Titania McGrath - Woke: A Guide to Social Justice

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

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Little, Brown Book Group

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Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won.

Nelson Mandela

Its not a smile; its 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

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, weve 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, its like regular poetry but with extra pauses. And theres 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 Asbjrn, 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 isnt arrogance. Id go so far as to say its a curse to be so gifted. Id 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 doesnt 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.

Forgive, but dont 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 didnt 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 anyones 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 didnt 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.