‘Feminism Allowed You to Speak’: Maintaining Intergenerational Feminist Solidarity in the Face of Sophisticated Attacks

By Yağmur Uygarkızı

This article is part of a reflection developed for the first panel of Radical Girlsss called ‘Radical Courage: Can We Be Young, Feminist and Radical?’ hosted by the 2019 FiLiA conference. I would like to thank my fellow Radical Girlsss for their insights and contributions.

‘Le petit chaperon rouge’ Illustrated by Gustave Doré (1862)

Little Red Riding Hood is the story of a little girl who on her way to her sick grandmother, encounters a wolf who asks her where she is headed to. In Charles Perrault’s version, after the girl’s naïve reply, the wolf arrives at the grandmother’s house before Little Red Riding Hood. He deceives the grandmother into opening the door, eats her and dresses up as her. Once the little girl arrives, she does not recognise the wolf dressed up as her grandmother, although she remains quite puzzled by her granny’s big teeth. The wolf eats her too. End of the story.

Wolves still dress up as grandmothers. They still deceive little girls. They tell them reality is irrelevant. They make them question themselves and their guts, the very same guts that rang all the alarm bells when Little Red Riding Hood saw the big arms, big legs, big ears, big eyes and big teeth. Notice how the wolf attacks the grandmother before attacking the granddaughter. He could have just eaten the girl in plain sight, but no, that would have been too obvious, too dangerous even for the wolf. The grandmother, the mother would have been alerted by their beloved daughter’s absence. They would have sooner or later found the wolf. After all, wolves know that women do marvels when we come together.

In this context, where deceiving wolves have monopolised the discourse, maintaining intergenerational feminist transmission (radical feminism being a pleonasm, I dropped the adjective) seems more difficult than ever. It is no longer enough to expose misogyny for what it is to spark sex consciousness: various forms of oppressions have been turned into empowerment thanks to queer theory and its advocates. Simultaneously, material reality, women’s lived experience is presented as the ultimate form of subjugation that must be eliminated. By taking a long premise to explain the context that enabled queer theory to rise, I would like to suggest that queer politics are particularly pernicious in public discourse in that they operate an essentialisation of misogynist practices, rendering any criticism against them impossible and by the same token hijacking any struggle against them. The problem has a name, but it can no longer be pronounced. In this misogynist atmosphere, political consciousness and organisation of young women is a matter of urgency.

I. Postmodernity

To understand how we got to a situation where saying that ‘women don’t have penises’ has become tantamount to hate speech, we have to understand postmodernity. A rather fancy intellectual term, it is best understood as a reaction to the preceding positivist era of the 20th century in which scientific approaches to knowledge and ideologies dominated. Those ‘great narratives’ – all-encompassing visions and directions for society – faced crushing defeat in the form of wars, totalitarian regimes and the failure of ideologies to deliver (e.g. capitalism hasn’t been overthrown)[i]. In response, new paradigms – micro-issues, diversity, relativism – have replaced the old, but all in deference to the continuing male reign.

Whereas long-term global political battles characterise the modern era (liberation of women from patriarchy), in postmodernity micro-issues come to predominate due to a lack of ambition and sight (as if make-up was sufficient to solve women’s problems). By the same token, ethical relativism has replaced a universal morality; women’s rights are now negotiable. Culture is a wonderful bypass for all sorts of abuse. Girls were exchanged in a form of morbid potlach during the Rotherham scandal where Asian men were allowed to rape teenagers by local authorities. Known child abusers receive cinema awards[ii]. Multiculturalism, the product of such moral nihilism, is at base a racist policy that purports that just because ones comes from a different country one does not deserve the same rights as the locals[iii]. For example, it is conceivable for some that women can be entirely covered up in black because it is the only way men allow them to leave the house.

The postmodern emphasis on diversity distracts from the much-needed recognition of our common experience as women: the ‘white feminism’ discourse is nothing but a discrediting of misogyny. The only valid oppression would be racism that, what a coincidence, also concerns men. The minimisation of misogyny is a false reassurance for the ones that believe that money or skin colour can save us from our subordinate condition as women: let us not forget that even queens are forced to lie back and think of England. Intersectionality, as Fatiha Boudjahlat explains, is a crossroads where men always have a right of way[iv].

