#79 

Raquel Rosario Sanchez from FiLia in conversation with Women Talk Back!

Raquel: Today we are joined by two magnificent women, May Mundt-Leach and Diana Barrera Moreno, who are the founders of Women Talk Back. Women Talk Back is the feminist student society at the University of Bristol. They provide a space for women to engage in lively discussions and debate. They are in pursuit of global liberation from all forms of patriarchy. Women Talk Back, therefore centre all women who experience misogyny, but who also may experience racism, anti-lesbianism, classism and other forms of structural discrimination that arise from male domination. Women Talk Back is committed to the power of sisterhood and believe that it is only through an understanding of our similarities and differences that women can liberate themselves from patriarchy.

Women Talk Back believes that dialogue with each other is the first step towards liberation from oppressive structures and practices. Women Talk Back welcomes all women from all backgrounds to join and take part in all aspects of the group. Women Talk Back aims to foster a culture of collective responsibility, care and honesty with themselves and with one another. My name is Raquel Rosario Sanchez, and I am the spokeswoman for FiLiA. In the spirit of transparency, I would just like to say that I am also the Chief of Mischief of Women Talk Back, but right now I am here to welcome May and Diana, who are the founding members of the group.

How are you both? 

Diana: Hello, this is Diana. I’m well, surviving the pandemic.

Raquel: How about you, May? 

May: I'm really happy to be here. And I think it's going to be a great conversation and I'm going to have to look back in time as well, because it's been a while since I graduated in June. And so, it's going to be lovely reminiscing a bit on Women Talk Back and the things that we did together. So, I'm really looking forward to it.

Raquel: Wonderful. So, let's do a short biography so that our listeners can get a glimpse of who you both are. May Mundt-Leach is a graduate in social policy and sociology from the University of Bristol. May set up Women Talk Back in the living room of her university flat in 2018, as she felt that there were few spaces on campus where women could come together and talk about the issues affecting them. Having worked in France after graduating, May is now looking to pursue postgraduate studies in social research in the UK. She's particularly interested in the role that policy and social intervention play the everyday life of women and girls. 

Diana is Women Talk Back’s current Unruliness Coordinator. She's an enthusiast of dance, nature, art and sport. Diana believes that the creation of a better reality for women is possible. She has helped with hosting Women Talk Back’s weekly consciousness-raising gatherings, and multiple street safety workshops, as well as other hands-on projects. She has organised regular women-only parkour sessions across Bristol and encourages women to roam about in the outdoors. Diana is concerned about the pervasive nature of violence against women and will address the importance of visibilising this plight in society. 

So, would you mind if we begin with how you both got involved in feminism. May, would you like to start? 

May: Yeah, I’d just first like to say, I have participated in one of Diana's female-only parlour sessions and it was one of the most amazing experiences my life. My mother was not too impressed, but I thought it was fantastic.

Raquel: Is Parkour is where you are climbing on the walls and stuff? 

May: Oh, we were jumping off walls. We were climbing up walls. We were just having an amazing time. 

Raquel: Excellent. So tell me about how you got involved in feminism. 

May: I got involved in feminism, around the time that I left school. And so I was about 18 and I'd actually just changed my university course as well, because I started off doing veterinary medicine, which is a little bit different. Then I became more involved in social justice type projects and started reading feminist theory and was really passionate about it, and it really spoke to me as a young woman. And partly through that I changed my course to social policy and sociology, and then that meant I could just read all the stuff that I'd been reading and actually study it as well, which was great. 

The book that I remember the most was The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. And it just completely, as I'm sure it has for a lot of other women, it just filled me with such a sense of rage throughout the whole book, and also a kind of sadness, but then a desire to change things and a desire to change the way that women see their bodies. And then that kind of just spiralled and I became interested in reading more widely as well.

I was also quite interested in the role of social media and feminism online. And so I think reading was really the big jumping off point for me. And then it became, well, how am I actually going to put this into practice in my own life? And I started interacting with other feminists, locally and on a wider scale as well. And so it was really through just talking to other women and talking about our experiences in a very informal way that kind of lit a fire in me that's still there. 

Raquel: How about you, Diana? 

Diana: I think it's been quite a journey because in a way, looking back, I was sort of doing feminist things without knowing that was what feminism looked like. So for me, it was through the lived experience that I reached a more conscious level of what feminism is and what we can do about it. So, ironically though, this meant that sometimes when people were mentioning the feminists – yes, the F-word, feminism – I was bit worried or even scared to be labelled as one because I didn't really know what it was.

