magical elixir, keeping my soul purged and poised for the fight. In many ways, I am a modern-day Joan of Arc: indomitable, precocious, fluent in French.
Strangers often compliment me on my unwavering sense of social justice. ‘Titania,’ they say, ‘we’ve only just met, but you strike me as one whose very existence embodies the interconnected virtues of courage and truth.’ This kind of thing happens to me almost every day.
Allow me to formally introduce myself. My name is Titania Gethsemane McGrath. I am a radical intersectionalist poet committed to feminism, social justice and armed peaceful protest.
Over the past few years I have become a formidable presence on the live slam-poetry scene. For those of you who are unfamiliar with slam, it’s like regular poetry but with extra pauses. And there’s usually a lactose-free buffet at the end.
I often perform at arts festivals, deconsecrated churches and lesbian spiritual retreats. I have written over five thousand poems, a selection of which are included in this volume. I am particularly fond of ‘How to Prod a Shepherd’, a piece dedicated to my Uncle Asbjørn, the only man I have ever loved. May he rest in peace when he dies.
There are moments when the extent of my own talent frightens me. Sometimes, when I read my work, I cannot but help come to the conclusion that I am the only living artist worthy of note. I have that rare ability to take a linguistic scalpel to the cancerous bigotry of modern Western culture.
As a millennial icon on the forefront of online activism, I am uniquely placed to guide you through the often bewildering array of concepts that constitute contemporary ‘wokeness’. To put it bluntly, I am a much better person than you.
This isn’t arrogance. I’d go so far as to say it’s a curse to be so gifted. I’d much rather be mediocre like everyone else.
For too long the battle for social justice has been waged by middle-class hipsters, the kind who shop at Urban Outfitters and think that beard oil is a sensible investment. But being woke is actually much easier than people think. Anyone can be an activist. By simply adding a rainbow flag to your Facebook profile, or calling out an elderly person who doesn’t understand what ‘non-binary’ means, you can change the world for the better. Indeed, social media has now made it possible to show how virtuous you are without having to do anything at all.
Activists such as myself are spearheading a new culture war, sniffing out prejudice like valiant bloodhounds of righteousness, courageously snapping at the heels of injustice. To give a tangible example of our achievements, consider how the definition of the word ‘Nazi’ has been successfully broadened to include anyone who voted for Brexit, has ever considered supporting the Conservative Party or who refuses to take the Guardian seriously. Although this is a great victory for the progressive cause, it does mean that there are now more Nazis living in modern Britain than even existed in 1930s Germany. This makes Woke: A Guide to Social Justice not only timely, but essential.
A male could not have written this book. Males can never achieve peak wokeness due to their fundamentally toxic masculinity. They fear the power of the yoni, the primal cadence of the menstrual flow. Women are celestial goddesses, blood-sisters of the sacred moon witch.
I am a teller of truths, a slayer of patriarchs, a fearless metaphysician. I teabag the foes of justice with a gender-neutral scrotum. I suckle the babes of hope with my sinewy teats of equality.
If you are reading this, it is likely that you suffer from an inability to keep up with modern trends. I am here to guide you through the minefields of social justice, to remodel you into a more appealing version of yourself. Imagine me as a potter in her workshop, and yourself as a malformed lump of clay.
If you are willing, I can shape your destiny.
My Struggle
Forgive, but don’t forget, girl, keep ya head up.
Tupac Shakur
I may have been born woke, but it was a distinctly unwoke world into which I emerged. This is why I have always been so radical. My first act as a baby was to piss onto the obstetrician. I didn’t cry at all, which apparently caused some alarm. The nurse slapped me to see if a reaction could be stimulated. I remained defiant.
I was the only child of two barristers. I learnt early on that my private education and frequent family holidays to Montenegro and the Maldives were merely a ruse by which my parents could distract me from my oppression.
My infant years were beset with psychological trauma, which should come as no great surprise. To be born into a heteronormative patriarchal white supremacist world can be a strain on anyone’s psyche, particularly for a feminist toddler who is expected to sit still and not complain.
I had been breastfed for the first six months of my life. Did my mother not realise that I
was a vegan? Did she even care? Either way, this was abuse.
