The Bedsit Chronicles: Part Two- Neighbour Wars

The novelty of living in one room really wears thin when exams approach. The horror of sleeping in the same room that you have spent the last two days battling through Kant and then accidentally burning pasta, forgetting to do dishes and having to brush your teeth in the same sink is incomparable. I would rather get up at 7 in the morning to be the first person in the library instead. 

So I have started a new chapter in my life that involves setting alarms on my phone for before 10, making green juice, and going to the gym. The library security guards wish me good morning! I am a new person. A person who is reading war and peace before bed mostly every night and makes packed lunches, mostly. 

Before I get into this, I want to stress that if you have never lived in an apartment with thin walls, you probably won't understand how it is possible to know your neighbours so intimately that you have a clear image in your head of what they look like despite never having laid eyes on them. You know their deepest, darkest secrets, because you have overheard them. It's a special, weird relationship that is impossible to imagine until you enter into it. 

The first indication I had of the thickness of the walls was when what sounded like two parents fighting with their son about his fondness for smoking marijhuanna. It was so amusing to hear someones teen angst erupt in a situation that I had no emotional involvement in whatever I actively enjoyed the shouting. It ended pretty quickly, I fell asleep, and weeks went in perfect science, apart from the occasional rumble of a deep male voice and the sound of a TV on quiet. I felt pretty lucky, to be honest. 

Exam season began to approach, and I started going to bed the earliest I have gone in 3 years and waking up the earliest in order to get a seat in the library. Its a routine that has brought me surprising calm. I enjoy it. The third night of this new me, I cracked and didn't go to bed until half one in order to watch Game of Thrones. As I was drifting off into  sleep, the house was blissfully quiet. I was trying to empty my mind of thought in order to drift off into blissful sleep when suddenly, a TV started blaring, I live in an attached house, so it was in the next room (and next house). Whatever the person was watching, it was dramatic. My empty mind filled with the noise of frantic violins, and a couple having a violent argument. 

I laid in bed, the knowledge that my alarm was going to go off in 7 hours filling me with panic and anger. I got close to knocking on the wall several times. I thought about the Buddha, and how he says all suffering is alleviated by abandonment of the self. I tried to abandon myself, and not care about the neighbours for what felt like thirty minutes before my hate fire  was burning so brightly it was impossible to sleep. I deeply regretted not taking my sleeping tablets, and got out of bed to take one, despite the fact that they make me drowsy after 10 (it was two in the morning. 

I climbed back into bed, and the singing started. I am sure the Buddha himself would not have been able to abandon his ego if he had to listen to two men (in my head they were wearing check shirts, had receding hairlines and were wearing jeans with brown loafers) singing wagon wheel over the blaring noise of the TV drama. I knocked on the wall, the univeral symbol of neighbourly displeasure, and nothing. They seemed to be working their way through Nathan Carter's (described by my mother as "a man who should be silenced') entire discography. I banged a shoe, and still nothing. I thought wagon wheel was the song I most despised on this planet, but I had yet to hear Back to Tourmakedy. This inspired me to throw War an Peace (which conveniently was located beside my bed) at the wall. 

They moved on to Tequila Makes her Clothes Fall Off. I realised the music was so loud they couldn't hear me. I had thrown what some considered Tolstoy's finest literary work, one of the longest novels ever written with great force at the partition wall which had proven itself to be very thin and they still could not hear it over the volume of their Nathan Cater sing along.

I had nearly reached a level of rage that would have overcome my hate for confrontation and was considering going next door to ring their doorbell in breaks between songs and then let all of my pent up anger out, when I remembered that I had a secret weapon I could utilise. Two could play at the annoying music game, especially when one of those people(me) had an unusual like for bagpipe music. 

There is an incredible man on youtube called MarinesandPiper, a man I had unleashed against neighbours many times with great success. A man who covered pop songs on the bagpipes. I think he is a hero, and should be sainted, but most people despise Lady Gaga's poker face on bagpipes for some strange reason. 

Pavlov's dog new what was up. I decided that the only cure for this awful, awful, two in the morning sing song was Rebecca Blacks Friday, covered on bagpipes. I turned it up loud enough to drown out the music, pressed the repeat button, and drifted off into sleep confident in the fact that when they eventually did stop singing, they would spend the rest of the night listening to the worlds most irritating song played on what some consider the worlds most irritating instrument. 

