#104 

Raquel Rosario Sanchez from FiLiA in conversation with Cherry Smiley - fighting for the liberation of Indigenous women and girls.

Raquel: My name is Raquel Rosario Sánchez, and I'm the spokeswoman for FiLiA. Today I am honoured to speak with Cherry Smiley who is a feminist activist, artist and researcher from the Nlaka’pamux Navajo Nations. She has worked as an anti-violence advocate in a rape crisis centre and transition house for battered women and their children, as an assistant coordinator for a drop-in anti-violence group, for indigenous girls and as a project manager for the National Native Women's Organization, she speaks locally, nationally and internationally on sexualised colonial male violence against indigenous girls and women. 

She's a co-founder of Indigenous Women Against the Sex Trade and was a recipient of the 2013 Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Person's Case and the 2014 winner of the Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy.

She's currently a PhD student at Concordia University where her research work works to end sexualised male violence against indigenous women and girls. 

Cherry, thank you so much for joining us. How are you? 

Cherry: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate getting to speak with you and all the work that you and FiLiA does. So thank you for that. I am doing pretty good. Thank you. How are you?  

Raquel: I feel great to speak with you. It’s always great to connect with women who are doing fantastic work around the world. 

There is so much that we would like to speak with you about. So let's start with an exciting new project, which you have recently launched called Women's Studies Online. You write that Women's Studies Online seeks to put women back in where women’s studies become gender studies. So tell us a little bit about its mission and what inspired you to set it up. 

Cherry:  I'm really excited and I'm really proud actually of this initiative that I'm working on. I'm so fortunate to have some other amazing women pitching in and helping us to live the dream. 

 This came about, you know, it was years in the making, I went through my undergrad degree, I did a Master's in Fine Arts and then now I'm doing this PhD. 

So I've been in school for a long time as part of academia, I guess when I started, I thought I could make some wiggle room for myself and that I could find a way to do the research that I wanted to do in a way that made sense to me. And that that's kind of true. I am doing the research that I want to do in the way that I want to do it. 

The consequences of that are actually really quite serious in terms of my reputation being harmed and all kinds of false statements made about me and these kinds of statements circulating in academia.

It's not that I've lost hope in education, it's just that I don't think right now the university as a structure and as a system will allow for women to do feminist research for women within its walls.

So, we listened to Renata Klein who is incredible. I love her and what she's done. And she talked about how when women's studies was getting off the ground in the seventies, I guess, that there was a few reasons why we've ended up now with gender studies.

And so one of those reasons was that there was quite a debate between feminist scholars in universities about whether to continue with women's studies as an entity in itself and to keep women's studies as a department or a school, as something separate, or should the goal be to integrate women's studies into the university as a whole, so that you wouldn't have a women's studies department, but you would have women's studies, principles and theories integrated into all of the other departments and like history, communication studies, whatever.

So, the women who wanted an autonomous women's studies lost that battle, unfortunately and that's kind of where we are today. If we think about it politically, I think that's the strategy that we need to be following in terms of separatism.

So how do we create spaces for ourselves where we can educate ourselves and we can express ourselves in the ways that we want to and strategise to achieve our political goals as members of an oppressed class. 

So, I'm seeing Women's Studies Online as kind of trying to imagine what might have happened if the argument to keep women's studies autonomous had won out.

I've done lectures, been invited to do some guest lectures into a gender studies course or whatever. And generally when I'm doing a lecture, I'll ask what the students know about second wave radical feminism in particular and it's always the same answers. ‘It's exclusionary, it's racist, it's bigoted’. Just a total dismissal. And, then I ask: ‘so tell me, tell me specifically what theories or what women writers are you talking about when you're making these kinds of claims’ What I've seen over and over again is that these students have been taught to dismiss radical feminism without really actually engaging with it in the first place.

And so Women's Studies Online is also trying to answer the question: What would happen if we valued women's work, feminist work and we built on second wave radical feminist theory and action instead of just dismissing it.

Raquel: It’s fascinating that you talk about how students are encouraged to dismiss it before even reading it because it's similar to a lot of what I encountered when I was teaching women's studies classes in Oregon. I found students who were very passionate about how exclusionary and how sort of discriminatory and outdated, mainly how outdated and kind of on an undercurrent of scholars who have focused on women and girls like there was an emphasis on how outdated these ideas were because they centre women and girls.

But when you actually delve into it. it’s tied to how we're taught to dismiss sort of like women's knowledge has an expiration date. Whereas there are still people 200 years later talking about Karl Marx but meanwhile Sheila Jeffreys or Carol Pateman or even Sexual Politics, that is just too old. It was written 30 years ago by women, it expires, whereas men's work is eternal. So, thank you so much for saying that.

 What has been the reception to Women's Studies Online? 

