#132 Sophie Walker - 5 Rules for Rebellion

Sophie Walker Talks to Lisa Marie

LM – I’ve heard Pragna Patel talk many times about how activists, feminist activists, have to fight on many fronts and there is a need to find a way through all of this to a place where we can be as effective as possible.

I feel that your book, Five Rules to Rebellion, acts as a guide to becoming active and can accompany us all along the way and is particularly useful with finding their activist feet and call to action and encouragement to take part.

Can you share something with us about how the book began to take shape in your mind and that moment you decided – I’m actually going to put pen to paper here.

S – Thank you and I’m really glad it chimes with you the way it does. 

The book came about after I stood down as the then leader of the Equality Party. I had been in that position for about 4 years. It was a period in which the political landscape had changed dramatically. I had been a campaigner for about a decade by then, I was pulled into it by discovering my daughter’s autism diagnoses and the realisation that we were not going to get the support or understanding that she really needed.

It was from that space that I then became interested in, specifically feminist activism and feminist campaigning because I was starting to see the multiple ways that my daughter’s autistic experience was dovetailing with the sex discrimination that she was also experiencing.

That’s how I ended up in the space in the WEP (Women’s Equality Party).

We started in 2015 with a real sense of joy and optimism, we were catching a wave where people wanted to talk about this stuff and push it into top line politics. 

Feminist activism, political feminist activism in the UK is well and healthy and has been for a very long time.

When we launched as the first feminist political party, the first party founded on feminism, it was just so exciting. Then Brexit happened and the country split on all these additional political fractures, Trump was elected, misogyny, sexism, a real hatred of women, it felt like it began to be, not just something that was acceptable but something you could proudly align yourself with and vote for it.

I was out there in that environment for really only a few short years, they felt very long and the experience of repeatedly going out and doing TV debates with a misogynist in a nice suit who would debate with me how much equality it was acceptable to give to women, was really quite punishing.

I also began to understand through that experience, that I was a white middle class woman talking about one tiny corner of feminism and also to understand the additional layers of support that women from minoritised communities needed in order to step into that space and be supported and safe.

So I stepped out of WEP and wanted to work out how I could be useful in other ways.

I was really tired and felt very burned out and felt quite sad but I also felt – how do I put this experience to good use? 

One of the ways was to set up Activate which is a political form to support Black and disabled women and women from low socio economic backgrounds, to stand for political office and the other was to write a book to make sense of what I’d been through. I did take a few months of lying on the sofa with the curtains drawn thinking – what on earth has just happened to me? – and trying to work through what activism was how you could do it without ending up dispirited, tired and burnt out.

That was when I realised that activism was actually a philosophy for life and not a series of pitched battles and if I could pin parts of that journey, I might be better able to connect back to that community to that cycle of activism and support others to understand the various phases that we all go through and how we can support each other through that. 

LM – I think this idea that we push and push ourselves and at some point our body or our mind turns round and says – stop for a bit now. You emerged from that, you’ve written a book – Why the word rebellion? I particularly like that.

S – I think because women are encouraged, so often, to play nice, to be diplomatic, to be kind. That’s not to say you can’t be a kind rebel. But there’s something in the way that women are told to participate in the world which too often tells us to try to go along with the broken systems to the best we can, to fiddle with them a bit, to mend the bits we can, to make do with them the best we can, to try and make some friends to enable us and maybe one or two others into that space. What we really need to do is get rid of it and start again.

I think the ‘Rebellion’ was very much about a expressing a need to not accept what absolutely is not working for women.

LM – I have these discussions with myself all the time – working within the system, outside the system, is it revolution we’re looking for – I think Rebellion encapsulates it. I think we need women rebelling inside the system and outside the system. The best is when we’re all pushing in the same direction with similar goals.

The other reason I like your book is it speaks directly to the audience, it says – come and join in – I really like that a lot.

I would like to explore each of your 5 rules for rebellion.

Rule 1 – Defeat despair: I hear a lot about how easy to get lost in a sense of hopelessness. There’s an onslaught of things coming at us from all directions and this crisis of democracy, as Sarah says in your book, politicians don’t care, that is a widely, increasingly prevalent view and alongside that Yomi Adegoke says – It’s crucial to remember that women are not born felling less than but if you’re continually treated that you are, you eventually internalise it. Imposter syndrome is a logical outcome of a world that was never designed for women to be successful.

You say the important first step is to recognise those external factors that make us feel so hopeless.

Can you share how to go about recognising them and more importantly, how to move beyond the constraints they place upon us as women?

