I attended a national conference for student feminists!

So, a 4 day student feminism conference. Sounds a little hectic, you think? You're not wrong. Overall it was good, and I got a lot out of it! There were some great workshops about how to be a good ally, how to actually be an activist and run campaigns, how to deal with street harassment, campaigning for disability rights and abortion rights and - the most fun one! - a slam poetry workshop that the leader didn't show up to, so we just ended up watching poems on YouTube for an hour! I learnt a lot of things I didn't know about people with disabilities, particularly feminists with disabilities; for example, the leader of the workshop explained that its almost as if disability activists were fighting for some things that are the exact opposite of feminism - to be seen as sexual beings and to the right to motherhood as approximately 2/3 of parents with disabilities have their children removed from their care, with mothers specifically over represented.

In terms of abortion rights, we talked about just how muddled the laws are in each state of Australia, and about the fact that nowhere in Australia is there any laws that disallow any hospitals (eg catholic funded hospitals) to deny access to certain procedures, despite the state laws - with no obligation to tell patients before admission. For example, it's common for rape victims taken to emergency rooms of these hospitals to not be given any information on emergency contraceptives, or denied access even if they request it. It is also common for those hospitals to refuse to refer them to rape crisis centres, as they see doing so as 'coordinating with pro-choice organisations'. In the case of early membrane rupture, they wait until either the fetal heart beat stops or the woman becomes infected with sepsis to do anything, so it's not seen as an abortion, despite risk to the woman. 

This information was in a talk by Leslie Cannold, the founder of Reproductive Choice Australia; an organisation focused currently on changing the social stigma surrounding abortion. Immediately after her talk I went to the abortion rights activism workshop, run by a volunteer from RCA. After learning more about the organisation, abortion rights and abortion activism, I've decided to volunteer for RCA! I haven't started anything yet, but I'm looking forward to getting involved! Pro-choice activism isn't something that I've always had a solid opinion on - my opinions have changed drastically in the last year or so, and they're still forming and solidifying. It's not an issue that has deeply and personally affected me, but I am passionate about it being a woman's choice (and her choice only!), regardless of the views of others.

So that's exciting! A hell of a lot more good things came out of the conference, and overall I enjoyed it! However... There were some things that I disagree with, which caused me to feel a lot of negativity while I was there. I've struggled a lot with how to process these things and how to talk about them without crossing lines. In simple terms, I felt like there was far too much emphasis on "privilege checking". To me it makes no sense to meet at a conference in an attempt to unite and learn, only to separate into clear groups and tell others they basically have no right to an opinion if they are not part of that group.

To an extent, this is not a problem: I agree that I can never truly understand what it's like to be a low socio-economic woman of color, for example. But ya know what? Quite frankly, I didn't go to a conference to be told, more than a few times, that I'm a white middle class woman and therefore privileged. Anyone who wanted to be there knew that already. I know that. Telling me that doesn't actually achieve anything. Telling each other "you are different from me, you can not weigh in on these issues" unites no one and solves nothing. And wasn't the point of this conference to eradicate division within the student feminist movement?

But I can elaborate on this in another post.

Overall, it was quite a learning experience. There's way too much for one post, but luckily it gave me a lot more material for the future! Brace yourselves!