#69

Sunday closing speeches FiLiA-conference 2019

Kate Smurthwaite: Okay, thank you very much, thank you so much for coming, and please can we start with a huge round of applause, whooping and cheering, to welcome the final session of FiLiA 2019. 

And I want to start by saying a few personal ‘thank yous. She can't hear us because, of course, she's on the phone dealing with yet more issues. But please can we hear it for Lisa-Marie, and also of course for the rest of the FiLiA team, and all the stallholders, and all the people working here at this fantastic venue.

And now we'll slide seamlessly into mildly boring administrative issues and say that there is a lost property box down at the FiLiA front desk. If you've lost something this conference, please go and find it. In particular, if anybody is friends with Mary Mason, I've got her train tickets home and - oh, are you here? Oh, thank goodness, we’ve found you! Oh my. She's gone to the station without the tickets. So, emergency, run to the train station. Thank goodness we found her. Yes. 

So for those of you who don’t know, my name is Kate Smurthwaite, and I've hosted or co-hosted FiLiA, or as it was previously known, Feminism In London, since the very first year that it happened, year in and year out. Last year, I decided that would be my last year, and I would move on to new projects and make space for new voices. And I was quite happy and content in that decision, until in March of this year I was booked to perform my one-woman comedy show at a pub in London, and they said, 

“Well, you’re cancelled. We can't possibly put you on. Apparently, you are involved in that FiLiA conference, and apparently there may be people in the room who have different opinions to each other”.

It seems radical, I know, but I was like, why would I go to a conference where I agree with everyone? Like that's the whole point. I want to go and hear other people's viewpoints and their stories. And also, if you want to police the right of women to be in the same room as someone who has a different opinion, I feel you should start at the top, and accept the fact that I have been on Katie Hopkins’ radio show. I'm pretty sure that nobody in this room is a problem on the scale that that woman is a problem. 

So, I'm here for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to make it clear to those people who think that they can silence women and bully women in that way, that I thought, “If I don't show up for FiLiA, they'll think that I've been cowed by their behaviour, and I'm not going to do that”. 

And secondly, I thought it would be an opportunity to make a point about what I sometimes call the problematising of women. This idea that women have to say and do everything perfectly in line, with your views or your opinions or otherwise, they must be entirely cast out and banned and relegated, the idea that women aren't allowed to have different opinions, that we aren't allowed to treat women as whole individuals and go, “Look at all the great work they're doing! Does it really matter if we've found a badly worded tweet from 1983? No, it doesn't.” 

That's not what matters, especially when we're talking about women, as in the case of so many women here at the conference who've spoken, but also so many of you here in the watching gallery, in the other side of participating, who I know do absolutely incredible things and should be really, really proud of yourself. And shouldn't feel, in the slightest, the need to get bogged down in worrying about whether you've been entirely perfect in every aspect of your life. Because let me tell you, you don't need to be perfect. You need to be brilliant, and you are brilliant, every last one of you.

The other great thing, about deciding that I would come and say hello at this year's conference, is it gives me a chance to tell you what happened on my way home from last year's conference. On my way home from last year's conference, I got on a train, from Manchester back to London, and I guess I was a little fired up, as I suspect many of us are, at this point in the weekend. And I got on the train and there was a young woman sat a few rows down from me, and a stop later, a guy got on, clearly a little bit drunk, and sat down next to her and started harassing her, demanding to know her name, demanding her telephone number, asking her, frankly, very awkward questions about her ethnic background that we did all not need to hear her interrogated with.

And I figured, “What the hell, I'm saying something”. So I had a go at him, and he got very angry, and called me a number of things, including at one point a Tory, which was a surprise – it's always those ones that hurt the most, I find – but I was not in the mood to let these things slide. So I went on my phone. I contacted the British Transport Police. I made it clear that there was an incident going on. At this stage, it had got to the point of pushing and shoving, and it had gotten quite aggressive. And sure enough, we got to Stoke-on-Trent and the doors of the train did not open.

And then when they did open the British Transport Police piled onto my carriage, and found the guy, and arrested him. He did try to make an escape, but he had very considerately had a very large and very distinctive tattoo put right across the back of his neck. Which was very kind of him when it came to identifying him for police purposes.

And I had to sit at Stoke-on-Trent station for another hour and a half, and give a statement, and there was a lot of general nuisance. And at the end of all that, they told me, “Well, the thing is, if you are the only person who gives a statement, we probably can't do anything. And we haven't heard from anybody else on the train, and the woman who was being harassed, she didn't seem to want to say anything. So it'll probably end here, but thank you for at least reporting the crime.”

And I left it there and I forgot about it. And they rang me a month later and they said, “Somebody else on the train came forward”.

And it certainly wasn't the woman who was being harassed, because when she was being harassed, he asked for her name, and we all heard it. In fact, I know the name of the woman who reported because there was a fairly understandable administrative error; she's also called Kate. And I don’t know who she is, I have no idea who she is. She was A.N. Other, woman sat on that train carriage. She, by the time she got back to London, thought, “What the heck? I'll go online and I'll say to the British Transport Police that I witnessed this incident”, and they went to court. 

And he was convicted of being drunk and disorderly on the train, and he was sentenced to some fine and some community service, that I'm sure we probably think isn't enough. But the point is something actually happened.

And so, if you take nothing else away from this conference, remember that fire that you feel, you know, in your belly right now, from hearing all these amazing speakers, and all the incredible stories you've heard about, and all the times you've thought, “We should do something about that, we should fix that, we can change that”. 

Hang on to that. And keep that spark there and keep being the person who goes, “I'm going to kick back. I'm not going to take this. I'm going to push back against that.” Because once in a while you might think that you're sat four rows down on a train doing absolutely sod-all. But in fact, you might be just that one person who ends up making a real, real difference.

And we have got an amazing line-up of speakers. I mean, I can't be trite and go, “who've all made a real difference”, but you know what I mean. This year really, really is the last time I'm going to speak at FiLiA. I'm going to get back on. I have got, incidentally, before I start introducing people, I am touring my solo show. If you know a great venue that would like to put it on, it's called Bitch and it's about the word “bitch” and my efforts to reclaim it, backslash, get rid of it from my life, and about the way that women are treated, about double standards. And it's full of jokes, because I am actually a comedian, contrary to what Twitter says. 

So we're going to hear from a number of incredibly – I say empowering, inspiring – a number of incredibly brilliant women, talking about all kinds of things that are going on around the world, and I'm really delighted to have such an amazing lineup of people to introduce to you. 

What we're going to do, first of all, I won't give a big plan of what's going on ahead. Sit back. It's going to be mind-blowing, take my word for it. 

What we're going to do, first of all, is just have a quick word from Charlotte Sands, who is from the History of the Women’s Liberation, and she's just going to appeal to you to bring your stories in, to be a part of her project. So Charlotte, I'll let you explain what you are going to do.

