#63

Sally Jackson from FiLiA in conversation with Kathleen Barry, feminist activist and the function of Consciousness Raising.

Sally: Sally Jackson here, FiLiA volunteer, and I'm really excited to be joined today by one of my feminist Sheros Kathleen Barry.  Kathy, it's great to speak to you. Thanks for joining us. 

Kathleen: Oh, I'm so happy to be here. My favourite subject after all. 

Sally: I was delighted to first meet you a couple of years ago when you joined us with FiLiA and went through one of your feminist knowing to action weekends, where a group of us learned so much about making feminism more about activism and using our feminist knowledge and finding our feminist power.

Kathleen: That was a very special weekend. You all were just so wonderful, and I think you got a house together someplace in the country. 

Sally: We were staying at a cottage and it was sharing food together, you know, getting up in the morning, having a cup of tea and then the sessions with you. It was just a lovely way to spend the weekend. 

Kathleen: It was wonderful for me to kind of touch in on it through Skype. 

Sally: And it's crazy you on the other side of the ocean and a different time zone, but it felt like you were with us throughout. 

Kathleen:  That's what it felt like to me.

Sally: Fantastic. So, and one of the things that happened for us at that weekend is that we did, as a group for the first time, consciousness raising, and we're going to talk a lot more about that later, but I wondered if we could start with just talking a little bit about your history and how you started your feminist awakening and some of the work that you've been involved in.

Kathleen: Well, it started with consciousness raising back in the late sixties, I think it was around 1967, I was working with a group, a civil rights group in Detroit where there had just been a riot and it was all very tense time as it was all over in the late 1960s. And a friend of mine in this group said, I just heard that there's a women's liberation group starting.

And I said, find it. We got to get out of here. That was it. We went to the group and it was ipso facto consciousness raising. Nobody was talking about you do consciousness raising or not. It was just, that's what happens when you get together with women for the first time and you all start talking about your complaints and problems and issues and anger and, you know, all kinds of things. And people are going, me too. 

That's what happened to me too. Or, I know what you mean. I haven't had that experience, but I know what you mean. And there was that level of knowing that pervaded the whole room and we were all, well, I went with a friend, but aside from that, we were all strangers to each other.

And the next week we met and probably five or six of the women didn't show. We were still about eight or nine of us, which is a good size for a consciousness raising group, and we just then hung in together, I think that was around 1968 and I left Detroit in 1972 so it was about five years, and we just would meet every week or every other week and we would go out and do what we called Zap actions.

We were meeting one night and we were talking about rape, which hadn't really come up as a feminist issue yet, but it was just starting to break. And so we hopped in our cars, bought some cans of spray paint, and went and sprayed the university campus nearby with ‘stop rape’. And that's how we started.

So from the beginning we were doing things. I think sometimes women can confuse consciousness raising with a very serious intellectual pursuit of feminist knowledge, which is very good in and of itself. But consciousness doesn't exist in the brain. There's no intellect, no place you can go in the brain and say, that's where consciousness comes from. 

So anyway, that's how we got started and we just kept going from there. We are also doing actions that were fun in addition to really serious things, you know, so we'd pull off different things. We broke into the Playboy Club one night with this enormous papier-mâché penis and developed this chant. It was: ‘now is the hour to smash prick power’. And then we'd smash the penis on the floor and run out. And so we just started like that and there was so much like that action.

The issue needed to be reduced to the absurdity that it is a Playboy Club. I mean, it's absurd, you know? And we did that and it was wonderful fun. And at the same time we did a march through Detroit in remembrance of the women who had died from butcher abortions.

We could do as serious as that and as silly as the other, we were all inclined toward activism. So we would start talking about issues. and then it would go right into what are we going to do about it? 

Sally: Absolutely brilliant. And of course part of that as well was your writing and the difference that you've made with some of the books that you've put together and shared, and again, not just on an academic level, but leading to action and leading to change.

I'm thinking especially of Female Sexual Slavery and the work that occurred following the publication of that book. 

Kathleen: Yeah, you can't stay sane and write that book without having a plan for what to do about it. As a feminist who cares about women and women's wellbeing and safety, you have to have a kind of a plan for that. And so, yeah, that's what came out of that.

Sally: And you know, part of the development then of the Coalition Against Trafficking - CATW - So you know, from that book, a global movement continues to make a difference.

Kathleen: I'm glad you brought that up because I was thinking about this very recently when I wrote Female Sexual Slavery. There was nothing in print in the English language on that subject. Nothing. In fact, I got some complaints from some men who bought it thinking it was going to be lascivious and all that crap.

Sally: So we were talking about when the book came out and the fact that through the Coalition against Trafficking there was a global movement suddenly. People were talking about trafficking and doing something about trafficking. 

Kathleen: Right, that book involved me in several years of lots of lecturing. I was teaching at a university, but I was always also going off and doing lecturing in Europe as well as in the States, and that lecturing would connect to women who were wanting to do something about it. And some of them were women who had been in prostitution.