Cherry: Oh, it's so exciting. It's so exciting. I'm excited. I think women are generally excited. I think that it's something that is needed and I think that the more of us that are willing and able to say, this is how this is how we're going to do it. We're going to do this on our terms. We're going to conduct research and we're going to educate ourselves and we're going to organise ourselves in feminist ways that serve our purposes as a political group of women. I think the more of us that do that, it helps. I hope it helps other women to see that that's an option because I think there's a lot of different aspects or different ways that women are encouraged to dismiss feminist theory, for example.

But I think that by kind of taking a stand, as you're doing as well, and speaking on our own terms, I think that it can be really difficult for women to know that they have the right to say no and the right to have boundaries. 

Just as a quick example, I was doing a group, and in this group, it was a woman only group and we were having a discussion and every once in a while the conversation would, ‘well, what about men?’ Or what about the men? And yes, it's awful of course men are harming and hurting each other. Yes. But that's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about us and it was like, oh, okay. And then we would just get right back into it. So it's when we, I think publicly are able and willing to give ourselves permission as women and other women permission to ask for women only space and to create it for ourselves and maintain it and to do that with a feminist politic, I think that that's something that I hope will be helpful. I know that when I've seen other women do it, it helps me.  

Raquel: That's so beautiful to include that. Thank you, Cherry and to defend those boundaries once we set them. 

I have a question for you. So you are an indigenous rights campaigner focus on centring women and girls’ rights. And you've touched a little bit briefly on it. Could you tell us a little bit more about what has been your experience going through the academic system? What has been your experience in academia? 

Cherry: What academia has really tried to teach me is that I'm wrong. So everything about me is wrong. I am the wrong woman. I'm the wrong kind of woman, the wrong kind of Indian, I have the wrong politics. I express myself in ways that are wrong.

We know that that's the general message that women are taught from the time we're born is that we're deficient, there's something wrong with us. When, in actuality, it's the systems and the structures that we're born into that are the problem. Not us. 

So I can more clearly see now that messaging, I do think it was always there in academia, but perhaps it wasn't as visible or maybe my consciousness wasn't raised to the point that I could kind of see what was happening.

So it's been a struggle from the very beginning. I do think that what I've learned and the amazing things that I've learned have been in spite of academia as opposed to because of it. I know when I started in my undergrad and it continued until my grandma left here.

I would write an essay and I would read my essay to my grandma over the phone and so if she understood what I was talking about, then I knew that I was writing clearly enough and that I was able to clearly explain a concept or an argument that can be quite complicated. 

 I'm just speaking generally, academia makes these claims about being inclusive and, you know, community, community, community, especially in Canada, we see a lot of indigenisation and decolonisation, claims by universities.

But what they say and what they do are two very different things. And what I see happening in universities for example, is a focus on culture and displays of culture, dancing and singing and those cultural practices. And that's great. That's fine. That's great. but that's the easy stuff, right? That's the surface stuff. 

 If I think about the example of reading my essay to my grandma and making sure that I'm writing clearly, and knowing that that if she doesn't understand, it's not for her lack of intelligence, it's a reflection of my own inability to communicate clearly.

 And so if we think about universities, we're going to make this cultural space and we're going to do smudging and we're going to have a beating circle and do all these, these ‘cultural activities’ but we're not making sure that students are reading their essays to their grandmas so that their grandmas can understand, right. Because there's still this, you know, it has to be complicated and that the more complicated and the less sense you make in your writing somehow the more intelligent you are in academia.

So it really is a very surface, a very superficial attempt at universities to try and say, well, we can make dream catchers and this is how we're indigenising as opposed to actually examining the patriarchal roots of academia as a system itself. 

Raquel: Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. The question is, well, why does it have to be complicated? Why does it have to be that the more complicated it sounds the better. And I think that this is something, this is a very distinct difference that I have found between some texts in Women's Studies versus the text that I encountered in queer theory.

And it's almost as if the early proponents of Women's Studies, they wanted to be understood. They wanted to be understood by the women that they were talking about. And it almost seems as if with the institutionalisation of identity politics, the more complex that you sound, the more you can pretend to have or show an appeal to authority. If I use these massive words, then people are going to think that I'm smart. And if you don't understand it, it is because you're not smart enough to understand these arguments. I think Karla Mantillawrote an excellent essay on it, Let Them Eat Text, and it was about postmodernism and how by obscuring the message it was about to the authority of this is so complex that you cannot even understand it therefore you have to rely on me as the authority to tell you what to think about this topic. 

I myself do the same as you. The same sort of mental exercise is the work that I am doing something that my grandmother would understand? Is this something that my sister would understand, is this something that I can explain to my friends, my family, the women in my circle, because if it's not, then why am I doing it? I think that a lot of academia has become, or maybe it was always meant to be the way, but it's very interesting to see how a disconnect from the material realities and conditions of people is seen as a virtue rather than as a bias. 

So you've touched on the disparity between indigenous communities and identity politics because essentially by highlighting culture, as opposed to tackling the structural aspects of colonisation and patriarchy and racism by highlighting culture, then you're not really sinking into tackling the structures.