Most importantly, while in a modern era there is the possibility of finding the truth, making statements about reality and calling for change, postmodernity precludes this by preaching a vociferous relativism[v]. Subjectivity, not objectivity, is a key word; there are ‘alternative facts’. This last expression was coined by the Trump administration: it should alert us over the fact that populists and the most evident representatives of postmodern culture – queer activists – are closer to each other than they themselves would like to believe. Their superficial division can be understood as a diversion tactic to better circle us women with nowhere to exit.

Queer theory

Despite what the wolves tell us, ‘queer’ is not a synonym for lesbian or gay. The current queer craze – from TV shows like Queer Eye to the rewriting of history (no, Virginia Woolf was not queer) – takes its origin from the academic work of queer theorists from the 1980 and 1990s, most notably Judith Butler[vi]. While feminists had demonstrated that what were considered female traits were not linked to biology but to socialisation[vii], queer theorists went one step further and explained that sex itself is enforced by societal discourse. A core tenet of this theory is thus ‘gender is a doing’: it is because we repeat certain behaviours, dresses, language, etc. that we enforce the idea that there are two sexes. In reality though, this is just an illusion maintained by the almighty and all-powerful of our societies (feminists?). In a nutshell, we would all be actresses performing our gender in the great drama of humanity[viii].

Performance is a key word here: it is informed by the notion of performative utterances, which is none other than a fancy way of saying speeches that are acts. If you say ‘I promise’ you are both saying the words and executing the action of promising. As such, performative utterances can never be true or false. If you don’t keep your promise, I cannot say that what you said was not true, because you did say it. However, you did not stick to it, so it is ‘unhappy’. Speech acts can only be ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’[ix]. This is where we can fully sense the deep divide between modern approaches and postmodern ones. According to performative utterances and by extension queer theory, if a man says he is a woman, his claim can only be happy or unhappy: he can only act upon it or not. It can never however be ‘false’ because the notion of truth itself is irrelevant, if not entirely eradicated. By saying it, he is performing it. When we say no, this is not true, or something as terroristic as ‘women don’t have penises’, we are clearly passé. We are evolving in a positivist approach of truth and falsity that no longer has any place in pomo world. It’s like shouting in a language no one else around you speaks because they already adopted another one you cannot learn. The means of expression are still monopolised by men and once again our voices bounce off deaf ears.

Flip it around and pick your favourite jailbreak excuse! Note: Not suitable for children. Retrieved from: http://sites.middlebury.edu/sexandsociety/files/2015/01/Rubin-Thinking-Sex.pdf

There is another tenant of queer theory that, although not directly relevant to this article, is worth mentioning because of its enormity and the danger it poses to women and girls. Since changing discourse is sufficient to change reality without ever acting materially, it follows that many practices that are perceived as problematic are only so because we say they are. Queer theory being more obsessed with sexuality than a horny Freudian, this approach is particularly germane for sexual practices. As Bec Wonders explains, for queer theory, any sexual normativity is bad – we can already sense one of the many self-defeating contradictions of this academic dogma, which I will return to later[x]. For example, prostitution is not the problem, stigmatisation is. Men abusing children are not paedocriminals but are engaging in ‘cross-generational sex’. This is what Gayle Rubin argues in her circle of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ sexuality. She also equates the imaginary struggle of paedocriminal members of the infamous North American Man/Boy Love Association – a group built in 1978 to suggest that victims of paedocriminality are actually lovers of older men – to the one of homosexual activists, updating an old stereotype of gay men as paedocriminals[xi]. She is not the only queer academic to come to the defence of paedocriminals[xii]. Well might we like to dismiss these words as the mere ravings of one or two academics who have chained themselves up in an ivory dungeon, they have become not only the dominant paradigm in universities but have swept through the media and politics too, with great political consequences for women and girls.

II. The consequences: identification with oppression

‘Strippers have feelings too’ Yes, poor women who are sexually exploited by men do have feelings. Picture from the infamous ‘Slutwalk’. Retrieved from: https://www.complex.com/life/2015/10/amber-rose-slutwalk-interview-photos

Judith Butler explains that the description of sex is already the attribution of it. Any definition of woman is ineluctably normative: saying that women do have XX chromosomes is to queer ears the same as saying that women should have XX chromosomes. As mentioned before, normativity being necessary exclusive is bad, so it is better not to define women and even better not to organise as women. The only possible political organisation is in the name of the deconstruction of womanhood[xiii]. This queer lesson in political activism is well integrated by a vocal number of young women who instead of organising around the female sex organise around female oppressions.