So for me, it was quite a journey and actually meant that my personal life story, violence received from a partner, that ultimately helped me open my eyes. Well, not only that experience. So after that relationship, I was seeing a therapist. She said to me one thing that was very simple, but it was a big breakthrough.

So she said to me, ‘Look, what I'm going tell you sounds very simple, but later, you'll look back and realise that this is a very important message actually.’ And what she said to me was, ‘It's not you, the problem; it is not you who is constantly choosing the wrong partner. It is that even statistically it is highlighting that you will end up with man that is violent or misogynistic, because this is the society we live in.’

And then I started reading, on her recommendation, different feminist Facebook pages. And I also started following a woman here from Spain who writes about romantic love and how feminism can help women break free from that idea of a life being just about loving men.

So that was a big step for me, and then, because I was in the UK and not around the area where my therapist was suggesting all of these feminist contacts. I started looking for all the things to do locally. And that was, I suppose, more of a hands-on thing, consciously, because like I said previously, I was always trying to help those who were treated unjustly that was hugely healing but I didn't know that was feminist. But after that therapy and that whole period of healing myself, it became more of a conscious thing. 

Raquel: Well, thank you for sharing with us, and what a journey, both of you. I also remember a sort of revelation, because it felt like a lot of the things that were happening around me suddenly had a language and the book just managed to articulate these words that we know, like empowerment and objectification, and how ideas of society are hurtful to women and are all about keeping women in this space obsessed about ourselves and it's just like there's this whole new world of consciousness that I can now articulate. So it felt so important to me as well. 

So I have question for you both. So tell us about Women Talk Back. What is Women Talk Back? May, would you like to first? 

May: Women Talk Back is essentially a space for discussion and sharing. But on a bigger level, it's also about coming to a political consciousness and being able to have a, have a feminist analysis of our lives as women.

And so I’ll just talk a little bit about what inspired me to start a consciousness raising group in 2018. I had participated in, I think, a few in London and they were fantastic experiences and really interesting. They were based on this premise of consciousness, raising feminist consciousness raising, which started in the 1960s, I think mainly by Kathy Sarachild, who wrote the first text on consciousness raising and wrote the guidelines. And if you, you did, you can do some trawling through the internet and find these really interesting pieces written in sort of 1964 or so outlining... And it really represents sort of what women were going through at the time on the left mainly, and what women were angry about and a big reason as to why some women chose to eventually split off from more mainstream leftist groups was because they felt as if their voices weren't being heard and they felt as if their experiences as women were not being represented.

That's why the groups were created initially, and I felt quite similarly in a sense. And I remember also feeling as if, at universities, particularly there weren't many spaces to be able to really discuss our lives and our personal experiences as women. And it felt as if the conversations were almost dominated by a certain way of thinking about particular subjects. And I don't want to call it an ideology or a doctrine, but I think there were definitely elements of… you expected to have a certain opinion. And if you didn't maybe agree with aspects of that opinion or the opinion in general, then you often felt quite… I ended up feeling quite alienated sometimes.

I think, in general, activist spaces can be very liberating and I've experienced that also. But I think if maybe you are new to an activist space or you don't really have a theoretical grounding or an academic background, they can be quite alienating and can be quite theoretical and dense.

And so what we wanted to do with consciousness raising was actually work from women's experiences upwards and that was our starting point. So, yeah, I just initially messaged a whole load of women who I knew at university and presented them with the idea and just asked if they wanted to come along. And as I said, the first meetings were in my university living room. It was great. It was amazing. I remember the first meeting and it was just like this sense of coming together and giving space to one another and kind of attending to one another, which was really important.

It was really nice also, because, obviously we were all university students, but there was a mix of ages. There was some undergrad, some PhD students; it was it was quite diverse in that sense. And so it meant that there was a nice variety of views and of perspectives as well, which I thought was important and we had cake and tea and that was quite a big theme throughout.

We decided to do it weekly as a regular thing, which I think was also really important because it meant that, for people who attended regularly, there was also the opportunity to build up trust among the group. And that also meant that people, over time gradually, or I got the sense anyway, and I felt like it felt easier to speak because you knew who was around you. I think having a regular group was really important. Because I think one off sessions can be great, but it also leaves people with a sense of, well, what do I do next? And so I think having it… we had it every Sunday evening, and it also just gave people something to look forward to as well.

I really looked forward to sitting down with a group of women on Sunday evening and talking about our lives. And I will just say that we did use some of the materials that were written in the early days of consciousness raising to shape our meetings also. And so in one of the texts they talk about there being four stages of consciousness raising and I'll just sort of read them out.