It kind of sounds like maybe that's the easy band aid. Do you see any sort of space being carved out to actually try to address tokenisation that you see within academia?

Cherry: I don't, I don't and I wish that I did. It's not so much that I'm losing hope in universities, but it's that I'm just that I can see more clearly the structures and the inability I think of women at this time really get in there and break down that structure from within it. I don't see it.

I'm trying to finish a PhD. And so it's a bit contradictory. It messes with my head a bit. I think this way now about academia, but at the same time, I'm jumping through their flaming hoops still.

When you asked, why, why does it have to be that way? I think we all need to be asking that question all the time. 

Education itself, I think, is so incredible and that can take so many different forms.

It doesn't have to look like a university. It doesn't have to look like sitting in a classroom. Just some dudes, a long time ago, decided that this is what education looks like, and this is how it's going to be. And then they just did it that way. 

I think at the end of the day, it's all very arbitrary on one hand and on the other hand, very calculated to keep women out of having any ability to really shift that structure from within. Maybe in the future, I hope, that would be great. 

I do have hope eventually that we will get to a place where women are not just represented within the patriarchy but that women have actually been able to defeat that structure. And we we're able to create a world where we relate to each other differently, not the ways that we have now. And that's hard to imagine. 

What I see in in academia, and so if I think of another example, so in university, we'll learn about all these statistics and research and these studies about the circumstances of indigenous women and girls in Canada. The very high rates of male violence, of poverty, of criminalisation and incarceration, mental health, issues, addiction issues, just the whole spectrum from A to Z.  There's a lot of issues that indigenous women are confronted with constantly whether themselves or being confronted by a family member or a friend.

So we learn about that in school, kind of, and then the university's solution is let's make dream catchers. So I guess I'm wondering for example, why there aren't sexual assault centres on university campuses, I think they need to be women only for sure and they aren't, but you would think that there would be some effort there given the very high rates of men sexually assaulting indigenous women, that there would be an understanding that this might be an issue disproportionately for this group of students. So let's try and make sure that we have some understanding of colonisation and how these very real issues are impacting the ability of indigenous women to be successful and to stay in school and to finish and we can apply that if we think about poverty, if we think about mental health, all these other things but that doesn't happen.

So it's let's address the fun stuff. So here, put some beads on this bracelet as opposed to, let's really try and look at these really, really violent damaging structural issues and recognise that this is happening and we know it’s happening because we read about it in books and journal articles. But there's not a connection made between that journal article and that indigenous woman that's standing right in front of you. 

So I think what I see a lot in university, and I know people have a lot of different ideas about this, there is, at the end of the day, in certain circles and academia is one of them, where identity politics as you've mentioned has allowed for certain identities to carry more weight or to have some benefit, within those identities.

And so in Canada we see that with many different individuals claiming indigenous identity because they self-identify and they say, they are, so they are. So I think there's a lot to be said about the issue with self-identification and the very kind of neoliberal, individualised way that, that works.

Raquel: Self-identification of sex? Not of self-identification into like oh, I actually identify as Canadian so that I can have a Canadian passport, but it's like the only self-identification that is actually acceptable is into women's rights.

Cherry: Yeah, I, yes. Yes. And what I see in Canada is I see people whose Great. Great, great, great, great, great, great. Grandma was a Cherokee princess, for example are identifying as indigenous. And so what you have, often, is the indigenous kind of scholars who are able to be successful, a lot of times, are perhaps further removed from the impacts of colonisation and are more likely to be successful and can play the game better.

I know when I started, I was like, oh, I don't want to play the game so hard that I forget that I'm playing the game. But, I was like, oh no that's not going to happen. The women around me won't let that happen in terms of me making me making sure that I'm keeping my feet firmly on the ground. 

Raquel: You're critical of prostitution as an industry and you are also critical of gender identity policies, you've talked and you've written about how you were the first woman in your family to get a PhD in an academic environment like Concordia University. 

Do you think that the backlash that you have received, your presence has received at Concordia University, going through these institutions would be different or there would be no backlash if your politics were different, could it be that if women in similar positions to you who say yes, we support the pimp lobby, yes we think self-identification is wonderful, are they having a great party and you're out of it because of your politics? 

Cherry: I would say 100%, 100%. If I were to say that I believe sex work is work and that trans women are women. I know that I would have doors opening, opportunities coming in from all areas instead of having doors slammed in my face and being treated as if I'm a pariah or this violent bigot. So it is very much a club that I don't want to be a part of and I know you don't want to be a part of it either and we like our, our feminist club here.

At the end of the day, it really is political disagreement and I was actually reading this morning an edited book about prostitution in Canada. And I keep seeing this coming into play where, and it's like, we went through this! Women have written and talked like extensively about feminist research and what that looks like and what I see is the university and academia in general, deciding that because we are critical of prostitution and because we are critical of gender that we're biased and therefore our research is not valid because you know, we're biased and research needs to be evidence based and objective, you know, and all of these kinds of statements that have been ripped apart by feminist researchers already, but here we are again, not even back to square one, but we're like at square negative one, where we're trying to say no, that our knowledge is valid and how we come to know what we know is valid.