Before I was even out of the crib I was self-harming with my nappy pin. By the age of four, I was suffering from both anorexia and chronic overeating. When these two conditions occur simultaneously it can be difficult to spot, because the victim ends up eating a regular amount of food on a consistent basis.
But I was bleeding inside. My insides were literally full of blood.
After I enrolled at my local nursery I decided to identify as ge nderqueer. I instinctively knew that I must resist what Laurie Penny has described as ‘the disaster of heterosexuality’. I was light years ahead of my time, because at that point the term ‘genderqueer’ didn’t even exist. The teachers had never heard of a gender-neutral toilet, so my demands were met with blank stares. Little wonder, then, that I have ended up with a severe case of self-diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder.
I have always been playful with language. I remember lunches at infant school where I would use the Al phabetti Spaghetti to spell out creative synonyms for ‘vulva’. Even at the tender age of five, I was keen to demystify the commonplace societal prejudices against the female reproductive system.
As I got older I excelled at all academic subjects, except for biology, physics, chemistry, economics, history, religious studies, computing and mathematics. I quickly realised that it was not due to ‘failure’ on my part, but rather that these fields of study are patriarchal constructs that perpetuate white privilege. My adolescent self was intuitively mistrustful; my low grades were doubtless a valiant act of subconscious self-sabotage.
As Pr ofessor Rochelle Gutiérrez from the University of Illinois has pointed out, ‘on many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness’. Indeed, the Ku Klux Klan were once known to set fire to plus signs in order to intimidate their victims.
Besides, Pythagoras fingered kids.
It was at school that my poetical predispositions found something to rail against. A cishet male English teacher known as Mr Gourlay attempted to teach us one of Wordsworth’s sonnets. I think it was about a bridge or something. Everything about it – the forced rhyming, the bad spelling (what the fuck is a ‘doth’?), the sheer sense of male entitlement – caused me to retch in disgust. In my GCSE Drama practical examination I presented a devised piece in which I defecated onto a copy of Wordsworth’s complete works live on stage. It scuppered my chances of becoming Head Girl, but it was definitely worth it.
My higher education was fairly typical. I studied Modern Languages at Oxford University and then stayed on for an MA in Gender Studies where I wrote a groundbreaking dissertation on technopaganism and the corrosive nature of cis-masculine futurity. It’s the kind of degree that prepares you for life in the real world.
It was not until university that I composed my first bona fide poetic masterpiece: ‘Castrate All White Men’. It was so radical and powerful that the student newspaper refused to publish it. The editor’s claim that ‘it simply isn’t very good’ was clearly an excuse to avoid the inevitable controversy that would ensue. I took this rejection as evidence of institutionalised misogyny, and staged a performance-protest by screaming the poem repeatedly in the High Street, smeared in menstrual blood, throwing dead earthworms at passers-by.
Ever since then I have worked tirelessly to produce the most potent and dissident writing ever known to peoplekind. Words can change the world. When queer activists appropriated the word ‘gay’ from its traditional meaning of ‘happy’, they achieved their goal of simultaneously increasing gayness and decreasing happiness. Such is the power of language.
I don’t write poems; I write eviscerating daggers of truth.
I am currently residing in one of my London properties, a semi-detached three-bedroom in Kensington. The utility room isn’t particularly spacious, but my quotidian struggles are what nourish my genius. I feed on misfortune, digest it, and vomit it back out into the ether as a beautiful kaleidoscopic shower.
I have made it my mission to change the world for the better, to follow in the footsteps of such trailblazing luminaries as Emmeline Pankhurst, Rosa Parks and that guy who played Mr Sulu in Star Trek. I adore the word ‘woke’, because our society is a slumbering beast that has been trapped in its coma for far too long. It needs to be nudged.
That’s where I come in. I am that formidable beast-nudger. Read on, and with my guidance you too can realise your inner wokeness.
Fuck the Patriarchy
When a woman reaches orgasm with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticising her own oppression.
Sheila Jeffreys
I have words of wisdom for all young girls. No matter what you do in life, or how much you achieve, you will always be victims of the patriarchy. Understanding this is the key to your empowerment.