The first one is the opening up stage where you talk about your personal experiences and your feelings about what you're talking about. Another thing I should also say is that each week you have a theme and so we had a lot of different themes. The first, I think one of the first ones was on menstruation and periods and another one was on body image.

We’d have other ones on religion and so, and we'd vote for the theme. And so the first stage being the opening up stage, and then you'd move on to sharing. And so everyone would share their own experiences about the topic. And then you'd go on, hopefully in a natural way to analyse these experiences and try and understand the meaning of the experiences in relation to wider structures of oppression.

And then linked to that, what you really want to achieve ideally at the end of a session is actually to start looking forward and think, well, what is our potential here? And what are we trying to… what is the problem… we've identified the problem and what is it that we want to, about this problem, that we want to change? What do we want to see changing? So what is our vision really of how this problem can be made easier for women and what can we do about it and how can we engage politically? And so again, bringing it from the individual to a wider political analysis was really important.

Raquel: Diana, would you like to contribute? What is Women Talk Back from your point of view.

Diana: Yes, Women Talk Back is that space, like May has said, where women gather to sort of make sense of one’s life and to come together, as… well not necessarily homogeneous because we all have our personal life and our stories and our struggles… but somehow we do share a lot of injustice just because we’re women.

So personally for me, it was it was a game changer, so I came to Women Talk Back around the time that I was doing, I think, nine months… so just less than a year, but more than six months of my therapy. And my therapist suggested that I was ready to move on from rage to action, because she explained to me, emotions, tell you that you need to be doing something about that thing in your life that you are sensing.

So you feel something because there's something happening around you. So I felt angry because of all of that injustice that I had gone through, and now it was time for me to figure out things and finding all the feminist groups was a part of that. So, in my lookout for things to do with feminism, I once found an advertisement about meeting that said it's a relaxed meeting. There will be tea and cake, and we are going to talk about what it is like to grow up as a girl. And I felt the call. It was something that I knew I needed to be doing. So I went down there to that meeting, which happened to be the first official meeting of Women Talk Back outside of May’s house. I felt that I could talk about what was going on in my life without feeling that I was stupid. Because you know, there was always this sense of being out of it. You know, like everyone else was doing well handling things, and I was just not good enough to deal with my own problems, but being there in that meeting helped me to see that it was not just me, that a lot of women had somehow similar experiences. That gave me a big sense of togetherness that I have not felt before. 

Of course, that's also a bit of a trigger for anger because it makes me feel that, you know, it was bad enough that I was feeling this now. It is even more urgent that we do something about it because it's not just one person who is experiencing that; it's nearly half the population of the world.

I think it was both a comforting sense of community and also an inspiration to do something about women's status in the world. Yeah, so since that first meeting, I decided that I wanted to stick around and do my best to keep it going because I knew for sure, that I wanted all the women to experience that joy.

So, yeah, for me Women Talk Back is a place… metaphysically also speaking… not just the meetings and where we go and have tea, but that knowing safety and hope that things can change and that we are doing something about it.  

Raquel: That's wonderful, and you just put it so beautifully. Thank you both so much. 

So let's just address the elephant in the room and the elephant in this room is that Women Talk Back is so far the only female-only officialised student society in the UK. We know of course that we have our sisters at the Cambridge Radical Feminists up in Cambridge, the Camradfems, who are magnificent young women as well.

But so far, the only officialised and recognised by the Student Union, and recognised by the student union, the student society which is female-only itself. So why? Why is Women Talk Back a female-only student society? Why is it important that we protect this space, where women come together? Why does it matter to either of you that we, not only centre women, but that we make the point that this is exclusively for women? May or Diana, which one of you…?

May: I think that there is a big obstacle to women publicly discussing feminism. It is that very often the conversations, I'm sure a lot of people can relate to this, end up revolving around men and men's feelings and men's needs. And I think women are also socialised into kind of catering to men and also feeling the need to respond to men and kind of justify ourselves and justify our presence and justify even our thought processes and our political standing.

And so I think what's really important about female-only space is that these spaces exist and that they reduce the kind of need for women to constantly be responding to men and having questions, repetitive questions of, ‘Well, what is the need for feminism?’ etc. etc.

And that's not to say that we don't have disagreement within the group and that there aren't sort of challenges, and challenges raised to what people say not at all. But I think when we're talking about a system of power it's really important to think about the effect that the person in the dominant position has on the mindset and the actions of the person in the oppressed group.

And so, what I found even when I was in university seminars, was that, you know, men were taking up the space, even if there were only one or two of them there, they were taking up the space for a lot of the time. And a lot of women just didn't even get the chance to speak or didn't feel like they could speak.

