#50 

Zoe from FiLiA in conversation with Angela C. Wild of Wild Womyn merchandise and Get The L Out.

Zoe: So I'm Zoe and I'm going to interview Angela C. Wild. She's one of the organizers of the ‘Get The L Out’ Campaign. She's a lesbian feminist activist, a writer and a political artist based in the UK, and she will be presenting her research on the Cotton Ceiling entitled ‘Lesbians at Ground Zero’ at FiLiA. 

So first of all, Angela, how long have you been an activist and what issues have you campaigned on?

Angela: So I've started to develop a feminist consciousness and to write since 2005. And in 2009 I moved to London and I started to join feminist actions. And mainly at the time it was anti-porn protests, loads of dad's mag's action with Object and protesting Playboy, that sort of thing.

 I've done also some political artwork around the issue of motherhood as a patriarchal institution, and I've helped organise some women only gatherings, conferences. I've run workshops on motherhood, on compulsory heterosexuality, and sexual violence and lesbianism. 

Since 2012, I've worked on the issue of transgenderism as a threat to women. And mainly this has been taken the form of direct actions until now. 

Zoe: Excellent. So, moving swiftly on. How did you become a lesbian? 

Angela: Well, in 2012 I was very lucky to hear Sheila Jeffreys speak and she was speaking about lesbian feminism, actually. And at that time I was married to a man, a very abusive man. And this remains my only heterosexual relationship I've ever had in my life. But at the time my thoughts on lesbianism was that, lesbians came out at the age of 11 or 12 with a fully formed consciousness of their lesbianism and that lesbians were women who never had any relationship with men or even sex with men at all.

I had been questioning my sexuality when I was younger. But I stopped and I considered then myself to be heterosexual because I was married to a man and you know, that was it. So when I heard that Sheila was speaking on that topic, I thought, woo, you know, lesbianism, that's interesting. Obviously it's not for me. It's not about me. But that would be interesting. And in fact, it was more than interesting. Sheila was speaking about how in the seventies and eighties women who were involved in the women's liberation movement were becoming lesbians, a lot of them and how they were spending like a lot of time together doing activism, marching, campaigning, and the parties and that it made less and less sense for them to go back home to Nigel. 

So I suppose women also started to feel differently about men and maybe they started seeing their own men as agents of the patriarchy. I don't know. Maybe they just enjoy the time with women more. 

But I think both these elements are important to be able to develop that lesbian consciousness. But when you know that at some point she said this, she said ‘Most of us were becoming lesbians and so will you’, and you know, I was like, whoa, when she said it, it really allowed something for me to change that, you know, that click moment that feminists have. This was a really big click moment. It hit me straight away. I thought, that's it. I'm done with this, this is what I want for my life. It makes sense to me. I want to be with women. No more men. So when I leave this one, that would be it. And it was a strong moment. 

So it was a decision and it was followed by a quite an intensive time of consciousness raising, a lot of reading, political discussions with friends, et cetera.

And then what came out of it really unexpectedly was like some forgotten memories that came back from a lesbian past that was completely buried and, these lesbian experiences had been repressed and they emerged out of nowhere. But what's important for me now with my perspective is that I could not have had access to that past, without feminism, without the politics, I could not have accessed it without it and without me making that conscious decision at some point, that I did. So naturally the next question for me is, how many other women like me are trapped into heterosexuality, isn't it? So that's kind of my coming out story.

Zoe: It's lovely. And what does your lesbian feminism mean to you? 

Angela: First of all, I'm going to refer everybody to Adrienne Rich, but I think it means understanding that heterosexuality is a political institution that is enforced by men onto women, and that without this political institution, there is no patriarchy. Patriarchy could not function without it. So it means understanding how it works, like looking at the culture that represent heterosexuality as the norm and lesbianism as perverted, for example, and society or family will punish lesbianism, ostracise lesbians, the violence including sexual violence against lesbians.

So again, read Adrienne Rich, I'm sure maybe we can put a link somewhere. And this patriarchal culture in my opinion, acts itself as a form of conversion therapy. We don't have to send women to conversion therapy. Conversion therapy comes to make them straight because patriarchy does that.

Patriarchy is a conversion therapy camp in itself. So really it means going against this patriarchal ID that was embraced by the gay movement, that homosexuality is innate and that gay people have to be accepted because ‘it's not their fault. They cannot help being gay, they were born like that’.