S – I don’t think anybody would have too much difficulty recognising them. We are living through one of the toughest experiences that any of us have lived through. Shining a spotlight on the inequalities of all of our systems and entrenching them in fact. I talked about the change in the political landscape and the rise of the populist strong man who hangs onto power by pitting us all against each other so that he himself avoids scrutiny. I think that what we should try to understand is that the problems that we’re facing are immense from whatever your immediate personal experience is to the global environment or the technological challenge that we all face. There’s a whole list of huge world problems and when you put them all together they can seem mind bogglingly enormous and us as a bit small and weedy by comparison.

I think that activism essentially is hanging onto a big vision of hope and breaking it down into very small actions every day. When I wrote the chapter about defeating despair, what I was trying to say is – the fact that you despair means that you are actually still connected to the world. You haven’t switched off; you haven’t given up. You’re feeling despair precisely because you do still want something more.

That spirit of refusing to accept that this is all there is, is wonderful, it is the ultimate spark. You have to remember that there are people who rely on your despair to keep you silent and powerless. What they haven’t understood is that despair is unfulfilled hope and hope is an enormously powerful tool for activists.

So it’s very much about seeing where your despair will take you rather than thinking that despair is a dead end.

LM – One of things that has helped some of us enormously is that connectivity and being in it together.

I’m going to ask you to read Page 47 –

S – ‘If you’re reading this and wondering how to accrue a signature strength, don’t worry, you already have it or your passion will lead you to develop it. Maybe your friends have been too polite to point it out. What you may feel embarrassed about as personality faults at home might actually be very effective in activist circles. Your awkwardness, your difference, your lived experience. Put them together with a curiosity of how your experience compares to other people and you’re on your way. You might have been holding off in the hope that somewhere, somehow, someone is coming to the rescue. No one is coming to the rescue. Get that fantasy out of the way. The fact that nobody is coming to the rescue means one thing. It’s up to you now to save yourself. Welcome to your liberation.’

LM – Are you going to do an audio version of the book?

S – Yes, it’s out there

LM – Rule 2 – Channel the Rage: This is my favourite rule. There’s a quote by Athena Stevens who says – Anger is sometimes the only healthy response to the injustice in this world – 

As a woman in the public eye you are acutely aware of the public response to female anger and you say that our anger is dismissed precisely because it is female rage, then with the sum of these experiences of dismissal and you connect with that anger in a productive way.

S – Any feminist who has been called a man hater knows what this feels like because from the moment you start to express your desire for women’s liberation and freedom of choice, your detractors and those who are worried sharing their power, will try to immediately make this a personalised attack on you or a sex based attack on you as in – this is not a reasonable request because it’s coming from an unreasonable person so the attempt is always immediately to make you small and to make you meaningless and to make you an object of ridicule or disdain. Essentially that you’re the problem, not them and certainly not the system.

But what you can find comfort from that is that their discomfort is because you’re demonstrating that the system isn’t working. Your anger is the red blinking light on the emergency board that they are scrambling to try to switch off because it’s signalling that change is coming.

I have experienced all kinds of rage among many women who have a voice on social media and have experienced all kinds of appalling threats to me and my family. When I’ve been out campaigning I’ve had people cross the road to spit at me and shout at me and I have had men threaten me in person. I had a very scary experience last year when my house was attacked multiple times. I’m not trying to be Mary Poppins here, I’m not trying to be little Miss Sunshine, I’m not trying to say – never mind ladies, let’s all try harder – what I’m trying to talk about here is the fact that this response to a request for freedom and respect is so violent, almost the violence of it itself acknowledges that the systems don’t work. That’s not a reasonable response.

I have worked really hard to try to recognise that other people’s anger at what I’m saying, I do try to continually check and assess that I’m being reasonable and I’ve done my homework by making space for other people and other people’s ideas. There’s a fuel there, you can see the impact that you’re having. Channel that anger you feel because it’s an energy and essentially it’s that energy that is going to keep you going.

LM – I’m really sorry for what you’ve been through and other activists too. I take comfort from the fact that the women’s liberation movement is rising up again and I think we’ve adapted very well to the need for on-line meetings and what have you. The organising hasn’t stopped; the activism hasn’t stopped.

I think it’s really poignant when you say – you wished you had expressed more of your anger.

S – It’s constant battle when you’re a public figure. I’ve always sought to be honest about who I am and what my motivations are. I’ve also tried to be honest about where I might have made a mistake or where I would like a bit more time to consider stuff, which is really hard to ask for. When you’re in the public eye you’re supposed to have all the answers and having been in the public and trying to say, I might have got that wrong or can I have a bit more time to think about that, is really hard and I spent a lot of time really trying to be diplomatic and to keep myself and my heart and my mind open. On reflection I wish I could have protected myself a little more and maybe just said – this is unreasonable behaviour and I’m not going to accept that. I think I was trying really hard to be good and sometimes ended up hurting myself as a result. 