So, I think female space is really important for that reason that, actually, we have our space and we claim it and we put up the boundary and we say, ‘This is for us, for this moment in time.’ And that's not to say we can't have mixed spaces and we can't do this engagement, because I think that's really important as well.

So that then we can actually refocus the division from responding to men all the time to actually looking at and reflecting on what we want as a group and what we want as women. 

Raquel: It also doesn’t negate other people's opportunity to set up their own societies. 

Diana: Mm-hmm 

Raquel: Other people as well, instead of mixed societies where they talk about both sexes, you know, and you can talk about whatever other issues other people want to talk about.

I think that you can tell how powerful it is by how challenging it to so many people, that there are hundreds of societies – we are the only one that is single sex, and somehow it's like, you have to change the whole policy to make sure that you take them down, and it's like, no, you can set up your own thing!

People don't have to seek to destroy what women create, but that is what ends up happening often in a patriarchy, especially when you make the point that we are going to centre women and girls unapologetically. Sorry, carry on, May. 

May: Exactly, exactly. And I think it's actually quite threatening to the system, to patriarchy, for women to come together and talk.

And I think that people, particularly men, do feel as if that is threatening them in some way. And so I think that's why it's so important for women to be persistent on this and to say, ‘No, we are going to have our space and we're not going to be apologetic about it,’ as you said. ‘And we're going to talk about what affects us.’ Yeah. It's really important. And I think that as soon as we got in a room and started talking, it just became so clear as to why it's important. And why it's so important to kind of just reduce that… and obviously you can't completely remove the male gaze because a big part of oppression, isn't it, is the internalisation of that. But I think that it was really important to have the physical space of it being women only to reduce the power of the male gaze and also be able to look at that critically and to be able to start to recognise that and start to recognise, well, how am I thinking about this and how have systems of domination and modes of thought influenced my way of thinking about myself and about other women and doing that in a non-judgemental female-only space is an effective way to do it as we found. Not without its challenges though. 

Raquel: But, May, let me play devil’s advocate for just one second. What about the men? 

Diana: Can I say something about it?

Raquel: Yes, of course. 

Diana: So, adding to what May was saying, I think that because patriarchy is under threat because, you know, women are now even more aware of the power that we have as women. And the fact that we can change reality, they have changed the strategy to undermine us. So, I mean, males have taken now a different approach to undermining feminism and women through co-opting our struggles and to branding themselves as feminist or whatever label that makes other women think that they are not against us.

May: So, for me, that makes it even more important to defend female-only spaces because it gives women the platform that we need to find that time for ourselves because part of that co-opting and part of that undermining is also making women feel guilty, because historically we've been made to believe that our duty, our responsibility, is to care for others, to put everyone else first.

And by claiming women-only space, we're doing just the opposite. We're saying actually, no, my life matters. We have, you know, needs as well. And it's a bit ironic in a way, because it's not that I don't want to help other people that are also struggling, but if I really want to help them, I cannot help them if I’m not well myself.

So it's a bit weird that. It would actually help people if women had a better foundation… if women were already the best. That came out wrong, sorry. But I think if we were stronger and didn't spend too much time doubting ourselves, sort of fighting each other, I mean, between women, we could achieve even much better things.

I mean, look at how far we've got, and that is with the struggle of getting to not hate who we are. So imagine how much we could be doing if we didn't have to spend time trying to lose weight or look pretty, or whatever it is that is your struggle. So part of that is having a space for women to talk about these issues and politically make changes.

So this is why, in a way, we're saying, ‘No, we don't need men in women-only spaces,’ because if we want to help you… I mean, in a way you can tell them, we are thinking of you because we want to help you, but we cannot help you if we're not good in ourselves. That's a weird answer. But does that make sense?

Raquel: Yes, of course. Something that I've always found very fascinating, is a study that I read a while ago, and he was talking about like the words that women find the most hurtful. And I was amazed because it wasn't ‘bitch’, it wasn't ‘slut’, it wasn't even ‘cunt’ Like the words that women found most hurtful was the word ‘selfish’. Like when we were called selfish, because women are socialised in patriarchy to always put other people's needs first to always put, you know, your boyfriend's needs first, or your family's needs first. your other friends… you know, all these other people go before you.

And one of the reasons why I think so many people find Women Talk Back challenging is that there's a group of women who are saying, ‘No, no. I'm putting myself first. My needs, my ideas, who I am… that goes first.’ And there's no amount of emotional blackmail that is going to force us to de-centre females from our collective consciousness.

You hear all of these people trying to talk at women's hearts. ‘So, you're being mean; you're being selfish. You are being self-centred.’ It's like, why should the default position of women be this endless giver, this endless caretaker? Why shouldn't women be able to stake a claim on their own lives?

