reflections on FEM08

I spent the weekend in Sheffield for the FEM 08 conference.

It was the fourth FEM conference, but it was the first I attended. I really wasn’t sure what to expect .

Here is my long and rambling review.

It started off with an introduction and opening speech from the founder of the conferences, followed by a panel discussion on ‘The rape conviction rate scandal’, and a presentation/panel on ‘Rejecting destructive masculinities’. I enjoyed both of these sessions, though they were both extremely rushed.

I then went a a screening of the film ‘Hardcore’ which was devastating viewing, and you could see it in all of our faces as we filed out afterwards. See Socialist Cephalopod’s account of the conference for more on that. Sessions running at the same time as the film were on ethnic minority women in public life, the female face of poverty (which a couple of my friends went to – they were extremely disappointed and frustrated by the session), the right to choose, refugee women, organising a Reclaim the Night march and knitting.

The next session I attended was ‘Grassroots feminist networking’, where the Glasgow Feminist Network did a little presentation on our activities. This session was surprisingly small. I felt it lacked any real focus. I was surprised to see that Oxfam were included as being grassroots, too! It really suffered from lack of time again – extremely rushed. The session wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. I felt a little resentful that I was attending the session to speak to a few people in a rushed, not particularly useful environment when I could have been attending workshops on prostitution, pornography, feminist media, international development, sexism in the workplace, or resisting Hooters.

After this was a ten minute speech on ‘Putting women’s rights at the heart of international devlopment’ which I avoided in favour of buying things from stall.

Then followed a session on ‘Challenging lapdance clubs’, which I thought was excellent. Two young women spoke – one a former lap dancer, the other representing Object, a great sounding organisation, and I love their clever puns!

We then had over an hour entirely focussed on Germaine Greer, which I found extremely odd. All of the other sessions had been crammed into the shortest amount of time possible to accommodate for the ‘celebrity’ feminist. It was a shame. Greer’s speech was interesting, but it wasn’t really about anything. Ramblings of a celebrity.  And that was the last session, followed by a short closing speech!

I’m really glad I went to the conference, and I did enjoy it, but I think we can do better than that.

The conference wasn’t participatory at all – it was very focussed on an audience in rows listening to a series of ‘experts’ imparting us with their wisdom, and then a small opportunity to ask the ‘experts’ questions.

I was also very puzzled by the number of sessions that were the only thing on – the rape conviction rate, masculinities, international development, lapdancing, and Germaine Greer sessions were all the only things on at the time. There were only two sessions where you had a choice of what to do, and there were 7 choices each time! It was difficult!

I think there was really no need for those sessions to be made compulsory for everyone through not providing an alternative. It also shows worrying priorities – why is Germaine Greer compulsory instead of the female face of poverty? Why masculinities (when they were very few men at the conference) instead of refugee women? Hmm.

I was pleasantly surprised that FEM08 took an active stance against pornography, prostitution and lapdancing – I was expecting the worst in that regard.

I was disappointed by the focus on organisations that are so mainstream they’re almost part of the power structure – Oxfam and The Fawcett Society? Oh dear. Where were all the radical speakers?! We’ve been writing letters to our MPs for quite a long time now and it hasn’t worked so far…

…and speaking of MPs! The facilitator of one workshop, when introducing herself mentioned that she was in the Labour Party. WTF? This phenomena of feminists in the Labour party never ceases to amaze me. They’ve been in power for over 10 years and things are just as bad for women, if not worse. The Labour party don’t give a shit about feminism!

Bizarre.

There was also very little mention of the p-bomb. I would have thought PATRIARCHY would be the most spoken word at a feminist conference!

Anyway, despite all my rambling complaints, I’m glad I went! I came back with a goody bag full of badges and zines and information. It’s encouraging to see so many feminist faces – even if they were nearly all white, middle class, English students. England really is a whole new country… I want to see a national Scottish feminism conference one day in the future! And I’m sure I will.

All of our pals went back straight after the Conference, but my bf and I stayed to go to the after party. This was at my insistence back in Febuary (when I booked us a megabus back for the Sunday) because I foolishly believed that the conference would be somewhat participatory and that I would get to meet lots of people and make friends – so I wanted to go to the after party to mingle and network and meet feminists. But the day passed and I hadn’t really met a single soul.

The after party was much smaller than the conference, and the music was very very loud yelping punk. When are people going to get it – just because we’ve got ‘alternative’ feminist/anarchist/socialist politics doesn’t mean we’re going to be punks! So even if we had met anyone, we wouldn’t have been able to hear them anyway! So we left after half an hour or so. Oh dearie me.