Charlotte Sands: Right, thanks, Kate. Yes, my name's Charlotte Sands, and I am one of a group of women, a collective of women, currently based in London. And we were all involved in the Women’s Liberation movement in the 1970s, 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. And because, you may be aware that 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the first Women’s Liberation Groups formed in the UK and next year, 2020, is the 50th anniversary of the very first Women’s Liberation Conference, which was at Ruskin in Oxford in 1970.

So, I know there are a number of women here who went to that conference and who were involved in some of the earliest Women’s Liberation groups, and certainly quite a few who were involved in women's groups in the seventies and eighties. We want to hear your stories.

We would like you to come forward and share your stories with us. We can either come to you and record an interview, or we invite you to share your stories with us in writing, and we're in the process of constructing a website, which should be going live in the next three months.

And we want to really try and ensure that the voices of all the grassroots women, all the many, many thousands of women who were involved in the Women's Liberation movement, get heard. We know that there have been some history compilations compiled already, but one of the things we've noticed, that they seem to have focused on quite a small pool of women, women who are already quite well known through having written books, and things like that. Whereas we want to reach out much, much further, much wider to encompass all the many varied, different women who have been involved in feminist activism over the years.

So, you may have seen me running around conference with these orange leaflets. Do take one away with you, have a read through and do get in touch with us at the email address at the bottom, which is: howl@howl-uk.org and HOWL, as you've probably worked out, stands for History of Women’s Liberation.

Thank you very much.

Kate: Right, and now I'm going to introduce to you the first of our closing session speakers. Sharena Lee Satti is a local poet from right here in Bradford, and she writes poetry based on her own experience and her own life. She's published three books, called Testing Times, Broken Chains and Unapologetic, and she's going to read one of our poems for you at the start of this session.

Her books are also for sale on the far corner over there, so if you enjoy her poem, please buy one of those on the way out. Please give a very warm welcome to Sharena Lee Satti.

Sharena Lee Satti: I'd just like to say thank you to Lisa-Marie before I start my poem, because she's been so supportive on encouraging me to come here today, and amplify my voice and the voices of women today. So, I'd like to say a thank you to her. The poem I'm going to share is called Women Of This Earth. 

 ‘Women of this Earth’

Once We were a Cluster of Cells,

 clinging deep into the lining of our mother's womb.

It was her soft, endless echoes. 

We first heard her every loving word.

 It was her voice 

Life started with her, with every woman on this earth. 

Shouldn't we be the ones in power? After all, we are the ones who give birth. 

It is through a woman that our lives were created.

 Every blood cell gathered, her body perfected us and protected us from every mortal thing.

We spread our essence in every season

 and plant seeds of new beginnings. 

In spring, we are worth more than we are given credit for.

 For we have the power to restore humanity and peace because women are the healers. 

And the sore receivers, the nature lovers, the feminists, the artists, and we have to raise our voices.

Otherwise, man will always benefit from our silence. 

We have to scream from the top of our lungs. 

We will not tolerate domestic violence. 

We will not stay silent. 

We will keep talking. 

We will keep roaring. 

So every one of our voices is heard, and that changes stored through our actions and upon every scream and word.

A woman's body is her body to dress it as she pleases. 

Her breasts are the very breasts that fed you at birth. 

Her body was the house that shielded and protected every limb of your body. For woman should be free of your curse. 

And free to live in this whole universe without suffering, discrimination or sexual exploitation.

Human trafficking and constant suffering, rape and abuse. 

And it's not always shared on the news. 

Some get highlighted like, me too. 

But what about the lives of those who stay silent, who are too afraid to speak out, who suffered at the hands of manmade violence and are consumed with complete self-doubt?

For us, women need to stand fiercely together, producing heat. 

No water contain women united as one spreading well. 

Flyer ignited by just one film for we are women, strong and resilient, and we grow through what we go through, through the dirt, the sheep, the grime, and we climb together through each hurricane, wind, and swim through every storm you see.

And we, women can sometimes disagree, and that's okay too. 

As long as we keep empowering each other, sharing our stories, our fight, and making sure we protect our own rights. 

Because we are no longer stuck in our traditions. 

We are the change. 

We hold the power to continue rewriting history and help the growth of

Every flower.

We stand together as one. 

We are the change the suffragettes wanted us to see. 

So let's stand here proudly together, creating history for we are the voices of and for the women. 

Thank you.

Kate: Thank you so much, Sharena. Our next speaker is Megan Armitage. Megan is a student, Megan is 19, and she's a university student from Halifax. And Megan is the great granddaughter of the Bradford Suffragette, Lilian Armitage, and in June of this year – let's have a clap for that, that's exciting – in June of this year, Megan spoke at a meeting of Bradford Council, and as a result of that meeting, a street in Manningham has now been named Lilian Armitage Close.

Megan Armitage:  Hello. Yes, as Kate said, my name is Megan Armitage and I am the great-granddaughter of Lilian Armitage, the celebrated Bradford suffragette. So, Lilian was actually born in Leeds, on the 9th of October 1885, into a very politically inclined family. So, when she came onto the socialist stage at the age of 16, it wasn't really much of a surprise to those who knew her.

She was a scholar at the Leeds Socialist Sunday School, and then her later teenage years, she became a teacher and a member at the Little Horton Socialist Sunday School, here in Bradford. So these schools weren't really about teaching religion. They were more about teaching children, from all economic backgrounds, how to read and write.

In 1906, at the age of 21, Lilian became the first Secretary of the Bradford Women's Social and Political Union, just a year after the Bradford brunch had been opened in 1905. At 21, this was such an esteemed position for her to have, to be secretary of such an esteemed organisation, and this meant that she was in close contact with the Pankhursts, and was doing a lot of things for the WSPU here in Bradford. The same year she also married one Matthew Armitage and became the stepmother to four children from his previous marriage, so she was very busy. 

That didn't stop her though, in February of 1907, from answering a call from Emmeline Pankhurst down in London. Emmeline had organised a march for women's rights from Caxton Hall, which is near St. James' Park in London, all the way to Parliament. And they contacted the northern branches of the WSPU, and asked for women who were willing to go to prison for women's rights, to come down and join them on this march, and Lilian answered straight away. Out of these women who went down to London, 50 of which, when they got to Parliament, started a bit of a brawl, since they were told to go away. 50 of these women were arrested, and sent to Bow Street Police Station, to be trialled for fighting in the streets. 16 of these women supposedly made it through the doors of Parliament.

Now, there's no actual records of what Lilian did when she got down there. However, the people who did make it through the doors at Parliament were given the maximum of 14 days in Royal Holloway Prison. And my great-grandmother, Lilian, was given 14 days in Royal Holloway Prison.

Whether we know that she was actually one of the women who made it through the doors of Parliament, we don’t know. However, at the time of her arrest, her husband Matthew did do an interview with the Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, and I just want to read you what he said:

“I fancy that the young Yorkshire girl who so furiously and determinedly attacked the line of police and finished up rolling in the mud with a big policeman, was my wife. She's very keen on this matter, and I believe she would attack anything short of a lion in her endeavour to do some good to the cause.”