And that, as May was saying, that's something that I think is so threatening. And it speaks to the power of societies like Women Talk Back. But is there anything else that you would like to add?

May: Yeah, I'd just like to say I think it's really, really interesting what you've both been saying.

And I think it's really interesting to see how actually capitalism and patriarchal capitalism has co-opted this really radical sort of feminist idea that women are individuals and have inner selves and are not just built for serving men. And what it's done is it said, ‘Well, look, you can be an individual and here's what you can do.’

And by using these words, like self-care and creating basically this fiction that the way to liberation for women today is to become a sort of free woman by focusing on yourself and your own career trajectory, and using this notion of individualism. So, the way to freedom for women is to focus on yourself and focus on your own liberation.

And I think the problem with that and the worry that I have with that, is that actually, who is that serving? Is that serving women as a collective, or is that serving the current capitalist system? Is by her focusing on herself entirely and being able to get up the career ladder and get a job as a CEO, who is that serving?

And so you've got this kind of like co-optation of the feminist understanding of being self-cantered – self-centred in a positive way – for women and to start focusing on our own needs And that's not placed in a context where women can see themselves as an individual, but also be aware of the collective and be working towards a collective liberation at the same time, if that makes sense. 

And so what I think consciousness raising is really important in what it does, is that it in one way, it allows women to focus on themselves for maybe the first time and think about their own needs. And then also think about those needs in the context of a collective, by talking to the other women in the group and hearing what the other women in the group are feeling and experiencing. And then so using that new sense of power, new sense of self, to actually work towards a better future for all women.

Raquel: Exactly. I mean, it's like, which women are you throwing under the bus on your way to climbing the CEO ladder, you know? And that becomes so complicated when you shift the analysis to also take into account issues of race, issues of class, nationality, migration, all that type of stuff.

I think your analysis was really thought provoking. You both mentioned, May and Diana, you both mentioned this concept, the state of feminism. It seems like the women's rights movement right now, not only in the UK, but also in so many other parts of the world, it seems so vibrant.

And by vibrant, it doesn't mean that it's all joyous and happy, but also just like filled with rage and filled with energy. And that energy, it transmutes based on all of these issues that are coming to the front the people's consciousness. And I wonder if you could give us your thoughts on the state of feminism, the state of women and girls’ rights. Maybe on how it relates to Women Talk Back. Do you have any thoughts that you would like to share?

Diana: Yeah, I think we are at a crossroads, is that the right term? Yeah, so there are a lot of things going on right now, 2020, that are somehow potential for positive change. But equally what is worrying, is if we give into fear. So, one example, in March there was the International Women's March. And at the same time it was announced that the pandemic was taking over the world and we should start to self-isolate, or work in social distance, start lockdown or whatever it is called where people are listening into this. And I'm not going to get political right now about the whole health crisis here, but one of the implications of that intersect with feminism, in in the way that just as there started to be every attendance of more women, that more women were willing to go out in the streets and raise their voices and say, ‘We're not going to let men be violent against us anymore.’

All of a sudden, there's this big crisis. Women are sent back to their homes, a sad majority of them to a violent home. And I think the danger of that is that it might get women discouraged from stepping out again. It is tempting to say, ‘Oh, maybe if I stayed home, my husband wouldn't have realised I was a feminist. Now I'm stuck here in my house. I have nowhere to go.’ What I'm saying is, that it could potentially discourage some women that were starting to see a way out of violence. But on the other hand, it can also make space for women to take action and say, you know, we're fed up with this and we want to do something.

But then again this is not an easy thing to solve because, as well, the whole crisis, from my point of view, is showing how badly we organise our societies. The fact that the care will lie on women, that now we are seeing problems where now the main carer has to be the man because the woman has fallen ill and then the children, and then there has been rising violence in homes because men can't cope with being responsible for care duties.

The ideal thing is that everyone realises that this is a big problem and that we need to change how we are operating at the level of even the nuclear family. Because if we think that societies are better understood… not understood… that we would benefit from having the basic unit – the mother and child – and then organise around that, instead of having the modern unit, the wife and husband, and then organising everything around that which again is a model that stems from patriarchy, so that women can remain under control and oppressed, basically. 

So, I suppose what I want to say with this is that what's happening right now is a big opportunity for change for us to realise that what we are doing, isn't giving good results. But equally, because we're scared, because not everyone has access to the same information or the same resources, to say, you know, fuck it’s not working.

So, I want my way out. I'm going do something else. But not everyone has that privilege. So there is danger that instead of going two steps forward, we go three backwards.

