I feel a bit weird posting here because to be perfectly honest i skim read this article because I struggle with reading (dyslexic), and i don’t know enough about gender theory to have context. so I hope i’m not going to be very annoying and uninformed and i’m sorry if i’m missing the point.

I’m down with the idea that there are no universal women’s experiences, i’m happy for transwomen to share feminist spaces, what i struggle with is the idea that womens oppression is abitrary. that somehow its an accident and it could as easily of fallen the other way (perhaps i’m misinterpreting the message here?)

I’m going to talk about myself now and my life, because I don’t know how else to explain this. I had two children with an arsehole in my early 20’s. (unplanned) He was abusive and controlling and eventually I took the kids and left him. It was hard. I’m a single parent, I’m not well educated and I don’t have wealthy parents, my family is very small and my younger brother has servere mental health problems so I’ve spent most of my adult life in reletive poverty, trying to balance childcare and work, without much support, and my choices have been severly limited because of these things. I don’t see their father, they don’t see their father. He has never contributed in anyway. My situation is in no way unique. When women have children with men, labour and money are rarely divided in a fair or equal way and I know countless women in my situation or similar.

Just to clarify, I love my life, I love my job, I love my kids, I don’t regret having them or any of the choices i have made subsequently but being a young single mother is a thankless, isolating job, with huge amounts of stigma attached to it and society is not set up to make it easy. I wasn’t really interested in feminism before I had kids, but the thing is having two small people depending on you makes everything a million times more complicated; leaving an abusive partner, going out to work, earning enough to make the rent, keeping everyone fed and clothed. Finding the time to do things for yourself, like read, bath, form relationships with other adults, wear make up, finish conversations, finish your cup of coffee before it gets cold. I think I went ten years without actually going to the toilet on my own, or getting through an entire night on my own in my bed, or without being woken up, or sleeping in later than 6am.

I know women can chose not to have children, I know lots of women don’t even have that choice, but for me my biology has been The Defining Thing in my life and the central foundation from which almost all the oppression I experiance is rooted in. So if I’m honest, I find it hard to be told it doesn’t matter. Again I’m sorry if i’m missing the point of your argument somehow, I hope if this is the case someone can set me straight.

    Esther Karaline Calder

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