Little Politics
In writing it's easy to get swept up in the big politics of it all, but perhaps the little politics can matter just as much ...
At University I used to write for the student newspaper. It was pages later used to wrap last minute birthday presents filled with over political, under edited ink splurges.
Perhaps that's a bit harsh. But I would see article after article about Russian policies and Gaza politics written by boys who had only recently left their childhood home in Oxfordshire. I would begin to read paragraphs full of tongue tugging words and give up because they made no sense. The approach these students had to politics made me feel out of the loop. And reading the actual news was no better. Attempting to read about politics made me feel the same way I did watching American high school dramas. I knew I had been to school, but I had absolutely no idea what was going on in this one.
So instead I wrote about what I began to call ‘little politics’. Politics with a lower case ‘p’. Articles you would find in the slap-bang-middle of a paper. Politics for coffee shops instead of conference centers. Digestible. Relatable. Bus journey worthy.
The articles I wrote were titled things such as ‘Why Paul Holly-should leave bake off’ and ‘box or binge: is real TV dying?’. They featured Bridgerton, dating apps, and University bathrooms. I wrote my unabridged opinions on things I believed didn’t really matter and the section editor subdued them in her bedroom across the hall from mine.
But the weirdest thing happened.
I won best writer at the newspaper two years in a row. Out of all the articles about foreign wars and global politics mine was the one that the most people read and, crucially, enjoyed. It was a weird feeling, going up onto that stage and collecting a certificate. So many people had read my words and yet barely any of them knew my face. Not to overly reference Bridgerton, but I felt like a true Lady Whistledown.
I was praised, so of course my people pleasing tendencies lured me to write more. ‘The people need me!’ I thought. The people were more bothered about the baguettes in the Student Union going up by 10p.
It wasn’t until I wrote my article ‘Up the Creek without a Pad’ that I realised the scale of ‘little politics’. It all began when I decided to write about the new free sanitary products they had put in the Student Union bathrooms. Though a lovely gesture, the pads were thinner than a common panty-liner, and the tampons looked like the stuff that was currently choking turtles. I, being the headstrong, spontaneous woman that I was, pitched it directly to the Opinion section of the paper.
Unfortunately, by this point the head of the Opinion section was no longer my female housemate. Instead, it was lead by a team of three lads (I hesitate to call them men) who wouldn’t have known a tampon if they were playing swing-ball with it. Hesitantly, they welcomed the idea.
Apparently, in an all male team there hadn’t been enough articles about ‘women’s politics’ recently.
So I wrote it. I asked all my friends about where there were pads around campus, whether you had to ask for them, and if the pads were any good in the first place. I don’t know how much you know about period politics, but depending on that the answers may or may not shock you. Out of an entire university that each student paid over £9000 a year for, there were only three places to get free sanitary products. Three. And one was only in one bathroom in a specific hallway of the biggest building on campus.
I included this in my article, alongside opinions from friends and lecturers. But it also sent me down a rabbit hole in looking at period poverty in the UK and across the world.
In my opinion there is not one place in which period poverty has been overcome.
It is not talked about and it is not provided for. Many women go without education, career opportunities and much more because of a lack of period provisions everyday. But that’s not the point of this article. That’s the point of the article I wrote for the paper back then.
The point of this article, because every article has a point, regardless of how well authors seek to disguise it, is to show you that all politics is politics. It is not little or big. It is no lesser to write about the women’s toilets in the Student Union than it is to write about the war in Russia.
In the years since I wrote that article I have often reflected on the phrase ‘women’s politics’ and thought about the group of boys that called it that. In a way that small group seemed to be a microcosm for media across the world.
After all, anything you write can be new and unique if stories like it aren’t being told.
I am, of course, on the feminist side of TikTok. Microfeminisms are my current fyp conqueror. They have shown me that many things I do are political acts, no matter how small. When I began writing what I called the ‘period post’ I intended it to be a funny little article about a few toilets in one building. But then it became in one university, and slowly I realised it was the same few toilets in the same types of buildings poorly provided for across the world. Period poverty affects half the global population at some point in their lives. It would probably affect even more if the other half listened more to the complaints about it. Some do, some don’t. But regardless, even if I only get half an audience for my ‘women’s politics’ at least someone cares about it. And that’s all that matters, because little politics grows bigger with every person that cares.