Raquel: What do you think, May? What are your thoughts on the state of feminism in 2020?

May: I would completely echo what Diana has said. And it reminded me actually of one of the things we've seen in recent years in feminist studies, or what was called women's studies are kind of two things. I think the first thing which has, has been really important is the acknowledgement that an analysis of society and of ways of living and of oppression that solely focuses on one particular identity or one particular aspect such as gender in feminism’s case is not actually effective and it doesn't reflect the realities of most women in the world today. 

And there's been some really important work by black feminists, such as Kimberly Crenshaw with intersectionality theory, as saying, well, actually we can't just be focussing on gender and we can't have this single analysis because it doesn't reflect the reality of women today, and we won't be able to find solutions to the problem if we just look at this through one lens. And so I think that's been really influential. 

The other thing that I think has happened is the rise of post-modernism in academia. And I think that the impact of post-modernism is something that we're starting to see more and more. It's really been characterised by a loss of the idea of having a meta-analysis or having a structural analysis and in its place, there's this idea that kind of nothing really exists. And we can't really give names to things because everything is supposedly socially constructed.

And so it makes it very hard, I think, to be able to have a material analysis of, in this case, women's oppression. What I think is happening is there has been a kind of increasing separation and distancing of academic feminism from grassroots initiatives that are happening on the ground and are led mainly by women.

I think where consciousness raising would come in, and can be really useful now actually, is to sort of remind ourselves that knowledge production happens in various ways. But it happens in essence by talking to each other and articulating our own experiences. And that is how knowledge is created. 

I know that a lot of the early feminist texts that have been really influential, and feminist writers like Shulamith Firestone, a lot of the theory, the original theory, came out of consciousness raising groups. And so I think in order to kind of counteract this sort of creeping postmodernism and this idea that we can't really have a bigger analysis of things, and that everything has become very individualised. I think that's very much influenced by neoliberalism and consumerism. And so, everything is kind of quite separated.

I think by coming together and talking and having honest discussions we can start joining the dots again and start bringing back this material analysis that has somehow seem to be gone out of fashion even in academia, I think. But I think also conscious raising does show the complexities of women's lives and does bring into focus how we do differ and we've had some really fruitful and really important discussions in our group on racial differences on how race affects women and on class. And I think that certainly a lot more of that needs to be done in order to really shine a light on that. I think it's been a real sort of education in, on one hand trying to create a structural analysis on what is it in our lives that that is the problem. How can we go about this? But then also being reminded, you know, in every session of the real complexities of that, and of how it actually is very difficult to generalise and how it is difficult to make big generalisations about particular groups. 

Raquel: Your analysis reminds me of that wonderful text by Carla Mantilla, ‘Let Them Eat Text’ in which she addresses the in-articulation of the women's movement. She's talking about… she was in academia, in the US, writing probably 1999 and she was talking about how post-modernism meant that her students felt unable to identify what you're saying, what we're now able to identify through consciousness raising because it turned concepts into meaninglessness.

Remember how at the beginning, I was talking about how The Beauty Myth was such a revelation for me, because it helped me articulate things that were happening that I didn't know had names. And now I was able to identify it and say, well, this is commodification. 

But through postmodernism, especially the way that it has infiltrated academia, then from academia, it trickles down to the third sector, charities and non-profit organisations. And then that sort of goes into the public sector. But the way that the effects of modernism in academia, and especially in women's studies, which are now gender studies, the effect has been to disintegrate this collective consciousness. To turn to crumbs all of these solid concepts that women feminists have been constructing for decades.

And what is a better example than the fact that we're in 2020 and we're having politicians go on radio shows to say that they don't know what a woman is. You know, ‘Well, it's complicated, you know, we can't really tell.’ What are you talking about? We know what women are, but because of the infiltration of both the neoliberalism, and particularly postmodernism, we lost the words that we used to consolidate our social struggle. 

So I think that it could seem trivial, but the way that language has been hijacked from the women's movement is having a transformational effect. And that can go both ways. You know, it can be very negative, but as you were saying, both of you, through your consciousness raising, you can sort of claim it back.

I wanted to ask you to do a little bit of an exercise. We were talking about academia, and I was wondering what would you like to say to young women coming into university and to young women coming into academia at this moment in time who maybe have an inkling that they would want to learn more about feminism or who would want to get involved in a women's space. What was it like as a 17-year-old going into university? What is something that you yourself would like to say to the 17-year-old version of yourself? You know, coming into university, wanting maybe experience more of this whole women's liberation movement. What is something that you would say to them? 