To me, this kind of rhetoric doesn't feel like pride. You know, it feels like an expression of shame. It feels like an excuse. It's presenting like a birth defect. I find it really weird. I don't understand it. I'm a lesbian and it took me a long time to escape heterosexuality, the trap of heterosexuality.

And it took me a very long time to be able to live as a lesbian, to call me a lesbian. And I'm not willing to hide behind some biological determinants argument, to apologize behind it to say, it's not my fault. It doesn't make sense to me at all. So I own it. I'm a proud lesbian and I'm proud to be a lesbian. I don't want to hide it. 

And so with this, I think also there's two more points to come, the understanding that lesbians are under attack for political reasons because we are a threat to men and to patriarchy and it means also that we are as lesbian and as feminists centring women in every aspect of our lives, including emotionally, including sexually, it means being involved in creating women only spaces so that women can create our culture. And by this I mean not just a culture of resistance, but a culture centred on women and on our love for women. That's what it means to me. 

Zoe: Lovely. So saying all that, what do you think about some of the discussions that have been going on around political lesbianism?

Angela: Well, I think it's becoming pretty boring actually, like all debate that is based solely on theory, it can become very stale and rigid sometimes, which it is now. I think theory is great and I love it, but you can only go that far with it. So what I've found is that actually I've had a lot of very interesting conversation with women, with a lot of very different background and experiences with lesbians and I find that once we pass this theoretical debate and the disagreement that wall. If you manage to pass over that, you manage to speak to each other and to listen to each other perspective and the experience we can have, then you can start building something together that is much more interesting than having a discussion on theory, I think.

I think we have to accept that we don't have all the same journey and the same theory to be able to work together. And what we need to respect each other’s and those perspective. I think that's much more important. Understand that the way women have been oppressed changes and varies and that the conclusion we drew from our experience will be different, but it's not a problem as long as we can respect that. 

Zoe: And would you call yourself a separatist and do you think that lesbians will lead the revolution? 

Angela: I wish I was a separatist. I think I'm a separatist as much as I can be, which is a case for a lot of women. We still have to function in patriarchy for a lot of us but no men are allowed in my house and I'm one of those killjoys who doesn't read men's book and I don't watch a lot of TV.

Women have the right to physical privacy, without it, there is no private consciousness. And I think that's a really good point for some separatism and I agree that women need to spend as much time as possible away from men, first of all and away from patriarchal structure. And to spend as much time as possible with ourselves and with other women because that allows us to think outside of the patriarchal system because this system is brainwashing us, gaslighting us, and only, from my experience, but only when we leave our oppressor, I think individually, but also collectively, and we can start to have a better idea of what we actually think for ourselves and build the feminist consciousness.

So for that reason, I think the lesbian, yes, is a form of separatism. because we refuse that our bodies are accessible to men. And maybe because of that we have a clearer view of patriarchy than women who are not lesbian because we are standing at the edge of it. We're not really inside it. So bring on the revolution. I suppose I realised the importance of that when I was helping organise a conference in 2012, which was to be a woman only conference.

We were constantly relentlessly targeted by trans activists, not male rights activists, trans activists and it was quite a shock to me. I was not expecting it then I thought, you know, there must be something really powerful for women to organize together, uh, and to meet such a resistance. It must be something important that we do. If it's not allowed, then we must do it. It was trans activists who were targeting it. It was very clear that they were against that. So it was kind of my eye-opening moment that it was a political discussion, you know? 

Zoe: There's a lot of talk these days about gender critical feminists. I don't expect you call yourself gender critical. Do you call yourself a gender abolitionist? 

Angela: No, not really. I call myself a feminist because I think feminism, by definition is against what is called gender already. We call it gender, but we used to call it sexist stereotype or sex stereotype. So it's already in it and I think feminism as a term is broader than just fighting gender.

I think this is one aspect of our struggle and feminism goes beyond that. There's plenty of other issues that are not covered in gender abolitionist or gender critical movement. And it's true also that a lot of people use the gender neutral word, ‘people’ here who call themselves gender critical or gender abolitionists who don't necessarily have a feminist perspective on any subject apart from that one.

Zoe: Would you say that trans activists are the modern face of patriarchy? What do you think makes them tick?

