Letter from Penarth
Sarah Tanburn
Have you heard about the golden age of Welsh feminism? The Big Reveal
Last October the biggest feminist conference in Europe was held in Cardiff. Nigh on two thousand activists descended on the capital for three days of workshops, laughing, dancing and planning.
This site reported on the extraordinary Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, at last free to tell her own story. It was a fablas weekend for all of us who made it.
You hadn’t heard about it? That’s a shame, but you can hardly be blamed given the blanketing silence from Welsh government and those many organisations you’d hope would be partners in uplifting women’s voices in 2022.
It proved impossible to get coverage before the conference, almost impossible during and very difficult since. No elected representative was interested in welcoming so much political energy to Wales.
FiLiA 2022, nonetheless, showed that the Women’s Liberation Movement (remember that) is alive and kicking with a vengeance, and will not be kept down despite all such efforts to push women to the margins.
The three days reflected back to us just how much we are achieving, and how very much there is still is to do.
What do women want?
It’s not hard. Bodily autonomy, equality before the law, safety in our homes, workplaces and in public, a liveable planet.
And we want them for all women, not only in Wales but everywhere in the world. Men want those things too, of course.
The difference is they generally already have them (except the liveable planet bit).
Let me take just one example of the way institutions seem to think uppity women really should just go away. The culture of misogyny in some police forces has received a lot of publicity recently.
In such a context, it is hardly surprising that figures for the investigation of for sexual assault or domestic violence are appalling; it seems from Freedom of Information responses, that less than 10% of reports result in charges. The conviction rate is poorer still.
Yet all Welsh forces have consistently ignored requests to meet with groups concerned about male violence, sexual assault and the use of police powers. Of course, maybe coincidentally, none of our Police and Crime Commissioners are women.
Such wilful refusal is endemic in the Welsh political club. Members of Senedd will whisper to activist women that they cannot have an open conversation about our rights. Councillors will ignore us; some even abuse us on social media. Sports governing bodies and hospital trusts do not reply to requests for meetings.
Meanwhile, lobbying groups claiming to represent the views and interests of all women have clear access to discussion, funding and agendas.
My recent review of studies of devolution highlighted that ‘partnerships, originally created to promote diversity and inclusion [have] become the originators and endorsers of specific interests from which contrary voices may be actively excluded.’
This is precisely the dynamic which has silenced anyone, but especially women, who wants to make the argument that sex is real, immutable and important.
Welsh women have allied around these issues creatively and strategically for a long time but the last two or three years has seen activism flowering on many fronts.
It’s been a delight to talk to such energetic campaigners – here in Penarth, on zoom, at FiLiA, and across Wales from Bangor to Aberystwyth to Pembroke, Swansea and the Marches.
Friendship and more
A big theme has been the many new friends, the importance of those friends through challenges, their perceptiveness and ability to find the right words for our lives.
In this spirit the fantastic A Best Friend Handbook, to be piloted in South Wales schools next term, offers guidelines for girls to help their friends who are also girls to recognise and respond to violence in relationships and family.
We also know that lesbians have experienced some particular post-Covid difficulties, because they are often alienated from their families and their communities were the wrong side of local lockdown limits.
The WomenZone Lesbian Reconnection programme was devised in Penarth and Pennard and has been a great lift in rebuilding the community. It has spawned groups from kayaking to bouldering.
Whoever it was claimed we don’t access the outdoors enough has obviously never met a middle-aged lesbian!
In a very different spirit but also based on the importance of mutual support and recognising impossible legal conundrums, Welsh women have become active in the Hague Mothers Project.
International law has tried to prevent one parent taking their children across national borders without the permission of the other.
In practice, over seventy percent of cases seeking the child’s return are aimed against victims – almost always mothers – fleeing domestic violence.
The legal hounding by perpetrators is further abuse. Filia in Cardiff was the first time many of these women from all over the world, some of whom had travelled thousands of miles, had met in person. There was joy, solidarity and tears a-plenty on such an occasion.
Leadership at home and abroad
These examples highlight that across the UK and much further afield, Welsh women are leading the way in upholding safety, rights and opportunities for women and girls.
A major issue for women everywhere is preserving our sex-based boundaries, in hospitals, prisons, religious spaces, swimming pools, lesbian groups and so on.
Sometimes Welsh law has diverged from England, Scotland or Northern Ireland, but it is often similar, so women can use the guidance developed by women for women across the UK.
