The Exciting Life of Being a Woman

Feminist Webs, Amelia Lee

Description

The Exciting Life of Being a Woman is the feminist survival manual you wish you had read as a teenager. It is written by Feminist Webs, a cross-generational youth project for girls and young women based in Manchester, UK. Drawing on the history, practices and activities of Feminist Webbers, The Exciting Life of Being a Woman provides inspiration for women of all ages to live their life in creative and empowered ways. It includes illustrations, comics, youth work activities, personal writing and much more.

Introduction: Beginning with us 4-24

Chapter 1: Resilience 25-38

Chapter 2: Her-story 39-57

Chapter 3: Banged up and banged up 58-79

Chapter 4: Riot… 80-98

Chapter 5: ...Don’t ‘diet’? 99-115

Chapter 6: Freedom 116-123

Chapter 7: ‘Politically correct’ or just plain correct? 124-144

Chapter 8: Peace sister 145-160

Chapter 9: The art part 161-172

Chapter 10: It’s a big world in here 173-185

Chapter 11: Commonality and difference 186-208

Chapter 12: Young, gifted and girls 209-240

Resources 241

Contributors 241-247

Notes

Sujets

• Feminist Theory
• Gender Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Sociology
• Feminist movement
• Social movement
• Gender
• Feminism
• Activism
• Cultural Studies
• 2012

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 17 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781910849248
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

Copyright
Published by Hammeron Press
www.hammeronpress.net
© Hammeron Press
All rights reserved
Printed and bound in United Kingdom 05 12
First Edition
All rights reserved.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.
We have made every attempt to locate the authors and creators of all the material used in the book. If, for whatever reason, something or someone has ‘slipped through the web’ then we apologise and hope that you will be gracious enough to accept our apology, and happy for us to use your empowering work for the greater good!
Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.
251 p.cm
ISBN 978-0-95645-072-2
Editors
Amelia Lee and Debi Withers
Cover Design and layout
Tamzin Forster
Illustration
Harriet Gibson, Hebe Phillips and Tamzin Forster
Contents
Created by members of Feminist Webs
Typefaces
3rd Man, Certto Headline, Baron
Kuffner by Bumbayo Font Fabrik
Keytabmetal by Tension Type,
Helvetica Neue by Max Miedinger
Handwriting Dakota by Altsys Metamorphosis
This book has been made possible due to a kind donation from the Heritage Lottery Fund Young Roots Programme
Contents page
Introduction: Beginning with us
Chapter 1: Resilience
Chapter 2: Her-story
Chapter 3: Banged up and banged up
Chapter 4: Riot…
Chapter 5: ...Don’t ‘diet’?
Chapter 6: Freedom
Chapter 7: ‘Politically correct’ or just plain correct?
Chapter 8: Peace sister
Chapter 9: The art part
Chapter 10: It’s a big world in here
Chapter 11: Commonality and difference
Chapter 12: Young, gifted and girls
Resources
Contributors
Notes
Introduction - Beginning with us
Who we are and why we wrote this book
by Amelia Lee
W e are a group of women. Women just like many of you reading this now. Some of us are young, some of us older, some disabled, some not. We come from difference races, places, religions, sexualities and classes. What brings us together is that we like being women. Women of all shapes and sizes and talents.
Once-upon-a-time each one of us started out a child and began to grow up, to become a woman, and to find out many wonderful things about the world.
But as we grew, each one of us began to get an unsettling feeling deep down inside that something in the world wasn’t quite right. That jokes about rape weren’t funny. That being wolf-whistled at by strangers at night when you just want to walk the streets in peace was not ok. That other people trying to take control of your ideas, your confidence, your independence and your body is BAD NEWS.
So feeling this sense of unease, we began to look across the vast and wondrous world that we were finding out about, and started to talk to other women. We found out that many women shared ideas about the world with us. They had decided to make the world better for women: to challenge the bad things women experience, and to look at the bigger reasons why these things exist. These women are feminists. Their mission: to end sexism.

Ideas generated by young women at Feminist Webs workshop
mission: to end sexism.

“
Sexism is the UNEQUAL power between genders. ”
Goodwin, 2001
They were living the exciting life of being a woman. They were talking about society’s old fashioned ideas about women, debating about women’s bodies, about power, about life, and carving out a life for themselves that wasn’t about being a stereotype and WAS about believing in yourself. We became like these women. We became feminists.