So it makes it really hard in a lot of ways to further our thinking, because we're, we're being put in this position where we have to defend our right and our ability to say what we know and how we know it and have that accepted as valid. 

Raquel: I think that what you're touching on is a matter of humanity because if you think about it, the men, the male sex are allowed to be a presence in academia with all sorts of ideas and contradictory ideas. And even one scholar can have one idea in 1990 and then in 2010 could have a different idea and they sort of get to exist with all of this viewpoint diversity. There are so many men in academia that get to state controversial positions but they get to experience the academic experience without it being a constant upward battle that you're mentioning, then you're not really accepting of indigenous women into academic spaces, you're accepting some indigenous women into academic spaces, as long as they promote certain ideas. 

Cherry:  Yeah. As long they agree with, as long as they agree with you and as long as they say what I want them to say, then you're welcome.

Raquel: As long as you promote the sex industry and look at the context of it, you know, in Canada, the sex industry is made in large part. I mean, the violence of the sex industry prostitution is being inflicted in large part against indigenous women and girls. And so, what it is saying is if you are an indigenous woman who is willing to say, but this is acceptable, and this is to be celebrated, this industry, which is harming the women and girls in my community, this is actually very empowering. As, as long as you say that, then you will have joy time in university. But if you don't, then your life will be hell. Then that means that you're not really accepting of women. You are accepting of some women, as long as they promote a political perspective, that advances your own views. so thank you for sharing that, it goes to the heart of the matter. 

You wrote and you're an excellent writer, precisely on this point called: Trans Women are Women or Else, and you write about the consequences for women when we don't tow certain lines and you write:

‘no woman owes anyone a justification as to why she dares to say in public no less that she and other women matter, no woman should ever be asked or expected or feel pressured to reveal to anyone the hurt men have caused to her to justify her analysis of issues that impact her. Even when we decide to share accounts of the horrific male violence so many of us have lived through, we do it in our own terms and for our purposes, Sisters, we are accountable to each other as a community of women who organise together for women's liberation. We do not owe anyone an apology or an explanation or a justification for saying that we are not menstruaters, we are women. And we matter, we will continue to describe our bodies and realities as we know them to be’.

Could you tell us a little bit about what the reaction has been to you stating that in your academic community? 

Cherry: Oh my goodness, it didn't go over well, it hasn't been well accepted at all. At the end of the day, I don't get it. I don't think there's anything hateful or violent or anything about what I wrote, and I know we've talked about this before, but I do think we can see connections there as indigenous women and women of colour, particularly that we get constructed as just inherently violent, inherently savage or scary or threatening when we disagree.

What we see happening is just this reaction that really plays on those sexist and racist stereotypes and ideas that just by basically saying, I am a woman, I am naming myself, I'm using the language that makes sense to me to describe my experiences as a woman and I'm going to continue to do that: that becomes comparable to the Holocaust or genocide. These, these actions that have just been horrific and targeted hate and violence, male violence towards particular groups of people for reasons that are incomprehensible and invalid.

It's such a way to gas light women as well. Because it's like you are being told now that you're the one that's hateful and you are the one that should be ashamed of yourself.

There have been some reactions telling me that my relatives should come in and speak to me as if I'm out of line that I should be ashamed of myself that the community and even my grandmother would be ashamed of what I've written. That one stung a little bit, to be honest, but it only stung for a little bit. I was like, oh no, no, no, I know my grandma would be very proud of me for saying what I think.

So, the reaction is when we say these types of things and we hold that line and we don't give in because it is one thing to come out and say it, and it's another thing to hold that position. When I was writing that I was actually thinking about JK Rowling.

I've been following that a bit, but I had read her short essay and I felt angry on her behalf just because I've seen this happen to so many women and we see it with prostitution a lot, for example, if you disagree and you'll say, no, I think prostitution is inherently a form of male violence against women, people will say, well, you're not a sex worker, so you don't have an opinion. And so, what that does is it pressures women to reveal things about themselves that maybe they don't want to, maybe they haven't come to terms with. Maybe they just don't want to share that. And, and we shouldn't have to share that.

What happens is then, for example, a woman may say, well, you know, I am, but then you're the wrong kind of sex worker. So it never ends. It really does become about, again, we're put back to square negative zero, where we have to argue for our right to stand where we're standing and to share the knowledge that we have and have that knowledge accepted as valid.

It's just always about us and not our ideas and our analysis and our thoughts. So the response is so often very mean it's mean it's personal, it becomes about your characteristics, you as a woman are a bad woman for X, Y, and Z.

It's not about, oh, okay, well, I really, I disagree with what you've said here, because I actually read it, I disagree with you on here, here and here.  Those discussions can get heated. That's cool. That's fine. But it really, I think, that that goes back to this idea that we’re just wrong no matter what we say, how we say it, it's going to be wrong because we're women and we're feminists. Women do see that others see that and it can be really frightening and isolating when you see other women losing jobs or losing opportunities having their reputations put through the ringer for saying something like, I'm not a menstruator, I won't refer to myself or other women in that way. It can be really scary. 

