Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things

Read ALL the Light Bulb Moments

2011-12-22T00:59:00.006Z

I haven't been posting on here for a while, but I cannot stress how immensely important this blog is to me. I recently contributed to a book of stories of why we became feminists, a British answer to Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists. This one is called The Lightbulb Moment and is edited and published by Sian Norris of Crooked Rib Publishing. Sian is also a prominent blogger and occasionally a DJ - check out her blog, Sian and Crooked Rib.

My contribution is an extremely personal story about my gradual discoveries of feminism, and this blog features in it prominently as a source of motivation and inspiration and action that I created for myself when in a particularly difficult moment in my life. But it also touches on other important experiences, and is painfully honest, to the extent I wasn't sure I wanted it published, but at the same time, I think, a great illustration of how the personal is political. So I hope a story about depression, promiscuity, traditional family, bisexuality, moving around the world and other stuff will actually mean something in this important context.

The book also contains loads of other contributions from more or less known feminists and is fantastically interesting. From the Crooked Rib Publishing website:

"Some of the names you may recognise. Laurie Penny writing about Germaine Greer. Finn Mackay telling the story of how she went to peace camp. Jo Swinson campaigning for girls to wear trousers in her school. And then there are the women and men whose names you might not recognise, but who are working every day in the fight for gender equality and a better world for all.

Many of these stories are funny. Some are moving. Some tell of pain and trauma. Some are about family members or friends. All of them are inspiring and exciting.

Editor of The Light Bulb Moment, Sian Norris says:

‘After reading ‘Click’ I felt very strongly that we needed this book for the UK. We have such a rich feminist scene here. I thought it would be fascinating to hear how the women and men involved in UK feminist activism ‘found’ feminism. And I was right! These stories are so diverse and unique – I hope that people will enjoy reading them as much as I have.’

By bringing together the stories from women and men from a range of communities and generations, The Light Bulb Moment hopes to offer a snapshot of feminist activism in the UK today, and share the stories of the women and men involved.

The eye-catching cover was designed by illustrator Susie Hogarth."

You can buy it over at Lulu for £7.99 (that's 20% off the original price): http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-light-bulb-moment-the-stories-of-why-we-are-feminists/18726169

Now, I also feel obliged to explain why this blog has not been what I meant it to be lately. It was something that dragged me out of a black hole of despair and inactivity, but recently I reached another difficult point in life, and unlike previously, I have way more responsibilities than I can handle, and somehow the work that's the most personal and satisfying and therefore important requires so much effort and is only self-imposed, so a lot of the time, even though I think about posts all the time, I never sit down and write them out, because whenever I have time to sit down I instead lie down and do nothing. If I'm making any New Year's resolutions, if there's one thing I promise to myself I'll do more not less, it's to post on this blog, because always having it in the back of my mind but never quite managing to fulfill my own expectations for it is bad, for my own self-esteem and expression. So I hope you will be able to read more on it than there already is.

So not as an excuse, but more an explanation, without being dramatic and also additionally promoting an amazing, amazing artist, I wanna quote Hyperbole and a Half, from her post Adventures in Depression. It's very recent and it resonated with me a fucking lot. Here are a few pictures, but read the whole story here. Hyperbole and a Half is Allie, who describes herself as "heroic, caring, alert and flammable," makes these incredibly expressive drawings in Paint, and is currently writing (drawing?) a book, scheduled for release by Touchstone, a division of Simon and Schuster, for the fall of 2012, "just in time for the apocalypse!" Definitely something to look forward to.

"Some people have a legitimate reason to feel depressed, but not me. I just woke up one day feeling sad and helpless for absolutely no reason."

"It's disappointing to feel sad for no reason. Sadness can be almost pleasantly indulgent when you have a way to justify it - you can listen to sad music and imagine yourself as the protagonist in a dramatic movie. You can gaze out the window while you're crying and think "This is so sad. I can't even believe how sad this whole situation is. I bet even a reenactment of my sadness could bring an entire theater audience to tears."

But my sadness didn't have a purpose. Listening to sad music and imagining that my life was a movie just made me feel kind of weird because I couldn't really get behind the idea of a movie where the character is sad for no reason."

"Essentially, I was being robbed of my right to feel self pity, which is the only redeeming part of sadness.

And for a little bit, that was a good enough reason to pity myself."

"Standing around feeling sorry for myself was momentarily exhilarating, but I grew tired of it quickly. "That will do," I thought. "I've had my fun, let's move on to something else now." But the sadness didn't go away.

I tried to force myself to not be sad."

"When I couldn't will myself to not be sad, I became frustrated and angry. In a final, desperate attempt to regain power over myself, I turned to shame as a sort of motivational tool."

"But, since I was depressed, this tactic was less inspirational and more just a way to oppress myself with hatred."

"Which made me more sad."

"Which then made me more frustrated and abusive."

The story continues - I won't repost it all here, but go over to Hyperbole and a Half for the rest of it. It's sad and depressing, but also captures sadness and depression and some other things extremely well, and is still a cartoon done in Paint. Pretty amazing.

My best friend Nadine, with whom I set up this blog, says that the most feminist act is self-care, and I agree - and there isn't enough talk about that. Hyperbole and a Half posts about other things, too, of course (such as cake or spiders or alot or adulthood/the internet) but I feel like this one is particularly important because even in this slightly comical lens, mental illness is still seen as essentially a weakness, laziness, feeling sorry for yourself, and essentially your fault. Especially for women, who to keep up are expected to be pretty, well-dressed, fit, but also to have good jobs (if you're liberated now, at least take the fucking advantage), stable partners with views for a family, and on the side loads of great hobbies and additional activities just to you know, seem interesting enough.. And that's just the top of the iceberg, with all the contradictory underlying expectations of sexy but unavailable, smart but not imposing, liberated but not too independent, caring about body and looks but not vapid, interesting but not intimidating, etc. I feel like you don't have to be mad to crack down under all of this shit, so it's even more important to talk about it.

Nishma Doshi is another blogger who talks mainly about politics over at Topsoil, but also about extremely personal things and experiences of depression on her personal blog AcaciaThorns. I admire her greatly for never being ashamed to talk about how shitty she is feeling, and about how mental illness is still hugely stigmatized, and feels like a vicious circle with no breaking point even to so-called privileged young people, including people who are so involved in changing the world and fighting for ideals - and that for nobody is it just whining, or being lazy, and the last comment you ever need is "cheer up." But I also admire how the personal, again, coincides with the political, and on Topsoil she would still post entries about mental illness, such as this one about Time To Change:

"In the past, when I have spoken about my mental health conditions, I have either been called “brave”, or patted on the back and told to “sort myself out”. I don’t know which is worse. Is it brave to talk about something that burdens me every day? Can I really sort out an illness that changes the way that I think? In all of these points, I’ve sought for someone else to not only bring up some statistic and then tell me I’m not alone, but to share with me a story of how they cope. But I don’t hear those tales. Stigma does not only harm us in that society ignores our existence – it prevents recovery. The last thing anyone wants when they are ill is to be alone. And so many of us are."