So whether or not the woman in the quote is Lilian, I think it paints quite a glorious picture of just how strong-minded these women were in the process of trying to get the vote. Lilian went on to have five children of her own, the youngest of which is my granddad, Matthew Armitage, also called Matthew, and she continued to be a formidable woman, even in her later years. My grandma tells a great story about how, even when she was hospitalised in her later years, Lilian requested that she always had a desk in her hospital room so she could continue to write to MPs about problems that she wasn't very happy with, and she continued to do this until her death in 1981, at the age of 96.

For her work with the WSPU, Lilian's name is on the Suffragettes’ Royal Honour List. She was also given a Pankhurst scroll, and a little engraving of the portcullis at the Royal Holloway Prison, which she so eloquently lost in her later years, and as Kate said, in June of this year Bradford Council said that they were going to be naming a street Lilian Armitage Close, in the Manningham area, where the WSPU for Bradford was based.

And as her family, we are very proud to carry this Armitage name and for her to be honoured in this way. Last year I turned 18 and I voted for the first time, which poetically coincided with the 100 year anniversary of women getting the vote. And I stand here today, urging you all as women and me as a young woman, to continue to vote, because of people like my great-grandmother, who fought so hard and so earnestly for this.

And last of all, I hope that Lilian Armitage Close can become the beginning of a process in which empowering, pioneering women are more widely celebrated, not just in Bradford, but all around the world. Thank you.

Kate: Thank you so much for that, Megan, that was amazing. Our next speaker is Vandana Aparanti. Vandana joins us from India, where she comes from an oppressed-caste background, and she works on caste and gender-based discrimination, oppression and atrocities, and she's here, and wherever she travels, she's going around raising awareness about caste-based and gender-based discrimination. Please give a very warm welcome to Vandana.

Vandana Aparanti: Good afternoon, sisters. Good afternoon, sisters. I'm very thankful to FiLiA for giving me this opportunity, because my sisters back home, not only in India, but South Asia, will feel empowered after seeing that I'm speaking here and raising awareness about the issue which is happening in those countries. Today I'm going to speak about the caste-based atrocities committed on women from the oppressed-castes, commonly known as Dalits.

But I do not want to call myself a Dalit because Dalit means “crushed” and I'm not crushed. That you can see. The reason is, I'm standing here before you.

Caste-based violence is a full-fledged human rights crisis that has been perpetuated throughout centuries. Oppressed-caste women and girls faced extreme forms of violence and multiple discrimination as they are considered to be at the bottom of the social hierarchical order, the caste system. The caste society, which is inherently violent in nature, unleashed violence on caste-oppressed women because of a combination of three forms of discrimination. One is the caste, class, and the last one is gender. The oppressed-caste women are essentially seen as voiceless objects and are stripped, beaten, paraded naked, raped, and even burned alive.

Their minds and bodies are constantly violated. The caste system is estimated to be affecting 260 million people, out of which 100 million are women. Violence against these women is often used as a means of punishment and demonstration of power by the dominant castes, towards both women and their community.

Forms of violence encompassing physical, sexual, psychological, social, and economical harm, are perpetrated against women and girls from the oppressed-caste communities. The National Crime Records Bureau of India reveal that every day, five oppressed-caste women are raped. Various independent reports reveal that there is a rise in atrocities against the oppressed-caste women.

Moreover, oppressed-caste women are often victims of trafficking and forced labour such as the Devadasi and ?  systems of forced prostitution in India and Nepal. Although it is alarming, crimes are grossly underreported and the levels of enduring violence against oppressed-caste women is much higher than what official data shows. Oppressed-caste women and girls who challenge caste hierarchies, or stand up for their rights, are frequently targeted with violent retaliation by those who benefit from the caste system. Yes, our country has guaranteed constitutional safeguards and mechanisms to protect the oppressed castes, but still caste discrimination continues to be a social evil experienced every day in several covert forms, and in acts of brutal violence.

The reality proves that governments have failed in its due diligence to protect the rights of oppressed-caste women and girls. The laws are not effectively implemented to prevent the atrocities against the oppressed-caste women. Most women do not report violence, and studies show that only 2% of the cases that are actually filed, end in conviction.

Therefore, I would like to say, to break the denial and to show full commitment to eradicate the age old structures, that are the root causes of these atrocities; caste is not an issue confined to India alone. It is a global issue now. It is not only an issue of oppressed-caste alone, it is the issue against humanity.

Everywhere we go, the moment we talk about caste, no one wants to talk about it. Anyone who says caste system doesn't exist anymore is living on another planet. Caste is not discussed enough. Caste is not recognised enough. The surnames of South Asians tell the caste they come from and show that they are from the privileged backgrounds.

So it is a challenge for all of us now. It is a call for the privileged communities here which I'm giving. We are fighting for our dignity, but this is for you; to leave your privileges by throwing away your surnames, which tell which caste you belong. Let's put this on the agenda. Caste is here, caste is present, and we have to be able to talk about it.

Stop caste-based gender violence. Thank you very much.

Kate: Thank you so much for that, fascinating and very uplifting. Our next speaker is Bracha Barad. Bracha is the CEO of Kulan, which is a women's organisation that promotes feminist discourse and action in Israel, and she will tell you a bit more about that. Please welcome Bracha Barad.

Bracha Barad: Thank you very much. First of all, I'd like to say thank you for the invite and for this conference. This has been an amazing two days for me. I'm so inspired and I wish we could have this very soon in Israel as well. As Karen said, I'm Bracha Barad, I'm from Tel Aviv and I've been an activist for the past six years, and for the past two years, I've had the privilege to manage Kulan, which means “together all of us”. It's a feminist grassroots NGO in Israel. Our mission is to be the voice of women in general and in particular sexual assault victims, and we're doing all of this through classic activism tools as well as 21st century activism tools, mainly social media.

Our work is based on three aspects. I'm going to speak mostly about the solutions because we've heard so much about the problems for the past two days. I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we're doing, in hopes that you can use it wherever you are trying to change the world, so we're doing work in three aspects.

The first of them is training activists, the second one is community building, and the third one is changing public opinion. They're all very much intertwined, and I'm going to speak about the public opinion, which is the most, dominant thing that we are doing, and I believe the most important thing, because change comes from the public.

The base of our operation is a Facebook group called Feminist Discourse. It's the biggest feminist group in Israel – Israel is big on Facebook and social media in general – and we have over 40,000 women debating daily on feminist issues. As you said, we usually do not agree on anything, but the fact that you have this place, that women can debate and can raise and can know that the personal is political, as well as giving sexual assault survivors, prostitution survivors, domestic violence survivors, a place to speak about what happened, a supportive place that lets them feel that they're not alone and there is somebody backing them up.