Diana: So about academia, I would say that, yes, it is helpful to be able to access all that knowledge that has been created through hard work.

And that it is helpful to have a language that is enabling a conversation. However, it is also, I think, even more important to know that knowledge is nothing, it's meaningless, if it is just sitting there on a shelf, in a corner, or even in your head, if you don't do anything about it, if you just sit with what you read and do nothing, then what is the point?

And if you are wanting to engage, it's about transformation. So, knowledge is important, yes. But it’s, again, what you do. It only helps to know something when it helps you to make better decisions. So, for me, the problem with feminism and academia, the way I see it, is that it's mainly speaking – well more recently, it's started to open up spaces for other oppressed sectors for women based on class and race – but the majority of it still speaks to a certain group. It's targeting white women of the global north, not necessarily the indigenous women, you know, in the Amazon or in Mexican rainforest, you know, women who have fallen into prostitution. So, yes, it would be ideal if the work that is being produced academically ends up actually helping that woman.

And perhaps to young women that are starting university, I would say enjoy your life, because we tend to think again that if we're not crying, then we're not doing a good fight and that's not necessarily true because part of the defeat of patriarchy is that women are happy. Because the debate of patriarchy is about women's pleasure that we claim back that. That we are able to create that reality for women. I would say, try and do all you can to enjoy your life and make it joyful for the women around you. Whatever that means. 

Raquel: That's very beautiful. Thank you, Diana. What about you, May? I know you had a bit of a turbulent time, as a young feminist coming to university. What would you say to 17-year-old May?

May: So many things. I still sort of see myself as a quite sort of young and naive person. So, I don’t know how much advice I can I give.

The main thing I would say is just keep talking. Keep talking to other women and keep talking, I'll say to yourself, which might be a bit mad, but keep talking, keep speaking out about what you believe in, and don't be afraid of making a stand about something. And if you end up changing your mind… you change your mind.

But I think what happens when you make a stand about something, or you say, well, actually I don't agree and these are the reasons why, a kind of internal process happens as well, which is that you start see seeing yourself as a subject and as someone who can have opinions and who can say things.

And it sounds like such a kind of obvious thing, but I think, actually, girls and women are brought up, unfortunately still, to be very afraid of having an opinion that other people don't agree with and are very afraid of the potential consequences of that. So I think, in doing that, you start to… or I started to realise actually that, one, I could do it and I didn't kind of collapse, when I did speak out or make a stand about something, and that it also had a kind of snowball effect on other women around me. And you start to realise that your actions as a woman, they have so much weight and they have so much influence on other women around you.

And I think doing the consciousness raising as well, what really benefitted me was from talking to women, like both of you, and observing how you lived your lives and your way of doing things and the things that you did, or the stances that you took and the things that you were quite unapologetic about, both of you, and that was so influential for me.

And because it showed me that I could do that too. And so, what I'm talking about is this kind of ripple effect that I think is really important for young women to experience. And kind of saying that, well, she's speaking out, and that means that I can, and she's doing this or not doing this, and that sort of gives me permission to do that too. So I think that's really important. The other thing I think is also, don't be afraid of feeling uncomfortable and don't be afraid of being potentially wrong about something or being potentially mistaken about something, and to really use that as a learning experience, rather than thinking ‘I'm a terrible person and therefore I'm not going to participate or be involved in anything.’ 

Because I think that's also another thing that comes from female socialisation, which is that if we're not perfect all the time, that means that we retreat into this place of, well, I'm just not going to engage at all, because I just can't do anything about it. When actually seeing that as all a learning experience and just being nice to yourself as well and being gentle with yourself and forgiving, I think, is really important as a young woman. And for anyone, but particularly if you are speaking up politically just to keep reminding yourself of what is important and to sustain your relationships with other women around you and to create a support network. 

And one way you can do that is through setting a consciousness raising group. 

Raquel: Thank you so much, May. That's so powerful. The idea of looking at other women who are unapologetic and taking inspiration from that. So on that note, if you could answer one of following questions. Either, what is next for Women Talk Back? Or, do you have any words of advice for other women maybe around the UK, maybe even around the world, who are listening and who would like to set up their own female-only consciousness raising group? Like how can they go about it? How did you do it? Any words of wisdom for them? 

May: I would say in terms of setting up a consciousness raising group, just speaking from our experience, I suppose, is don't be afraid to use your legal rights. And so don't be afraid to… 

Raquel: Hit people with the equality act 2010. 

May: Yeah, exactly. And so, you can use the law in your advantage because it's perfectly legal to have a female-only space as the equality act or the exemptions to the equality act say, and so on that basis, you have permission to do that.

