March Reflections

My feelings about ‘International Women’s Month’ have fluctuated over time - especially when it becomes another opportunity for corporate virtue signalling. This year, however, I didn’t feel the same kind of ambivalence - because frankly, we can’t afford sit back. It’s been hard keeping track of events these last few weeks - from the 'Tate bros' catching a private jet to Florida to cosy up to Trump to insanely extreme Executive Orders banning ‘gender’, ending collective bargaining, and frenzied abortion roll backs that include death penalty, trafficking charges and midwives arrested at gun point … and or course that’s before we get to the list of banned books and words. One thing is sure, things are moving fast and in completely the wrong direction.

And let’s please not make that age old mistake of thinking that this is happening over there. Think we’re safe? Think again. Just ask trans youth, migrants and people living with disability. In the last few weeks Starmer et al have been falling over themselves to emulate Trump’s frantic assault on human rights, in more ways than one. Broadcasting migrant deportations on live TV, cutting the overseas aid budget to fund the ministry of defence, ramping up of state surveillance and restrictions on our right to protest, to cite but a few, are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg - moves that should send a chill down all our spines.

Still We Rise

So, on 8th March, it felt like a not brainer to make my my way to central London - on what was an unusually sunny day - to join Million Women Rise and Women’s Strike.

Million Women Rise (MWR) have been marching on International Women’s Day (IWD) since 2008. Organised by Black women for ALL women, they ‘work together to challenge systems of oppression and create safe spaces, free from fascism, discrimination and hate’. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve joined MWR and the Black sisters who come together with this generous invitation to rise together, across difference, and raise our voices to end male violence against women and girls.

And of course - some might zoom in on the issue of language around ‘violence against women and girls’ vs ‘gender-based violence’ - but ultimately, the forces currently working to erase our rights, will not distinguish between these camps - they’ll come after us all.

Women Strike is another kind of uprising - even if in my dream world these two events would join forces - they each hold their own, important, brave space. Women Strike Assembly is the umbrella for a broad coalition of organisations, groups and individuals, including Sisters’ Uncut, SWARM and many more*.  It’s diverse, non-hierarchical, openly pro-sex workers, pro-trans rights, pro-Palestine, organised loosely along anarchist principles, it welcomes all genders, sound systems, dancing and flares - in some ways reminiscent of the 1990’s ‘Reclaim the Streets’ movement.

A major difference between both events is the police presence. Whereas policing at MWR was low key - it’s heavy handed at the Women’s Strike. And as the march advances towards Portland Place, we note the BBC building is fully cordoned off by police - in case you ever wondered whose interest the Met have at heart.

Both marches were well attended, the speeches inspiring and the crowds resolute in their resistance but, considering the global landscape, not overwhelming. Last year, I spent IWD in Santiago de Chile, where tens of thousands were marching loudly in the streets - a sea of purple and green stretching for miles, with trans and Palestinian flags, a cacophony of sounds and powerful singing. It is impossible to compare both experiences, but made me wonder - why there weren’t more of us? why we weren’t louder? what will it need to build a stronger, more visible movement? And importantly, how do we keep going and sustain our feminisms and movements - at a time when we must resist. None of these questions have easy answers, but connecting with our community/ies and engaging in the change we want to see, definitely features among them.

Who is afraid of Judith Butler?

Auspiciously, a friend and I had tickets booked see Judith Butler in conversation with Ash Sarkar about Butler’s latest book - and I was honestly grateful for having had the foresight. In academic/gender circles, Butler has reached rock star status. The publication of Gender Trouble in 1990 was seismic, and, while it didn’t propel them into mainstream consciousness, it shook the foundations of every gender theory before it and has forever changed how we talk and theorise about gender.

Royal Festival Hall was packed to the brim, the crowd delightfully queer, attentive to Butler’s every word as they set out to answer the question in the title: Who is Afraid of Gender?, explore the fears expressed by the trans exclusionary brigade and rebut every single one - with absolute mastery.

The conversation, more topical than ever, began with unpacking Trump’s Executive Order - with  ‘Either you are in favour of human complexity or you’re not, and they’re not’. In their analysis, Butler uses the word ‘phantasm’ to describe how very specific fears that may not even have much to do with gender are being masked and exploited by substituting in a word that is purposefully vague—a word that is difficult to define, even for academics: gender. Even if the document largely unworkable, it will have devastating consequences for trans people, including losing access to healthcare and being imprisoned with a gendered group that the don’t identify with.

And that particular sentence was just too much for the Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) sat in the front row seat (for which she had been prepared to pay a handsome sum) and began heckling angrily. Out came the old trope of the ‘murderer being let in a women’s prison’ blah blah. Butler took time to respond, that ‘we cannot essentialise on the basis of exception’. But unsatisfied, the heckler continued. To which Butler rightfully retorted that those who pose a danger to women are prison guards, not trans people. Anyone worried about women being attacked in prison, should frankly join the campaign for prison and police abolition, rather than opposing trans-rights! D’OH!

The interruption prompted Sarkar to ask Butler to elucidate: What is a woman? And Butler’s response was absolutely spot on - why should we fall into the trap of defining the category ‘woman’? For decades, feminists have refused to be pigeonholed into categories, and preferred fluidity. So why would we change that now? And why would we feels so threatened by a marginalised community - a community that do so much to shift the oppressive system that hurts us all?

Butler’s message is clear - let’s not get bogged down in ‘identitarian taxonomies’ and lose sight of our shared humanity and basic aims of freedom, justice, emancipation, and equality. This really is not the time.

*All African Women’s Group, Anti-Imperialist Front, Argentina Solidarity Campaign, Congolese Action Youth Platform, DECRIM NOW, Empty Chair Collective, ESEA Sisters, Espresión INCA, Feminist Assembly of Latin Americans, Feminist Fightback, WomenRising, Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth, Hackney Anarchists, Jiyan Kurdish Women’s Assembly in Britain, London for Sudan, London Trans+ Pride, Migrants in Culture, Mekete UK, Nanny Solidarity Network, Orchestrated Discontent, PLAN C, Pride of Arabia, Queers for Palestine, Reclaim Croydon, Sex Workers Union, Sisters Uncut, SWARM, Socialist Women’s Union, Tigray Youth Network, Tower Hamlets Transpride, Trans Strike Back, United 4 Mahsa, United Voices of the World, Warmis UK, Women’s Strike Assembly, Young Struggle.