Today is International Women’s Day and I went to “How to be a Feminist”, run by Word Writers and Readers Festival. The first hour was a live broadcast from Sydney Opera House with a panel made up of Germaine Greer, Roxane Gay, Anita Sarkeesian, Tara Moss, Clementine Ford, and Celeste Liddle. Germaine Greer was the only one I’d previously heard of, but they all made interesting contributions, especially Anita Sarkeesian, who works to raise awareness of the sexist representation of women in video games. She is part of an organisation called Feminist Frequency. I found the whole panel a little depressing as they struggled to identify any recent moves towards improving women’s lives. Yesterday on Kim Hill’s show Marilyn Waring also stated that we are now moving backwards.
The event was held at the University of Canterbury, and as we went in we were handed a pamphlet outlining Germaine Greer’s transphobia, with a pair of earplugs attached – a clever way of suggesting that we could avoid listening to Germaine.
The second hour was a panel of local women, including Dr Erin Harrington (English lecturer), Sionainn Byrnes (President of FemSoc, and editor of the feminist zine “What she said”), Kait Nelson (a non-binary transfemine person who advocates for the rights of transgender and intersex people), Dr Gina Colvin (an indigenous Mormon feminist) and Beck Eleven (“Press” journalist), with chair Rosemary Du Plessis. Rosemary started by reminding us that International Women’s Day commemorates women garment workers in 1857 who protested against their working conditions and were trampled by mounted police.
Sionainn pointed out the the university is now a site of privilege, which reflects the erosion of local democaracy. Financial constraints are silencing both lecturers and students. Kait said that women share oppression and the same battle, with different issues. Erin stated that every time we spend money on something we’re giving it approval. When individualism tries to divide us we need to remember that we exist within communities. In response to a question about how feminism and religion can be balanced Gina said that we all want to be with our own people, and that it’s possible to have rich faith conversations within the orthodoxy.
Rosemary summed up by stating that to act collectively we need to have productive, energetic, and dynamic ways to discuss what each other is saying.
The session was a nostalgic reminder of the Women’s Studies seminars and conferences of the 1980s. These days there seem to be few opportunties for such debate, and I miss “Broadsheet”. Maybe some of these discussions are taking place online but, if so, they are passing me by.
“To hear what women have to say
was what made this a special day.”
I think all of the developed world is actually going backwards now that the extreme right wingers have control virtually everywhere. Its not just womens rights that are being eroded its everyones rights. The Dalai Lama said that Western women will save the world. I hope he is right but we really dont have much time to do it and men seem hell bent on stopping us.!! .
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Maybe its time to bring back Broadsheet. I ermember the good old days of the 70s when women worked together and achieved a lot for other women…now the male competitive paradigm seems to be paramount and most women are more competitive than cooperative.
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I’m afraid the cult of individualism has taken hold, plus I doubt whether there’d now be the energy to produce something like “Broadsheet”. Surely there must be some relevant online publications promoting local feminism.
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