This blog was set up to not be lonely. I will be doing my clumsy best in the next year to actually post about all the things I've been planning to post about, but also new things, exciting things, ALL things (this is a reference to an internet meme that originated from this Hyperbole and a Half drawing:

A good explanation of the phenomenon can be found here, and Google Images will give you 60,600,000 results for it, too.)

But this was also set up as collaboration, so is open to everyone and anyone, as long as the contributions are related to feminism/promoting female activity. In the very first post this is what I said was our main objective, and that's also quoted in my contribution to The Light Bulb Moment - that it is "important to promote and inspire female activity, expand the scopes of femininity, dispel stereotypes and cushioned conceptions of perfect equality, and protest against discrimination and stereotypes that fuck with female and human dignity.”

If this means something to you, you are always welcome - as a supporter, reader, commenter, guest, contributor, sister. I'd like to make this place meaningful, inclusive, and alive. Be good to yourselves and see you in the New Year. xoox

end of challenge for Positive Women

2011-06-08T23:16:00.000+01:00

On Saturday I finished the Live Below the Line challenge, and so far managed to raise £100! The donation page is still up, and any help would be appreciated: http://my.livebelowtheline.co.uk/martalucysummer

It was pretty tough to stick to mostly rice and porridge + a carrot & apple a day, especially that lots of people offered me free stuff (I was not supposed to accept anything for free, and offer to accept a donation instead - that was the spirit of the challenge). I went to a departmental end-of-year party at university (with a huge load of free drinks and food), a gig, a friend's birthday, another friend's end-of-exams drinks, two BBQs, and even to a restaurant with a couple of friends (where I was just drinking tap water). That was probably the hardest: not being able to participate in something people around me were freely doing, but I imagine the experience of poverty must be that x1000, constantly being reminded of all kinds of stuff you'd be able to buy/consume if only you had money. Another hard thing was that I needed to carry food and water around with me all the time, and also that it was getting very boring to eat the same thing every day. So rather than being hungry, I was a bit bored and frustrated. I'm so glad I've done it though, and I'd definitely recommend the experience! I was very proud of myself for sticking to it, and also now am appreciating being able to eat various things a lot more, plus my awareness of how much money I spend on just about everything is heightened, knowing that one fiver (which wouldn't be enough for two pints of beer in a pub) lasted me for almost a whole week. It's not too late to give it a go; the full list of organizations you can raise money for is here.

I chose to do it for Positive Women, an organization running programmes in Africa that support women and children to access education, legal support and funds and training on how to generate resources for themselves and their families. They actually also work with communities in the UK, in particular Wales, to use their skills and knowledge in a productive way. All this is meant to create lasting changes throughout the communities, and ultimately give some of the most vulnerable and disempowered the confidence and skills to make educated and productive changes to their lives, the lives of their communities and eventually to their countries. So the organization's work is not so much donating goods or money, but creating sustainable solutions: supporting communities to help them change their own lives and circumstances, to alleviate poverty and make significant social progress. To achieve this, they must have their basic needs met, choices in their lives and an understanding of their rights.

Positive Women's main focus is Swaziland, the last absolute monarchy in Africa, where the king lives like a king, and the rest of the country (over a million people) is in poverty. It is also critically affected by HIV/AIDS. As reported in the 2009 CIA World Factbook, Swaziland has the highest HIV infection rate in the world (26% of all adults; more in other reports) and also the lowest life expectancy at 32 years, which is 6 years lower than the next lowest average of Angola. From another perspective, the last available World Health Organization data in 2002 shows that 61% of all deaths in the country were caused by HIV/AIDS. With a record crude death rate of 30 per 1000, this means that about 2% of the Swazi population dies from HIV every year.

Positive Women was founded by Siphiwe Hlophe and Kathryn Llewellyn, and it was a project thought out to reach all of the eight Millennium Development Goals. In 1999, as a married 40-year-old looking to continue her education in agricultural economics, Siphiwe Hlophe discovered she was HIV positive. As a result, her husband left her and she lost an academic scholarship, but she reacted by co-founding an organization in 2001 called Swazis for Positive Living (Swapol), which aims to fight gender discrimination related to HIV/Aids and help other HIV/Aids victims. In 2007 Siphiwe was nominated for and won the Index on Censorship award by RT Hon David Blunkett. Kathryn Llewellyn has been involved in campaigning and development management for nine years, including being the CEO of Pump Aid, a water and sanitation NGO working in Zimbabwe, Liberia and Malawi, running the Live Below the Line campaign for the Global Poverty Project, leading campaigning NGO Action for southern Africa and most recently International Development Director for Global Ethics. Kathryn has one a number of awards including: the Sheila McKechnie conflict resolution award for her campaigning work on democracy in Zimbabwe and an UNTLD award for Social entrepreneurs. She is also an advisor to the Channel four Battlefront show, mentoring young campaigners and a number other International NGO’s on both Fundraising and programme development.

The achievements of Positive Women involve:

Giving 500 orphans and vulnerable children access to education
Supplying 500 orphans and vulnerable children with memory books
Establishing 45 women-led income generation projects
Taking 5 cases to court and educated 500 women in their basic legal rights
Raising over a million pounds in three years

I met Kathryn at activist training for Tea Time For Change earlier in May, when she had just finished her Live Below the Line challenge, and was very inspired by her and entirely in awe at what she was doing with the organization. At a panel called 'Why campaigning matters?' she recounted two experiences: one of success and one of failure. First concerned the invitations Robert Mugabe keeps getting for international summits and occasions, despite being banned from travelling in the EU and US (apart from UN events). I can't recall which invitation it was about, most likely the EU-Africa summit in Portugal in 2007. Llewellyn was involved in organizing a lobby against that invitation, managed to get a lot of people involved and even Gordon Brown to put his foot down, and succeeded in keeping him away from defying his ban and attending the summit, and enforcing the sanctions put on the dictator. A more recent story concerned the invitation of the king of Swaziland to the Royal Wedding, which was particularly distasteful as peaceful protests in Manzini were crushed by the police and the army just a few weeks before the wedding, in the beginning of April, and the invitation for the king was still valid. Police have used tear gas and water cannons to disperse protesters calling for democratic elections. Many people were arrested and threatened, there was also a number of pre-emptive arrests before the demonstration even started. Meanwhile, King Mswati III, his 14 wives and a whole entourage were to attend the Royal Wedding. Llewellyn told us how she'd call up anti-royalist journalists perpetually to raise awareness of this and have mainstream media address the issue, but that in the end it didn't work out, people didn't want to listen, and the king and his court still made a show of how much money they are prepared to spend on glamorous international presence rather than their people.