Ideas generated by young women at Feminist Webs workshop
But when we looked around, we couldn’t find pictures of women like us on billboards, or on the television or in museums, or in books or on the internet. ‘Why is this exciting life so hidden?’ we thought. ‘Where can women (young and old) go to find out about their sisters throughout the world, about themselves, about this exciting life?’
And so we sought out things and found such places, many places, that women had created: libraries, books, films, archives, pictures, music, gardens, safe spaces, clinics, protests, community centres, homes and conversations at tables in kitchens all over the world.
But these were often small groups of women, only loosely connected to one another. So we had an idea. What if each woman, each place, each idea could be connected? What exciting things might happen in our lives then? What if we spun a web to connect all these women together? And so, we did. We spun Feminist Webs. Because, in the wise words of the proverb,

“
When spiders unite they can tie up a lion. ”
Ethiopian Proverb
Feminist Webs is a movement of young women, youth workers and academics. We want to record and capture the best bits of youth work with girls and young women from the past, and use this knowledge to make a better world for young women in the future. We have created resources, booklets, a website, an archive, art, delivered many events and exhibits, and sparked lots of ideas in the women we meet. We are making history, or should that be herstory!? And with this book, we hope you will join us!

Photo by Jean Spence

Six or seven years ago, in York train station, two women found each other...

They both happened to be youth workers with a shared passion for girls’ work in particular.

It occurred to them: Would girls’ work be forgotten soon? What would happen to all the progress we’ve made?

Perhaps a network ....a WEB of women could come together and create an archive...

Shortly after a meeting was held, 35 women gathered in Manchester to make an archive.

They also decided to create a pack of resources for youth workers and women. They called this booklet ‘done hair and nails, now what?’ to challenge the idea that women were only interested in beauty.
Comic strip by Hebe Phillips
How you might want to use this book
You can read this book on your own, dip in and out, read from cover to cover and go off and do more research on the topics that interest you. Pass the book on to friends if you think you are done with it or if you think they need it!
You can use the book to set up your own girl’s group, women’s group or even cross generational women’s group. You can do this formally in a youth club or community centre, or informally with friends, or even just one friend. You could work through the chapters as a way to help you think about different ideas and issues. You can do this yourself, DIY! In that way you are already part of Feminist Webs. You don’t need to ‘join’. Just set yourself up and go for it!

Notes from the second Feminist Webs annual gathering
There has always been a women’s movement
Women who fight for their rights and for the rights of other women are feminists. Since time began there have always been women who have done this. They might not have used the word ‘feminist’ to describe themselves. So it is hard for us to talk about feminism ‘beginning’. It is also difficult for us to talk about exactly what it means, because it means so many different things to different people, and it changes all the time.
Here are some examples to help you think about your feminism:

Ideas generated by young women at Feminist Webs workshop

“
Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings. ”
Cheris Kramerae, 1996

“
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat. ”
Rebecca West, 1913

“
A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men. ”
Gloria Steinem

Because woman’s work is underpaid or unpaid and what we look like is more important than what we do and if we get raped it is our fault and if we love women it’s because we can’t get a real man and if we expect community care for our family we are selfish and if we stand up for our rights we are loud and if we don’t we are typical weak females and if we want to get married we are out to trap a man and if we don’t we are unnatural and because we aren’t deemed responsible enough to decide if, when and how we give birth we are feminists
Original text by Joyce Stevens 1975
Speech at Rosa Fund launch in 2008 by Omena Osivwemu, scanned in, including typos, from Feminist Webs Archive

What else is feminism about?

By 30 young women from North West England on a residential trip, 2011 and on a residential for Oral History Training in 2009
• Empowering
• Women
• Same equal rights as men
• Suffragettes
• Campaigning
• Feminism is empowering women and campaigning for equal rights as men
• About girls and how girls dress
• They say you have to be feminine and girly but girls have a mind of their own, they can have their own choice and their own different dress sense
• Judgments: tomboy, get bullied, ‘dyke,’ ‘lesbian,’ get singled out, not safe, ‘slag’ ‘slut,’ they are sleeping around and impress boys, ‘a dress is not a yes’
• Women standing up for themselves
• Anti-sexism
• Challenging women’s roles
• Sexuality
• Women’s rights
• Equal pay
• Making sure women have a say and are heard
• Being yourself not what society wants / expects you to be
• Women having equal rights to be themselves (whatever that is)
• Fighting stereotyping
• Not being a man-hater
• Cope / being strong (periods, giving birth), housewife, mother, maternal
• Men and woman
• Equal rights for women
• Someone who believes in the empowerment of women
• Someone who campaigns for the rights of women
• Misunderstood word
• Equality
• Women’s issues
• Women live for equal rights and not to be treated badl