LM – I like that you recognise that the original second wave text was full of fury. Read Andrea Dworkin, rage oozes out of the page.

Rule number 3 – Wield hope as power:

We must all have hope otherwise what are we fighting for. We have to believe that change is possible – just to say I’m in awe of the work being done by women for women at a grassroots local level and women are full of hope in the face of huge adversity.

You’ve put in this chapter about meeting Gloria Steinem and trying to find a way to understand and utilise hope without being overwhelmed by it.

What can we take form her answer to you that we must behave as if everything we do matters because it might –

S – It was excruciating meeting GS. I was so overwhelmed both by meeting her and also the responsibility of the role I found myself in. it was a very embarrassing encounter.

I would sum this is up as – when you say you’re a feminist, certain people get angry and upset and try to dismiss you. When you say you’re an optimistic feminist, then it’s – oh god she means it.

I think there’s something ruthless and relentless about being hopeful that absolutely smashes down barriers in a way that I think nothing else really can. They can take everything from you but they can’t take your hope.

LM – You’ve managed to sustain that hope?

S – Always. I used to be a marathon runner. It taught me about endurance training and it taught me that you have to put in in order to produce and give stuff out and that endurance is a matter of training.

Hope is a bit like that, you have to train yourself to be hopeful. There’s very few of us who are lucky enough to be born with that sunny optimistic disposition where you go to bed everyday thinking – what good things await?

Especially doing the work that we do. The experience of so many women is not a particularly hopeful one.

The hope I’m talking about here is something really gritty, a determined hope that challenges and it is quite steely.

LM – The hope that things could be different. That they should be different, that can be different. They will be and we are contributing to that in some way.

Can I ask you to read page 106?

S – ‘In 2018 after the first 3 years of WEP included an EU referendum, a snap general election, multiple local elections, a mayoral election against a backdrop of growing hate crime, division and political confusion, I made a promise to myself to be an optimistic feminist. I chose those words deliberately because I could see I was living through a time that required hope almost more than anything else. In these times, hope is our greatest support, hope is our strongest armour. You can’t conquer a person who has hope. When everything around you seeks to make you despairing, angry and lonely, hope is the ultimate act of joyful revolt.’

LM – There’s something incredible about hearing women reading their own words.

Rule number 4 – Collaborate with compassion:  One of the many things I admire about you is that you do seek to work collaboratively to great effect. I think this is a particularly necessary skill when we talk about grassroots women organising that relies heavily on volunteers’ time fitted in with rest of life everything that the world throws at women.

I want this question to focus on the compassion part of this rule.

You say ‘empathy is about caring for others but also caring about the movement’ so what do you mean by this?  How does that perspective help us to navigate the collaboration part of this rule?

S – The point I was trying to make there is that it’s really hard to share your idea with other people but it’s also very vital in order to start marching. A movement is not one person, it’s many, many people and I’ve seen so many good ideas struggle to get off the ground because the person who had that idea either doesn’t want to share it or finds it very difficult to get feedback and that’s totally understandable. Many of us have felt that way, particularly in the area that we work because we bring our lived experiences and those lived experiences are often those of hurt and pain and difficulty and it can often feel as though a different perspective or challenge to an idea based on that experience is a criticism or a denial of that experience, which of course it’s not.

This is one of the things I have really observed, one of the things I have felt myself. I have walked out of meetings feeling bruised and hurt and forced myself to go to meetings and gatherings where I knew I was going to be challenged really hard and I knew if I was going to do my job, either as the leader of WEP or someone who basically wants to be a useful feminist and productive to achieve social justice by whatever means, that I had to take that stuff on board.

Where it stops being so helpful however is when you lose the theory of change aspect and this is the point about protecting the movement. There’s a difference between consciousness raising and discussions with empathy to where it becomes an exchange of feelings because at that point you’re selling tickets and giving people seats rather than marching and activism is not therapy, it’s about changing the world and you have to keep moving in order to change the world. That’s the point I was trying to make, that you have to be able to listen and be comfortable with being uncomfortable and you have to always understand how this fits into the bigger movement and the change that we all want to see. 

LM – When a woman said – consciousness raising informs activism - that was a light bulb moment for me. Consciousness raising has to lead to activism. 

I like in your book where you say – you decide your cause then you work out what your piece of the jigsaw is, you are never the whole picture, you are only a piece. I think it’s important for women coming into the movement – find your piece, think about your skills, think about where your passion lies and that’s where your best work happens. 