Positive Women are currently running a number of campaigns: a petition for democracy in Swaziland, income generating projects (candle making, knitting uniforms or work on agricultural projects), workshops on basic business skills for women, legal advice, educational initiatives linking Swaziland and South Wales, supporting social welfare and transparency. All this also takes into the account the difficulties and stigma attached to HIV/AIDS, whose victims are the organization's main target. Over 60 people participated in Global Poverty Project's Live Below the Line challenge so far, raising over £15,000 for Positive Women. The organization is always looking for sponsors, private or businesses, and also currently for office space in London for 6 months. Read more about their activity and how to get involved:

website / facebook / twitter

Meanwhile, the Global Poverty Project has a next campaign planned out: it seeks to catalyse the global movement to take effective concerted action on poverty through the presentation 1.4 Billion Reasons. This is what they're said about it in an email I got this morning following the completion of my Live Below The Line challenge: "Every year we provide tens of thousands of people with the knowledge and resources they need to become agents for change within their communities through our presentations and campaigning work. Through the money raised for the Global Poverty Project, we will be training up new ambassadors to bring our message to even more people over the next year. You have already shown yourself to be committed to supporting this movement by participating in Live Below the Line, and now we'd like to invite you to journey with us in fighting poverty all year round."

You can register to either attend or hold the multimedia presentation developed by GPP which is travelling the globe engaging and inspiring audiences to understand and get involved in the movement to end extreme poverty. It's built around five sections:

What is extreme poverty?
Can we do anything about it?
What are the barriers to ending extreme poverty?
Why should we care?
What can I do?

1.4 Billion Reasons has been tailored to specific audience groups and delivered in workplaces, schools, universities, faith groups, community groups and at conferences.

At the GPP website you can also commit to various ways in which you can personally tackle poverty, such as talking to your friends and family and speaking up in your community, learning more about it, buying more fair trade products, volunteering your time. They are currently running a campaign on bribery and corruption, calling on Ken Clarke to create an anti-corruption strategy. One year ago, he was announced as the UK’s International Anti-Corruption Champion. Personally appointed by David Cameron, he promised to develop a plan to combat corruption. To date, this has not occurred. GPP's petition on this is here.

But enough clicktivism; tomorrow I'm going to an actual lobby in the Parliament called Tea Time For Change. It's a chance to meet your MP (about 150 confirmed they're coming, though mine, Kate Hoey MP, has only said 'maybe attending') and talk to them about three crucial matters: international aid, tax dodging, and alternative funding strategies such as the Robin Hood Tax. It should be fun + useful. A blog post will follow.

the challenge begins

2011-06-01T22:08:00.001+01:00

This (+ a thing of porridge which I forgot to take out for the photo) is what I'll be eating for the five days.

I'm doing the Live Below the Live challenge to raise money for Positive Women, a charity supporting women and children in Swaziland with education and income generation programmes. The challenge consists of surviving on £1 a day for food and drink, and free stuff from housemates or conferences or parties or what have you is off limits (although I will say I have so far cheated on that slightly as I had a glass of beer that my housemate brews himself, and a small sip of my friend's hot chocolate as she in-sip-isted). The poorest (that's 1.4 billion people), live on less than $1.25 a day - about £1 in the UK, not only for nutrition but everything else. I feel like Living Below the Line is a good way of realizing how little that is, and getting a better understanding of the challenges faced by people in extreme poverty. I'm still paying rent, using my bike and clothes and cosmetics, so am nowhere near an actual poverty line, but restricting/reducing something as crucial as food serves as a tiny imperfect simulation. Shopping for £5 worth of groceries for the entire week (minus the weekend) has already challenged my habitual perspective.

This is what I bought:

0.75 porridge
0.17 kidney beans
0.49 split peas
0.35 carrots
0.30 garlic
0.64 green tea
0.60 apples
0.18 pasta sauce
1.25 rice
0.20 spaghetti

=
£4.93

I was not as ambitious as my friend Clare who did the challenge last week, who rightly said that buying Tesco Value products is not very ethical. This already shows how the cycle of poverty continues, as to buy the cheapest produce you need to take advantage of the exploitation that creates the cheap supermarket prices. Nevertheless, I went into a big Tesco and looked for things that could feed me for 5 days that would cost as little as possible. I didn't think I spent much on food normally, but realizing how expensive stuff actually was gave me a bit of a headache. Especially fruit and vegetables were not budget-friendly, in comparison to all the fill-up carbohydrates that were in my price range. I tried to include a reduced (!) piece of broccoli but it was still 0.69, which wouldn't have worked unless I substituted it for at least 3 other items; yikes. So it seems cheap food is also quite unhealthy: a small apple and a carrot a day definitely don’t cover your five-a-day. I was ecstatic to find a pack of green tea that fit into the fiver; it doesn't have much caffeine but the perspective of not being able to have a hot drink for 5 days really stressed me out. I also stretched the rules a little bit and used leftover vegetable skins and ends that I usually store in a plastic bag in the freezer, trying to make up for the fact that we don't have a compost and also to make veg broth out of. The skins and ends actually contain a lot of good stuff, so I'm hoping this will help at least very slightly with my vitamin intake. The broth is very simply made by boiling the skins and ends in water and cooking for about an hour, then sieving them off. I also added a few garlic cloves to make it taste a little better. I tried to do a similar trick with the vile Tesco pasta sauce, frying some garlic and adding the kidney beans, but it still tastes pretty awful. So basically, I eat porridge in the morning, an apple at 11, some rice and split peas cooked in the leftover veg bits broth for lunch, a carrot at 5ish, and some pasta with thin sauce for dinner, + tap water and up to 4 cups of green tea. After almost two days I'm not wildly hungry at all, just a bit bored, and tired. I also had to refuse a few sweet offers free stuff (homemade lemon cake my

All this is not a personal development challenge, though. Apart from highlighting the issue and learning whatever you can learn from it, its point is to raise money for anti-poverty initiatives. You can choose from a variety of organizations you may want to raise funds for: Global Poverty Project, Salvation Army International Development, Think Global, Results UK, Restless Development, SAFE (Sponsored Arts For Education), International Service, Christian Aid, Methodist Relief and Development Fund (MRDF). I chose Positive Women because I had the amazing opportunity to meet its co-founder Kathryn Llewellyn at an activist training for Tea Time For Change, and I was extremely impressed with the kind and amount of work she was doing with her organization. Both Positive Women and Tea Time For Change deserve their own blog posts, which I hope to deliver in the remaining three days of the challenge. I'll also hopefully post about how focusing so much on eating so little does not seem too unfamiliar to me, and probably any other woman, although being well above the poverty line it's for entirely different reasons that we are so scarily used to doing it.