Angela: Yes, definitely. I really absolutely think that trans activists are the avant-garde of patriarchy and that they have developed the most recent invention, the latest patriarchal reversal, you know, to use Mary Daly's words. What makes them tick? I think power, like all men. I think the fact that a small proportion of the male population can manage to monopolize the media, manage to redefine language, change the law in their favour, generally speaking, make people, you know, I mean, especially women deny the existence of our biology, you know, the definition of womanhood, make women believe, what we know is a lie. And, and they still manage to make women say that, this is the ultimate expression of power to me. 

I really see transgenderism as a form of gaslighting, mass gaslighting. 

Zoe: So tell us about Get The L Out. How did it start and how has it evolved? 

Angela: Well, lesbians, on the internet, mainly, but lesbians have been frustrated for a while now by the lack of response to our concern by organisations such as Stonewall and Pride and others maybe since, I mean, you know, this is an ongoing issue, but maybe since the cotton ceiling emerged in 2012, there was quite a lot of talk and never has this been addressed at all by the organization. 

So Pride in London seemed to be a very strategic and symbolic place to have a presence at but it's only when I saw the action, there was a Lesbian Action in Oakland Pride in New Zealand last year before the London Pride happened where two women held a banner on the march where they were saying Protect Lesbian Youth, where I thought, wow, this is, this is amazing that they managed to do that in the lions’ den, and survived. So I thought we could do something similar. 

And it turned out that Sara had exactly the same idea at the same time. So we started talking about it and organising. Then very quickly Liane joined the planning group and we got on with it. We were not a constituted group and it was to be a one of action. We were not planning anything beyond the action if you want. So there was this hashtag that has been going on the internet for a while, Get The L Out (GTLO). We used it and we just started. 

And after that we were absolutely shocked by how much impact the action had. We were not expecting it; we didn't think it would work that well.

So we took a long break, to kind of recover but also to take some distance because it's really easy to be in the reaction. And we didn't want to do that. We just wanted to take some time and see what the next step was. And then I had this opportunity to do the cotton ceiling research, the one that I will be speaking on at FiLiA.

It's something that's quite important because I think as GTLO we are both good at direct action, but we also have this aspect that we are in the academia somehow and do research and theory. So we have both aspects that are complementary and very important. 

So from that this year, Liane and I decided to visit Swansea Pride, to kick-start the Pride season early, pay them a little visit. And then from there we've marched in Vienna as you know, for Europe Pride. It was very important to us because we are Europeans and we have a European perspective on these kind of things.

And then Resistors United and other informal groups organised their own actions this year, which was very, very exciting to witness and not be part of, just to look, it was nice to see that this was happening all around the country. That was really great. And then we went to Manchester Pride because we have been told that we would be dragged out if we went. So we thought, okay, let's go. That's where we are at the moment. I'm not going to tell you our plans for the future. 

Zoe: And what has the reaction been this year from Pride organisers and other GBT organizations? How have they changed, if at all, in their strategy in response to all these protests that have been going on this summer?

Angela: Yeah, well I think they started to develop strategies when actually for the London Pride they didn't really have a strategy because they didn't think it would happen and they just reacted. But what's been constant is they've constantly demonised us, called us hateful and anti-trans, nothing really new. And this carries on. 

What they've really done this year is they try to silence us through silencing the press so that our action doesn’t get reported as much. And in London, for example, the Pride in London Committee has tried to ban press photographers to access the parade, which was a big scandal in the press. Manchester Pride has banned the photographer because he was taking pictures of a lesbian, which apparently are not representing what the march should be about and that's from officials.

 In Leeds there was a Lesbian Strength march and the photographer took pictures and trans-activists, so it doesn't come from any kind of officials as I understand, but they've still tried to bully this photographer to remove the pictures. So that is lesbian erasure in action. 

They also downplayed our work. Every time there is any sort of demo protest or even with the Lesbian Strength march they basically said that there was not that many of us, so it's not relevant, this kind of thing. They lie. In Euro Pride they said that we had been removed by the police. We have not been removed by the police because we're not doing anything wrong. So these are the kind of strategies.

What we've seen in protests where the decision was made to show visibility from the side of the parade, not at the front. And we've seen threats and physically aggressive behaviour from a crowd of young identifying as queer, I suppose and these were encouraged by older men to come and shout at lesbians. This is what I witness and that's really, really worrying. 

Zoe: With GTLO often, they post mainstream news articles about lesbophobic attacks, including murders. How far do you think the public is aware of the level of misogyny and anti-lesbian sentiment? 

