Cheering on the young female resistance (essay)

Cheering on the young female resistance

First there was the student riot at Millbank Tower, where in amongst the groups of your atypical lefty male activist-types, were women experiencing direct action for the first time, including, “a shy looking girl” who “squeaks in fright, but sets her lips determinedly and walks forward, not back, towards the line of riot cops” and giving “the glass under her feet a tentative stomp, and then a firmer one. Crunch, it goes. Crunch.” 

Then there were the young women taking to their city centres to demonstrate against cuts to the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) and occupying their student unions in protest at increased university tuition fees; their faces lit up in joyous defiance, their stand self-assured: "They are cutting EMA and they are cutting arts and sports programmes, but they are not cutting the Ministry of Defence and nuclear weapons which is ridiculous. They need to get their priorities sorted out.”

And I thought: how fucking brilliant is this? These women may be heading into adulthood amidst the bleakest social and economic times of recent years, but perversely, this is also inducing their political awakening, an awakening which may have taken longer to dawn had their futures beamed a little brighter. These 15, 16, 17, 18-year old girls have now found their political voices, felt the freedom in fighting back - something they’ll never forget. So now their resistance has been piqued, who knows what further riots they could inspire?

Then as I sat amongst rows of young feminists at the recent Bristol University Feminism Conference, I was struck by the way feminist activism has taken off on university campuses in the past couple of years.  I attended my first feminist conference in 2005 (FEM 05 at Sheffield University Student Union) shortly after graduating, and there had been no similar student feminist movement back then. And yet now there are all these pockets of student women finding feminism and wanting to run with it.

In short, it’s really exciting and encouraging to see such a surge of political energy coming from young women - at a time when it’s most definitely called for.

~

My current optimism signals a shift in my feelings about the efficacy and value of some activism, particularly in relation to how it’s utilised in feminist movement. A couple of years ago, I was writing quite critically about feminist activism in the UK, arguing that one-off demos were unlikely to achieve much and that more vigour and commitment was needed behind the more high-profile campaigns.

However, I’ve been engaging with feminism in a more positive way again recently, mainly because of the Women Speak Out project I’ve been doing. I’ve been meeting women involved in some of those campaigns I’ve since cut ties with, but getting out from behind the computer screen to instead talk face-to-face with them has humanised and provided a better context for me to understand their commitment and motivation for getting involved in the causes they do. 

For instance, at our discussion in Bristol, we were talking to women who were most concerned with porn, beauty ideals and the sexualisation of young women. Now, these are no longer the sorts of things I get so worked up about, and I’ve got my issues with how feminism tends to tackle them, however there’s no escaping the fact that, just like the young women we were speaking to, my first forays into feminism also involved protesting lad mags, rape, and sexual objectification. I too remember discovering that feeling of joyous defiance, the freedom in fighting back.

My feminism has since calmed down and got more complicated. But recognising my younger feminist self in these burgeoning feminist activists – as well as in some of those girls taking their first tentative, yet also heady footsteps, into activism via the issue of education cuts - has made me more empathetic and understanding towards their activism and the feelings fuelling that activism. So, instead of completing disavowing my early feminism, and continuing to criticise other, often younger, feminists for continuing down that road; almost expecting my feminism to be their feminism, I’m now more in the mood to try forging productive alliances and dialogues with them, on the understanding that we come into, and do, feminism at different stages and from different places.

~

If we acknowledge that being a feminist involves taking a political journey, one which will see our politics change as our personal circumstances change, then that not only allows us to question and shift our own positions on certain issues, but also means we are better placed to accept the different positions held between ourselves and other feminists.

And perhaps there is no better way to set out on that journey than to just dive in and see where it takes you. I’ve been critical in the past about feminists protesting for the sake of protesting, to no specific end, and that coming together for a couple of times a year to march through the streets of London is never going to bring the revolution. But that was talking as someone who had already embarked on the journey and was ready to alight at the next stop – I’m not going to criticise other young women for joining in the way I did, and dismiss them when they declare, for example, how empowering marching alongside other women is (which it is!). I’ll cheer on any young woman who makes that choice – still a pretty radical one – to step out on the streets and speak back on something that rouses her ire. If nothing else, it’s a way for her to test out her new political ideas and experience what resistance feels like. Even if the aims of the campaign aren’t achieved, even if it requires a bit more work to be successful, even if she comes to a point of disillusionment with it, at least she’s now gathered further fuel to embark on the next stage of the journey.

And this is something that will continue throughout the journey; you stop to focus on a particular campaign or figure out a new theory, before setting off again, either because the campaign/theory no longer fits, or on the contrary, its success requires you to keep moving forward with it. No one sets out with their feminism fully formed, but then again, no one can ever claim to have a fully formed feminism, because our politics will always change alongside our personal lives, therefore we shouldn’t be expected to get it right all the time, we’ll make mistakes, and say and do things which in a couple of years we may no longer want to align ourselves with.

The important thing is to create spaces and dialogues that allow for this within feminism. We’re not always going to agree with each other and wish to attach ourselves to the same causes, but I still believe in the possibility of entering into constructive dialogues with those at different stages of their feminist journeys, whether those differences arise from ideology, personal experience, or how long we’ve been on those journeys.

We had such a discussion at Bristol; some of us were speaking from different backgrounds, with different beliefs, and investment in different causes, but I found it exciting to see the young feminists we spoke to keen to ask questions and listen and learn from each other.  They were idealistic, but not dogmatic. They had their convictions, but they were open to having them challenged and expanded.

~

But I also feel like cheering on this rush of young female resistance, because now is not the time to be holding back and staying home. I think it’s better we head out and make our voices heard than not do anything at all.

When I read about young women, “feeling alive, really alive” as a result of their political awakening and involvement, I see that as the key thing right now. In these times of neo-liberal, Conservative rule, where we turn up to work and get coined as ‘resources to be rationalised’; are expected to find solace in television schedules stuffed full of shiny soulless entertainment; are told our hearts should lie with Royal Variety Shows, where the heir to the throne shakes hands with those nice boys from Take That, whilst no matter the kids outside who’ve left London burning because they’ve just been dealt a debt-ridden future; in these times we need to be storming Parliament Square, taking to the streets as huge masses of women, and turning off the X Factor to tune into a heartier soundtrack - to show that we’re Alive and not falling for any of it.

Sure, we need to make sure our protests are potent and on target – just like those of the recent student movement, which feminism could take a lot from (particularly as the two movements overlap, anyway) - but we should also be encouraging all those young women who want to get involved to get going.

For girls - your time is now. Dare to dream and turn those dreams into reality. Get stuck in and set off on your political journeys; calling out what tugs at your heart and turns your stomach. Don’t be afraid to second-guess, criticise and change your minds. But do insist on writing your own futures - don’t let others read them to you.

By Michelle Wright

Winter 2010