That's probably been the most moving thing for me with that book is the women who've come up to me and said, thank you, you heard my voice. It probably means more to me than anything else in the work around that, but it was that kind of a thing that was happening and you want to coalesce that energy.

Sally: Absolutely. And so important because still those women that have exited, they are the voices that are seldom heard. They are silenced very quickly by the huge corporates and the money behind the global sex industry. 

Kathleen: I think if you look at, I haven't been in touch with her in a few years now, but Rachel Moran is a good example of someone who, once she started writing her book and her experience of prostitution, she had already connected with feminist work, that made a huge difference for her and for us, having someone who could really speak from the experience, but as a feminist. It then shifted my role a bit of not having to just speak for the women who haven't been heard, but she came in and really became part of the encouragement of other women who've been in prostitution to come out and speak and it changed the planet.

Sally: Absolutely. And some fabulous work. 

And I have to also mention with relation to FiLiA, your biography of Susan B. Anthony. We've been running conferences in London for a few years, it was your book and reading about Susan B. Anthony, that spurred us to actually take the conference and travel it around the UK so that we could build the movement.

Kathleen: That is the main reason I wrote that book. When I really got familiar with her life, I thought, if feminists can read this, they could be inspired to do this.

And she was really a very ordinary Quaker woman and she just had a set of ideas. And in that Quaker fashion, when you know what is right, you stick with it no matter what. And then out of that, we get a whole half century of her work. I love that biography. When I was writing Female Sexual Slavery I promise myself that my next book would be the biography of Susan B. Anthony. That I would just give that to myself. And so you're moving FiLiA around the country? 

Sally: Yeah, every year a different venue now. 

Kathleen: Oh that’s fabulous. I had a really nice Skype talk with Lisa-Marie, maybe a month or two months ago.

And so now when I need to give an example of what I mean is if you look at the women in the UK and then start talking about what you've done with FiLiA you know, that's really exciting. 

Sally: It's lovely. And it's great to see those networks building and the work that you then hear of women doing after the conference because they met and they found something in common and they've gone forward with it.

And one of the things that we are now also doing regularly at the conference is sessions around consciousness raising. So, you know, we really do have an awful lot to thank you for Kathy, you very much shaping FiLiA as we move forward. 

Kathleen: Well, it's mutual in terms of, I just have a notion that just getting consciousness raising out there is enough to spark movements any place you do it, it's the foundation of everything. 

Sally: So just of thinking of women listening to this today and they're thinking, so what is consciousness raising? It sounds like it's positive. How would I start? What would you say to women? How would you explain how to set up their own group?

Kathleen: I would start by getting a group, that's where you start and you get a group of like-minded women in the sense that you all have some interest in feminism or some interest in making serious change for women and it follows pretty easily from there because you get a group together and the first thing you're going to do just quite naturally is meet someplace, best in somebody's living room and we're talking about a group of eight to 10, down to four or five women, and somebody just needs to start the conversation. 

You know, why are you here? What is it that concerns you about women's issues? And let it roll from there. It will define itself fairly quickly because women come in with either one issue or one question, and as each of them try to describe why they're there or what their concern is, the room keeps getting fuller.

Everybody's got a slightly different angle from being there, but with them, everybody, there's a connection. There's some connection that goes deeper than just, I want to find out more about this or that. What happens very quickly, and I know we've seen this happen, is that in the very beginning, once women start talking about why I am here, it gets very personal, very quickly and that's very good. 

But it may be more personal than women had intended or thought about. And for some women, it's so personal that they haven't thought about it. They've buried it in silence and then all of a sudden kapow -  consciousness raising - and I just discovered that and something comes out from there.

It's a very, very powerful tool that we have and it brings women together even as women are going to their own separate individual experiences because in those individual experiences, there's some commonality. 

If I start talking about when I was raped and you pick up on something that I've said and say, well, that didn't happen to me but now I understand why I'm concerned about this or that.

It's an interesting way that women pick up on what each other is saying. In the sense that it doesn't have to be a direct, you know, I talk about this and then you talk about the same thing. It’s just the talking about it brings into the consciousness of the group, a level of vulnerability that's safe, just the way the group treats it makes it safe to say it. 

And for many of us in the first consciousness raising, it's things you've never said to anybody before and sometimes it has even passed out of your own consciousness.  

Sally: I think one of the things that, surprise isn't the right word, but I found sometimes when discussing something in consciousness raising, as you are talking you kind of think, oh, I didn't know I was going to say that or I didn't know that was going to come out, although it's you that is verbalising it and it's actually phrased in a way that you've not heard yourself think about it in that way before, which is quite alarming. 