So that is the base of our operation and that's where we actually started. And as I said, changing public opinion, one of the main tools that we're doing it is through social media. We have Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We have a few accounts advocating for feminism and for women on a daily basis, all of them volunteering. And as a matter of fact, we've been doing social network advocacy as well as mainstream media advocacy for the past two years, and we've actually been able to make a change in the Israeli press. When about a month ago, I don't know if you've heard, we have a few scandals, rape scandals, of Israeli boys around the world this summer, one of them involving a young British woman who is, right now, being charged in Cyprus. And so this case was a big deal in Israel, and we were always complaining about how the press is giving just the point of view of the – we were actually, because the only one speaking Hebrew in Cyprus was the attacker's lawyer, and so all the Israeli press was filled with what the defender of the, well, attackers wanted them to say. And so we were very upset about this, and we did all sorts of things on social network and approaching press. And about two weeks later, unfortunately, we had another scandal of young Israeli teens, and this reporter from one of the two major networks in Israel, every time that he reported this scandal, he let us speak, give a sync, if you know what that is; like 60 seconds of commenting about this issue from the feminist perspective. And I was able to go on mainstream TV and say that if a woman is taking back what she said, that doesn't mean that she's lying. Like all those things that we are saying, that are the feminist perspective on what you do when you are complaining, and why we don't complain, and all these things.

And that was just one really amazing achievement that we had. Another thing that we're doing is demonstrations. We didn't have, before we were founded, we didn't have really a grassroots women's organisation demonstrating, and every time that there is something, there were no organised groups that are going to the streets.

And what we did is we organised hundreds of activists in Israel to go and demonstrate. One of the major things that we are doing is the Tel Aviv Slut Walk, which is the biggest feminist demonstration in Israel. It had almost 8,000 people last year, and it was covered in 20 countries all over the world. And I'm very proud to say that this is the one Slut Walk in all the world that is anti-slut shaming and victim blaming, but also against the sex trade, which is apparently impossible if you are sex positive, but we are, you know, both. And so the Slut Walk itself is a very big and successful demonstration. 

Another thing that we're doing is, well, we were backing up each and every women's organisation in Israel. For instance one example is, some of you may have heard my friend and partner Luba Fein speaking yesterday about the abolishment of sex trade. We were one of the groups that was doing daily advocacy online and in mainstream media to get the public to the point where this law that we are criminalising prostitution customers, the public was – maybe 10 years ago, the public was in a very different place, and that took a lot of work from a lot of organisations, but we were the ones doing the advocacy mostly online and in the media. And so basically any feminist issue in our society that is coming up, we're helping to demonstrate. 

We have had demonstrations on women's murders. I just helped organised one last week when I was abroad. We have it, unfortunately, too much.

And I think one of the most important things that we are doing, same as we are doing on social network, giving women a place, to feel that they're not alone and there is somebody that believes them. We have had demonstrations in front of courts and in front of police stations where high profile rape victims were either debating the rapist or the trial is going on, and we're standing outside the court with signs that say, “I believe you”, which is basically one of our mottos. That we believe victims, and that's one of our main rules that when a victim is, or when any woman is, trying to tell her story, we step behind her and we believe her. And so this was something that gave these women a place, and gave them the feeling that there is somebody. You know, all society is blaming them, all society is questioning their story, and we are just standing them and telling them that we are behind them. And that was just one very amazing thing. We've actually had requests from victims, to come and stand in front of the court, because they're being sued for defamation or stuff like that. And so this is one of the most important things that we are doing, letting women know that they're not alone. Yeah.

And I think, if I have the chance to say one thing; I know social networks and the 21st century has brought a lot of bad things into our life, but it is also a tool and we need to use it like any other human technology. We need to know how to use it for our benefit. And what we have done is, to take social network and to use this to gather women together, first of all, so you don't feel alone, so you don't feel like the crazy feminist, like you feel in this room, you feel, you know, we're fine. So, this is what we're doing on a daily basis. Making women feel that they're not the crazy person in the room. They're actually the one in the right. and when we are together, our voice is much, much louder and we are able to do this in mainstream media and on social network, and we are gathering supporters from men and women that are standing and backing this idea up.

And I think what, what we need to do as women is to learn to use this tool to amplify our voices. So, amplify your voices through social network. It's an amazing tool and first of all, you can support each other and you can, you know, change the world.

Query from the audience

Bracha: First of all, we've had co-operations of Israeli and Palestinian women. We've had, in 2014 when we had – I don't know how to call it, they have weird names for it in Israel – we've had the bombings of Gaza, and we've had Israeli and Palestinian women sitting down and doing feminist discussions together because we believe that feminism can be the way to make peace.

I think if women rule the world, we would not have this terrible war. And I can only wish that we would have more co-operation with Palestinian women, and I could only wish that I personally would have more tools to change the situation in Israel, which I believe is devastating. 

Kate: Thank you so much, Bracha. Our next speaker is Houzan Mahmoud, a multi award-winning feminist activist, public lecturer, and the co-founder of, I think called the Culture Project, which you may be familiar with, which is raising awareness about feminism and gender in Kurdistan and the Kurdish diaspora.

Houzan Mahmoud: Thank you everyone, and greetings everyone. I would first of all, I would like to thank FiLiA to provide this platform to all of us, from wherever we are, to share knowledge, experiences, as well as form new solidarities. Thank you so much, Lisa-Marie, for your great big heart, for caring.

Basically, we had our own panel about Kurdish woman earlier on, but the reason I'm here is to address all of you about the very urgent and difficult situation of Rojava, that I am sure all of you know about it. Just remember in 2014, when Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, known as ISIS, Daesh attacked Kurdistan, it was the woman-led revolution in Rojava that defeated all of them. 

ISIS, if I can define ISIS in a couple of words, it's the most misogynist, masculinist, rapist, organised Islamist organisation on the face of this planet, that made rape its headline. Wherever they go, they rape women. And this is why Kurdish women in Rojava, old and young, men and women, they all took up arms and defeated them. 

While the Rojava revolution managed to secure a secular social contract, a contract that is based on gender equality, ecology, as well as scrapping all kinds of, you know, outdated, misogynistic, anti-woman legislations that was in the Syrian constitutions based on sharia law previously. They basically made sure to replace so-called honour killing, child marriages, underage marriages, rape, lots of other things, basically. I'm not going into details. I know you know a lot about it already. 

While they were busy keeping and maintaining this momentum for six years, now they are faced with another fascist dictator. This time Erdogan's dictator. He's calling his army, “The Army of Mohammad”, another rapist army basically. Now they have the agenda of subjecting even Kurdish children to genocide, they have just used chemical bombardment. A lot of children, women and men, and elderly, they have been killed, innocent civilians. Why? Because Kurdish people provide a secular alternative in that region called Rojava. It's an alternative that is basically anti-neoliberalism, that we all suffer from it everywhere we are, and that this experience basically provides and presents every good value that we need in 21st century. To be friendly to the environment, to care about the environment as women particularly, but also to fight for gender equality, and this is what they fought for. It was not only a military fight against invaders, but it was a women's-led revolution. And I am here to call on you basically to boycott everything Turkish; it's airline, it's food, traveling to Turkey. As well as, if you are an academic, if you work for an academic institution, as well as cultural institution make sure to boycott Turkish-sponsored academia and cultural activities as well. 