Angela: No, I don't think they're aware. I think not much because generally speaking, lesbianism is invisible. So anti-lesbianism is pretty much invisible too. I think even in our own lesbian or lesbian feminist community, we're not fully aware of how widespread it is.

I think mainly it's because there's no research on it because the GBT actually are not doing specific research on lesbians and it's going to be time for us feminists to do it. 

Zoe: So you've already mentioned the Lesbian Strength march. So did you go, actually what was that like?

Angela: Yeah, I was there, it was amazing. I decided this year to be one of the stewards of the march because I realised, I mean, a lot of women I was speaking to said they were nervous because of the threats that were done against lesbians online and elsewhere. So I thought I'll do that.

Obviously I think that march was amazing, just the fact that it happened, you know, because we need this, this is lesbians actually getting the L out and organising separately. So, you know, politically it was a crucial thing to happen. and the march itself I thought it was wonderful. I thought it was absolutely powerful. The energy was fantastic. Women were really happy to be there and proud and the pictures really show that I think.

What I really enjoyed was the diversity of the lesbians that were marching together. And if you think like lesbian, we hardly see older the lesbians, disabled lesbians, black lesbians, de-transitioned women, cotton ceiling survivors altogether.

The fact also I felt I was really powerful, that there was a real clear sense of purpose there. And I know every single one of us there, knew why we were there and what the threats were. And women still came. 

Zoe: You'll be speaking about the cotton ceiling, as you've mentioned, Lesbians at Ground Zero, and without giving too much away in advance of your talk for FiLiA, could you tell us perhaps one of the stories that you heard from lesbians, which you know, really fuelled your outrage and made you decide to do this, this research.

Angela: One of the reason I did it, in fact, it was before I heard any stories, the fact that the cotton ceiling, you know, the pressure that we experience on social media all the time and social media for those who go to dating sites or things like this that we hear, you know, all the time that we are bigots, that we’re hateful because we don't accept trans women as sexual partner.

And at the same time, what I find incredible is that trans-activists are denying that this is happening. As they are doing it, they are denying it's happening again it's like a classical gas-lighting. And it's one of the reasons I really wanted to see if there was any evidence and to show them.

In terms of stories, it was just really shocking. What really shocked me is how quickly I got really horrendous stories of rape within half an hour of posting the questionnaire online. I was not expecting that much. As much as the physical and the sexual violence is horrendous, what really shocked me, I think the most is the fact that younger lesbian were targeted. I don't know why I was surprised, but it really emotionally hit me. 

Zoe: Okay. Well I'm looking forward to your talk on that, as I'm sure many other women are as well so we'll leave that there. 

This year you marched at Million Women Rise with Beautiful Banner, which stated Lesbians Against Racism. Could you tell us a bit about what compelled you to make that banner?

Angela: The general context is not a secret. We are experiencing a very alarming rise of very right wing, very conservative, and very racist politic everywhere, including in the UK.  

Million Women Rise is organised and led by black women. It's the march that is and has been for a long time at the forefront of the fight against both racism and violence against women.

This year, particularly as a white lesbian, I thought it was important to express my support to anti-racism, given the context of the escalating racist/sexist attacks against black women in the UK but everywhere as well. 

But you know, there's also, I think a real risk that as feminists and or gender critical activists, we look for allies sometimes in right wing and racist places. And you know, there's this really weird idea going on that the left as abandoned women when they took over queer and trans politics and the support of self-identification and the feeling that women feel betrayed by the left, maybe feel that the right somehow feels more welcoming to them because they are gender critical. A proportion of the right wing doesn't embrace queer theory, doesn't deny the biology of the sexes and doesn't call us terf and to me there's several problems that I think we need to talk about that we've not really talked about.

First of all, I don't believe for one second that the left has betrayed women because I don't believe that the left has ever been particularly for women and that was before taking on the queer agenda. The left is male led, is male-centred, sexist a men's movement. And if you read women's history, we know that women have in the past separated from left wing and progressive movement. It's not new because we realised time and time again that women's issue were ignored, that sexism was rampant, that sexual violence was there. And this happened in the Gay Liberation Movement, in the anti-war movement, in the civil right movement and this has led to the creation of the Women's Liberation Movement in the seventies. It's not new, and I'm not quite sure where this feeling of betrayal is coming from because without this happening in the seventies, we wouldn't even have Women’s Liberation in the shape that it is now. So that's the first point. 