Similarly, the support for lesbians defending their boundaries (applies wherever the (non-devolved) Equality Act is in force, although it was developed by Welsh lesbian groups.
Pornography
Many parents are extremely concerned about the spread of pornography, with its inherent violence and the numbing effect on its users. You can’t avoid knowing that most users are male and most images are of women and children.
Welsh feminists have been key to devising new resources for teachers to reframe pornography and to demonstrate its coercive harms.
In another partnership, the same women are working on a programme tackling the grooming of incels (men bitter about their lack of sexual access to women) and other forms of radicalisation.
Prostitution is also inherently abusive. I, like many women, don’t believe that such forced labour can or should somehow be sanitised or made safe, let alone valorised as some advocates seek to do.
Instead we want to see women helped to escape this abuse, so I am delighted to see a toolkit created by Swansea women for agencies working with women to help them exit life in the sex trade.
This is a first for the UK, and is being admired far beyond our borders. Just last month, one of the authors of the toolkit visited Japan, where she made a brilliant speech.
These connections only highlight that that globally, attacks on women have been ramping up for some time: the control of women’s bodies in the United States, the everyday denial of education in Afghanistan, the attacks on lesbians in refugee camps or the impact of sex-selective abortion and infanticide leading to tens of millions of missing women around the world.
Welsh feminists are close to these struggles. Their work, often relying on pennies donated by individual activists, is closely intertwined with Wales’s notion of itself as a country of sanctuary.
Shoestrings and shut doors
I am beyond proud to see these projects – and many more I have not got space to mention – which have been created and supported by so many Welsh women.
I have to tell you, though, they rely on the goodwill and unpaid hard work of women all over the country. There is almost no public funding for these resources and very little from charities.
Many women I know put in at least a half-time week, for pennies or as volunteers, compared to the well-paid jobs available elsewhere in the ‘equalities’ sector.
Why is this?
Perhaps it goes back to the lack of representation amongst decision-makers. In Wales, despite the vigorous assertions of a government committed to ‘gender equality’, we still have a long way to go.
There may be parity in the Senedd, but elsewhere the situation is lamentable. In October 2021 it was reported that only 28.9% of local councillors are women – almost no change in over seven years.
But even where there are women in positions of power, many are shamefully uncomfortable recognising feminist activism at home or abroad.
The golden age is now
The still-building fifth wave of feminism is our current golden age, despite such wilful opposition. Our activism demonstrates that our rights do indeed matter to thousands of women across Wales, even if they cannot be mentioned in the environs of Cardiff Bay.
We are the inheritors of a proud tradition of feminist activism: we and our foremothers fought for the vote, founded magazines, marched for peace, protected our mining communities and so much more.
We continue to campaign on all the issues in this Letter and more: an end to the monstrosity of female genital mutilation, capturing the extraordinary history of Bute Town and evidence-based, age-appropriate education amongst other issues.
In the 1970s, feminism’s second wave defined seven demands. Some of them have been achieved, such as removing more restrictive definitions of women’s dependence. Sex is a ‘protected characteristic’ in equality legislation, and there are specific provisions for women.
Yet, we still fight to assert and defend our bodily autonomy and our boundaries as women living under patriarchy.
We still need to campaign for safety, and the end of discrimination in pay, healthcare, policing and all the rest.
Our activism builds on the successes of the second-wave, and we will do what it takes to protect and preserve those sex-based rights we already have in law.
Raising our voices
To achieve all that, we need to talk and be heard.
We are raising our voices – in letters, in print and on the streets – till those policy makers and legislators who frame our lives stop shouting us down and start listening.
The fantastic campaigners in Scotland aren’t weeshting. Ni fydd merched Cymru yn cael eu tawelu.
From here in Penarth, to Pembrokeshire, Amlwch or Powys, the women of Wales will also not be silenced.
I hope you will join us.
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Thank you for this article. It’s so rare nowadays to see coverage of the very real struggles women still face. Some seem to think that problems like violence against women have already been fixed: but they have not, as this article details so thoroughly. The Welsh government has been a big disappointment in failing to listen to women. If only they’d sent representatives to the FiLiA conference, they’d have come away so much better informed about all these issues.