In the meantime, if you could sponsor my efforts, and by that support women and children in Swaziland, that would be really, really great. You can do that at my sponsorship page: http://www.livebelowtheline.org.uk/martalucysummer. Any amount would be kindly appreciated!

Living Below The Line (£1/day for 5 days)

2011-05-22T00:16:00.003+01:00

This May (31st May - 4th June as I'm staring this a bit late) I'm going to be living below the line: for 5 days I'll be surviving off just £1 a day for all of my food and drink. The rule is that everything has a price, so items I already own/am given for free also count towards the £1. Aside from rent, bills, etc I will try not to spend any money on anything else, in a still imperfect simulation of what it would be to survive on such a tiny amount of money. It seems so much tougher but cooler to do this instead of going out and getting drunk after my final exams are over.

It's definitely going to be hard, but it's an awesome way for me to raise money and awareness for the 1.4 billion people who have to live like this every day - and who have to make £1 cover a lot more than just food.

I chose to raise money for Positive Women, a charity set up to empower women and children in Africa, starting with Swaziland. Their work focuses on supporting women to change their own lives and circumstances. They support them and their families in projects that will help alleviate poverty and make significant social change. Through education of their children and HIV/Aids orphans, through women-led income generation projects and through legal work, Positive Women is helping the women of Swaziland and their families secure their basic needs, and empower them to secure a different, better future. Positive Women has reached some of the poorest communities in Swaziland and has already had significant and far-reaching impact on the lives of thousands of women and children.

Please donate to support me, and critical anti-poverty initiatives. Also please consider joining up and doing it yourself; it's a worthwhile initiative.

http://my.livebelowtheline.co.uk/martalucysummer

I will blog about the experience after I'm done here on Women, Fire & Dangerous Things. I'll also write a bit more about Positive Women, their mission and activities in Swaziland, where they empower women to change their lives and the lives of their communities. Their focus is in particular on HIV positive women and children, on HIV/AIDS prevention education and also on removing the stigma associated with the virus.

Here's also what Positive Women are saying specifically about the Live Below The Line campaign: “Live Below the Line highlights this generation’s biggest challenge – to help 1.4 billion people out of absolute poverty. Positive Women has seen what small amounts of money and support can do, long term, for these communities. It’s vital, particularly now, that we give our support and help to those most in need. That’s why we’re taking the challenge”. (Read more: http://positivewomen.org/?page_id=783)

This should be a good opportunity to get out of the final year at uni + a load of personal issues lethargy that has led me to think about posting but never actually posting in the last few months. Regular service should resume very soon; apologies.

+/- 1,000 words on the new feminist movement

2010-11-25T15:44:00.001Z

This is an article I wrote in early September for a new online magazine that apparently never launched. It was supposed to be about the new feminist movement, and it mentions Kat Banyard (founder of UK Feminista) extensively as she kindly agreed to be interviewed over Skype for this. I already briefly mentioned her book The Equality Illusion: The Truth About Men and Women Today in the review of UK Feminista's Summer School. Banyard was also profiled in The Guardian around that same time.

Women earn 23% less then men. The conviction rate for rape is only 6.5%. 1.5 million people have an eating disorder, and 90% of them are female. During the 1990s the number of men paying for sex acts has doubled. One in four women will experience violence at the hands of a current or former partner. And that’s all not in the third world, but the UK.

Ever since feminism existed, in whatever shape or form, there’s been arguments that its mission is done and hence the movement outdated. Virginia Woolf (!) in 1938’s Three Guineas claims that ‘since the only [women’s] right, the right to earn a living has been won, the word [feminism] no longer has a meaning.’ The illusion that equality has been achieved persists: nowadays, when a widely read liberal paper runs a story on feminism, the comments underneath are shockingly aggressive and sexist, the mildest insinuating that whoever wrote the article was transported back to 1969 in some homemade time machine. Oxford University Press’ Short Introduction to Feminism stops around the turn of the millennium. Women got the vote, women can work, they’ve got the pill - what else could they possibly want?

I’m sorry to break it to you - feminism is not finished. Actually, I’m not sorry at all; but whoever wants to believe that the world they inhabit is fair and free will have to reevaluate their standards, and that is never a pleasant thing to do. Some people claim that women in allegedly developed and great first world countries should stop ‘moaning’ and instead focus on the enslavement of women in Islam. What? Do you think that’s a valid response to the fact that Harvard President Lawrence Summers believes that there are fewer female scientists because of the ‘innate’ differences between the sexes, or to the UK government’s recent emergency budget, where 72% of cuts will be met form women’s income, as opposed to 28% from men’s? Yeah. If you think for more than 30 seconds, you should agree that feminism is not just another piece of 60s/70s/80s/90s nostalgia. It’s a real necessity in 2010. And it’s not just for women either: according to Kat Banyard, recently profiled in the Guardian as one of the UK’s most influential feminists, if you believe in the inherent dignity of people, in justice and human rights, then feminism is for you.

Banyard is the author of The Equality Illusion: The Truth About Women and Men Today, a carefully researched study that takes an interesting shape of an ordinary day in a life of British women. Issues begin as early as 06:56 am with Waking Up To Body Image, continue through the morning with A Gendered Education and Sexism and the City, turn to Coming Home to Violence and A Night Out in the Sex Industry, to culminate with Bedroom Politics at night. Banyard’s focus is incredibly broad, which makes her work even more impressive. It only took her 9 months to write the book, and apart from researching academic journals, she conducted case studies, finding individual women who agreed to speak to her about their experiences. She is not a theorist: everything she writes about is deeply rooted in reality. And exceptionally, it reaches much further than the bookshop. Banyard believes that academia and activism have to go hand in hand, and so she used the advance on setting up UK Feminista, an organization that brings together feminist activists, campaigns, and organizations. It only started in March, and with no external funding, already in August UK Feminista ran a free feminist activism Summer School, an amazing training and networking opportunity with panels, workshops, and talks for experienced activists as well as complete beginners in fighting gender inequality. It generated a huge buzz online, and proved that the book+organization initiative is symptomatic of a wider upsurge in feminist activity. As Kat Banyard told me when I briefly interviewed her, despite the huge amount of stigma that has grown around feminism in the last decade(s), change is happening. There’s been a steady growth in activism at a grassroots level: more groups, more blogs, more websites, more marches, more conferences. More feminist publications came out in the last twelve months than in the last twelve years (Catherine Redfern’s and Kristin Aune’s Reclaiming the F Word: New Feminist Movement, Ellie Levenson's The Noughtie Girl's Guide to Feminism, Nina Power's One Dimensional Woman, Natasha Walter's Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, Sheila Rowbotham's Dreamers of a New Day, or the recent and hotly debated Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cornelia Fine). It all shifts feminism back into the center of the political debate so policymakers, the media, and all sections of society have to pay attention.