But secondly, I also believe that having a common understanding of biology, with any right-wing person doesn't make them an ally to women or to feminists because the right-wing, conservative, politics, what they do with their understanding of biology is they'll oppress us with it. And it's important for them to say that women are women, men are men because for conservative politics, having female sex mean that we are inferior and then we are relegated to second class citizens which is how patriarchies worked for a long time.

And this is biological determinism by the way. Then they implement all sorts of law based on that, laws that are deeply racist, deeply sexist, and anti-lesbian. And these people are not, and can never be our allies. We have to remember that. 

So our question, I mean my question, our question at GTLO is why would we form alliances with men led movement left or right when we could just regroup with other women because who needs racist sexist allies?

Zoe: Big question. How do you think we can begin to build an anti-racist movement?

Angela: Yeah. Big question indeed. I don't know. I'm not a specialist and I don't tend to have like the answer to this. I don't anybody has, otherwise it would've been done.

But I can certainly like reflect a few things on stuff that I've heard or seen around or haven't actually, as a white woman, I'm going to speak to white women, but I think first as white women, we need to recognize that there is such a thing as racism. And I know it sounds really basic, but again, sometimes this basic understanding is missing and that women of colour are oppressed in a way that white women are not. It's crucial to realize that. So black women have a different experience of oppression. and therefore different understanding and therefore different priorities. And as white feminists, we have to respect that first, not impose our theories, our thinking or thinking that our struggles are the one and only that are important or more important than others.

Again this is something that we really frequently see. We need to recognize that black women are silenced in different way than white women are, for example. I know that at GTLO we have worked with black women who were really committed to work with us, but who said specifically that it could not be seen in our action because, for example, they would receive life-threatening repercussion from people in their own countries for even being a lesbian. That needs to be acknowledged and not invisibilised. 

So, generally speaking, we do try to build a truly, I'm going to use the word here, intersectional but you know, in a feminist way, a truly feminist, in a feminist meaning and what we want to do is to meet, work and build alliances with women from different cultures, from different backgrounds, with different experiences and, and to go beyond the patriarchal divide that sometimes happens at these intersections we're talking about. 

And this is why for us it was so important that we did the, the action in Vienna because then we were really able to work with women from different countries and backgrounds because obviously these women are also our friends, but we want to be able to exchange on a different perspective. And this is really important. 

And generally we want to work with women who are committed to work with other women with whom we have a common cause and who do not centre men that goes beyond, I think all, the race issue or any other intersection. 

Zoe: So, Angela, when I met you we were both mothers of toddlers and you were doing some work on motherhood as a patriarchal institution. You mentioned it earlier. 

Could you tell us a little bit about that work and why you felt it was important to do that? 

Angela:  The work you were talking about was a political art exhibition that I had organised a few years ago with some artwork that I had designed. It was called A Bundle of Joy, quite sarcastically, Untold Tales of Mothers, Motherhood and Oppression.

And at the time I was myself, a new mother. I had just escaped a violent marriage that I mentioned. And as a survivor and a single mum living in London, I was barely surviving. I was isolated. I couldn't function, I couldn't work. My mental health was really, really bad. And then, you know what it's like you're not well, but you have to look after a baby when you can barely look after yourself. 

So it was a bit of a shock. I had no idea what was going on, and I never really thought or imagined that motherhood could be that hard. So in the rare moments that I was functioning enough, I started to collect research and found all these statistics about motherhood.

Some of them have collected here, so it was maybe four years ago, 70,000 women suffered from postnatal depression. Each year, 30,000 women lost their job as a result of being pregnant. By the way, this doubled with the Tory government. 30% of domestic violence starts in pregnancy.

I have plenty, but this is the kind of stuff I started to look at and because I'm a visual artist, after reading those, images just popped into my mind and they were calling to be created. So I did, because I've got a background in graphic design and very luckily I had the opportunity to show this and to have a little exhibition locally where I lived.

So I organised a couple of weeks of exhibition where we had daily consciousness raising session with mothers who wanted to come. And I met many women including yourself, properly and we had the most amazing conversation and started to build networks. And for me politically, these images created the space to discuss.

And then the discussion really helped me to understand some stuff about motherhood and my own experience of it. And I really started to think like, why is the issue of motherhood not widely discussed, certainly not critically discussed. I was really amazed that we are sold this myth of motherhood that is a lovely experience and that women having a great time in playgrounds, you know, when in reality for a lot of women is horrendous and the struggles of mothers are kept silent.