Secondly, I would like to call all on all of you and particularly FiLiA to issue a statement of solidarity from this conference to our sisters in Rojava. I think with neoliberalisation of every aspect of our life, what we need more is feminist internationalism, solidarity, and sisterhood. 

The same armies of ISIS and Erdogan who are both rapist armies, who are both Islamists, they advocate only for fascism and Islamic fascism as well. They are spread everywhere in Europe and in the Middle East to basically target every single secular leftist, progressive, you know, activists and organisations wherever they are.

We need to make sure to protect, to provide support, and to defend that particular little hope in the Middle East that is surrounded by fascist and Islam fascism. And I would like to thank everyone who have already showed your support and solidarity through demonstrations, but there's a lot more to do.

Thank you so much.

Kate: Thank you so much. That was amazing. Some of you will have already visited, at our wonderful conference, the Testimony Tailors stall over here. If you haven't, this is an organisation which is supporting Rohingya women by allowing you to essentially buy clothing made by Rohingya women, which is then given to Rohingya refugees. Here's an example, and you'll be sent a picture of the person who's received the clothing wearing it, and you can see some really lovely pictures there. So obviously FiLiA has had an enthusiasm for supporting Rohingya community for a very long time. And we're here in Bradford where there is a small Rohingya community, and for quite obvious reasons, it is not always easy to find women in these communities who feel able to come and speak out. But I'm delighted to say that Ravina Akter is here. Ravina is 17 years old, and it is the first time she has ever spoken at a conference.

Ravina Akter: Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk today. I never done this before, so I'm kind of nervous.

My name is Ravina Akter. I am Rohingya and I was born in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Many of you perhaps don't know where Rohingya is. Please let me explain briefly. Some of you may have heard of my friend Jasmin Akter. I don't know if you actually know her. She's another Bradford teenager, recently played cricket for an England team. She was also listed in the BBC News’ Most Inspiring Women of 2019. She's a Rohingyan. Let me explain who Rohingyans are. We are native community of Western Burma, or Myanmar, as it called now. For decades, the Rohingya have faced brutal campaigns by the Myanmar military. To this day, Myanmar continue to experience human rights abuses under denied citizenship and all the basic rights like education, healthcare, in Myanmar.

We are falsely made stateless. The government consider us illegal Muslim immigrants, besides the fact that there is historical evidence of citizens of Rohingya settlement in that part of Myanmar. In August 2017, Rohingya faced a vicious military campaign, more than 740,000 Rohingya men, women, boys, and girls, fled across the border to Cox’s Bazar District, in Bangladesh. UN officials have described this as genocide and ethnic cleansing. 

This is about me. My parents became refugees in previous waves of such attacks. This is why I was born in Bangladesh. I lost my father when I was six months because of lack of treatment. I've never talked about my father, that’s why.

My family benefit from the resettlement scheme, and that is why I'm in UK. However, our family is spread across three different countries. Two of my siblings are in Australia. Some relatives are still in Bangladesh, and I am here in the UK with my Mama. This is what being refugee means.

This is what it's like being Rohingyan. Family members separate from each other and not physical home.

I'm sorry.

I am really happy to be speaking here in this feminist conference, but to be a feminist, you have to be a human first. And the reality is that Rohingya woman, young and old, living in Myanmar or that come in Bangladesh, are fighting to be considered human beings.

They all want to be part of you. They want to be able to sing our songs, speak our language, and dream their own dreams. Cry and laugh, love as you do, but they can't. When they speak, no one hears them, as if no sound came out from their mouth. They are an invisible community, and for decades now the world has been looking and doing nothing.

From what I heard, women in our community have suffered the most, suffered at the hands of soldiers and other men’s. Rape and sexual violence is a weapon of war for the military. If you read the figures from the UN and MSF, you will know what unfolded two years ago in Myanmar was nothing short of genocide. The UN Finding Missions Report revealed that rapes and sexual violence were committed on a shocking scale, with thousands of Rohingyan women and girls brutally raped, including in public mass gun rapes, which often ended in killing and terrible injuries.

This is how it was. This is how it's been for us. This is not how it was. We were minority community in Myanmar, but our forefathers was still from Burma. We had rights, we had land, we had business, we were in school, we in college and university. But everything began to change in 1962 when the military junta came to power, we became fair game for Buddhist men and the Myanmar military. Rohingya people needs the support.

This is my request that I need to make today in this conference. Please raise your voice and help us struggle against genocide. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Congosi: My name is Congosi. I'm really proud of my little girl. I supported her from Manchester Airport. She came a little girl without any word of English, and I'm proud of you. Well done you. 

Kate: Thank you so much, that was amazing. We have one more speaker before we have our final speaker. We are going to have just a couple of little announcements. First of all though, we're going to hear from Mishirat Ramen who is a Bradford woman of Kashmiri heritage, and she is going to talk about the current situation in Kashmir... and she looks around to see where there you are, there you are. Fantastic. Please welcome Mishirat Ramen.

Mishirat Ramen: Hi folks. I'm going to keep it brief. I'm sure you're all aware what's happening in Kashmir since they've revoked the Article 3.17.35.A. We are a group of women from Kashmir, born and bred in the UK, and we've got links into Kashmir. What we are trying to do is start setting up demos, so people sit up and take notice about what's happening in Kashmir.

What we're also doing is, we are going to be doing a demo next Sunday, which is led by Kashmir women, but it's open to women. It's actually, we have seen a lot of protests by men, so this is actually led by women. And we want to do a peaceful protest and we're going to be using our voices, singing, poetry, and just putting up messages of solidarity, and we're inviting everybody to attend.

It's on Centenary Square in Bradford. And it's going to be from half-four to six o'clock. And you're all welcome to attend and that's all it is, really.

Kate: Thank you Misharat. Next up again, just a very brief comment, but Jane Hellings, as you may know, has been the artist in residence for FiLiA for the last two years, and that term is coming to an end. So she's here with Kathy Dunbar and they're just going to briefly make a comment about that.  

Jane Hellings: Hiya. Some of you will have seen us around in our costumes, and some of you have joined in. I have very strict instructions from Lisa-Marie not to wear anything that might trigger anyone. So, this is my “Celebrating My Middle-aged Body” costume.

I've been artist in residence for FiLiA for two years now and it's been a collaborative project, so I've been working with lots of different women. Kathy Dunbar and Helen Judge, who isn't as much of an exhibitionist as we are, have been working on a project called Mrs. Pub’s Parlour, where we've been looking at our own bodies, and with other women looking about how we feel about them, how we’re made to feel about them, that kind of thing.

And we're here with the results of that, but some of you have seen, and we've also got a zine that we were hoping might fund a bit of it. So, if at the end of this, you've got any money left, it's five pounds. But if not, just get our details and look us up. 

