Being a
feminist and part of a feminist
collective can be a comforting privilege. The comforting part relies in the
feeling that you are part of a community
where individual members share to a large extent the same values, ideals, frustrations
and goals; where a sense of support and solidarity among members prevail. On
many occasions I felt this privilege. When few years ago I was passing through
a personal experience that left me broken, weak and isolated, my feminist
friends were there and stood by me. They helped me overcome, process and
reflect on this experience in a way that made me gradually capable of rising
again with the least damage possible. I learnt, in the hard way, that what we
experience as women in the private is political indeed and that the collective
has the political and the moral duties of not leaving any woman behind.
The space we
wanted to create is a space where women from different backgrounds can come
together, talk about anything that bother us; start initiatives on multiple
issues that we set as priorities on the agenda of the collective; where we can
express our gender, sexual and political identities without being morally
judged, where we can get solidarity and support when we most need them; where
we can share resources and exchange knowledge and skills; where we can find the
political power in our collectiveness. We wanted it a place from where inspiring
progressive politics, radical, feminist, secular and leftist, emanate. From
which we can build alliances with other progressive and democratic forces on
different common goals: women rights, workers’ rights, refugees’ rights, so on
and so forth.
However a
feminist collective is not necessarily an ideal place. Many times, the
political and social structures that we claim fighting, with all the conviction
in the world, can be recreated in our feminist place, unintentionally. When we
claim to fight uneven power dynamics as part of our feminist ideals, we don’t
notice that sometimes we regenerate them in our most intimate and political
place that we presume safe, free, liberated and liberating.
I am writing out
of my personal and political responsibility as a member of a feminist
collective where I played a leading role for a period of time. What I mean by
leading role is that I was given by the collective some responsibilities and
day to day duties. Where I was responsible in executing the collective’s
decisions and following up on the tasks designated by the collective. I am
writing out of my personal responsibility to give justice to women who we left
out in a total denial of our feminist beliefs.
More than one year
ago, the collective was shaken to the ground when 3 members communicated their frustration
that their report on a sexual harassment incident that took place in the
collective’s space was overlooked and neglected. The frustration came to reveal
deeper problems in relation to structure and authority: how decisions are being
taken? Whose voice is being heard? What democratic structures that allow the
expression of all members equally exist or are non-existent? What mechanisms
did we put in place to be more attentive to women’s concerns? Was our space really
as feminist as we thought it was?
The
questions kept arising throughout this intense process. None of us claimed that
she had an answer but members who took part in the process shared a common
sense of acknowledgement that these questions are legitimate and there’s a
collective responsibility in finding answers to them, especially if we wanted
this collective to persist. However, process was interrupted for many reasons,
mainly because of the rising distrust among members and some who thought to
take advantage of the situation to mark points over other members.
In relation to
sexual harassment I found out that for a collective, it’s easier to deal with
the incident when the harasser is a male outsider. It’s easy to blame and shame
and hold a male responsible for sexually harassing a woman because after all
men are socialized in a way that tells them that it’s okay for them to harass a
woman; that they have the total right to display power over women’s bodies as
fathers, as brothers, as boyfriends, as bosses, as professors, as husbands, as
friends, as fiancés, as clergy men, as politicians, as soldiers, etc. But how
to deal with a sexual harassment case when both the accusing and the accused are
women members of a feminist collective?!
Hence, during
our meetings another sexual incident arose. When one member told us she was sexually
harassed by another. And again we were totally consumed in dealing with this
issue, when what was intended to be a confidential procedure went public with
the name of the member accused of harassment. What was intended to be a safe
mechanism to deal with the incident in a way that is healthy turned out to be a
disaster. We neither knew how to investigate the matter properly, nor we knew
how to bring justice for the accusing and the accused member. Moreover we
didn’t hold responsible the member who disclosed the case for the public.
The accused
member, who knew about the case from a mouth to mouth gossip, denied every
relation with the incident. She felt isolated and pushed out of the community,
with her reputation tarnished as a “harasser”. Being someone who is at the
intersection of multiple forms of disadvantages, for being a woman worker, a
lesbian, a secularist and a leftist, feeling also automatically kicked out of
what she once perceived as a safe space and community, without being
questioned, was not something that is easy to endure alone.
I understood
very late what this friend and comrade went through from social isolation and
psychological burden and self doubt. During this time I didn’t even bother
myself to pick up the phone and call her to ask: what’s your take on what you
are accused of? Put aside that I had a “leading role” within the collective to
lay down the ground for a democratic structure where a transparent mechanisms
are put in place to deal at least with these incidents that believe it or not, may
take place in self-claimed feminist spaces as well.
I do acknowledge
the fact that I share responsibility in what happened to these four members,
since I should have stood for them as other members stood for me before. It’s
wrong, simplistic and naïf to assume, that if a woman is a feminist then
automatically she can overcome an injury. We always find comfort in talking to
someone who can listen to us and understand and be supportive. After all isn’t
this what feminists should do at least to one another?! I feel no sense of
heroism or courage in this acknowledgment. I say that out of my political
belief and commitment to my feminist values. I acknowledge the fact that I
didn’t rise to the level of my beliefs and that we failed in creating a space
that is not exclusionary, where members acknowledge that they come from
different backgrounds and where we should be open and sensitive to the
overlapping layers of disadvantages where many of us are situated.
Why I am talking
about this after one and more years? For sure my intention is not to point
fingers, nor to blame a particular one or two or three persons. I am writing first because, on a
personal level, I didn’t find a closure yet with this experience. I don’t think
I will anytime soon. Second, I am not
talking from the view point of someone who lost hope in the struggle for gender
and social justice. On the contrary. I am talking out of my past responsibility
and future ones in these struggles. We should reassess this experience in order
not to commit the same errors that can be disastrous on political and
individual levels.
We lost so many
beautiful, smart, energetic and committed women in the way we handled the
problems which arose in our journey. I don’t think that any space can be ideal,
not even a feminist space. But we should learn from our experiences, so that
when they arise the next time -and they will- we know how to deal with them in
a way that make our spaces more inclusive and sensitive to our injuries and
wounds; and in a way that empower us individually and collectively. I am
certainly now more aware of the obstacles, one of them is when the personal is
conflated to someone’s duty in a collective, or when a political stand is
conflated with complex interpersonal histories.
I don’t have magical solutions. I still
believe that the answers to the questions that I presented earlier should be
made collectively in a way that is rooted in our experiences. I am only sure
about one thing that denying the past problems that arose, will not be the best
way to go in our present and future feminist po
litics…
not anymore.
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