Feminist Think Tanks (WisCon 30 Panel)
Panelists
Panel Description
Transcript / Notes
Rough notes, typed during panel. Feel free to fix anything here or contact me directly and I can do it for you. - LH lizzard@bookmaniac.net
Vonda: intro
Liz - here for Laura Quilter whose flight was delayed. wiki.
Timmi: publisher, novelist
Susanna: panel was her idea. Talking about feminism without having to explain why you're doing it. All year round feminist presence. So much forgotten. Pressure cooker for feminist ideas.
Beth: feminism and women's issues/problems reframed in last 20 years as individual problems we're supposed to go off and solve on our own.
Vonda - Standing on shoulders of Le Guin etc. Door openers for us. [We want to keep opening those doors for others & future generations.]
Janet - Background in anthropology. Fan. No position in community except what people think of me. Interested in intersections of political/social issues. Ideally that's what think tanks are for.
Liz: Virtual part of thinktankitude. Think tanks can be events. Events that are documented. They are "instances of" the feminist think tank.
Timmi: We need a physical place like a math institute. A place for conferences and talks. Drop-in. People invited to do residencies there. In addition - also need virtual community. Physical institute is the face to it and is really important. You have to get away from your daily life. If it's all online you triage. It becomes less important and it's just another burden. This is an important lesson of wiscon. We have every sort of person across spectrum of feminism. Scientists, writers, [...] who have life experiences, artists, performers. Every kind of feminist of every age and experience, it's the conversation and making connections that can really work powerfully for us.
Susanna- One thing that inspires me - I came in on the tail end of consciousness raising. It was the core of 60s 70s feminism. Great mechanism. We lost something really mportant when it dwindled. One reason it dwindled - we thought once you were raised you were raised. People after did not get excitement of figuring out and building the skills. Then we got experts and the people coming in later became the secretaries. We need to decentralize .
Liz: Woolfcamp, unconferences, brain jams, event, house party, declare it and make a phsycial face to face event and then document the hell out of it and put it on the web.
Susanna - yah
Timmi - But we really need the physical institute.
Beth: important that [.....] What suzanna said about early CR feminist movement, free love, got pregnant at 19. World becaome diferent and issues became different. When I was juggling trying to raise kids and daily life, academic argument became irrrelevant and dysfunctional. What I see is the think tank becoming this room. Go back to your communties you're from even if they're not feminist communities. I work for a bank. My president knows I'm going to a femsf conf and he's fascinated. Male white 55 yr old bank pres. you CAN have that conversation with them.
Liz: That is a different thing that the focus and push forward and not having to explain feminism...
Beth: we need both
Audience member: we need both! there's not either or.
Susanna: there's almost no good idea that can't get screweed up by group dynamics
- general laughter*
vonda: [....]
janet: Taking these ideas and transforming them into action. Conservative think tanks. heritage foundation etc. how to frame the core of idea sn then funnel that into media outlets with which t hey are affiliated....
janet: taking these ideas and transforming them into action. conservative think tanks. heritage foundation etc. how to frame the core of idea sn then funnel that into media outlets with which t hey are affiliated....
timmi: there are other think tnaks though. the right wing...
janet: yes there are. but the rw is more powerful at this point. part is having easy access to get these ideas out into the mainstream one of the strategies is ... on a blog recently if you have an idea percieved as outlandish... your goal is to make it seem merely radical and then reasonable... normalize it
- general audience murmur of normaliziing,etc*
... and i think of times i see that happen with ideas i find horrible and unthinkable... feminist ideas that i love shouod be pushed more into the mainstream
vonda: can be coppted for good, just bc thing is evil doesnt mean process is evil.
janet; think in nyrof books abotu jane jacobs. urbanist. deep critic of urban design *nods from audience* in early 60s self tuaght largely, death and life of great american ccities. activist for rest r of her life. audience: stopped thembuilding highway thru manhattan, thru village.
janet: she just died a few weeks ago. Important women thinkers of 20th centurely a realky weird list. rachel carson, julia child, betty friedan. thin g that linked them int he mind of the writer is that they had a deep apprication of the forms of everyday life. that woudl be an interesting approach right there.
suzanna: read jane jacobs early in college, made me look at how space affects how people relate. era of 26 story high buildlings, muggings, etc. audience, does martha steweart qualify for this thnk tanmk? *hahaha*
beth: happens in media over and over, our qusetions and interests get reframed. when carly fiorina lost her ceo job. then when she lost it , articles over and over, would htey ever give a woman a ceo job...again... then whhen eisner lost his jbo i looked and looked... no aritlce on man gettin a ceo job again... hahaha
suzana: it did nto take a huge number of peple to take over the republian party. there is nothingg on the left, that gravitational pull, there is nothing keeping the democratic party. one of the maistakes from my youth, we latched ontno a good didea and we ditnt get t that diversity was key. peple can pursue a goal in different valid ways. many things have to be goingn on at onc.e ongoing battles in feminism. the eroel fo separatism. we didnt' all have to separatists. just having a pool of people who were experimentig on the edge, kept us twho were closer to the middle asking questions. Am I giving up too much? not everyone has to go off and live onthe land.. or give up sex or have sex all the time. that increases the range of our imagination. we are missing that so much,
euan bear: the left... [misseed it]
suzanna and so much of that is happening on the right
timmi: theyve just 15 percent,
audientce: participiatior democracy... harder than authoritarians. it's earlier to incorproate so many divergent views. which is why we look sloppy. audience: keeping the other infear of loss of power. the others are cowed , the repubs, then boom.
timmi: they 've got a real pusnishment system. it's ruthless.
euan - power of naming
me: naming the problem?
euan: no just naming. liberal... abandoned by demo party WE need to identify ourselves as feminist as much as possible.