“The Golden Age”? If you say so. In fact, it is just that – your say so. Elsewhere on Nation we get headline like Amazing mural, Incredible New Play, Beautiful, Viewers Stunned, Groundbreaking – We are living in the The Golden Age of declaring that things are good when simply reporting that things happened, and then castigating those who disagree. There may be ideas of value here, but when dissent or counterpoint is immediately characterised as attempts at “silencing” or “hating”, when expertise in data analysis and experience in a relevant field are viewed with distrust in favour of simply… Read more »
Well that’s a long old reply to KA about things she didn’t say. But let’s set aside the wordplay. It’s too long. I’m not reading it. Feminism is an important movement even now because women are still:- Assaulted Raped Bullied Harassed Not treated equally Getting their bodies policed Dismissed as hysterical Gaslighted Mansplained Etc etc etc It’s that simple. You can write as many strawmen fallacies and reductio ad absurdum pieces as you like. (I’d rather you posted sources for your ridiculous claim that not many support feminism, because I think you made it up. Assertions without evidence may be… Read more »
And yet the TERF contingent merely want to pass on these problems to a far smaller oppressed group.
I mention this because I responded (politely I felt) to a TERFy post down the page. But NC censored it.
I stand as an ally to feminists and the other protected characteristics identified in the Human Rights act. But this does not extend to any hate groups that hide amongst them. Knowing the downvoting trends on this site, I thought you should know this before you hit any up or down arrows or mash the report button.
I wish I had known of this as a feminist of the seventies — ah, but good to know and would be even better to know of any other events/ etc as columnist with the Western Mail ( Welsh) but also as President of Wales PEN Cymru
Amazing! Thank you for covering this subject. We know the decimation of our rights is underway but most media outlets are too – what? Scared? Cowardly? – to mention ‘women’s rights’ even in passing. An absolute pleasure to read an entire,
long, thorough article about the subject.
Diolch
This is a wonderful article. Thank you, Sarah Tanburn. I told my MS and my MP about Filia and asked that she attend for an hour or two. I belong to two separate women’s groups that have started in the last few years after several of us wrote to the First Minister and our Senedd representatives about concerns about gender self-ID and weren’t even acknowledged. There is a huge resurgence of feminism among grassroots women as we realise how too many apparently ‘progressive’ proposals are detrimental to women’s rights. Unless the Labour Party here in Wales wakes up to the… Read more »
To summarise that 👆long rambling mess.
1. I completely support the rights of all 9 protected groups.
2. Where these rights come into conflict (EG women and transgender) the former’s rights must not be sacrificed in favour of the latter’s)
3. The men raging against trans rights do not make good allies. They also raged against BLM and #metoo
4. Stockholm Syndrome is real
5. Conflicts are resolved by speaking and listening with mutual respect
Here it goes again. The downvotes coming in. Out of curiosity, is it the call for rational discussion that offended most, the factual information provided, the suggestion that ALL the 9 groups named in the Equalities and Human Rights Act are deserving of common human dignity, or something else? Or is it just the Andrew Tate homeboy’s fragile egos?
Are you aware of a condition known as AGP? I won’t go into details here but you can google. This is why so many women are up in arms about the loss of single-sex spaces. We know that decent men don’t want to share women’s loos or changing rooms and it’s the ones who do whom women need protection from.
Please explain the acronym. It could be accelerated graphics port or autogynephilia (which is a single word so the acronym is not appropriate). As I have said, where Trans and women’s rights come into conflict, I believe that women’s rights cannot be sacrificed. This isn’t gaslighting. Look up a few posts. You can see I wrote it. You are choosing to attack one of your ACTUAL allies. Not your current allies who shouted down the metoo movement and BLM. But here’s the thing, the story was about feminism. You chose to highlight a fallacy about self-identification for transpeople, which is… Read more »
And there speaks a man who knows nothing…
I really wish you would carefully read the message rather than attack the messenger. I’m on your side. But I am on other sides too. It is possible with care to balance the rights of everyone
Oh THAT’S interesting! My fair and respectful but opposing your views on trans matters, comments have been removed. Censorship through populism does seem to be a recurring theme on NC.
I guess you prefer to ally with men who also shouted down #metoo instead of men who ally with ALL protected groups.
No matter. Truth is rarely popular
Thank you for raising this issue, it’s become so hard for women to speak out, but each voice that raises these points has hundreds of voices scared to speak out behind it.
Thank you Nation Cymru for supporting the women and girls of Wales as clearly the Welsh Government and ‘women’s’ groups paid by WG won’t either. As one of the women involved in some of the grassroots works discussed in the article, people need to know that there are women in Wales working all day, every day to maintain rights we won over a 100 yrs ago. We are silenced at every move with the Welsh media being a big part of the problem. Publishing articles on how the sex industry is a positive step for women and girls appears to… Read more »