Kathleen: Quite exciting also. Because, you know, some thinking is going on in there someplace, and it's now found a way, a platform, a context to come out and that's the thrill I think of consciousness raising, is you're discovering things about yourself that you really haven't articulated needs or desires or whatever they might be. At the same time that you're interacting with other women who are making those same discoveries while you're all sharing with each other what you're going through, and invariably you focus on what your common experiences are in the room.

So I start talking about this and then you come in on something that relates to it for you, and then somebody else says, well, none of that's happened to me. But what this brings up for me is the domain of consciousness just keeps expanding. 

Sally: And there's a real level of trust and sisterhood in the sharings of that information isn't there? 

Kathleen: I think it's almost automatic. I think that doing it in a consciousness raising group, whether you even call it that or not, makes the trust necessary, and I've never had the experience of a woman turning on another woman in a group, women get upset and they might get upset with each other because things come out that they hadn't even thought about in years or something like that.

And they're flailing around trying to figure out where to put this. But I think the trust is automatic as soon as some women start talking about that which is vulnerable for them, that elicits other women's vulnerability almost as a necessity:

 I can't leave her hanging out on that pole alone. At the same time, I've had a similar experience or an experience that's related to that.

 And so just as it is in a normal conversation, you're in there for each other as much as for yourself very quickly and with a lot of sensitivity. 

Sally: And I think as well it really helps us to frame the experience of living as a woman within the structural inequalities that there are, because that common experience or common themes that women will recognise, oh it wasn't just me that that happened to, but other women have experienced, maybe not the same, but something similar. So then maybe it's not my fault, maybe it's something to do with the external environment and what's going on in society, as the reason why that's happened in my life, or that one was witnessed by me or whatever it was.

Kathleen: Precisely. As soon as another woman says, oh, something like that happened to me - and she's put her vulnerability out there, right next to yours, you have a kind of shared consciousness.

 There's a notebook out that I've just finished reading, it's called The End to Upside Down Thinking. The title is a little frivolous, but there's a lot about consciousness in this book, and one of the things that's pointed out is, it's called a Hard Problem of Science, is they can't find consciousness. There's no evidence that it's in the brain or that it comes from the brain and yet we know it and we know it in consciousness raising, but we know it in our daily lives, being conscious of this or aware of that. And I think that's fascinating because I think what it points to is the kind of universality of consciousness. 

One of the terms I like to use when I'm talking about this is I use a term ‘shared human consciousness’ and that's because we all share consciousness.

It's not just I bring my consciousness to the group and you bring yours and it can't be cut out into the individuality that our societies shape around us. In that sense, I think when I'm in a consciousness raising group or just with a group of women and somebody's talking about something that happened to her, I can experience her experience of it.

Sally: It's more than just hearing it. It's almost palpable. 

Kathleen: Yeah and I think this is a really important point. It's palpable and she's talking about something, I'm entering into that experience. We're sharing the consciousness of it and not like making a carbon copy. It takes different forms when I enter into that consciousness or somebody else comes in and enters into it. So we have a very, very extremely dynamic force. 

Consciousness is a very, very dynamic force. It's not confined to individuals. It's among us all and we all participate in it. What better thing to have in trying to bring women together to work together against patriarchal domination? It's almost like fool-proof. 

Sally: Absolutely. And equally because of that, it leads so well into the ‘so what are we going to do about it’ rather than just being that kind of sharing and thinking about things, but actually leading to action itself. 

Kathleen: Right. This point really has to be stressed a lot because I know some women who are really well read in feminism, are activists, are involved with issues, but in the climate that they live in, there's been no real interest or possibility of consciousness raising. I try to prick at that a little bit and push it along. 

But what I see is women who have a very strong intellectual and emotional grasp of feminist issues, but consciousness is another thing. And I think there's ways that women can mistake really good intellectual critical analysis of patriarchy with consciousness.

Certainly all the critical analysis and all the writings that have been done contribute, but it's not the same thing. It's just not the same thing. The way I experience it is, not being the same thing is, especially in the relation to other women, you know, it's more about having good intellectual discussions and doing programs and projects, but doesn't let you stop there. ‘That's what they're doing to us’ and intellectual awareness allows you to stop. But consciousness doesn't. It's not sufficient to just go, ‘this is what they're doing to us and now we've lost our funding and we don't know what we're going to do. And on and on and on’. 

 Consciousness is your lifeblood in a certain sense, a lifeblood of your actions and activism and without it, things dry up.

Sally: For me, it's almost like the, with consciousness raising, is a feeling and because you can feel it, it makes you want to do something rather than it just being, and I don't mean that to minimise it, but only an intellectual exercise. It's much more visceral than that. 

Kathleen: Wonderful point. Because the feeling is the consciousness, you know? I mean, nobody knows what consciousness is. I mean, where it comes from but that is the consciousness and you can feel it rising up. And I have to do something. I live alone and there's no consciousness raising around here or groups like that. But I will see or hear about something and immediately sit down at the computer and have to write something, you know, and send out to deal with it because my consciousness won't let me just sit with it.