Feminism in London 10

The huge Feminism in London conference took place last weekend. Over 1,000 feminists came. I was one of them.

Many amazing speakers; too many to summarize, but an evident theme that kept being mentioned was cuts and the massive inequalities implied in them. Women hold 65% of the public sector jobs, and women also rely on these services more because they earn and own less. Intro panel Women in Public Space had a young mother and activist Lindsey Hills speak out about harsh stereotyping of teenage mums, film director and writer Virginia Heath who started a campaign against sex trafficking, Ceri Goddard from The Fawcett Society and Helena Kennedy QC concentrating on the economic policy gender bias issues, and journalist Rahila Gupta commenting on how even in fairly liberal media sexism and misogyny are rife.


The following session was on Reproductive Health, which in my mind meant contraception, but was in fact largely about how women are massively restricted by hospitals in terms of giving birth. There was even a short film about home births and all kinds of issues I never gave a second thought. Another issue that gets just about zero coverage and so I imagine the general public is entirely unaware of there being any controversy about it.

I ordered vegan lunch, and got a piece of cake that contained milk and eggs - that was the only major fuck up (predictably, the venue was to blame). I didn't mind, because I'm merely vegan-curious, but I imagine actual vegans must have been very unhappy about it. Because almost all the sessions ran over there was really not a lot of time to explore the stalls, and because the venue had to be cleared right after the conference finished lunch time was the only chance to see any of them, which I sadly didn't get a chance to do. I'm sure it has to do with venue costs and all, but it would maybe be a good idea for future events to have the stalls available for a bit longer.

Post-lunch I was booked in a workshop called Exploring Your Internalized Prejudice. There was a whole bunch to choose from (including one workshop exclusively for men!), but I decided on that one in hope to get some unchallenged stuff out of my system. It was led by FolesHillfields Vision Project, who sat us in two circles, so that each person was facing someone else, and for the first half of the workshop we were switching a lot to be able to talk to a different person each time. The 'questions', or issues to talk about for about a minute each were about why it's good to have men as allies, imagining what our lives would be if there was no sexism, remembering first instances of gender prejudice, or considering what we would change in our childhood or youth if we could today. It was a bit all over the place, but because we had to think on our feet, quite inspiring. Then we got into slightly bigger groups and were trying to remember the first time we'd noticed racism, or were exposed to racist comments. Some people's stories were quite unbelievable; it was very interesting to hear many perspectives on that, and even just to try to identify yourself the very early and often un-intellectual instances of racism. The premise of the workshop was to prove that noone is born racist or sexist or in any other was unfairly biased, but that culture/society have their creepy ways of installing those prejudices into our minds very early on. I guess what might conclude from that is a higher awareness of those processes and somehow guarding yourself from them, but sadly the workshop didn't go as far as that. The final bit was a panel of women of colour who talked about what it's like to be women of colour: what's hard about it, what's great about it, what they'd never want to hear again from white people and what one thing they would change if they could. That was a very interesting, though also a slightly strange setup, to have all us white girls listening - it would have been excellent if there was more time for dialogue. Still, apart from slight technical/organizational hitches it was an interesting experience.

The final panel, or as it was officially called, a 'rousing finale' was indeed very strong: speakers declared they were angry, cuts again were mentioned extensively. My favourite two quotes: 'We don't hate men. We hate what capitalist patriarchy does to men as well as women' and 'If equal rights mean equal rights for exploitation of others, we want something different'. Many speeches interspersed with applause, and a standing ovation for Finn McKay at the very end. Definitely a very successful day for feminism. Many women and men who attended also brought their kids - it was really amazing how children-friendly and considerate the whole event was: so rare, though it should be entirely evident.

Tons of content, including videos, photos, write-ups, blog links, workshop descriptions, detailed speaker lists and anything else you may want to know about the conference available on Feminism in London's website: http://www.feminisminlondon.org.uk . I hope to go again next year!