Local London initiatives abound, from big organizations like London Feminist Network (its huge annual conference Feminism in London happened on Saturday 23 October; review here), London Third Wave, Equality Now, OBJECT or two London branches of the Fawcett Society, to specific campaigns like LASH (London Anti Street Harassment) or Hollaback London/ Hollaback UK, a dozen of local groups and Women’s Institutes like Shoreditch Sisterhood, Feminists of Hackney, East End W.I. or Feminist Societies based around universities at Goldsmiths, UCL or LSE; and even groups for men: London Pro-Feminist Men’s Group, White Ribbon Campaign, or the newly launched Anti Porn Men Project, ran by young male activists who oppose the aggression and sexism in pornography. Launched in mid-September, this initiative ties in perfectly with what Banyard believes is a crucial condition for feminism to advance: the involvement of men. ‘The future of feminism depends on focusing on the role of men and masculinity. We need to change what it means to be a man’, she said when I asked about feminists who have inspired her most, and she listed academics Robert Jensen and Michael Flood alongside famous US PhD Rebecca Whisnant. Hopefully the rise of the new feminist movement means that the stereotypes around man hating and marginality will disappear, and we will all accept that women’s issues are everyone’s issues, and sexism harms all genders. And that doing something about it is awesome, and as valid as it ever was.

----

In other, more recent news, this Saturday is Reclaim the Night, an annual national march in London to say no to rape and all forms of male violence against women.

"A recent survey by the young women’s magazine More in 2005 found that 95% of women don’t feel safe on the streets at night, and 65% don’t even feel safe during the day. 73% worry about being raped and almost half say they sometimes don’t want to go out because they fear for their own safety.

In every sphere of life we negotiate the ...threat or reality of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment. We cannot claim equal citizenship while this threat restricts our lives as it does. We demand the right to use public space without fear. We demand this right as a civil liberty, we demand this as a human right.

According to the British Crime Survey (2001) there are an estimated 47,000 rapes every year, around 40,000 attempted rapes and over 300,000 sexual assaults. Yet our conviction rate is the lowest it has ever been, one of the lowest in Europe, at only 5.3%. This means that more rapists were convicted in the 1970s when Reclaim The Night marches first started than they are now. Did you know that the maximum sentence possible for rape is life imprisonment? Probably not, because rarely are rapists even reported or convicted, let alone with a realistic sentence. This situation has to change.

We march to demand justice for rape survivors."

Reclaim The Night
Saturday 27th November 2010

Assemble 6pm, Whitehall Place (near Embankment tube) for women-only march followed by mixed rally and party at the Camden Centre, Euston till late. All welcome.

Men can support the Reclaim The Night march by joining the London Pro-Feminist Men’s Group solidarity demonstration. Meet by the Edith Cavell statue, opposite the National Portrait Gallery at 6pm on Saturday 27th November to make your protest against violence against women.

http://www.reclaimthenight.org/
http://www.facebook.com/?sk=events#!/event.php?eid=156359841057661

I will be visiting Nadine in Glasgow this weekend so sadly neither of us can come, but we will no doubt stage our own mini march in solidarity.

Feminism in London 10

2010-10-31T21:42:00.001Z

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!

Courtney Love FTW

2010-09-02T22:17:00.002+01:00

Courtney Love played Warsaw last week at Orange Warsaw Festival - I went to the press conference she gave backstage, which was exciting as hell.

I was never into grunge at all, but I can’t disagree with Rolling Stone when they say Courtney Love is the most controversial woman in rock history. Widely known not so much for her own career, but for her husband’s suicide, she is the object of hate for legions of his fans, and an object of admiration for those who actually listened to her music and lyrics, appreciated her role as a style icon, or just the fact she’s been creatively active for 25 years. She is just as likely to appear on celeb gossip websites and in tabloids as she is on esteemed music blogs. She’s in her 40s, and still an iconic bad girl, transgressing a dozen social norms at a time. Pop culture loves spectacular troublemakers. The more the public hates her, the more symbolic she becomes - but with so much more class and artistic credibility than similar figures who have emerged in the last decade. According to feminist Rachel Shukert, she has the guts to be just as nihilistic and self-destructive as a man, knowing all along that the world, instead of praising her like a genius, will crucify her and make everything her fault.

As Shukert says in her brilliant essay, telling the story of her becoming-a-feminist-lightbulb-moment, Love is no one's role model but she still changes lives. She has, above all, no shame. She says or does what she wants, genuinely not caring what people will say. She's the kind of person always described by the press as 'troubled', her every action being reported as the final condemning proof of her disgusting lifestyle, threatening the morality of the rest of the world. And she would still flash her tits on tv, post semi-nude pictures of herself on twitter, rant all she wants, and above all, continue to write and record. Aged 12, she applied to join the Mickey Mouse Club and was rejected after reading Sylvia Plath's Daddy for her audition. A most recent controversy is that surrounding her loss of custody over her daughter, venting on twitter insulting everyone involved, then on Frances Bean's 18th tweeting a 'crazy-ass incoherent 35-tweet rant', expressing out-of-control, contradicting, yet undeniably sincere emotions. I think there's no doubt that she's crazy: hard childhood, years of substance abuse, personal trauma; but you know what - she isn't trying to pretend like she isn't. She's out there just like she is, crazy, conflicted, troubled, whatever. She's not acting like it's all great and a piece of cake. People naturally hate that: it's disturbing, shocking, and also real. Love isn't scared of being real, whatever it can mean. That's why I may not get what she's about, but I admire her greatly nonetheless.

It was incredible to see her in real life. She was really pale and really skinny, unhealthily so, kept smoking compulsively and jumping from one digression to another, occasionally making little sense. What was incredible though was how confident and calm she was in all that. Much more vulnerable than onstage, but still totally unafraid to be who she is. Piotr Metz, the festival's creative director, asked her about a Pearl Jam cover she played in Paris, and here she's replying to that, sort of, at the same time talking about a million other things:

Further questions were not up to any standard - what do you expect from the Polish public, playing here for the first time? Why aren't you headlining, is it a conscious decision? Were you upset by the reviews of Nobody's Daughter? And Love answers, in a totally reasonable way, even if the questions are inane or designed to intimidate.

