Aja The Empress: "#IAm an Adult Human Female"
Interview with Women's Rights activist Aja after her solo protest march around central London
On Saturday the 12th of March 2022, an activist named Aja took to the streets of London to declare her opposition to the erosion of women’s rights. She marched dressed in a dapper Suffragette-inspired outfit, made up of a white shirt and trousers with a purple top hat with accompanying beaded black Victorian face veil. Over one shoulder she carried a homemade flag of the same colours as her sash and ribbons -the iconic tricolour of green, white and violet. Secured on her left hip she held an extremely large green placard reading “I AM A WOMAN: ADULT HUMAN FEMALE” with the Venus symbol drawn underneath. On the reverse of the protest standard, she wrote in capital letters and bullet points:
“I AM NOT A:
MENSTRUATOR.
CERVIX-HAVER
UTERUS-OWNER
BODY WITH VAGINA
NON-MAN
VULVA OWNER
BIRTHING BODY
CIS”
She announced that she was doing the protest by posting on Twitter[1] linking her livestream[2] on Make More Noise’s Youtube channel, stating, “Hey so I had a idea the other day & it was this... so here #IAm doing it. If you wanna watch here Is a live stream 👇🏾 dunno what's gonna happen but wish me luck 😁. #IAm a Woman Adult Human Female”.
I saw the tweet then watched the livestream of her march around central London to Trafalgar Square, which she filmed with a phone camera slung around her neck. I was aware of her previous activism and her clever and verbally pugilistic feminist poetry which she produces under the name “Aja the Empress”[3]. Impressed by her fortitude, I contacted her that evening to ask her a bit about herself, what inspired her protest, and to discuss how it was received.
-What made you want to do this protest?
“Anger, I guess. I’m just so annoyed with people in power being afraid to fight for women and even too afraid to define what a woman is. I wanna show them that if I can do it like this, they should be able to do it too.”
She echoed this sentiment in a tweet[4] where she said, “So one of the main reasons I decided to drag myself and this huge sign around London today was to show that if I can bloody do it then people in power can do it too and if they can’t they need to step down and go work in McDonald's where they can’t fuck up my life.”
-How long have you been involved in this political debate and protest movement? What got you engaged?
“Since Pride 2018, I hadn’t been for years because I thought it was corporate bullshit, but my friend dragged me down because she was in the parade. That’s when I saw Get the L Out[5] and when I learnt about all the trans nonsense and the fact that they [trans identifying males] thought they were actually women and that’s when I peaked[6]”
-What is the protest hashtag idea?
“ ‘#I am’. I am a woman. I want women to tweet things like, ‘I am not a birthing body, I am not a menstruator! I am angry I am not shutting up!’”
-In the current climate there is a lot of pressure on women to not speak out and not confront this political intimidation. Feminists have even been assaulted[7] by trans activists, did you have any concerns before or during the action?
Aja tells me jovially:
“I won’t lie, I was shittin’ myself. But as I was walking around, I kept thinking, ‘bravery is not about being fearless, it’s about being afraid and doing it anyway’. It went well, we didn't have any trouble; we had a couple of people being like ‘Yey!’ One German dude saw me and said ‘Das ist gut!’, and one woman recognized me from Twitter and we messaged after. There was a couple of roadmen saying, ‘uterus? What is a uterus?!’ It was good, I was shitting bricks, but it went well and I’m happy I did it!”
She was supported by a small group of plainclothes friends, Mr Menno[8], Mary, @brownnaila, @gc_fem and others who handed out fliers to the curious public and who could defend her if things took an unpleasant turn. Luckily the action went smoothly with supportive comments from passers-by. The main heckling I heard on the livestream was from young people confused by the words “cervix”[9] and “menstruator” and, as Aja told me, the word “uterus”. This highlighted just how imperative it is to engage women as “women” and not “cervix-havers” or “people with vaginas”[10], especially in advertising and awareness-raising campaigns for necessary[11] health care procedures such as smear tests. Unfortunately, many people just don’t know what these words mean.
J.K. Rowling made headlines[12] for calling out this obfuscatory language with the now-famous tweet[13] that she posted on the 6th of June 2020, “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”. Rowling and Aja are tackling the same issue, and as effective feminists should, they mutually follow one another and share each other's words.
Both of these women take the activism to the tweets, and one takes that female strength to the streets.
By Bryndís Blackadder
Written 2022.03.13, published 2022.03.16.
END OF ARTICLE
Thanks for reading.
Images with permission granted for publication with credit (captioned).
Photo by @GC_Fem
Source tweet: /Aja02537920/status/1502691726548508676?s=20&t=jC2icpTLvx0GouSqEABQcQ
Aja. Photo by @brownnaila, permission given to publish. Source tweet:
/Aja02537920/status/1502657692032282636?s=20&t=RjbLlfugLcepdvpctpsovw
(https://archive.ph/wip/RCZZO)
[3] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiT2fCVT4AuGXjlVRVSKdwA/videos (https://archive.ph/wip/qaXCt)
(https://archive.ph/wip/ReCYj)
[5] https://uncommongroundmedia.com/pride-london-lesbian-activism/ (https://archive.ph/wip/IlLd6)
https://www.peaktrans.org/
(https://archive.ph/wip/WEijs)
[7] https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/04/27/trans-identified-male-tara-wolf-charged-assault-hyde-park-attack/ (https://archive.ph/WORzz)
https://4w.pub/manchester-male-violence/ (https://archive.ph/fv4nF)
[8] https://www.youtube.com/user/mennofest/featured
[9] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8580469/CNN-mocked-tweeting-American-Cancer-Society-advice-individuals-cervix.html (https://archive.ph/W6VIO)
[10] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-50289607
(https://archive.ph/UvXEE)
[11] https://fairplayforwomen.com/language2/ (https://archive.ph/wip/E1fRg)
[12] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/jk-rowling-tweet-women-menstruate-people-transphobia-twitter-a9552866.html (https://archive.ph/lSn7L)
(https://archive.ph/wip/DVzvj)