Three practices in particular seem to be recurring in mainstream media: prostitution, veiling and sex roles. Prostitution is presented as yet another sexual orientation on a par with homosexuality, itself equivalent to child abuse or sexual torture (‘sadomasochism’) according to Rubin. Therefore, a man does not prostitute a woman, but the woman is a prostitute (even worse, a ‘sex worker’) just like a man would be gay – her whole being is defined by the situation she is trapped in. She has it in her to be driven to this type of ‘sex’. This approach is evident in pro-prostitution slogans like ‘strippers and women unite’. The women abused by men are divested of their womanhood and reduced to whatever humiliations they have to bear in order to survive. The same old distinction between ‘normal women versus prostitutes’, promoted by the johns or prostituters themselves, is coated with titillating rainbow glitter.

There is a similar trend with veiling. Instead of being seen as a sex-based discriminatory practice that transfers the responsibility of sexual violence from men to women, it is turned into an identity. Women who practice veiling are ‘hijabis’. This is a form of reverse objectification wherein in place of a woman turned into an object – a ‘cumdumpster’ like in pornography – an object engulfs a woman to define her whole existence. You’re no longer a woman, ‘hijabi’, you’re the cloth that hides you.  

Finally, and most importantly, sex roles are no longer imposed but ingrained: gender becomes an identity. If you as a woman are foolish enough to abide by the stereotypes that constrain you, then that’s your problem: you could have just identified your way out of it. Thus, is the message the disparaging ‘cis women’ expression hides[xiv].

We are witnessing an essentialisation of our oppression: what men do to us is who we are apparently. If they rape us, we are the rape. If they veil us, we are the veil. If they stereotype us, we are the stereotype. One can sense a hint of victim-blaming here: just like a woman in prostitution/pornography might feel that she is only good at that, queer theory rehashes that yes, that is true. Instead of taking material biological reality as the basis of an identity, socially constructed practices are taken as accurate indicators of someone’s identity. What this means is that any criticism of those practices becomes a criticism of the person. Whorephobia. Islamophobia. Transphobia. The basis of the discrimination shifts from the female sex to the sex-based discrimination itself.

The paradoxes

The ‘hijabi’

In the wonderful emojis provided by Apple, all characters come in two sexes. Only the pregnant woman and the veiled one have no male counterpart. The first one probably will not last long, but I highly doubt that the second will change. For some reason the contemporary ‘feminist’ discourse targeting young women never challenges religiously motivated sex roles.

When looking closer at this nerve-racking discourse, the contradictions become evident. We have seen the first one: saying that something is bad is itself bad. The whole queer current[xv] seems to be operating on a self-defeating double negation.

Being gay is born that way, and by extension so is being a prostitute, trans people are born in the wrong body, yet, one is not born a girl. Sex is created by discourse, one is assigned a sex, but sex also provides so much work for poor women around the globe. Also, the existence of two sexes is too much to bear, it is a constraining binary, but it is replaced with another binary the cis/trans one[xvi].

Religion is the domain of belief, inherently abstract. ‘Gender’ is fluid. Yet here we have this practice of covering up only human members of the female sex, girls and women. In this immaterial world, there remains an insistence on defending the practice of something deeply tangible – the price being paid on the very real skin and hair of women.

We have the materiality of the being, made most evident by the body, and the abstraction of the identity, elaborated socially, on the other. By loathing the body, the material, queer activists reveal their contempt for women. Indeed, in our cultures, women are body and men are mind. The rhetoric of ‘born in the wrong body’ only enshrines that. The woman is body. The body is wrong. The woman is wrong. Again, we women with our terrifying inescapable visible, tangible, smellable biology are the terrible reminder of humans’ inescapable corporality. We must therefore be eradicated[xvii].