And who benefits from this omission and why are we not talking about it? And where is the current feminist critic of motherhood as an oppression. Really, we are not really talking about it. 

I think it's because new mothers are, you know, when we get hit by this stuff, the hardest, there's hardly any time energy or mental health left to organise politically and it gets kind of forgotten.

And the big conclusion I've drawn from this is, postnatal depression, because I was suffering from this or I was told. It's always presented as kind of a normal imbalance at first. And then you are told that there's something wrong with the chemistry of your brain and that can be helped with taking drugs.

I think all this is a lie because it frames oppression as a medical issue where really it's a political issue. I'm not saying don't take drugs, I'm saying the issue women are having in their real life is not going to be helped by taking drugs. We need to look at the structure and the fact that what is expected of mothers is not achievable on one's own. And the oppression and discrimination that we receive at that particular time is, is extremely high.

I thought also about all the pressure on women to become mothers, you know, and the shame on women who aren't. And I felt really compelled to speak to women who are not mothers and to tell them, think really carefully before you do that and know what is going to happen to you, what is likely to happen to you, what exactly, how your life changes when you have a child. Realities that are never discussed, actually. 

Zoe: You know, something stuck out from what you just said. So the fact that women aren't really talking about this oppression that they're facing because as new mothers, they don't have the time or the energy to do that, feminists need to actually help new mothers on this. 

So that brings me to my next question about the feminist movement and this concept of mother privilege that's banded about more generally.

 What do you think of attitudes towards mothers in the movement?  

Angela: I think the idea of motherhood being a privilege is laughable. I mean, it would be laughable, but it's disgusting. I think first of all, if we are feminist, we acknowledge that as women, we're oppressed on the basis of our biology.

That means because our reproductive capacity, but also through our biology and pregnancy and motherhood are some of the times where patriarchy hits women the hardest. Those who think that mothers are privileged because we ‘receive a Mother's Day card once a year’ I really think they need to think harder.

Women in motherhood actually lose status and pay. Those who are in violent relationships with violent men can generally not leave because they can't afford to work because childcare is so expensive, et cetera. How can a privileged group of women have such a low mental health, as mothers have, when the the suicide is the leading cause of death to mothers in the first year of their child's life. It's not something that is usually discussed. 

So, there is no such thing as mother privilege. Definitely not. And one step feminist could take is to acknowledge that for a start. 

Zoe: I don't know if you talk about this very often, but I know that you are doing a course and I think it's on Women's Studies, or at least it was when you started.

Could you talk about that and generally about the state of Women's Studies in this country? 

Angela: I am finishing it now a Women's Studies course. One of the things that really needs to be said is once I registered a few months after I was told immediately that the course was closing down.

And it was one of the last one in the country, maybe the last one in the country. So I am finishing my degree on a course that is dying, where the head teacher has been sacked, where it was absolutely unnecessary. It was clearly an ideological decision to do that, the course was successful. The course itself was great.

We did like a lot of very, very important, interesting work in women's history, women's literature, women's art. 

There's like such a knowledge and such a richness. You often hear when you speak, of Women's Studies to people, oh, is there such a thing and what for?

And there's like all this history of women's work that is completely invisible and erased so I really had a good time. I'm just like really grieving that women will not have access to it anymore. It's just really shameful and the state of Women's Studies that is Gender Studies because men want to do it as well.

I mean, it is clearly an ideological decision from the academia and it's disgusting. 

Zoe: Terrible. Okay. And just finally, could you describe a little bit about Wild Womyn Workshop, where do you make your creations and perhaps which pieces have you most enjoyed making?

Angela: Well it's nice, it's a positive thing because as one of the things that I like the most is that as an activist we deal with really dark stuff. We look at really horrible studies. We look at disgusting stories of rape and so on, and I really need like a creative outlet to go and do positive things.

I wouldn't say that I've got something that I like the most doing, but what I like is just to be in my studio at the back of my garden and to focus on women and to do some work around women and around lesbians and have a vision of the future that, you know, patriarchy doesn’t give us.

That is really important. That allows me then to go back into the activist fighting the dark stuff. It helps me to keep a balance and it helps me to keep positive. 

Zoe: Wow, that's wonderful.  Well, Angela, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me about yourself. It's been really, really lovely speaking to you. Again, we're all looking forward to hearing your talk at FiLiA. Are you ready?  

Angela: That's a really interesting question. Yes, I'm ready. 

Zoe: Good, well done. Thank you, Angela.