Tonight, along with a friend, I started hashtagging my tweets with '#torycunts.' My girlfriend took offense to this. She's not a Tory, and finds much of their policy abhorrent, but she has a friend who is a staunch Tory supporter, and felt like I was being unnecessarily cruel. We argued back and forth, but I wanted the opportunity to lay my thoughts down in a more coherent and lengthy form than twitter and text messages allow.
So here goes.
We're scared. We're fucking scared, and our votes count for next to nothing. I can vote for a left-wing candidate in my constituency until I die but it’s always going to be a Tory seat. We’re all of us crowded round our TVs and computers with our fingers crossed, hoping against hope that we’re not going to wake up to a Tory government tomorrow morning. Our worst nightmare of a Tory majority might be coming true and childish name calling is the only thing we have left.
We’ve seen the Polls. We’ve seen the Exit Poll prediction. We wonder, are they really representative? We think, no one asked me, how can my voice be heard? We take to twitter to try to feel less powerless. We're just shouting trying to make our voices heard, and if we shout loud enough, and hard enough, then people might take notice. It’s all bravado. We're like little kids in the playground trying to make ourselves feel brave so we can stand up to the bullies. We're calling people cunts because it makes us feel big and hard. We're calling people cunts so they'll leave us alone and stop bullying us. We’re calling people cunts because it’s the only thing we can do. It's not big and it's not clever but we do it all the same. We're hiding behind words, yes, but words are all we have left.
A Tory government wouldn’t stand for me. They’ve consistently voted against my rights, and what I believe in. I hate what they stand for, and they hate me. My vote won’t change that so all I can do is shout. And I choose to shout ‘cunt,’ halfway between what I think of them and what I think of the situation, because it’s all I can think of to do as I wait for the results to come in. It’s not big and it’s not clever, but it’s all I have left.