Also, talking about being born into a body makes it seem as if the body were a vessel entirely disconnected from the mind that one somehow slides into. It is reminiscent of the film The Man With Two Brains starring Steven Martin[xviii]. In it, Martin’s character Dr Hfuhruhurr falls in love with a female brain and goes on a quest to find her the ‘perfect body’ to ‘fuck’ (yet another coincidence, he finds one in the prostitution industry). In the real world though, men seem to fall in love with only other men’s brains: they celebrate each other’s writings, films, findings, tap each other on the back with lavish award ceremonies, promote each other all the way to the top. What a wonderful world it would be if some doctors not too different from Dr Hfuhruhurr would create the ‘perfect’ ‘fuckable’ female-shaped bodies to host the marvellous male brain: male head and female body; the structure of our patriarchal societies reproduced on the single[xix].

III. Why is this happening? Breaking intergenerational transmission

The contemporary queer movement as relayed by powerful media outlets like Condé Nast with Them or the BBC is a parody of feminism. It develops its own vocabulary, demands changes, it takes to the streets, but it’s become grotesque. Just like the Fascist regime in Italy, it changes pronouns[xx]. It enforces a newspeak. It is also reserved to a subversive happy few who are edgy enough to keep track, leaving the majority aside: anti-democratic at its core the queer is also profoundly anglophone since the linguistic reflection on gender it makes is not applicable to the many languages that are deprived of it. More generally the changes demanded denote not a struggle against the reality of oppression but a 'struggle against reality’ tout court. It asks us to pretend not to see the obvious tensions and contradictions. It goes so far in its demands that it annihilates the credibility of other social movements.

Beyond its parodic function, there is the more insidious aim of digging an intergenerational gap between women. Feminism is for the old, queer is for the young. A close friend of queer politics, Libby Lib Fem, so-called neoliberal feminism, tells young women to put that harness on and get whipped. We young women must have no knowledge of what women have done for us before, nor should we ever meet them, and how could we, given that activism is reduced to a screen?

The personal is political. What happens in the public discursive sphere is in tandem with what is going on behind closed doors. Before sisterhood, there is motherhood. Even when we don’t want to. How many of us have thought ‘I don’t want to end up like my mother’? Why would we? Our mothers are our first exposure to our female condition, clearly on the side of the oppressed in the domus. They represent the first potential female bond of our life. And yet, we do not identify with our mothers, as if doing so would protect us from the same fate. Our mothers are a temporal mirror that we break in a desperate attempt to remove our chains. Seven years of despair. More. Even if we are close though, we will be told to ‘cut the umbilical cord’. There shall be no strong mother-daughter bond under patriarchy lest there be early sex consciousness. If there is no daughterhood and motherhood, there will not be any sisterhood.

Just like we personally do not recognise our mothers, the queer movement dismisses the women that came before. It trashes the work done by our foremothers. It is no coincidence if the theoretical precursors of queer theory are men. Queer theory has no mothers, only fathers. What we see today lies within a greater tradition of male creators, first of all being ‘God’. Jealous of the female power of creating life, men have come up with this figure, a male creator of all there is on earth. If we can be led to believe this story[xxi], we sure can believe that men can get pregnant.

Where to next?

‘Fuck me not the climate’ Retrieved from: http://www.jeuxvideo.com/forums/42-51-59185254-1-0-1-0-ta-fille-destroy-my-pussy-not-my-earth.htm

In a cramped lecture room in a university in London, a heated ‘debate’ on pornography takes place. Debate is a strong word given that a handful of feminists condemn pornography in a room filled with young people saturated with it. Challenging the idea of consent in prostitution is always met with great anger and a woman in her twenties goes on about how much she enjoys having her hair pulled. An older woman curbs her enthusiasm and leaves the room: ‘Feminism allowed you to speak’. We forget that. The hard-won battles seem so distant and when new ones appear, there is difficulty in identifying the problem: male violence.

Young women are flocking to activism as the protests against climate change and for the 25th of November show. The problem lies in the lack of analytical and expressive tools that render the operation clumsy if not entirely unproductive. ‘Fuck me not the planet’ is a slogan that emerged in the Thunberg protests: written on a placard it is held by minor adolescent girls, sometimes with a phone number. Others say: ‘Destroy my pussy not my earth’. The salvation of our planet lies upon an altar of raped girls, apparently. Similarly, in protests against rape, some young women wear skimpy underwear with sexualised elements  like the playboy bunny tail: complain against rape culture but stay ‘fuckable’ darling.