I really wanted to ask her about her daughter, but felt it was way too painful and personal. Love mentioned sexism in her previous answer already, talking about her manager and how she's the only female artist he manages; so I asked her about the current state of feminism:

I'm not entirely sure what she was saying about the lunch she was having with another feminist, nor what she said exactly about her daughter in the beginning (I didn't catch it on video, but I think she said Frances Bean doesn't identify as a feminist, yet she recently made a bunch of feminist statements), or why the Credit Suisse bacchanal story was there, but it's really out of order how the interpreter then mistranslated the entire thing, saying that Love believed feminists were unattractive. What she said was that the connotation for the word was still negative, that 'we who wear heels and lipstick' can spell it femme-inist to make it sound more classy and French, but for most people, a feminist is still an unattractive woman. She also said she believed she was the last woman standing from her generation. She said she passed Kathleen Hanna in the street in New York the other day ('who has grey hair and runs a salon'), and they didn't say a word. It was sad.

I should really read Courtney's 2006 memoir Dirty Blonde before I say any more underreasearched stuff.But let me just mention Rachel Shukert's Nice Girls again, which is definitely worth reading, whether you care about Courtney Love or not. For a gist-of-the-story shorter reading, see Standing Up For Courtney Love And Outcasts Everywhere by Anna North. That's only the tip of the iceberg of controversy, but shows some fucked up and sexist shit that women who dare have to deal with.

UK Feminista Summer School

2010-08-04T23:11:00.005+01:00

I ecstatically posted about this as soon as I found out: UK Feminista, despite only existing since March 2010 and operating wholly through the work of volunteers, organized 'two days of feminist training, explaining and gaining', a FREE event on feminist activism in London. Held at Amnesty UK, it was overbooked and a visible 99% of the 350 registered attendees came. Nadine and I were moving house that weekend, which made it a bit difficult, but I skived off for some time and went as Women Fire's delegate.

Maybe the most amazing feature of the event was that it provided genuinely fun and interesting talks for activism beginners and veterans alike. Despite many cautionary remarks that 'we're preaching to the converted', it was far from redundant to hear statistics, learn skills, and absorb enthusiasm from various speakers. Just from listening I felt so inspired I started taking notes for future endeavours/involvements/articles and frankly, nothing beats that intense feeling of wanting to do something RIGHT NOW, and being given some actual tools as opposed to just walking up and down the room reeling from frustration. It's also refreshing to be able to talk to people who despite very different backgrounds and occupations share your views, and you don't have to defend yourself before you even finish making a point. Also very important is the realization that your power lies in numbers, and there are those other people out there - so if you organize, you can actually achieve something, and you really should try.

UK Feminista was started by Kat Banyard, author of The Equality Illusion: The Truth About Men and Women Today, who gave a particularly inspiring speech during the first panel The Importance of Feminist Organising: that more and more grassroots feminist movements are emerging, despite the general society's claims that equality is achieved and there is nothing else to fight for. Banyard's book dispels those myths, displaying research of amazing scope proving that gender inequality is still a serious issue. She pointed out that after a 'ten year drought' we had 'six feminist books in the last 12 months', and that publishing trend was definitely reinforced by an upsurge in actual activism, from NGOs and local groups, in form of blogging as well as marches, campaigns, demonstrations. In a stark contrast, perhaps the most cited statistic of the weekend had been about women taking about 70% of the consequences of proposed budget cuts in the UK. On the same panel was Gwendolyn Sterk from UK Joint Committee on Women, who reported that of the four sister organisations from across the UK that made up the Committee (Engender, network of women’s organisations in Scotland, the National Alliance of Women’s Organisations (NAWO) in England, Women’s Voice in Wales and Northern Ireland Women’s European Platform) only three were still operational: Women's Voice in Wales was recently denied funding and its future is uncertain. Women's issues are widely seen as a fringe, as something marginal 'real politicians' don't have time for. Actually thinking about it, most people probably don't realize women's issues are everybody's issues. And allegedly there are more men called John in the Parliament than women - sounds like a joke, right?

The enormous strength of the first day of summer school was its focus on practice. The afternoon was split into workshops on different levels of involvement: from how to run a feminist group to how to organize a Ladyfest, on running effective campaigns, organizing demonstrations, creative campaigning and direct action, using gender equality duty and other laws to promote your campaign ends, or what to look forward to in the feminist year ahead. If that wasn't amazing enough, all the materials fromt he workshops will be available at the UK Feminista website in the coming days. Simultaneously to the events, UK Feminista volunteers were tweeting, providing good quote selections and links, and doing it so well I didn't even feel the need to take many notes and instead have that online record of what was being said. I encourage everyone to go through the resources grouped under the #femschool hashtag on twitter (you can view it even if you don't have an account yourself), and to have a look at the materials when they're posted on UK Feminista - where in fact you'll find all kinds of useful info on local groups, campaigns, feminist links, and also discussion boards. A goldmine of news, information, and also people! What struck me about the event, aside from supreme organization, was the enthusiasm of everyone involved, organisers and participants alike, and the general friendliness - people were chatting away and forming new alliances all the time. After the event ended, UK Feminista volunteers announced they were going to dinner somewhere nearby, and everyone was welcome to join - in the end, about 20 of us went to a Vietnamese place on Kingsland Road to spend another 2-3 hours exchanging stories. I was about to go home after that, when on the way to the bus stop we passed a strip club, and someone said we should sticker it with the Sexist Shit and Feminisn't stickers we got earlier in the day. As a result, an ad hoc feminist action happened, and the next day the club's email address was still enhanced with a Sexist Shit note. All this was filmed - I hope to post the videos soon. That relatively small action made us feel so inspired for at least a couple of people who were going home to fall down on a couch instead found a nice pub to sit down in and keep talking to each other. There's no better feedback for an event than when people just don't want it to end.

The second day was a lot more opinion- and discussion-based, but great training was still being given: from how to use the media to how to influence politicials (theyworkforyou.com to check who your MP is and what they're doing), how to fundraise, include disabled people in campaigning, promote diversity within feminist groups, and why is climate change a feminist issue (I'm especially looking forward to the materials from this to come up online as I missed it, attending using media instead). At lunchtime there was a stand up show from Lynne Parker of Funny Women (which I shamefully missed getting actual lunch - I hope there will be videos). Two arguably biggest events of the day, however, were the opening and closing panels with Big Names. Women in the Media was led by Jess McCabe of The F-Word and had Hannah Pool (ex-Guardian/freelance journalist) and Kira Cochrane (Guardian women's editor). All three talked about their experiences with the media (including a funny, but actually quite depressing story of how Hannah Pool set up a white male comments account as Harry Pond and didn't get any of the abuse she did get as herself). Only 18 of 100 people on media's most influential list are women, and out of 18 national papers one has a female editor, reported the panel, and the recounted experiences were more or less along the lines of challenge and hardship (but also some hope). Pool's story exposed sexism and misogyny on the Guardian's website (cause just because you read a lefty paper doesn't mean you can't be sexist..), but also instantly motivated people to get their opinions out there, whether working in the media or not, just by presence and comments. Granted, under the excellent post-summer school write-up from Bidisha there is already a sea of disgusting, disgusting comments. Just asking people whether they were feminists is a very revealing question, and an important one to ask. Someone from the audience tackled the enormously important but very unpublicized issue that most instances of ageism in the media are in fact straight cases of sexism. All panelists agreed that to be a female journalist takes more effort and more talent, but through their examples showed it was possible, and important. Exposure is crucial for a greater awareness and understanding of feminism, so every publication counts - in all types of media, not just ones targeted at liberal audiences. Also platforms brought forward by web 2.0, like commenting facilities on all media sites, as well as blogging, facebook, twitter - it all counts and helps to change people's minds.