vondea: and counter the propostions they make up
audience: we dont use the "radical feminist:
ellen siegel : there IS a feminist think tank out there. grace hopper conferenc.e yeearly conference. women in technology. 5 years later she got fundingn for anita borg institute, they give grants.. to furether issues of women in technology. virtual and there are conferences.
vonda: god, what a perfect match for a bunch fo sci fi women
ellen: she had a brain tumor and died a few years ago and the instutue is still going. and no one in this room has heard of it. i wonder listening to it that why is it that no one here knows abot it.. why is it invisible
suzanna: peope who are active even in feminst print, if they dont' know anything about femiism and sf and fantasty.... i'm still explaining what wiscon is.
steven schw. american enterprise institute. i go on about pay attention to each other = important IN PUBLIC audience: power of language. using their language. their framing. . not doing it on theri terms.
timmi: c reativg alternatives rather than being oppositional.
lise eisenberg: anti-abortion vs prochoice ... language. the word "innocent"
- general hubbub about the use of the phrase "taking of innocent life"
lise: w/out using word feminism. reclaim word feminism or not? humanist. simone de beauvoir, women and human beings... whatt feminism is about, external navel gazing.
laughter...
i was assuming people were thinknig about things the way that i do. but i grew up reading sf books of her daddy... (!) my inmagination is far out there... 1000 years in the future... paraphrase: I judge people as being uneducatied... irrational arguments I donot' get why thereyr'e doign why theiry doing so i'm not effective in debate.
green scarf:. liz something: that's part of listening....
beth: basic diffrence in ways peopel process information. one thing that confuses me is i can't se this piece w/out seeing this and this and this and this...
audience: well duh!
beth: but most peopel can not only focus on just that one pice, they don't see anythingn else. and oen woman i had problems commuicating with . she had never understood that a whole is not the sum of its parts, it's how they interconnect. ... theh point i wwant to get back to is we have the rt wing manipulation of the world arouhd us and the terms go down to that simple issue... b/c people make de isions on that simple issue.
audience: the flood, the air, that is inevitable, that is your goal, to be alive.
sheree: someone's going to survive and ti's going to be me.
suzanna: andrea dworking wrote "right wing women' really interesting book. i havnt read it since 1985. her basic... she found the women she talked to who espoused very diff rt wing views basically had, understanding of things liek dynamics btwn mena nd women on an interpersonal family level, not v difference than rileft and radical and feminist. but the rt wing women were much more pessimistic about nothing every changing. me personally, online, saving sanity.. if you are in a place wher eyou are in a lot of ways solo, what your sense of your won possibility, that you can change, if it's just YOU... *nods, "yeahs" fromaudience* thsi si my first wiscon in 8 years.. just the sheer sense of possibilitty: *asent* what they chose from my speech from 9 years ago, bernice johbnson reagon, pspech she gave in 1980, distinctioni between your home and the politica colaition work you do. she ided soething that was an isue. we swoudl tend to mistaek the home and the colaition . the coalition and polical work is not nurtuiring and calm. you need a home base. a family home, a wiscon or a group of people who support you. you need that to keep you going, but you can't stay there.
audience: you need a very long rope...t o get out all those different palces.. but a tether.
susanna: the phsycial place the think tannk, the connections, important. the popssiblitiey of doing that is greater than it hever has been.
Bunny: i've been a teacher. a guy who said "wll ther really arent any women's issues anymore... " and a guy who said there is anti-aboriont How do we answer these people? and the young peopler who think that feminmims fixed it, or didn't fix it, but either way it's done
sheree: instances... hip hop girl... [i mised it... space... youn g local femnists doing something... ]
audience - tall woman in back
suszanna: CR... absence of books... no womens studies books etc. the intense conversation, starting from scratch was very powerful. ....
i lost the m iddle....
beth asks me my experience as a young feminist
HAHAHA i'm almost 40
joe rodgers: the US is in an undeclared civil war. a fear economy. i am tyring to counter it with a love economy. then it clariries itself in that way.. what kindof future do you want to live in. hp and stuff
audience: capitalism automatically justification for anything
steven: so,mething about workers and marx... what people are given for sort of... when itried to educate myself about feminist issues, i was going back to books 10 and 20 years old. the think tabnk whether it be distributed. manifesting and calls to arms for this generation for this generation.
roslee: i a think thank org by rich man in seattle. to think about their areas of texpertise in 1000 years time not called feminist. but fascinationg. theh brains who are the brains of the universe.
sandra: feminism for dummies needs to say that ... femimism is recent, fragile, in an insxtant you can lose everyting. we must never lose sight of that.
me: theh wiki. quilter's fsffu pages, but rebuild them with a group and see what happens differently, collaborative process. laura q or I will show anyonw who wants at wiscon how to edit the wiki. anyone can edit it. audience. what to do to make sure there are more women leaders. and all these women who are doing stuff aqre doing it.... they are not identified as feminist. the positive glowing feeling that people have for success. ... need to be resprented as feminist
suzanna: adrienne rich. when a women speaks the truth she makes it possible for more truth around her. ... deep down i dont believe peopel have flipped that much... the tiny minority just has more permission to sepak. karenjf: i heard otn ehradio a week or so ago, the part of the popsulation least likely to go vote is unmarried young women.
suzanna: ..
kjf: pat murphy told me a story 20 years ago she saw a tabloid headline... 18 of your senators space aliens her first thought is there are more space aliens than women in the senate. the day that we have more women than space aliens int he us senate.
- looking over this real quick I think andrea hairston was speaking a lot but i didn't know her name till later that evening so she is just "audience" 8-( - LH ****
External Links
Just some things that look interesting & potentially relevant: