Women Do Something (Continuing the conversation)

A couple of weeks ago I attended an event called Women Say Something and, naturally because I tell you guys almost everything, I blogged about it.  Thanks to that first event and the wonders of Facebook I am now hooked in to some super cool active women, the kind of women who get off their arses and make an event like this happen.  It seemed natural that I would go to the follow up event, after all it was free and I am broke, it's about feminist issues and I'm a feminist.  Best of all the event was attended by the fabulous Kimberly Dark.

Kimberly is a sociologist and a story teller.  She uses humour, irony and anecdote to open our eyes to the strange and interesting diversity of thought and perspective in our world.  I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to attend and to enjoy her work.

Me under the star with the star of the show, Kimberly Dark.

Lots of very interesting topics were raised and discussed by the group.  Many would be worthy of exploration and commentary.  The thing that resonated with me most intensely was the need to hold to our beliefs and represent our points of view every day in as many situations as we encounter.  One articulate young woman pointed out that thirty or forty years ago there was a huge gap in equality, it was blatant and gaping.  It was easy to see the cause, to know what was needed in the fight for Women's Liberation, for the Women's Movement, for Feminism.  So many things have changed and so many barriers have been broken down that it is more difficult than it was back then to simplistically categorize the target.  Yet inequity still exists in every arena.  As the young woman put it, "there are many small gaps rather than one large one".

I can't remember a time in my life when I did not believe that we influence the world one person at a time.  Mostly, on a day to day basis, I just try to make people smile in the hopes that they too will make someone else smile.  Long before that disgusting schmaltzy movie "Pay It Forward" claimed the high ground I believed in the difference small interactions can make.  As a lesbian I have always been "Out and Proud" in virtually every situation I have lived through.  This is how you combat homophobia.  You keep showing people that gay people are just normal everyday people like them, they/we are their friends, co-workers, family etc.  I don't think anyone has ever said this better than Hilary Clinton did recently at the Human Rights Day in Geneva, here courtesy of the Huffington Post is a transcript of her brilliant speech..  I digress...

Feminist is (as Girlwiththecane said in a comment on the last blog) still a dirty word..  But I don't really care what we call it (though it would be convenient to have a title that symbolically represented basically the same thing to everyone) but I do care about women and equality.  I believe we need to not shirk the day to day responsibility of having the courage of our convictions.  The courage to clearly state what we believe and why it matters to us.  I believe that we need to be Out and Proud as women and as feminists (regardless of the title).  We are 51% of the population, the world over, and we own less than 1% of the world's property.

Courtesy of Girl's Guide to Taking Over The World

This fight has not been won.  

This struggle is not over.  

This complacency is killing us.  

Every day in every interaction, we, the ordinary people not just the high profile organizers and activists, WE need to take this debate to our friends, our co-workers, and our families...

Stand up and be counted or stand down and be trodden on.

(As an aside some of the women were kicking on for a drink at my old stomping ground The Imperial but unfortunately I was starting to get that urge to be horizontal so I gave it a miss... maybe next time!)

Women Say Something

Tonight I attended an event.

Long ago, back before cell phones and personal computers, before MASH stopped running, before I even knew what the words meant, I referred to myself as a Marxist Feminist Lesbian - at the time I was none of the three.

Time passed and I totally embraced one of the labels, held firm to the principles of another, and modified the third.  I grew to become a Socialist Feminist Lesbian.  I was never a separatist (though I have dear friends who were) but I understood where they were coming from and I marched for women's rights and listened to good solid lesbian lefty folk singers.

Somewhere in the late1980's and 1990's the wheels seem to have fallen off the women's movement, even the separatists mostly came down out of the hills and "played the game" and worked for "the man".  Of course I was swept along just like everyone else...  Settled down, had a baby, stuck at a real job, bought a house...  But it was never far beneath the surface.  Even when I moved to the US in 99/2000, even in the US, where when you say the word "socialist" lots of people hear the word "Stalin", I kept saying it.

Dammit I am a SOCIALIST and I am a FEMINIST and I am still (although not practicing LOL) a LESBIAN!

Sooooooooo by way of Twitter and Facebook I accidentally head about this event so I spent the afternoon resting and I went!

Oh my goodness - when did lesbians and feminists get so young?  Yikes!

There were two panels, the first focused mainly on inclusion and talked a lot about bullying in schools.  The second looked at feminism and (this is my takeaway so forgive me if it is not what anyone else got from the discussion) it talked about the future of feminism and if the word feminism can be revived/reclaimed/revitalized.  A couple of times the word humanism was brought up as a possible replacement.  At one point during the first discussion one of the panelists mentioned that dropping the words "Gay and Lesbian" from the front of the words Mardi Gras for the giant celebration held in Sydney ever Feb/March was an example of us (the queer community) showing the world that we are more inclusive than "they" are.  I wonder if the word "humanism" were to be applied would it be considered the same way?  Or have we become so inclusive that we no longer have an identity?  Personally I think that if the feminist movement was no longer identified as relating to women it would have no validity and no reason to exist.  One of the panelists insisted that she would always refer to herself as a feminist and that failing to do so would be disrespectful to all the women who have fought for the "equality" we have today (such as it is) and I agree.

There was an older woman on the second panel (one of the few people I saw who was most likely older than me!!!) and she suggested that we are bogged down in viewing the world from an economic (ie male dominated/goal focused/financial) point of view and that we need to move back to a focus on society.  She said there needed to be a collective movement towards societal change.  At this point one of the other panelists mentioned the Occupy movement and no one really pointed out that Occupy is totally an economic focused movement, its very core is an opposition to corporate greed and a desire for a more equitable distribution of wealth.

This evolved into a discussion of how factional in fighting and issue arguments are disrupting the ability of women/feminists to organize.  One of the other panelists, a very interesting woman who is the secretary of a major trade union made a very interesting point...  She said that no one has more in fighting than the unions but that when Australia was under the conservative Prime Minister John Howard they managed to put aside their differences and unite against the common enemy.

This to me is the crux of the issue....  The common enemy, the overarching goal, the fundamental principles - they must be grave enough and significant enough to unite us and to compel us to act.

On the way home I was singing this song to myself in the car...

Judy Small singing about the amazing Jessie Street.

Folksingers like Judy Small, Alix Dobkin, Cris Williamson, Maggie Kirkpatrick, and other lesbian artists like Robyn Archer taught us our women's history and reinforced our social consciences.  Who are the young women of today learning from?  I mean I really like Beyonce (The Boy would kill me if I said anything else) and Irreplaceable (to the left to the left) is a very empowering song but it's hardly educational.

God help us if it's Katy Perry!