In the Blog

Women’s Worlds Young Women’s Leadership Team: IDEA BURSTS!, Part 2

June 13th, 2011     by Julia Horel     Comments

This is the second in our series of Idea Bursts. Please check out the first!

Aruna shares another Idea Burst, this time answering the question: Where are the Girls? A transcript follows the video.

Love what she has to say? Hate what she has to say? Want to speak up? Info on the Idea Bursts series, including how to submit your own, follows today’s video.

They are everywhere. Like, they are living. They are doing their thing. I think just because we don’t see them at our big bougie conferences and, like, in academic settings doesn’t mean that they’re not there, that they are not doing things, as i said before, in an everyday basis. But, what I like to think in terms of, what i like to remember, actually, in terms of when we’re asking these kind of questions, is also questioning who’s in the room. And also questioning why they are not there. And so like working class young women, Indigenous women, women of colour, young trans women, and just young people in general are also at a point where they’re just trying to survive. Right? And I think survival is also part of a movement. Right? So like, if we think about the little ways in which we don’t actually acknowledge things that, like really radical things that are happening all the time. Like me talking to my little sister about safer sex and reproductive justice is a moment of radical movement-building. You know? And her being a 16 year old in high school in Scarborough where most young women of colour are getting pregnant and not actually having access to a lot of reproductive justice stuff in their lives? Like, that’s a really big deal for her to go talk to her friends and peers about that. But that of course doesn’t get talked about in terms of how we understand feminism. Right? So I think when we’re asking the question of “Where are the girls”, we have to also kind of re-think and re-imagine what we understand as legitimate actions, legitimate what actually is happening on an everyday basis that we don’t talk about in these larger settings of asking these questions. Just because they’re not in the room doesn’t mean they’re not being forcefully fierce all the time on an everyday basis. So, I think for me, that question is also, like: Where are YOU in the girls’ lives, and why are you relevant? Why would it matter for them to engage in these conversations, even though they might be having them already? And to not think that that’s also only happening in your world. It’s happening all over the place.

Listen up! Check out these provocative and compelling “idea bursts” intended to spark conversations on key issues leading up to and during Women’s Worlds 2011 (WW 2011, a global feminist conference being held July 3-7 in Ottawa, Ontario). We encourage everyone of all generations to embrace and explore these ideas. Get your mind moving, thoughts jumping.

This series of short commentaries is initiated by the Young Women’s Leadership Team (YWLT) to ensure that young women’s ideas, organizing, and thoughts are present at this global congress.

Create your own! Record your thoughts before WW 2011. Upload your own Idea Burst to youtube.com and tag it “#ww2011burst” or “#ww2011.” Or if audio is your thing, post your Idea Burst to AudioBoo, make it “public,” and use the same tags. And if you plan on being at the congress, visit our intergenerational drop-in space to share your ideas in our BURST booth (Deja Vu Lounge, Room 230 Morisset Hall, University of Ottawa).

For more information contact us at youth@womensworlds.ca.

Tags: activist report

« Hello! From a New Shameless Blogger.

Myth Seven: Fat is Jolly »