Borrowing shoes

Friday 21st, a big deaf Scottish event was organized: Burns Dinner. It’s a traditional event that celebrates an old Scottish poet, and I should probably learn more about. All I know for now is that there will be a lot of food and a lot of drinks. And that white sneakers – aka the only shoes I brought – are not allowed.

Half desperate I contacted some of my female colleagues – who I all have met once, twice, or never at all – if I maybe could borrow a pair of shoes from them. None of these strangers/colleagues were surprised by my request and everyone would gladly offer me a pair, but as it turned out, no one had the same size as me. So, what did almost all of these wonderful women do? They asked their friends if I could borrow shoes from them! These barely strangers asked their friends if I, a complete stranger to them, could borrow their shoes. And this is why I love women – in both the feminist and the gay way.

So, is this a deaf thing, a women thing, or a feminist thing? (Maybe all of them?) I’m not sure. But I do know that this is an anticapitalistic thing.

(Do you really have to make everything about politics, Ine? – Yes, because the personal is political and these invisible acts of women sharing shoes represents how societies could and should work, how the future is feminist and how we will burn this capitalistic heteropatriarchy to the ground.)

As you can probably tell from the confusing tenses I used throughout this article, I wrote this post before Burns dinner. A few days later, another colleague also lent me her dress with a Scottish print. I, of course, forgot to take a picture of the shoes, but I did manage a picture of the dress.