In the first half of my life, the prevailing opinion in the UK was that the authorities should not interfere in the mutilation of girls and young women because it would be disrespectful to their parents’ culture.
In the second half of my life, the prevailing opinion in the UK was that the authorities should not interfere in the mutilation of girls and young women because it would be disrespectful to gender identity culture.
We have been tolerant, we have been passive, blinded and distracted, but there is a sound, there is a stirring, there is something in-coming.
Jin, Jiyan, Azadi!
At FiLiA 2022 in Cardiff, women from around the world gathered, determined to interfere with an Iranian culture that uses the weapons of war against school girls waving headscarves in the street; with a Taliban culture that bullies women back into veils and obscurity; with a global rape culture that inflicts sex-trafficking, surrogacy and forced marriage on women, a profit-above-all culture that puts every mother’s daughters and sons in peril of climate crisis, war and starvation.
Zan, Zendegi, Azadi!
Women are thinking, coming together, talking — women are dancing, shouting and singing. There is a movement.
Do you wonder what’s going to happen next? Think instead, what can I do?
Educate, Agitate, Organize
The sisterhood is indeed global, as FiLiA has just demonstrated. We need to grow it some more (and yes, of course you can befriend and educate brothers as well but the miasma of patriarchy tells us the visible, white, middle class male is the be-all and end-all. Resist. Why not women first?) Don’t wait for the establishment left to sort itself out and give you permission, don’t wait for next year’s conference season to come around — if you do nothing else, resolve to talk to one new sister every day — or if you can’t do that, talk to one every week. When you can, talk to hundreds.
We have a global movement
Some ideas from Sylvia Pankhurst, her biographer Katherine Connelly, Dr Jane Clare Jones and Assata Shakur …
Women, life, freedom!
We are a movement — let’s move!
Kiri Tunks
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Times are hard, and so the articles on this site are freely available but if you are able to support my work by making a donation, I am very grateful.
Cheers,
Kay
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Kay Green 