I woke up the next morning to the shrill noise of terribly recorded bagpipes. I felt like Leonardo de Caprio emerging from the frozen body of the bloody horse in the Revenant. My sleep had not be the most refreshing, but my desire for revenge made it sweet. 

i wish this was the end of this story, but it isn't. The same thing happened for the next three night. Something had changed though. The singing was coming to a stop sooner and sooner after I began the bagpipe music. 

But on the fourth night, something magical happened. 

The voices started up around half one, and I clearly heard a male voice shout "I have been enjoying a drink for the last forty years, fuck off". Nathan Carter started up. I hit play on the bagpiper cover of Taylor Swifts Shake it Off. 

Nathan Carter stopped a verse in. A broken man shouted "Those fucking bagpipes!", and silence. No more Nathan Carter. I turned off Marinesandpiper, liking the Taylor Swift cover and sending out thanks to the universe for its inception. It was over; I had won. Nathan had been defeated.

Explaining privilege to the privileged and why not being a feminist is sexist

Emmeline Pankhurst being arrested after demonstrating outside Buckingham Palace for the right to vote. 

When I walk into the library and all the desks are taken, and people have saved some with stacks of papers or books on them, I feel angry. Some people leave for an hour when the official rule is 15 minutes. I am stuck at the trinity version of a children's table at a party, and a pile of books is taking up a desk I could be studying at, instead of wasting my time trying to squeeze my longer than average legs under a smaller than average desk. 

When I am sitting at a desk however, I don't really care about the piles of books. I don't care that there are people at the childrens table and books at the grown up table, to continue the party metaphor. Personally I would not leave for longer than 15 minutes unless it was an emergency, but I am not motivated to care enough about the people that do, because I already have my desk. 

This is how it feels to be privileged. White privilege, male privilege, class privilage,sexual orientation privilege, library privilege. The last one is not a very important privilege, nobody is dying, there are not huge injustices taking place. It is easy to not care about racism when you are white, because you are already sitting at your metaphorical desk in the library. It is easy not to care about feminism when you identify as male, because it doesn't matter that the desks at the edge are smaller and more uncomfortable. Your desk is comfortable. You do not feel the discomfort, so you do not really care. 

You don't really know what it's like to be on the other side until you are on the other side. It's easy to say All Lives Matter instead of Black Lives Matter, because it makes you feel better. All lives do matter, but black lives are more likely to be in danger. When you say All Lives Matter, you are metaphorically sitting in the comfortable seat in the library, but you are not allowing yourself to feel discomfort about the fact there has been a laptop charger taking up a desk for three hours while some people are sitting on the floor. 

I am proud to be a feminist, because feminism means equality for all, but recognises that the ones in need of increased equality are not men. I am a feminist because I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by men and women in my life who raised me to blossom as the person I am, not to shrink because I am a girl. Who told me that I was worth exactly the same as the boys in my class, that I had the right to raise my hand and ask as many questions. That I had a voice that I didn't have to apologise for. 

I am proud to be a feminist because I want to stand behind every single person who has experienced sexual harassment, assault or rape. Feminism taught me to say to the man who grabs me outside a night club that if he doesn't let go, I will punch him in the face. Like a man. Feminism taught me that I should never apologise for having good ideas, or let others take credit for them. 

Feminism taught me that I was worth more than the man who tried to stick his hand up my skirt when I was fifteen, then shouted at me because I wouldn't let him. That it is my body and my choice. That gender doesn't matter, I can do whatever I want. That I can be whoever I want. whatever that may look like. 

By being a feminist, I do not hate men. I don't think that men should be treated better than women. All I want is equality. I am 20 and I am already tired from all the fighting I have had to do to be heard over the stigma that seems to be engrained to so many people's brains. 

I am with Masie Williams on this one. We should just start calling people who are not feminist sexist, whatever their gender might be. Because not recognising that there is a gender imbalance, that women are treated differently to men, that is sexism. If you don't believe in feminism, you believe in equality, you are sitting in your comfortable seat in the library and you are pretending not to notice that while you are on Facebook for three hours someone is trying to write an essay kneeling on the floor. 

Feminism isn't just for women. It is about dismantling toxic masculinity that ensure men who are raped do not speak out about it. So men do not get attacked in nightclubs and schools and by other men and women because it is not ok to assault someone in any circumstances. So male victims of domestic violence get support, Women who commit crimes against men get punished equally, so men who do not fit the masculine norm are supported. So being like a woman is no longer a slur. It's something to be proud of.