There were many fantastic things about UK Feminista Summer School but my personal favourite was feeling like a student, but only this time at the world’s best University. Between rushing to a workshop on running campaigns whilst cramming a sandwich in my face, getting lost on campus, taking illegible notes, playing ridiculous drinking games in student halls, mainlining coffee, introducing myself to absolutely everyone, requesting early 90’s CHOONS in an old man’s pub and using monster munch as a hangover cure and then trying not to chunder in a seminar, it was like the good part of being at University, right before the bit you had to go move into the library and do some proper work.
Student nostalgia aside, UK Feminista Summer School will probably be the most valuable thing I do all year.
The best way to describe Summer School is activist training. Basically, ‘How to be a better feminist’ in two short days. Workshops included: running a feminist organisation, effective campaigning, consensus making, how to influence MPs, using the media and taking non-violent direct action. Alongside the workshops were seminars on current feminist issues such as Women’s role in the Arab spring, abortion rights, the sex industry and how the public spending cuts affect Women. These seminars uniformly ended with a section on ‘what to do next’ or ‘how to take action’. The tone of these workshops and seminars is always an active one with the emphasis on concrete, completely achievable ideas of what we could, or should, be doing as feminists who want to influence the world around us.
Empowering: that’s how would I sum up Feminist Fantasy University- Here’s what the problem is and here is how to we can try and solve it. The amount of ideas that was presented to me as something which GFN could feasibly, easily infact, be doing was unbelievable. Add in knowing that perhaps everyone else in the room felt they were also champing at the activist bit made for a very powerful feeling.
Sometimes, it can be difficult being an ‘ardent feminist’ (as I was introduced as earlier this weekend). Feminism is a label that some women still shy away from, or some people don’t get (‘ahhh you hate MEN’) and feeling like you’re the only person aware of blindingly obvious sexism is an advert or TV show that everyone else perceives as perfectly benign, can feel isolating. Summer School was like the antithesis of this feeling. The social event on a Saturday was like feminist respite. Taking over an old man’s pub with a feminist disco (mostly Blondie), finding someone else to discuss Bikini Kill vs. L7 with, and feeling like everyone was ready to be your friend instead of the competition was in a word: awesome. More feminist discos says I. See one of my co-students blogs what on socialising without a male objectifying gaze is like: http://petitefeministe.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/you-oughta-know/
Will I be back next year? So much so I’ve written to ask if Glasgow Feminist Network could host Summer School next year. I am sometimes aware that organisations use the label ‘UK’ but are in fact quite Anglo-centric. So I told them to come up to Glasgow, if they think their hard enough ;)
Hazel x