S – I totally agree with you. It’s always nice to talk to people you agree with. 

LM - Rule number 5 – Practice and Perseverance: 

Here is where you explore staying power and what you initially assumed this entailed for you and what you found with trial and error and worked best for you were different in some way. Can you share your wisdom with us, there’s much to be done and any wisdom on staying the course would be much appreciated. Women who haven’t ventured into activism yet but they will do now. So, how do we stay the course?

S – One of the most important things that I feel very strongly about is the understanding that you’re part of a movement and you’re part of a circle and you can persevere and persevere but there will always be times that you need to rest and that’s ok. There will be times when you’re absolutely on you’re A game and you’re holding it for somebody else who needs to rest and there’ll be other times when you need to rest and somebody else is going to be out there killing it, so that’s a really important part of it.

Perseverance also means supporting your activism through rest. It isn’t about throwing yourself against the next hurdle and the next hurdle, it’s about understanding that what you’ve signed up to is a philosophy for life and that there are many ways to persevere and we all of us don’t feel like being out there in the thick of it all of the time.

I think the other thing to say is that self-care is incredibly important, looking after yourself is really important. What’s also really important is not to fall for – there’s just a lot of cynicism out there, a lot people trying to cash in on women’s ‘wellness’ with messages, if you listen carefully, are not terribly healthy, they’re actually saying ‘you have to fix yourself’ ‘do yoga’ or ‘drink green juices’ or ‘get a spiraliser’ because that way you will be the best version of you.

This isn’t about being the best version of you, this is about understanding that you’re up against barriers and patriarchal structures that are not going to be dismantled by signing up to yoga and green juices. Those are things to use to look after yourself but don’t be distracted by this idea that wellness is an individual experience. Wellness is women’s liberation; wellness is women’s equality. There’s a much bigger thing going on here, don’t let the marketeers distract you.

LM – Please read Page 165 

S – Activism is trusting that the world can be a better place and loving the people who take this leap of faith with you. Trust and love underpin every rule of rebellion and every rule of rebellion adds up to a philosophy of life that will sustain us, no matter where in the world we are.

Activism is a state of mind. It’s the intention you set at the start of every day. Difficulties, setbacks and outright failure do not alter that intention to rebel. The hardest thing you’ll ever do as an activist is to commit to that. It will challenge you and test you. It will also bring you fully into contact with the world and with the very best people. the biggest hopes and dreams and the widest spectrum of human experience and it will sustain you like no other decision. The only thing left to do now is to commit.

Declare yourself an activist, join the rebellion of everyday, extraordinary people who want to make something better. Here’s my hand, together let’s change the world.

LM – A perfect ending to a wonderful book. 

How has the response been to your book?

S –It’s been good. When I launched it I was really looking forward to doing a book tour and meeting people and hearing from activists and learning about what’s going no across the Nations but we went straight into lockdown so the challenge has been to keep in touch in other ways. We’ve been doing a lot of work through Activate, the organisation we set up to support women to run for political office which also supports community activists. It’s been really lovely to speak with people who are Activate supporters and have applied for local grants through there. That has really helped me in learning what’s going on and the challenges that exist.

I’ve had some really lovely messages from people who have said the book has encouraged them and has been practically helpful. That to me is the best. I really wanted to try to create something that would sustain.

LM – Questions that women have sent in: Were there any rules that you had to leave out?

S – There are too many rules for women as there are. I did hesitate about calling this ‘rules’ because there are so many rules we should be adhering to. So the short answer is ‘no’. Apart from the stuff that didn’t make it into the book. I had other rules like basically to keep myself out of trouble like - don’t drink and text – don’t drink and do social media – they weren’t big rules for rebellion they were more my little rules how to keep going really and to try to be sensible while the world seems noisy and chaotic and pulling at you.

LM – Another question: what has been the highlight of your activism? You can have more than one.

S – I hesitated about saying this, it sounds as though I’m taking credit for somebody else’s achievements but one of the most wonderful moments over the last 10 years has been watching my daughter get her ‘A ‘levels and go to Art school. This amazing child who was told so many times in so many ways that she wasn’t of value and she didn’t have a place, who, nevertheless went out every single day to make a space for herself in the world and to show being autistic is different not less. Watching her, after all of the work that we did, shoulder to shoulder to take on the system, watching her fly has just been amazing. I owe her so much I terms of what I’ve learned from my daughter and what she continues to teach me about compassion and integrity. 

LM – The last question: You’ve done so much already. What is the future for Sophie Walker?

S – You tell me. How can I be helpful? What have you got for me? How can I help? I just want to be helpful, possibly in a more behind the scenes way than I have up until now.