The longing for change, the activism, the organisation at grass-root level are already there; the critical analysis is not. A first way to guide this vital energy is reading. Libraries can save lives. Many essentials in feminism are no longer edited. The ones that are available are forgotten. Titles need to be shared; book requests must be made in public libraries. Instead of sedimenting thought, we undertake a Sisyphean theoretical work at each generation. Young women are given answers, we need questions.

To ask questions we need a space. Reading, writing, learning is one thing, shaking up your preconceptions, disagreeing face to face and dancing wildly late at night is another. Radical Girlsss was specifically born for young women. The youth branch of the European Network of Migrant Women and Girls aims to foster a space of critical thinking, sisterhood and solidarity. Tired of fake activism behind our screens, the isolation that comes with it, the lies we are told about sexuality, lack of boldness, we fight back and we grow – from the root. 

Sorry Cassandra…

The doctor with the male brain and the female body

Queer theory draws inspiration from Monsieur Michel Foucault who described ‘biopolitics’, the politics of the bodies. It is a great irony that Foucault exposed the medical body for being shaped by political needs and that queer activists defend transsexualism following the exact same principle. It is after all the British Medical Association that came up with ‘pregnant person’. The Endocrine Society is obviously over the moon. The pathologizing ‘phobia’ is the preferred term for supposed discrimination, thus medicalising and individualising what is a political matter.

Retrieved from https://drafthouse.com/show/the-man-with-two-brains

Cassandra is the beautiful daughter of the king of Troy. In one version of her myth, the god Apollo falls in love with her. To seduce her, he gives her the power of predicting the future. She rejects him. He punishes her by revoking the gift he had made: she will still be able to predict the future, but no one will believe her. Her mouth left open, he spits in it. Her open mouth is his, she can shout but she will no longer be heard[xxii]. 

She was already perceived as a little crazy, but when she warned her fellow Trojans against the infamous horse, it was confirmed. She is laughed at. Discarded. Insulted. In a desperate attempt to fight the inevitable, she tries to burn the horse. She will be stopped. They will die[xxiii].

In the face of a mounting postmodern world order, the feminist movement is facing a dire attack. When we say: ‘Name the problem: male violence’, queer activist reply: ‘Naming the problem is the problem’. Don’t shoot the messenger, or the message won’t pass on to the next generations. For the principal danger of the current political discourse directed at young women is not just about making us active agents of male violence against ourselves but to build a wall between us and our feminist mothers. There are already signs of disgruntlement; after all, there can be only so much patience for nonsense. We must remain vigilant though: once the obsession with ‘gender’ is exposed, it might even more difficult than before to make the case about sexual politics. When the sea retreats too far, a stronger wave comes in.

[i] O’Byrne, Darren (2017) Sociologia: Fondamenti e teorie. (Sandro Bernardini trans) Milano -Torino: Pearson Italia.

[ii] While in the UK, religion is typically a free ride to abuse girls, that same function is fulfilled by ‘art’ in France. For a wider study of the excuse men develop to justify their abuse of women (my favourite being a parody made by Liliana Ricci: ‘my mum tied my nappy too tight’) see the work of Patrizia Romito later adapted by Lise Bouvet and Yael Mellul (2010) in Intouchables? People, Justice et Impunité, Paris: Balland, 2018.

[iii] Boudjahlat, Fatiha (2017) Le Grand Détournement. Paris: Les Editions du Cerf.

Donati, Pierpaolo (2008) Oltre il Multiculturalismo. La Ragione Relazionale per un Mondo Comune. Roma -Bari : Laterza.

[iv] Boudjahlat, Fatiha (2018) ‘Fatiha Boudjahlat : «Contre Le Racisme Des Bons Sentiments Qui Livrent Les Femmes Au Patriarcat Oriental»’. Le Parisien. (18 August 2018). http://www.leparisien.fr/societe/fatiha-boudjahlat-contre-le-racisme-des-bons-sentiments-qui-livrent-les-femmes-au-patriarcat-oriental-18-08-2018-7856688.php (Last accessed: 8 December 2019).

[v] O’Byrne, Darren (2017) Sociologia: Fondamenti e teorie. (Sandro Bernardini trans) Milano-Torino: Pearson Italia.

[vi] In Unpacking Queer Politics, Sheila Jeffreys brilliantly criticises the hogwash of queer theorists, rendering it accessible to all.