That first discussion was heated, but mostly in unison - the closing panel, Feminist Question Time with Bidisha, Dr Aisha Gill (Roehampton University), Sunder Katwala (Fabian Society), Karon Monaghan QC (UK Feminista) and Julie Bindel, provoked a lot more controversy. Julie Bindel said there was a lot of terrible anthropological research, particularly concerning women in the sex industry, and that they should not be treated as an anthropological field research group, but that there should be good quality social research instead. She went as far as saying that if she had one bullet in the gun, it would not go for the pimp, but for the academic who's all into the sex industry. Dr Aisha Gill was talking a lot about how the media essentialize women and in cases of trafficking for example, create stories of 'good victims'. Both raised a lot of comments and if it wasn't for time limits, this could have gone on forever. Interestingly, one of the questions on an earlier panel concerned dealing with disagreements within the feminist community. There isn't really an answer for that, just as there isn't one for tackling antifeminism, especially when it's displayed by women. There had been attempts to give advice on this (watch a video of this question on femblr), but all, in my opinion, failed: 'just being on the girls team' is a really not that simple, it's a slogan that doesn't help much when you face women who are misogynist themselves, nor does it when faced with super offensive comments (like those under Bidisha's article). Julie Bindel said 'we make a lot of excuses for men to the point where we praise them for not being fuckheads', which made everyone laugh, but about five minutes later someone angrily said from the audience that the men (there were a couple in attendance) must feel very excluded in the current talk, to which both Bindel and Bidisha reacted heatedly. As @inspirewithhope on twitter remarked, it was sad to see gender binaries reinforced in most of the conferences - people kept talking about *both* genders, *both* sexes, as opposed to all of them. The sex industry came up a number of times, but without a clear and visible designate - prostitution, trafficking, porn, strip clubs were all mentioned, but those issues are so broad, and the sex industry comprises of many more branches, each deserving an analysis. Not saying that sex industry doesn't hurt women and isn't a product of inequality, but these matters have traditionally been massively controversial within the feminist movement and that variation of opinion was not addressed at all (like the mixed stance on pornography, and the emergence of what could by some be called 'feminist porn', or pornography for women - see a previous post). However, overall I am inclined to say it was the best summer school I ever attended - really inspiring, a great opportunity to learn as well as meet people, and acquire skills and information to proceed with conviction and fury. 'We've had wave after wave of feminism; we need a tsunami of feminism. Mass civil disobedience is the only way they'll listen.' 'There's not a central office for activism, you have to do it yourself.' 'Feminism is about social justice and basic human rights... Of course we still need feminism, that shouldn't even be a question.'

More feminist summer school coverage:
UK Feminista official summer school resources (including some of the presentations)
Kira Cochrane's article 'Feminism is not finished'
Bidisha's commentary Women's mass awakening
Radio 4's 'Exciting time' for British feminism with Kat Banyard and Gaby Hinsliff
Discussion post with summer school reflections, links to blog posts, etc
review on Daily Feminist Action
We Mixed Our Drinks review
At Home blog
Notes on a Campaign by Delilah
femblr video with advice on countering antifeminism

More links:
Equality Now
Women's Aid
Womankind
Eaves
Fawcett Society
Southall Black Sisters
Women Against Violence
Justice for Women
European Women's Lobby: Centre on violence against women
Pink Stinks
Ladyfest
Strom In A Teacup
The Girls Are
OBJECT
Lash campaign

all photos by Kirsty McCall-Thornley (Flickr / Twitter / Blog)

NEXT CONFERENCE: Feminism in London

I'm going. Register here!

Iriarte Iriarte online shop

2010-08-04T16:07:00.001+01:00

Just to let you know, Carolina of Iriarte Iriarte who I last posted about just opened an online shop for her bags (and wallets). Check it out at iriarteiriartestore.bigcartel.com!

Iriarte Iriarte

2010-06-08T00:27:00.005+01:00

Iriarte Iriarte is a shop/studio/atelier of leatherwork in Barcelona. It’s ran by Carolina Iriarte, who makes the bags, belts, wallets and other leather products by hand on site. She also completely manages the business, is her own PR manager and all that. The place is set up on two floors - the current collection is on display on the ground floor, and overlooking is a tiny mezzanine where she works at a sturdy desk.

The first time I went, Carolina immediately noticed my bag - one I found in my grandmother’s old stuff. She was so friendly - as soon as I entered the store, she put down her work, came down the steps and chatted and explained things about the bags. I made a mental note to do more research and come back for an interview - and so today I did! A big thank you to Carolina for a nice chat.

Carolina moved to Barcelona about three years ago from Argentina. She first came to visit at 18, and called her mother saying she loves it and is staying for good. In the end, she went back and completed a degree in art with a focus on theatre direction and production, counting days till she can move. Her sister was already in Barcelona. The two started working together on the project.

Marta: Not only is your shop also your studio, but you often hold events here.
Carolina: Yes, I like to have stuff happening. The space has only been open for a year - we’re having a big party coming up to celebrate this in about two weeks. Before we had a concert - I have many friends who make music, and a collection presentation - a very elaborate one, almost a performance. A number of people were dressed up and doing different things around the store, there was a bride with a bouquet of flowers, people going up and down the stairs, sort of like playing little scenes.

M: How did you find this place? According to the Sight Unseen article on Iriarte Iriarte, ‘fate intervened’.
C: No, not really; we were looking for a place to work. And this one became free..
M: Was the district of Born a conscious choice?
C: Yes, this is traditionally an artisan street, and though I don’t really think of myself in these terms, it’s a commercial area with nice little streets, people walk around here a lot.