But at the same time, the more of us that do it and share what we're thinking the easier it is for all of us. And I think for me, and what I see with Women's Studies Online as well was how important it is, I think if we're just looking at prostitution, for example and gender, how important it is that we are looking at those issues in the context of women's liberation.

Part of that means is that we need to be exposed to and have access to all of this incredible writing that feminist women have done before. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. I think it was Audre Lorde, she said ‘there's no new ideas, only new ways of making things felt’. 

That's true. we're not alone in our thinking, even though we may feel like it. I really do think that making sure that we're always looking at these issues which are particularly controversial, but any issue, I think that disproportionately impacts women negative ways, to make sure that we are looking at that issue as feminists I think otherwise we very easily can get led astray down a path towards conservative right wing ideologies that aren't at all invested in women's liberation. 

Raquel:  Well, thank you for sharing that. 

I've seen some of the comments that the article that I just cited has received, and some of the comments were saying ‘this is harmful and violent. This is aggressive.’ This is, it's hard to read it. It's like, you have to take it down. You have to apologise for it. I have to say a lot of it feels like there's a mean girl culture about it, a bully mentality that is fermented on this issue in which people are encouraged to prop themselves up by denigrating a woman.

You know, if I single out Cherry as a horrible violent aggressor then I sort of put myself on a pedestal as if I was a virtuous person. 

And for example, a lot of what I have experienced similar to what you described. A lot of what I have experienced has been done by British white women or white people. And it was only after I understood it, that that was coming from a place of jealousy, a place of  envy of my talent, my drive, my power that I sort of was able to understand that these people think that by singling me out as a horrible aggressor,  that my talent, my power, my drive is going to rub off on you. It's like, no, it's not going to rub off of me. At the end of the day. You're still a mediocre person trying to drain the energy of someone who is more powerful and talented that you are. But there's this mentality being encouraged particularly on young people or people who by taking someone down by making their lives miserable, then I win. You win nothing. You're still a shit person or mediocre or whatever.

I saw some of that happening to you on that article and it really took a lot of strength in me to not say to those people, you know, you're not going to become talented and brilliant and gifted like Cherry is just by bullying her and abusing her.

But then there's a second aspect of it, which is the reification of the idea that indigenous women or women of colour, black women, there's a reification of the stereotype that all those women are violent, savages, uncontrollable, the stereotypes that says that women of colour are savages, violent savages that need to be detained, that becomes reified in dynamics in which our words and our ideas are construed as violent and harmful and damaging. When in fact we're merely stating something that is believed by almost everyone who inhabits planet earth. 

This is your analysis. I have to say it that this is your analysis that this dynamic serve to reify harmful stereotypes against women of colour. It's a bit like we're living in some, some topsy-turvy kind of times. 

So speaking on that topic, you are in Canada and the law in Canada has abolished sex-based rights through Bill C16 which was an act to amend the Canadian Human Rights act and the criminal code by replacing sex with gender identity.

Would you mind telling us a little bit about what has happened in Canada ever since? 

Cherry: Oh goodness. A lot has happened in Canada and sometimes it can be really, I think, confusing for women because well laws are colonial and the state is violent and it's so yes, yes. But this is what we have to work with. So, I think it can get really confusing for women, which is why I think it's so important that we are really digging into feminist theory. And because it just gives us a framework, it gives us a map.

It gives us a way to make sense of these kinds of issues so that you're not getting yourself all tangled up in knots trying to figure out what you think. And so I do think that laws and legislation send a very, a very powerful message. So in terms of how effective they actually are and how they are applied or not, I think is, is one aspect.

Another aspect is, okay. So what is this legislation saying about this culture and to individuals and groups in this culture. We've seen the Human Rights Commission used, I would say used I wouldn't say they were misused, they now have more ability to work according to their foundational principles, which I think are incredibly patriarchal and individualised. 

We've seen these Human Rights Commissions used against women for refusing to provide very personal services to a man who identifies as a woman.

I know that that case has been I think circulated quite a bit.

Raquel: Sorry, is this the case about the men who demanded that working class women wash his testicles? 

Cherry: Yes, that this was the case. What I see happen is that it's like, you can see how conservatives have kind of taken that and run with it. I see women who read about that case who are like, oh my gosh, this is ridiculous. Like what the heck is going on? And then find conservative or more right wing kind of media coverage. So you see that women are frustrated. They know that this is what the heck, this is ridiculous. So it's like how do we increase our reach so that women can hear and learn about and contribute to a feminist analysis as opposed to any other type of analysis.

At the end of the day other feminism is the only analysis, the only methodology, the only theory that prioritises women and girls. 

Raquel: To be fair the left has given gender identity issues as a gift to the right, essentially. They put a bow on it and then just gave it to conservatives. Conservative women are going to be impacted by the sex-based rights. 