You might want to collaborate with us or join in at another – we're carrying on – so you might want to join in, because it is actually about serious subjects, but it's also, hopefully, we've provided a little bit of light relief, because I have my big FiLiA cry this afternoon. I think most people have one, but we've also tried to have a bit of fun too. So, thank you very much. I've had a lovely, lovely time.

Kate: Thank you. Now there's a lot of announcements that we end up making from the stage, and I think you can all agree that the most important one is what's about to happen, which is that Sally Jackson is going to tell us about next year's FiLiA. 

Sally Jackson: Kate, thank you again. Before I talk about next year, I'd just like to say a few ‘thank yous for this year. We started off, remember, yesterday morning, with the conference being opened by the wonderful Fiona Broadfoot, thank you. The best way to start the conference. 

And it was really important for us to have a Bradford women start it, because we've worked all year with a whole variety of Bradford women’s grassroots groups, that are doing a huge amount of work locally, and it's been an absolute privilege to work alongside them for the last year and to have so many of them involved in this year's conference.

They're a real sisterhood and it's just been an absolute joy. And there may have been a few vodkas involved, I can't remember. I'd also obviously like to thank all of our speakers over the two days. Both those that have done the keynotes, but also those providing the workshops, those that are up on the sixth floor doing the workshops up there, but also those wonderful people that look after the kids for us, so that we can go to the other workshops, it's a huge thanks for them.

I am so proud to be a trustee of FiLiA, and one of the reasons, one of the many, many reasons I'm so proud is, we have the most wonderful group of volunteers. The women that we work with are just amazing. Could I just take a moment to thank all of those, for the work that they do?

And having said that, I know our volunteers won't forgive me if I don't mention the evaluations. Please, please, please fill them in. Also, can we just have a quick hand as well for the hotel staff who've looked after us for the last few days. 

But really importantly, of course, we’d look pretty daft if you gorgeous women didn't turn up. So thank you so much for taking a weekend out of your lives to join us at FiLiA, it’s a joy to be in your company. Thank you.

So we hope that that will continue, and if you'd like to support us, if you check out our webpage, you can see now that you can become a Friend of FiLiA. And I'd like to do a quick shout out to Lorraine. She knows who she is. She was our first official friend, go Lorraine!

But she doesn't have to be alone, we're quite happy to have more than one friend. So please have a look. If you could donate a pound a month, it would make a huge difference to us, in being able to make more women, particularly those women on lower incomes, be able to attend the conferences year after year and make it accessible to all.

So talking about continuing, would you like to do it again? Well, that's a relief I can tell you. So could you please put the 17th and 18th of October in your diaries, and come and join us in Portsmouth next year for FiLiA 2020. 

Thank you.

Kate: Thank you so much, Sally. And we have one more speaker to close out our 2019 conference. I believe that I'm not going to say anything after you've finished, so I'm going to say goodbye, from me, for now. And thank you so much for letting me host your conference for so very, very long, and I hope it goes on to ever more exciting things, and I'm sure our paths will cross again when you come to my show. Subliminal messaging. 

But I'm delighted to announce our final speaker for the closing session of FiLiA 2019. Dr. Akima Thomas comes from a background in nursing, social work and psychotherapy, and is the founder and clinical director of the Women and Girls Network working with survivors of violence. And she has been researching recently, women's strategies of resilience, resistance, and rebellion. So please give a very warm welcome to Dr Akima Thomas.

Dr Akima Thomas: Greetings, troublemakers. How are we doing? Rebels with a cause? 

Okay, so they always say that they leave the best to last, I don’t know what that means in this instance. But anyway, I'm going to try to give us something that, not encapsulates what's happened and these two remarkable days, because I would never be able to do that; but there is something about, actually I've heard a lot of pain, I've heard a lot of tragedy, so I hope what I'm going to share with you doesn't make you drift off, but it is our clinical model. And don't get phased out by that. So, there is something about trying to make sure that we are ending with something that we can take home for definite strategies.

Yeah, there she is. That's me when I grew up.

So, I don't want to say that, that actually this is going to be an easy talk because I think it's going to have things that are kind of quite triggering for us. So, I think we need to take care of one another and take care of yourself. I always start with this poem because it grounds me and it makes me realise the enormity of the work that we do.

So, I'm going to share this with you. It's been kind of quite an emotional time, so forgive me if you hear me stuttering, because I do feel kind of quite overwhelmed, with everything that we've been doing over these last two weeks, and certainly for some of my panellists there as well. So, this is called The Strong Black Woman is Dead, and the writer remains anonymous:

The Strong Black Woman is Dead…

On November 27, 1987, at 11:55 p.m.,
while struggling with the reality
of being a human instead of a myth,
the strong black woman passed away.

Medical sources say she died of natural causes,
but those who knew her know she died
from being silent when she should have been screaming,
smiling when she should have been raging,
from being sick and not wanting anyone to know
because her pain might inconvenience them.

She died from an overdose
of other people clinging to her
when she didn’t even have energy for herself.
She died from raising children alone

She died from being sexually abused as a child
and having to take that truth
everywhere she went every day of her life,
exchanging the humiliation for guilt and back again.

She died from asphyxiation,
coughing up blood from secrets
she kept trying to burn away

She died from being responsible,
because she was the last rung on the ladder
and there was no one under her she could dump on.
 
 

She died from being a mother at 15
and a grandmother at 30 and an ancestor at 45.

She died from sacrificing herself
for everybody and everything
when what she really wanted to do
was be a singer, a dancer, or some magnificent other.

She died from lies of omission
because she didn’t want
to bring the black man down.
 
 

She died from myths
that would not allow her
to show weakness without
being chastised by the lazy and hazy.

The strong black woman is dead.

She died from never being enough
of what men wanted,
or being too much for the men she wanted.

She died from being too black
and died again for not being black enough.
 
 

She died in bathrooms
with her veins busting open
with self-hatred and neglect.
 
 

And sometimes when she refused to die,
when she just refused to give in
 
 

Sometimes, she was stomped to death
by racism and sexism, executed
by hi-tech ignorance
while she carried the family in her belly,
the community on her head,
 
 

The strong black woman is dead.

So, the strong Black woman is dead. But who murdered her, is our next question. There are many guilty of her murder. Numerous perpetrators, absolutely we know this, but she was also killed by social injustice, poverty, misdiagnosis, medication, lack of support. All of these elements are culpable in her demise.

Can you see that? You need to see. Audre Lorde. So, the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house, and I guess that's where Women and Girls Network started. That was really important for us. But we didn't want to just recreate the same kind of services, back in 1987. We wanted to create a defiant house of rage. 

I think we're doing it women.

We didn't want to create functional women to exist in dysfunctional, fake places. We wanted to ensure that we rebelled and raged against the machine and we're still doing that. It's important. This is us all today as well. So, I'm going to move on quickly in terms of looking at the holistic empowerment model. 

I am keeping you with pictures. They are pictures, so don't let's get too bogged down in them. It's just to occupy and focus our mind a bit. But anyway, for us it was really important to ensure that continuity, consistency. We're working with the whole continuum of male violence. We're working with mind, body, and soul. We've got advocates, we've got counseling, we've got body therapies. It's really important that we had something that held us all and provided that continuity and consistency in our work. 