Jeffreys, Sheila (2003) Unpacking Queer Politics: A lesbian Feminist Perspective. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

[vii] A classical reference is Little girls: Social conditioning and its effects on the stereotyped role of women during infancy written by the Italian educatress Elena Giannini Belotti, first published in 1973.

Belotti, Elena G. (1973) Dalla Parte delle Bambine. Milano: Feltrinelli.

[viii] For those of you who are particularly nerdy or simply still not get the queer universe (which is probably their purpose), the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s page on the sex-gender distinction is accessible and exhaustive. It provides the necessary historical and academic background to understand the theoretical underpinnings of expressions like ‘pregnant person’.

Mikkola, Mari (2019) "Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/feminism-gender/ (Last accessed: 4 Dec 2019).

[ix] http://web.stanford.edu/class/ihum54/Austin_on_speech_acts.htm (Last accessed: 4 December 2019)

[x] Wonders, Bec (2019) ‘Generation Feminist’. Panel. FiLiA Conference.

[xi] Rubin, Gayle (1999) ‘Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality’, in: R. G. Parker & P. Aggleton (eds.), Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader (Psychology Press, 1999).

[xii] For those who do not have the emotional energy to inflict themselves a thorough reading of queer theory in the previously mentioned book by Sheila Jeffrey, the environmental activist Derrick Jensen brilliantly and wittily summarises the paedocriminal penchant of queer theorists in this short video. Do notice that he is interrupted by queer activists during a discourse on rape culture and successfully manages to put his points across despite the atmosphere.

[xiii] Mikkola, Mari (2019) "Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/feminism-gender/ (Last accessed: 4 Dec 2019).

[xiv] As a note, the expressions cis and transwomen are actually incorrect. Cissexed/cissexual or transsexed/transsexual would be more accurate. The prefix cis- means on the same side as and trans-  means across. There is no such thing as across women (or maybe we are to understand that on the other side of women are men?). Also, the prefix trans- requires the definition of the word it is attached to. Transport means the means used to move objects or people around (across ports). A port is a harbour. Transnational: across nations. Nation: a group of people sharing a sense of belonging in a given country. And so on and so forth. This is why the prefix trans- is more widely used than cis-. In the case of women though, no definition of woman is allowed, so it is not clear who is crossed (feminist?). The incorrect use of the two prefixes is made evident in the translation into romance languages like French or Italian – which are much closer to the Latin roots the prefixes originate from, where trans effectively becomes a suffix: ‘femmes trans’ or ‘donne trans’ (as opposed to ‘transsexuel’ and ‘transsessuale’).

[xv] There might be objections that the points I described about prostitution, veiling and gender identity are not orthodox to queer academics. What matters to me here is not so much if queer theorists themselves have suggested all of those things exactly as I report them but how queer theory is the basis of much faux-feminist discourse today.

[xvi] Terragni, Marina (2018) Gli Uomini ci Rubano Tutto. Venezia : Sonzogno.

[xvii] On an analysis of culture versus nature encapsulated by sex differences, read Susan Griffin’s 1981Pornography and Silence. London: Women’s Press.

[xviii] The Man With Two Brains (3 June 1983). Film. Directed by Carl Reiner. USA: Warner Bros. 

[xix] I would like to thank agkp for suggesting me this way of seeing.

[xx] Ajello, Nejo (2008) ‘La guerra dei pronomi nell' Italia in orbace’. La Repubblica (Archivio). (27 January 2008). Available online: https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2008/01/27/la-guerra-dei-pronomi-nell-italia-in.html. Last accessed 4 December 2019. 

[xxi] I would have not come up with this point were it not for a conversation with U who highlighted the fundamental issue with veiling. ‘If we can believe that veiling is a choice’ she said, ‘we can believe that anything is a choice. The veil is only a test of the extent of our gullibility’.

[xxii] Cremaschini, Marilena (2016) ‘Il Mito di Cassandra e l’Impossibilità di Comunicare’. Dottssa marilena Cremaschini. (5 November 2016). http://www.marilenacremaschini.it/il-mito-di-cassandra-e-limpossibilita-di-comunicare/ . (Last accessed : 4 December 2019).

[xxiii] https://mythologica.fr/grec/cassandre.htm