Stop Whistling, Start Listening

Fem11

Yesterday I was delighted to attend UK Feminista’s sold-out annual conference Fem11. It was a brilliantly inspiring day and fantastic to see over 1,000 women and men in one place eager to discuss a range of topics and hear what others had to say. 

The day opened with a brief introduction by Kat Banyard, Director of UK Feminista who started running these conferences seven years ago. She was followed by a look back at women through history by Sandi Toksvig. I knew relatively little about Sandi Toksvig and had no idea she had been such a fantastic feminist campaginer thorugh the years until I saw her speak at the Women of the World conference at the Southbank Centre in March and was blown away by her passion and her wit. She told some brilliant stories of women through the years and the lack of recognition they received. Who knew that Florence Nightingale was actually known by soldiers as the Woman of the Hammer, not the Woman of the Lamp as she later became known? Unfortunately the talk she gave at Fem11 was pretty much the same talk again but it was still brilliant  and funny to listen to. 

The first full session I attended was run by End Violence Against Women. Having introduced themselves and their work they asked women in the room to mention things that really make their blood boil. Everything from street harrassment, Nadine Dorries, labiaplasty and Eamonn Holmes still being on TV were listed. The discussion moved from there to sexualisation as a causal factor in violence against women and girls. Notions of masculinity and the expectation of women and girls to play a sexualised role were all talked about and thrown up for discussion. EVAW also showed their new video aimed at young men. The video provoked quite a lively discussion and I’ll return to this topic in a separate blogpost in coming days.  It was a brilliant session - a highlight of my day - and while there was much disagreement in the room it was all reasoned, debated and presented with humour. It was a fascinating and inspiring workshop.

After lunch outdoors (the venue was SO warm) and overhearing feminist discussions all over the concourse outside Euston station, it was back in for the second session of the day. I was torn between OBJECT’s session on challenging sex object culture and Women for Women International’s session on building for International Women’s Day 2012. In retrospect I think I made the wrong choice. Women for Women International do fantastic work and I hoped I would gain more information on their work and plans for International Women’s Day. Instead, the session consisted of their ‘grassroots’ team splitting us into groups to discuss events we ourselves would like to hold. Perhaps I misunderstood the description of the session but there was too little structure for my liking.

On the other hand, I heard the OBJECT session was great. Porn, lapdancing and other aspects of sex culture are some of the most divisive topics in feminist debate and I gather OBJECT did a great job of putting their views across and answering challenges from the floor. Sorry I missed it. 

Feminist Question Time was the penultimate session of the day, and was chaired by Cllr Rania Khan from Tower Hamlets. Panellists included Shami Chakrabarti (Director of Liberty), Zoe Williams (Guardian columnist), Bea Campbell (writer and campaigner), Carlene Firmin (writer) and Matt McCormack Evans (founder of the Anti-Porn Men Project). It was a tough session as the room was dark and Cllr Khan found it hard to see who had hands raised. In addition, some of the panellists really seemed to go on and on rather than making a succinct point. Carlene Firmin came across brilliantly though, as did the wonderfully reasoned Shemi Chakrabarti. 

Finally it was time for the London Mayoral hustings. All the candidates had been invited and both Ken Livingstone (Labour) and Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats) attended. Jenny Jones from the Green Party was unable to make it but Natalie Bennett, Chair of the Green Party Women was more than able to speak in her place. Boris Johnson, current mayor and Conservative candidate not only didn’t show, but didn’t see fit to send anyone to speak on his behalf. His no-show prompted people in chicken suits to hand out flyers in front of the venue calling him out as a coward. I’ll admit, the anti-Tory feeling at the conference would not have been easy to face but that’s politics. Maybe if the Conservatives had better policies regarding women, it wouldn’t have been so terrifying. Samira Ahmed did a fantastic job of chairing the debate, forcing all candidates to stick to strict time limits and ensuring questions were kept short and to the point. It was a great debate (well summarised by Ahmed on her own site) and some really interesting topics were raised. Many were on broader party policies, and not strictly within the remit of the Mayor Of London, but hearing the candidates views was still relevant to how voters may feel about them. I don’t think Brian Paddick did himself too many favours as I found his responses to be vague and lacking in detail but his admission to having suffered domestic violence and returned to his violent partner was quite shocking and very brave. Natalie Bennett showed herself to be genuinely clued in to the issues of the day and Ken Livingstone also did a great job of convincing attendees (or at least me and my friends) that he’s got potential as a candidate.

Overall it was an amazing day. To be in a room with 1,000 other feminists is really inspiring and the lively but respectful debate was fascinating. The atmosphere was really celebratory all day in spite of everyone’s obvious anger and frustration at the issues being discussed. I left with my head buzzing and full of ideas and inspiration as well as real hope for the future. I look forward to Fem12.