So here is the holistic empowerment recovery model. The holistic empowerment recovery model – saying ‘her’, can you believe how happy we was when it's spelled out ‘her’, stroke of genius. I looked at it for years and years and years and it was actually only Michelle Springer-Benjamin who actually said, “That spells ‘her’” . 

But anyway, but this is a diagram so it's not sequential, you know, some women come with a broken heart and it's really important that we have spaces that are around relationships. Or otherwise, they've lost a sense of their soul and identity, so their beginning will be around more holistic work. So I'm not going to spend too long on this because I want us to have other times together. I'm sorry that this isn't a bigger conversation. I would love to have converse with you. It's important for us to have feet forward so that our project is constantly evolving.

You can see her? Maya Angelou?

Can we switch the house lights down, so we can see? I don't know whether that is possible. Can we do that? But don't put me in darkness, I can’t see. Right, can we read that?

I'm a feminist. I've been a feminist for a long time now. I'd be stupid not to be on my own side.

So obviously for us, it's still about those hardcore feminist principle. The personal is political. Egalitarian principle. Yes. Power alongside, not power over. Yes. Value in the woman perspective. Yes. About radical self-love is really important for us. 

This, maybe you want this blurry, because this always is a difficult one for us to see, in terms of looking at all of those levels of violence, from even before we are born as women, right up until our death, we experience these different kind of violences. We know that they are universal. We know that they are global. Prevalence rates are same, everywhere in the world. The only thing that changes is the types of gender-based violence that happens. So those are really important for us to think about in terms of that collection, that awful legacy that we inherit, and what we have to do about it.

And this is also the next slide that accompanies that. So when we think about the physical aggression, threats, intimidation, humiliation, that isolate, exhaust, disable, and punish us, well, that's a hell of a lot that we experience. 

And I don't just want us to think about these symptoms, as distressing as they are, there's something deeper, a much profound level of grief that survivors experience as well. So we can understand these as injuries that bruise the soul, that give us that sense of that profundity. 

I'm just going to relay some of those elements that are not included in these kind of charts about symptoms. So: betrayal and destruction of self-worth, esteem, ability to trust, injuries that bring dishonour, shame, disgrace, stigmatisation, ostracism, that affect our earning power, livelihood, full potential, places in society that affect survivors liberty, autonomy, safety, freedom, and rights, that prevents women from freely exercising their control over their life.

Fuck, that is huge. Absolutely huge. 

And when we're thinking about relational, we have to think about Andrea Dworkin. You ever read something and you think, I wish I'd read that, wish I'd written that, wish I'd said that. This is the thing for me, and I'm just using her as an example of thinking about our connectedness as women. And obviously for us, we're still fighting for women's spaces. That is crazy for me, but anyway.

So those things about creating environments where solidarity, but amongst  , survivors, about respect, about dignity, about safety, and freedom are really important. That's what's held in those women's spaces.

Can you see? Bring back the love. Bring back the love. Revolutionary love. This is really important for us as well. Healing the environments. Were never meant to be cold, dispassionate places. They were meant to be alive with passion, with compassion, and love. We’ve kind of lost that, in the industrialisation of trauma. So I'm going to come back to that point. But those are really important things for us as well. 

If we think about that most violences happens within relationships, it's quite important for us to journey back into relationship, to do that healing, to do that restoration, to do that reconnection. So that's really important for us – in all of our services, we have that relational approach that provides compassion, respect, continuity, consistency, and care is really important for us. This is what we understand as revolutionary love.

Can you all see that? That's an important slide for you to look at. A really important one. I think you would just need to clap our hands at this point just to connect with that, in terms of love is our resistance. Absolutely. We're bringing now revolutionary love is important for us as well. 

So patriarchal systems are mainly built on anger, hate, and aggression. Every time I say patriarch, I'm going to give that a little kick. I don't mean to be demeaning about it, but you know, we need to kick it to the side. I talk about kicking racism out of football. Yeah. We're kicking patriarchy out. So anytime I mention that we were going to do that kick. So revolutionary love, patriarchal systems.

Just do it big. Just do it big.

We have an incredible herstory, from the African continent to the ancients, and under that potent promise of revolutionary love, which is about our interconnectedness, our responsibility, for being part of the solution to provide care, support, nurturing, and resisting oppression for all. Important things for us.

So revolutionary love is not a notion of love, purely, of sentiment. It's of course from the heart and concerns our sense of interconnectedness and our deep caring for humanity. But it's all from fire and bravery, courage and commitment to all women and girls who are oppressed, standing alongside in solidarity.

It's about their liberation and our freedom. That's revolutionary love. At this heartbeat of revolutionary love are acts of resistance, the fight for dignity, the lack of surrender, important things for us. And can you see that the devil whispers “You can't withstand the storm,” The survivor, the warrior replies “I am the storm.”

I'm going to do a cheer for this one as well. Women never consent to the violence they experience.

They're never consent to the violence they experience, and they always resist. “They always resist” is the other thing for us, and I don't mean that in, patriarchal terms of physical force. I'm talking about the myriad of ways that women use their intelligence, their wisdom, their intuition, their tenacity, their courage to overcome and survive, days, weeks, months, whole childhoods, that they survive.

Really important for us that they refuse to comply with the will of the perpetrator, really important things for us as well. And that they use their courage, insight, tenacity, and they are defended and defiant, not just defended. That's really important. Defended and defiant is really important for us to understand that.

And it's acts of rage that has secured that survival as well. You can't say courage without saying rage. Look, that was a little bit weird. Look, let me run that part you again, “you can't say courage without saying rage”. Yeah.

So at Women and Girls' Network, we found it really important to not just track symptoms. That gets us nowhere; look, tick boxes, depression and blah, blah, blah, blah. We're tracking resistance. I want to know what happened to a woman and how she survived, and I don't mean in those big ways as well, of fantastic things that women have done.

But I'm also talking about the silence. It's also really important as well. So that's really an important way that we understand, because these are our freedom fighters. We can change the world. We are changing it. Bloody hell, women, we are doing it now. It's happening. So, we need to have that kind of uplifted confidence about exuberance, about ourselves, about what we are capable of.

I'm not going to talk too much about “this is the trauma”. It's endless. It affects individuals, families, generations, whole communities. Its language is about entrapment, captivity. Terrible things that can happen. But I also want to bring this image of Munch, “The Scream”. Yeah. Let's not focus on the scream. We know that. Let's focus on the people who are standing there, doing nothing. It’s the important thing about the bystanders, and I'm just giving us a cautionary tale. I love the trauma informed approach, but we now have to start asking ourself, “is it hiding more than it is revealing”, is the thing for us.

Its language is still about disorders. Post-traumatic stress disorder, you know? Absolutely been a really useful construct for us, to validate women's experiences, to validate women's pain, but also we're still left with what then: survivors, women having the disorder. I would say that the perpetrator is the one with the bloody disorder, yeah.