I think, also, if you are interested look around and see what other groups you can seek advice from… from us or from the Cambridge group. I'm sure they would be happy to do that as well. Also, what I found really useful was looking back at… you can find it all online… but looking back at how consciousness raising groups ran when they were at their height, in the 1970s, 1980s. There are lots of things in terms of not only how they ran, but what sort of themes that they covered and, if they had certain guidelines, what were those guidelines and what was their vision as well?

And also there's some really interesting reflection on what worked about those groups. And there's also, you know, a fair amount of critique of consciousness raising as a political tool, which I think is really important to look at and to use in the present day, in terms of seeing what worked then and what didn't work. How can we adjust this to the present day and to the needs of women now, and especially to the needs of young women and what is important now?

So, look online, do your research, but also don't hesitate to contact us or to contact the other groups to just find out how we did it as well. 

Diana: I would say just don't be afraid. And it might be scary at the beginning if you find out that the women that you know, are not willing to have a conversation because not everyone is in the same place, in the same head space.

So, just going there with an open mind and knowing that you will certainly find at least one woman you can talk to. And about future Women Talk Back, well, ideally we can resume our weekly meetings, maybe online for now. But, we're still here trying to be here for you.

Raquel: Well, that's powerful and very moving. Not to be afraid to go and do these things that may feel very challenging at first, but it's actually quite liberating. 

May: I would also just add that, I think one thing that maybe we were slightly preoccupied about at the start and then realised that it wasn't actually a problem at all was the amount of people that attended the group.

And so you'd set these quotas in your mind of, ‘It'd be great if we could get 10 women today’ or if we had a particularly big group, you think that that felt successful. But actually, over time, what I came to realise was that the number of women who attended really wasn't the important thing; the important thing was the quality of the conversations that I had.

And actually, we found that the smaller the groups, the more intimate we could get with each other. And, just from my point of view, we had some of our most interesting conversations in a smaller group. And so there were pros and cons to having big groups and having smaller groups. But I'd say, as Diana said, if you can find even just one woman who will come and you have a conversation with the two of you, it’s just fantastic. And so, yes, quality rather than quantity of women who come, I think, is something that I learned throughout the process.

Raquel: Well, thank you, May, for that introduction, that's actually important. And also on that note not only quantity, but also variety is important. I know that at the beginning of Women Talk Back, the number of students that would come to the meetings was higher than the proportion that we have now. And I think in part that is because we have a little bit of a feminism problem at the University of Bristol right now.

But what we have seen is that, even though the number of students that we have has gone down, we have a number of women from all walks of life who are coming to the groups. And it's so unexpected, you know, to come to the meeting and we're preparing the tea for everyone. And here comes a woman and her daughter.

And at one point this past term, we've had two sets of mothers and daughters, and you're sort of like sitting there, like, ‘Oh my God, this is magical.’ And we've had like grandmothers come in. And at one point, we had a woman who was maybe like 19 and sitting opposite to her was a woman who was her teacher when she was at middle school or something like that.

And it was, it's just like intergenerationally, there are so many connections that are being made in that society that I just get goosebumps, when I think about it, because as you were saying, both May and Diana, it would be wonderful, maybe, if you had a large group of women there, but sometimes that can be overwhelming.

And sometimes the conversations that you're having are best suited for one-on-one conversations. And I mean, speaking just purely as the chief of mischief of the society right now, we appreciate it when we have one woman with the same sense of gratitude as when we have 15 women. And for me personally, the thing that has really made me feel this beautiful and inspired is just watching women cementing these bonds intergenerationally, and from all backgrounds, women who are students, women who are not students, women who are students in other universities, who are coming to our meetings.

That has been fantastic. So any last thoughts before we close our podcast, either Diana or May, anything that you would like to share with us? 

Diana: Thanks for listening. And if you are in the Bristol area, well, we have it online, so it doesn't have to be Bristol to come to everything, so hopefully see some of you and just keep going.

Raquel: May?

May: I would just echo what Diana said. And, again, don't hesitate to get in contact with us. I think our details are going to be on the podcast website, if you are interested in setting up your own group. It’s been great to talk to both of you.

Raquel: Thank you, Diana. Thank you, May. 

And thank you so much for setting up this student society, which has proven to be quite prolific. We're hosting events, and we have a website and we're doing all of these things and there's weekly consciousness raising every week. You know, what a force.

So thank you both so much for setting that up. Thank you very much to the people who are listening to us. Thank you for joining us at this FiLiA podcast. We look forward to seeing you all very soon at our conference, or we just look forward to you joining our future podcast. So, thank you all very much.