M: Another article said it was unpopular for young people to pick up traditional trades, like yours - so you are close to a traditional artisan in a way.
C: Well, yes, it’s all handmade, it’s a pretty traditional material. Before I worked on shoes as well, but now I have no time, so I concentrate on bags. I did make two dresses for this collection, too - they’re not in store, but there are some photos on the website. I might make more, but at the moment, I do everything, literally everything myself. That means I basically have no life of my own!

M: What was it about Barcelona that initially made you so keen to stay?
C: First of all, my sister was here, but I also found an art school which seemed amazing, and it became my ultimate dream to go there. Then when I came back, already with a degree, I enrolled and it was completely not what I was expecting. I did a year there, before I started with this project, and by now I’m pretty sure I won’t be going back.
M: And so you learned to make purses and other things yourself?
C: Pretty much, yeah, I started cutting things out of paper, seeing how they would look in 3D.
M: That’s totally incredible, especially that all your designs look like you are working against a strong tradition, modifying old patterns.
C: My mum is a complete fanatic when it comes to shoes and purses, and so am I. So I always bought loads of purses, usually vintage ones because I rarely liked contemporary ones. I’d pay attention to the type of leather, the colours and all..
M: Is it true your bags are inspired by the schoolbags you used to have in British school in Buenos Aires?
C (laughs): Not entirely. I did have an old school schoolbag, but a lot of my inspiration comes from films. I love old films. 30s films, where they have a lot of leather stuff, luggage and things.. But not necessarily bags themselves, I find a whole film’s aesthetic inspiring. Like Truffaut. A bit Nazi, a bit naive.
M: So what are you planning on next for Iriarte Iriarte?
C: I’d like to have more exposure for the dresses. I made two models that are sort of similar, but really very different. A girl who was interning here helped me with the making of them. I used to make my own clothes when I was younger, my mum gave me a sewing machine for Christmas when I was 15 or 16.. But those are part of the collection, it’s a totally different thing. I prefer making bags, though. I do everything by hand, including dyeing the leather, that’s why no two bags have the exact same colour. But I do it with special dyes, so that the colour won’t run when it’s raining. Everything is done here, in the studio.
M: In plain view of everyone!
C: Yes, but I see them, too! I can see whoever comes into the shop, observe from above. I have a panoramic view (laughs).
M: Going back to the leather, does it bother you that it’s an animal product?
C: It does! I’m vegetarian. It’s a weird contradiction, that I like working with leather most. I try to justify it, it’s still more eco-friendly than plastic bags, and the product is long lasting. The animal is not killed for the skin, it’s killed for the meat that someone else will eat, and I just use the skin and give it a beautiful form..
M: Did you think of making vegan products as well?
C: I did, I’d love to, in the future - right now I’m struggling to keep up with the work I already have, and to make the effort worth the prices. But it’s certainly something I’d like to do.
M: Do you sell a lot?
C: I don’t need another job, so I guess I sell enough! I like making things, so it’s great I can live off it.
M: How did you get so much good press? New York Times, The Guardian...
C: By complete coincidence! The editors just happened to come by. Nothing is definite, but I might get retailers in America, Sweden, maybe London.
M: Not Argentina?
C: They love my bags there, but it’s super expensive with shipping, and people work more but earn a lot less there.
M: Would you say you make things in a specific style?
C: Everyone interprets it their own way. I thought it would be a more defined public, but in the end it’s all sorts of people, I regularly have old grandmas come into the store and ooh and aah over the bags. That surprised me a lot! But when I design, I always make things that I like, I don’t think of any target audience.
M: What advice would you give to someone who wanted to start their own business?
C: To actually do it! If you have an idea, act on it. It’s always scary, you don’t know if you’ll have enough money, if it’ll all work out, or that it will be hard at the beginning. But once you’ve done it, you’ve done it, it’s something you want to do. It certainly gave me a feeling of being independent and free.
M: Working with leather is a traditional trade, and a male trade, too. Also, 50 years ago it wold be unthinkable for a woman to just open a studio and run it herself. Do you think about what you do in a feminist perspective?
C: It’s true, working with a hammer and tough material that hurts your hands, it’s supposed to be male work. It’s not my primary motive, but yes, I do think about it.

At this point a woman walks into the store. Carolina greets her and tells her to have a look, points to the bags that can be made in different colours within two weeks. The woman walks around, looks at various bags and asks if that’s the only store in Barcelona selling these.

M: Does this make your bags even more special? That each one is unique and you can’t buy them anywhere else?
C: Also because of what we already talked about, that it’s all handmade, and I make it all here, in a studio open to everyone. That creates some sort of trust, and you can always come back here, see the progress of the work.
M: It was mentioned in one of the articles that you design ‘the old way’.
C: Well, the forms really aren’t that traditional. It’s a long way from design to finished product. I think about the whole collection first, how I want it to look all together. Then the making process, I guess that’s traditional, they’re made the same way they were being made before.
M: And you draw inspiration from toys, too?
C: Yes: toys, old cars, also military uniforms.
M: A bit Nazi, a bit naive. A vegetarian, but working with leather.
C (laughs): I never thought I was so extreme!

M: Do you take a siesta?
C: The store officially closes from 2pm to 4pm, more or less. I sometimes go home to eat, but mostly run errands. The siesta phenomenon surprised me a lot when I first moved, I would go out wanting to get something done only to realize everything was closed for a few hours in the day..
M: And do you still travel a lot?
C: Yes! Then the store is closed, but travelling inspires me a lot - people, architecture, everything. I might go to Berlin this summer, my friend just moved there, and she’s not totally settled, but I’d really love to go, I adore Berlin.
M: Favourite place to visit?
C: Berlin! And Lisbon. I like Portugal a lot, my boyfriend is Portuguese.
M: Dream journey?
C: Russia and China! On one of those five-day trains. I’d like to see somewhere that’s completely different in terms of language, people, culture - a total change.
M: Do you think you’ll stay in Barcelona for a while? Or are you sometimes tempted to go back to Argentina?
C: Argentina - not right now. I’m definitely not going to stay in Barcelona forever. I’d love to try Berlin, and maybe before that Madrid - I like it, and I think I could easily continue what I’m doing; people respect efforts like that over there.
M: Any chances for an online shop?
C: I hope so! I just can’t seem to take photos that are accurate enough. A friend of mine who does all the photos for me is great, but it’s not the kind of picture you need for an online shop. I sell stuff through email sometimes. But it would be easier if there was a ‘buy now’ button on the website. And also, it wouldn’t be the same thing - it’s so satisfying to see people come into the shop, find something they like, and see their faces light up. It’s a wonderful feeling.

You can find Iriarte Iriarte at the atelier (C/ Esquirol N°1, 08003 Barcelona, Spain), or online (official website / facebook).

All photos, save for the first and the last, are Carolina's. Thank you!