Since the dawn of time, and even long before that, women have struggled under the deadweight of patriarchy. The history of womankind is like a sand beetle attempting to traverse the Serengeti with a horse’s bollock upon its back. Yes, women in the West can vote, pursue careers and all the other clichés that males are so fond of parroting. Yet the sad truth is that women in our society today are more oppressed than ever before. It is the illusion of freedom that makes our oppression all the more devastating. The fact that so many women think they are enjoying their lives only serves to prove my point.
Women’s liberation is a mirage. As soon as it seems within your reach, it vanishes. Never let a man tell you that you are not a victim. A malnourished homeless man sleeping in a gutter is still essentially more privileged than the Queen.
Thankfully, activists such as myself – and the likes of Laura Bates, Emma Watson and Caroline Criado-Perez – are toiling relentlessly to inject some long overdue oestrogen into this dying system. I feel a genuine kinship with these fearless defenders of the downtrodden. For one thing, we have friends in common, mostly through the public-school debating circuit or hockey tournaments back in the day. Also, my godparents used to summer in a Swiss resort often frequented by the Criado-Perez family, so we’re practically related.
The struggle can be quite dispiriting, as Laurie Penny has outlined in her book Bitch Doctrine: ‘I’ve fought for years, since I was a messed-up schoolgirl myself, for a world in which women could be treated like human beings, and sometimes it seems like nothing’s changed.’ It’s almost as if her work has had no impact.
The word ‘woman’ comes from the Old English for ‘female human’, whereas ‘man’ simply means ‘human’. Linguistically speaking, this implies that women are deviants from the norm. In order to rectify this, I sometimes refer to men as ‘unwomen’, and boys as ‘ungirls’. I likewise often refer to straight people as ‘ungays’, so that they too can understand what it feels like to be othered.
Personally, I have little time for cis males. For me, the ideal man is one who, to borrow the late great feminist Andrea Dworkin’s phrase, has been ‘beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig’. Dworkin was a genius of the highest calibre who produced some of the most perspicacious feminist writing of the twentieth century and was a key activist in the anti-pornography movement. And she managed to achieve all of this with a total lack of charm and a face like a robber’s dog. A true inspiration.
Next time you are in close proximity to a male, observe his behaviour carefully. Everything he does is phallic in nature. He stands tall and erect, always attempting to dominate. He strides from place to place, thrusting his legs outwards, onwards, like he is yearning for copulation. He spits his words out, projecting each syllable as though simulating a violent ejaculation. When it comes to men, every gesture, every word, every thought, is an act of sexual aggression.
Some readers may be thinking to themselves, ‘But I know some adorable men, who are respectful, charming, and would never dream of upsetting a woman.’ Let me nip this delusion in the bud. No you don’t. If you believe that any man in your life is a pleasant human being, th
en this only shows the extent to which you have been deceived.
This goes for your father as well, if you are unfortunate enough to have one. I will freely admit to the existence of my male parent, but I keep my distance. I catch sight of him every now and then, usually at funerals, or while I’m casually flicking through the pages of Tatler as Nenita finishes off my laundry. But in all honesty, beyond the provision of DNA and a modest trust fund, I cannot see what purpose my father has served.
Men are trained from birth to disregard the desires of women. Come to think of it, the process is initiated long before that. All males begin their lives within the bodies of their mothers. They are literally inside a woman without her verbal consent. I cannot put this explicitly enough. The very first thing a male does in his life is to rape his own mother.
The question of how to exist as a woman in a patriarchal world is one that must occupy any truly woke mind. It presents something of a paradox. I have no doubt whatsoever of my innate superiority over men, and yet I still feel oppressed.
In order to obliterate the patriarchy we all need to work in concert to rid our minds of gendered stereotypes. In August 2018, Ann Millington, chief executive of Kent Fire and Rescue, called for the popular children’s television character Fireman Sam to be renamed ‘Firefighter Sam’ in an effort to encourage greater diversity in the services. Millington’s point is indisputable. The only reason women don’t go into firefighting is because they’ve had no stop-motion animation role models.
Frankly, if some ‘fireman’ tried to save me from a burning building, I’d tell him to go fuck himself.
The patriarchy is ancient. Our planet has existed for roughly four and a half billion years, which means that there have been four and a half billion years of male tyranny. What we really need is a system of reparations. The optimal solution would simply be to invert the current social order. Women should be paid twice as much as their male counterparts to make up for the injustices of history.
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