And where were they? They conveniently exit. So that's really important things for us. Why should our women be left with the disorder, this sudden? I'm not saying I have answers to this, but I think we need to challenge the questions and we need to challenge these constructs as well. So, the protagonist exits.

So, there's something about these kind of labels, about how they sanitise, because we're not hearing about violence anymore. We're only hearing about what's happened. And again, we've got that internalisation for her. “Survivors are not broken, society is,” is important for us to think about. So, and as Judith Lewis Herman talks about; in terms of hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, and the fourth missing monkey is “do fuck all”.  

Because, women, we have to remember this. Survivor’s brain is held in the body, which is moving and engaging in the world, and is therefore racialised, genderised, and exposed to many forms of power. That's really important for us to understand that. It's not just about a collection of neurons, or the symptoms of what's happening in her brain, yeah? 

So we need to evolve our understanding to ensure that our explicit intention is to be deliberate and call out violence all of the time, because otherwise, if we still have that reductionist approach, then we are almost, like for myself as a therapist, I'm just a passive audience to this then. Well, how do I mobilise my power, my privilege in those spaces as well? Because otherwise all I'm doing is witnessing and being passive to the violence that happens. We need to do more. All of our services need to do more. So we must also ensure that we stand out and be called to account, and working towards that structural change is really important. Although I do like the whole trauma informed thing, it gives us a sense of that seismic shift, from not “what's wrong with you” to “what's happened to you” and also, “what's happened to you, and what's strong with you” is really important.

This is for you. You're the ones that we have been waiting for. Are you? Are you? Yes. You’re giving the revolutionary love. You're kicking out patriarchy. I ain't seeing you very active, women. You was active enough last night on the dance floor. Come to me. Revolutionary love and are kicking out.

You look so beautiful from up here. I got say, you know. Okay, I'm squeezing through this. You don't need this. You don't need this. You don't need another model. Women and Girls Network, we love a model. A model within a model, within a model. We do it all the time. 

This is our work about healing, but in terms of rebalancing, and again, I'm not going to go into that, but just that it's really important to have those spaces of healing, we understand. But it's also important to have those spaces of breaking the silence, of the restoration of the self, that actually, her stories would've been tainted by who she was speaking to. So it's really important that we have this, as a cathartic way, that she tells her story in her way. That's really important. But for us, we use a South American way of critical remembering. So with every memory, is also your sight of resistance. It’s important that those two things can come together. Cause otherwise women can be left alone and kind of quite passive. So that's really important for us.

You can't vote for that. Yeah. 

Resilience is maybe just a way for us to think about the state not doing anything. I don’t know what your commissioners are like, but our commissioners are, “oh, but women are resilient, they kind of bounce on through it really”. They need services. So that's really important for us to understand, that resilience isn't just a birth right, isn't something that passively happens. The women I work with, they're made of iron. They're made of iron. They forge their own ways. They forge their ways from those depths of places, from those places of subjugation, out of that environment. That isn't just about resilience and about bouncing on through. That's about courage, tenacity, and all of those big grunt words. Absolutely.

Yeah. As part of our model recovery, we're going to be kind of changing it, because we are constantly having women saying to us “I didn't know that I was ill, that I needed to recover”. Absolutely true. But still, for us there's something about an aspiration about our services, that there should be an aspiration that women are going to be moving on, that they're going to be healed, is something that we need to understand; that momentum of survivor, to thriver is really kind of quite important. And it's that story of hope. And here we have as well, we cannot afford to have a single issue. You are either with me by the side of me or you ain't at all, is a thing for us. Absolutely, absolutely.

And thinking about Kimberlé Crenshaw and intersectionality in terms of; she talks about that crack, we need to understand that we've got a chasm that is opening, that women are falling through, into a vortex, because there isn't that social scaffolding that is helping women to move on out of that place. So that's really important things for us to think about.

“Patriarchy disappears life”, is the awful truth. It disappears lives into the criminal system, into the mental health system, into all of those places. We’ll even say things like, “she committed suicide”. No, she didn't bloody commit suicide. She was killed. It’s important. Because she was trapped by the perpetrator, whilst the state looked the other way. It's important for us to think about.

Intersectionality is a fantastic resource for us. It's a holistic analytical framework which identifies the social dynamics that survivors are exposed to, but also intersectionality, I don’t know about for you and your commissioners, but they've cottoned on to our language now. No, I don't think so! So, we can't just use that as a description of all of those overlapping social identities. That was only one thing. It was created by black feminist activists. So we need to think about what the value is, in terms of that tool being a real tool for social justice, for fighting against inequality, really important things for us as well.

So, I'm coming to the end of my time with you, and as I'm closing, it will be about holistic work, and I guess the symbol on the right hand side is Sanskrit for “breath”. And I guess that's what's happened to our women, is that they have their breath taken away from that moment that that violence happens, and for them maybe it's always a struggle to get their breath back again. So that's really important that we understand about breath, and about the importance of breathing. So, a lot of our work is about creating that breath, and ancient futures. The way that we love our neuroscience, absolutely, but also our global ancient ways of healing and how we combine those. And thinking that trauma is always a point of transition. It's dangerous, the Chinese translation for crisis is “dangerous opportunities”. So, I want us to remember that. And we need to think about maybe as survivors as living monuments, as liberators, as advocates, as healers.

That's maybe the healing cycle. Certainly at Women and Girls Network that's our healing cycle. We aim to inspire women, to be marching, in terms of Million Women Rise, and to be standing up, and standing their place, of theory making as well is really important for us. So hopefully you've been inspired to call for action, to kick out patriarchy. You're doing it, you're doing it with me. You're kicking out patriarchy. You're giving revolutionary love. That's the next thing for you. 

Okay, so I'm just going to start my closing. So, something about this has been a very big time for us. It's been a very energetic time. It's been a heartfelt time, it's been a time of tears, of laughter, and there's something as well about how we, and certainly working with survivors, one of the things for them is about coming out of synchronicity with their own selves, with their own bodies, and something about how we get back into the rhythm of life.

So I'm just going to do my closing with you with a few breathing exercises. If you can, I'd like you to stand up, take some space.

Okay, so just do some breathing with me, while we're just doing some technical things here. Okay. 

So, I would like you to breathe in love, fill yourself up. There's going to be a fire next time. So breathe out fire, breathe out energy, that's going to pull down. patriarchy. I can't hear you. You're breathing in. You're breathing in love and holding it, and you're going to breathe out fire that's going to burn down patriarchy.

It is possible women, and you're breathing in love, breathe in love and let go and fire next time. And you are keeping on breathing because I'm still waiting for my man here to do his thing…

You keep breathing, it's important. Let's do some stretching. Let's do some stretching. Up, up, up, up, up! Down, down, down, down, down! Shaky, shaky, shaky, a little bit. Shoulders, look. Lean into revolution. Easy, easy. Other shoulder, lean into revolution. Easy, easy. Up, up, up, keep your breathing going. This is you.