Cherry: Yes. 100%. And I mean, I've been reading a lot rereading Dale Spender's Man Made Language, this was the book that changed my life. I remember when I was reading it as a young woman and I was whoa, it just like blew my mind.

And so Dale Spender, if you're listening, I love you. And I love your brain. We love you. We love you. We love your brain. 

It's a simple sentence. Spender writes here: 

‘patriarchy is an interlocking system with its psychological and material components.’

 And she goes on but just that it's like, yes, it's material, but it's also, it's in our heads.

Patriarchy trains us to think certain ways about ourselves and about other women. And so, there'll be women who are supporting a gender identity who believe that, that is real. And are helping that patriarch to become real. And like, to actually have consequences in the world but at the end of the day you are kind of shooting yourself in the foot there because that it has such serious consequences for women. Once we start believing that gender is inherent and gender is something that we're born with.

I mean, that's really scary. 

Raquel: It has consequences for women when we erase ourselves from being named like refer to women as menstruators or people with a uterus, but it also has very material consequences for a very particular group of women, the women who end up in prison, the women who end up in shelters.

If you know, in the back of my mind, I know I will never be in prison because I have the wealth or the power to sort of get out of whatever trouble I am in. Or I know that whatever happens to me, I will never be in a shelter then, Yeah, you can support whatever politics you want because none of that is going to affect you.

But that's going to have a lot of material ramifications of those politics which are felt by a very particular group of women. And I don't think that we can afford to just forget about them just because that's not going to affect us personally. 

Cherry: I completely agree with you. And we see that with gender. We see that with prostitution, even with women who are being abused in their homes, by their male partners.

You get these whackydoodle ideas coming out of academia to, you know, well, we need to ‘decriminalise domestic violence’ because that's a good solution. you know, we need to decriminalise the pimps and the johns because that's going to solve the problem of women being murdered by men who are paying them for sex acts, and we need to have prostitution everywhere so that everybody can join in.

And, you know, we have these gender feelings or gender spirit or gender, whatever that we're born with, but we can't actually describe it. And we don't really know what it is, but it's there and it's real. And now it's actually, it's real in legislation. So it's like, what the heck? like, what are you talking about? 

And so I do think that this divide and this idea of the ivory tower that's just, like the walls have become thicker. But we can't see them as easily now, where you have individuals in universities that are just so abstract and that these solutions it's like, okay, that's an idea. Discuss that idea.

But it's like, no, this is more than an idea. Like this actually real implications in the world for real women so let's, let's talk about it in that way. I know Andrea Dworkin work said, she had a quote where she was speaking to that and talking about how it can be fun to sit around and talk about prostitution as if it's an idea, and debate it, it's more than an idea. It's the actual penetration of women in their vaginas, in their mouths, in their anuses, and all of that, that comes along with it. That's what we're actually talking about. 

For women scholars, that doesn't protect you, having wealth or having access to more resources, doesn't protect you from male violence and doesn't protect you from patriarchy in any kind of way, but it can remove you a little bit where the issue is not right in your face and it doesn't have a face, for you. 

So when I think we're talking about prostitution or rape other forms of rape, they're not abstract issues because they have faces. So we see other women, we see ourselves reflected in that. And so it's very real. 

I do think that any woman who's doing research on any type of male violence in particular needs to have that experience of doing frontline work and doing it, because you know you really do.

When I worked at Vancouver Rape and Women's Shelter, that I got a lot of my education there. A lot in terms of how to work with women who've been assaulted by men, but also in terms of feminist organising and strategising and these types of things, I'm very fortunate to have gotten the education there that I got.

I do think that, and I guess that boils down to, what the heck are you doing? Like, what are you doing here? Are you in academia because you want to sit around and make up ideas about things that are like may or may not be practical and whatever, and then write books about it and sell your books and get a nice cushy job and just keep batting your ideas around for your own career, your own benefit, or are you here because you are actually trying to make a difference. And when you are actually trying to make a difference, you have to take a stand. You have to. To just to make a decision, for example, to say that men raping women is wrong. 

Raquel: Or perhaps a little bit trickier, like make a decision and say women have a right to single sex spaces, not just in the things that are conventionally in the public, we can admit rape is bad. But what about protecting women's boundaries? What about standing up to bullying? What about standing up to like all of these other trickier issues? You know, it's not just about when things are easier and it's also about the extension. 

Cherry: And even that though, it gets complicated because you know, it might be very easy for somebody to say yes, a man raping a woman is wrong, but if he pays her, then it's okay. Or if it's in pornography then it's fine. So it's all of these things, they do have all these tentacles and they connect to each other and patriarchy is just so insidious that it just kind of gets into everything. And then that's such a contradiction in universities who are ‘we're objective,’ ‘we're evidence based,’ blah, blah, blah, blah. ‘we're so smart we don't take positions’ 

Sitting in classrooms where you have individuals, students, scholars, you'll read something or there'll be a discussion about, I don't know, female genital mutilation as an example, they’re like, oh, that's in, that's interesting, it's like what? that's not interesting, that's horrific. 

