Feminism and sexism: both alive and living in Oxford.

This past Friday and Saturday was the Women's Liberation Movement at 40 conference held at Ruskin College in Oxford. It commemorated the 40th anniversary of the original conference held at Ruskin in 1970, which was central in the British women's liberation movement.

I'd been helping with the conference organizing since the fall, though I wasn't especially helpful in the beginning phases when we most needed to identify UK feminist networks that'd be instrumental in pulling the event together. As we gained momentum and got closer to the date, though, I was able to help with logistics and the clerical/admin sort of stuff. Helping to plan it was a fantastic opportunity for me, both in terms of getting to see what goes into organizing a conference and in learning about the history of feminist efforts in Britain...and in working with the conference's phenomenal coordinator, Louise, as well as the rest of the planning team, folks from Ruskin and also from my course. This has been the one thing I've put any significant time and effort into outside of my work, and it's been well worth it.

A number of women who were present at the original conference came to our event, along with women who have been active in feminist politics over the years, as well as a handful of younger women/third wavers/whatever descriptive term you prefer. Mostly the conference team was running around for the full two days registering delegates, directing people to their rooms, helping out with the technology in presentations, checking on refreshments, clearing up spaces, rearranging chair configurations, etc, but we did get to sit in on some of the sessions and keynotes. I got to chair the session on contemporary feminist organizing, which I really enjoyed.

One area where I was left sort of uneasy, though, was the current state of things and the future of feminism. Though there was a fantastic keynote speech on the new generation of feminists, throughout the conference I picked up on a lot of skepticism from the participants about what younger women are doing now, and whether young feminists even really exist. The last part is always a bit disheartening for me--when I'm physically present in a room with women older than me, who can see me and people my age there, but then question our existence or commitment to action. I guess it's fair enough in some ways--a lot of women my age don't identify with feminism for reasons both legitimate and totally ridiculous--but to sort of dismiss those of us who do have a sense of feminist identity and connection to a movement is just really sad. As disappointing as those sentiments are, I have a lot of faith in third wavers--I have only to look at my friends from social justice circles and women's studies at Michigan, or to have conversations with my brilliant coursemates here, or to spend an evening with the conference planning team to know that feminist action might look different than it did in 1970, but it's still alive and badass.

Oh, and Louise got some fab feedback about our work on the conference in an email that she shared with us and made at least a few of us a bit teary:

"Thanks again to all of you who were involved in bringing about the wlm40conference. It was not simply very informative but very energizing (and for me at times moving). You are true successors of the women who organised the 1970 event at Ruskin."

(This is Una Versal-Suffrage, the knit suffragette that was donated to our conference. We had participants submit names for her, then drew one from the box. She is rad. )

On Saturday night after the conference was over, I went to the Moulin Rouge bop at Green Templeton college. It did feel really strange to go from something about women's liberation and empowerment to an event that struck me as a thinly veiled ruse to get girls to show up scantily clad and guys to ogle them, but my friends and I though a free bop at the end of term was a good opportunity for release, so we donned some feathers and headed over. For most of the night we were having a good time flailing around and singing along to lady gaga and beyonce, but then things took a turn for the worse. My friends and I were sitting outside to cool down (and get out of the serious STANK that the bop had developed) when two guys came up to one of us and started an interaction that can't really be described as anything other than sexual harassment.

One of them started touching my friend and wouldn't stop, and when she told him repeatedly to stop, the other guy started going on about the way that she was dressed and how dumb she was, etc. They wouldn't go away, and guy one just wouldn't stop touching her. Seeing that they wouldn't go away, I too got in their faces and told guy one to keep his hands to himself unless he wanted them broken, and guy two that no one was interested in his jackass opinions. Things escalated to the point that it was really just best to leave, since guy one, with his scary glazed drunk eyes and smirk was getting creepier by the minute.

That five minute encounter has been replaying in my mind for the past couple days. I am livid. It's infuriating that men feel entitled to approach and harass women; that they feel entitled to stay even when it's been repeatedly made clear that they are not welcome; that they may encroach on someone's person; that they justify doing these things by how someone is dressed; that we were displaced by their refusal to leave; that our fun was disrupted by their drunken advances. Granted, I didn't love the theme of the bop, and I think it's better to have bops like Kellogg's that haven't been obviously sexual or gendered (the 80's bop, heroes and villains). But even if every woman in the Moulin Rouge bop was dressed like a prostitute (which, p.s., was not the case), men, YOU DO NOT GET TO TREAT US LIKE PROSTITUTES (and then there's a whole other conversation about our ideas about how we treat prostitutes). What is it about costumes or clothes that is really so troublesome (I suspect it's not actually troublesome, and that it's just used as an excuse for skeezy men to do as they please)? You wouldn't confess your sins to a man in a priest costume; nor would you ask someone in a borrowed doctor's coat to remove your appendix.

That night was just one of many manifestations of sexism I've encountered in my time here. It's everywhere--in the lack of institutional support for our program, in the derision I get from customs agents, non-women's studies professors, and even many fellow students when I tell them what I'm studying, in the asinine comments and attidudes from the pretentious, arrogant, privileged little white boys debating at the union, at the bops and house parties, during one of which a male student started to demonstrate his bondage paraphrenalia on a female student despite her obvious discomfort, lack of consent, and moments of protest.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. It's so obvious to me that both sexism and feminism are still around....but there are definitely moments when I'm concerned about which one will have the last word. The movement continues, and sometimes it's wonderful and inspiring and I feel a strong sense of a history and continued presence of collective sisterhood in action...and sometimes it seems like the assholes of the world are winning. I guess we learn from the past, get creative when we need to, get aggressive when we need to (in my mental replays of Saturday night I've created an ending where I break some bones and make boys cry), and live to fight another day.