Raquel: Oh. But you know what? I would rather people say, that's interesting, what my experience in some spaces, my interest in violence against women was dismissed as like, yeah, but that's been done or, we just always talk about violence against women. Let's talk about something else. 

I remember sitting in a classroom in which we're supposed to be women and girls and that type of stuff. And we're going in circles. We're talking about the research projects that we want to do for that term. And I said, well, I want to look at the link between human trafficking and prostitution. And I want to see what the evidence is on that topic and sort of like the reaction of the people in that circle was ‘we're tired of talking of the violence against women’. There was, not a lot of interest. And they said that it was sort of like done, you know, that it was boring, that it's like, we've done a lot of talk on that topic let’s do something else.

And then as the circle went on another person in the classroom said that they wanted to research why feminist porn would not feature fisting in their films and sort of in the whole like queer theory language of like, this is a form of erasure this is violence to not feature actual depictions the of fisting in feminist lesbian porn and everyone around the classroom just went like, ‘oh, that's fascinating. Oh, that's so interesting. Oh my God. I'm so excited about it.’ And it's like, I'm sitting right there and I'm like, ‘excuse me’ are we hearing the same thing? Are we all present here? Have you heard the reaction to my topic versus this other topic? 

 I received a lot of that and I'm very grateful that I'm in the Centre for Gender and Violence Research in which it is not questioned why is it that you want to keep talking about violence against women from all the women there. And I'm so grateful for that. All the women at that centre understand that male violence against women is real. I can name it, male violence, because it is male violence and that we need to tackle it and we need to research it.

And it is okay to be a campaigner who does work about it because that's kind of what you have to do on this topic. So I really respect that you come from a background of doing shelter and refuge work. I really respect that. I also come from that same background and I know how important it is to look at a woman, to sit down and look at a woman who is going through this issue.

And it is possible that so many of us have also gone through something similar than this woman and can relate to her and we can talk to her and we can have these conversations with her and try to be present while this woman is going through something extremely difficult. So I really respect women who get into academia from that background.

So I wonder, how has that guided your feminism? Did you come to the movement building aspect of activism and that kind of stuff? Did you come to that after working in shelters for women and their children escaping violence, or was academia sort of before? 

Cherry: Academia? I learned what I learned in spite of it. I think movement building, I was exposed to feminist literature in the last year of my undergraduate degree. Particularly I'm thinking of Dale Spender's book here. and that changed my life because it gave me a framework. It gave me a way to think about, at that time, my life and everything that had happened to me in my life.

A way to understand that where surprise, surprise, it wasn't my fault. I wasn't the cause, it's not because I was a bad woman or whatever. So it was liberating to gain that knowledge. I didn't have that knowledge. How would I have that knowledge before?

We're not born smashing the patriarchy, we learn how to do that and we learn how to do that together as women. 

I know women's studies initially started and it was very connected, grew out of the women's liberation movement. And so you would have feminist scholars working together with women who were working in shelters who were campaigning and would come and teach courses together.

I think it's that actual activism, we're going to do something with this research. If you're taking that route, then you're going to take a position. Your position will not include everybody because it can't. They're not research participants or research subjects, but you're working with women together to build something together. And women are going to bring something, things that you don't know, and you're going to bring things that they don’t know, and you're going to mush them all together and make something even better and bigger. 

And so I think when you look at research or education, that it's not just for its own sake. I feel like there, there's just not a lot of space right now in universities for that, there's a lot of talk about it. But you're not actually really allowed to do it. I'm wondering, I hope I can, I can read a poem. Can I read a poem? 

Raquel: Yes. Yes.

Cherry: So this is a poem that I wrote, my grandma, I was with her when she left, she would say kia nam, she would talk about dying. And it would mean that she's going on ahead. So if you were walking down the road and somebody's way far ahead, you would say kia nam. I think that's a nice way to pass.

So this is a poem it's called Kick Ass Grandma, a poem by Cherry Smiley, 

My grandma through rocks every year at the woodpecker who is pecking on her chimney. Because he was being too noisy, too early in the morning. 

My grandma went after a young, bald Eagle with a broom because he was staring at her grandchildren through the window at night.

My grandma threw grass snakes as far as she could by the tail. So they couldn't eat little birds, frogs. Okay. 

My grandma threw rocks into the water to shut the frogs up because they were being too noisy too late at night. 

My grandma would shoot a 22 in the air to stop the owls from hooting at her. My grandma said no way, she wasn't going to go into the woods by herself for days and fast.

My grandma dug a hole with her brothers and sisters at the old home place to make sure they had a place to go and hide in emergency. 

My grandma asked why elders don't just go sit in a corner then. If they don't want menstruating women walking behind them.

 My grandma wouldn't let grandpa forget that half of everything belonged to her.

My grandma gave advice like don't ever get married and always have money that he doesn't know about. And I find all men folks are problems somehow or another. And why is he being stupid Grandma? Because men are stupid. 

My grandma can never remember the, the Nlaka'pamux word for muskrat. My grandma came first in her class to become a military police woman during World War II. 

My grandma would smuggle money she earned from fruit picking across the border in hair rollers on her head. 

My grandma never learned to drive a car, but would drunk drive her walker on Christmas. 

My grandma at 95 said she didn't want to be around seniors because she doesn't like old people. 

My grandma likes her old mill. Let's go to the beer parlour.

My grandma is quiet and loud and small and big.

 My grandma is not afraid of anyone except ghosts. 

Sometimes she's afraid of ghosts. Makes sense,

Raquel: Well, thank you for sharing that poem. Your Grandma sounds like a powerhouse of a woman, and I'm really sorry that you lost her. I'm sure she's in spirit with you. 

The sentence ‘always have money that he doesn't know about’. Those are words to live by. 

Cherry: Oh my God. oh my God. Yeah. Well, 

Raquel: Final question. I am so sorry that I have kept you for such a long time, but I want to refer to something that you mentioned on your website, your website is Cherrysmiley.com and you write about the importance of, like in this podcast we have talked about, essentially academia and the struggles that women who centre other women in their activism go through when we go into it institutions. But in your website, you speak about the importance of fun and you say: ‘I work on very serious and painful issues on a daily basis. I find serious and non-serious fun wherever I can’ And I loved reading that and I loved your website because it feels like it’s a website by a real person.

You see a lot of websites where like academics or feminist or activists, and it’s all kind of disjointed, it's like, here I am, I am a scholar. And you sort of make it all together so that we can get a sense of who Cherry is. 

So would you mind talking a little bit about in spite of all of the depressing things that we have been talking about, which is very depressing, about finding fun and the importance of finding fun where we can. 

Cherry: Oh my gosh. That was a tough lesson. I mean, I think for most of my life there was guilt because women are suffering and they are, and it's horrific, what's going on in the world. And then you're like, oh, I'm here laughing like, oh, geez, you know, that doesn't feel right.

But how important it is to laugh and to laugh at ourselves cause sometimes we're really funny whether we mean to be or not. But I think like doing that, I know for the longest time I just felt so much fear and I know a lot of women do too, because you're scared you're going to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, or you're going to forget about this group of women. And what about that group of women? And it can be very paralysing, especially I find with white women who are speaking about indigenous women, they just don't say anything because they're scared they're going to say something wrong and it's like, yeah, you might say something wrong, but the world's not going to end, you know, it's going to be okay.

So it, it can just be very, very paralysing, but I think that if we're able to address really serious issues, sometimes in non-serious ways, I think that's a skill and I mean, I love the editors of Radically Speaking, Diane Bell and Renate Klein and I love that book, that book and Theories of Women's Studies are the books that I I'm using, my Feminist Bibles at the moment, where she talks about, if we're not going to have fun doing it, then what's the point? And I think that that's so important and I know that I really like to laugh at my own jokes and I do it a lot and it doesn't matter if anybody else thinks it's funny or not because I think it's funny. And it took a long time to get to a place where I had the confidence to do that and I felt confident to laugh and to make mistakes and to make fun of myself and just embrace that otherwise I think, sometimes that's all we have, right.

Raquel: Or we would go insane. I think at one point I had to sort of look at everything that was happening in my life. And I think it was my mum who said to me, Raquel, listen, if tomorrow you have some sort of nervous breakdown and we have to seclude you in some facility or something, then that would be everything. Everything that you want to do in your life, if you don't have strong mental health, if you don't take care of yourself, that would be gone. 

So at that point, that sort of like jump started me into realising that like actually just embrace all the things that you are into like poetry or art, or I don't know, just being silly because everything that we have mentioned in this podcast is very serious and heavy.

Cherry: yes. And all consuming. I mean, it can just totally consume you. So there's not much of you left, but I think I know that in my mind, it's what I want for other women. I want other women to have joyful lives, where they can, you know, laugh and be stupid and be funny and make mistakes, that's what I want for other women. So I should want that for myself as well. 

And I think sometimes you just need to do it. And part of that is almost imagining what the feminist revolution will look like. 

And so I think that this will be one section of the course that I'm developing in Women's Studies Online is to imagine what that would look like because it's so easy to have the heaviness of all of these horrific issues that we're dealing with and how big and strong, they seem to be that we can't see beyond them.

And so, if we can take the time and laugh where we can and smile where we can and whatever. I think that that does help us to imagine what women's liberation looks like. 

Raquel: That was very beautifully put thank you so much, Cherry, for spending time with us at FiLiA this has been such a wonderful experience. And as always, it is just great to speak with you. 

Cherry: Thank you. Oh my goodness. It was so wonderful to speak with you. I really appreciate it. And thanks again to FiLiA and to all the work that, you rad women are doing over there.