 Welcome to the British Library and to Feminist Loose Ends. This is the event that marks the end of the library's big exhibition Unfinished Business, The Fight for Women's Rights. And we're going to have a discussion of that marathon piece of work, along with a sharing of two very exciting new books on that subject. I'm B Rollat of the Cultural Events team. Let's meet the panel. First of all, I'd like to introduce you to Polly Russell, Hi Polly. Polly's head of the Eccles Centre for America's Studies at the British Library, but she's here in her capacity as the lead curator of the exhibition. So she's going to kick off her curatorial boots and tell us what it was really like. You might also know her from her History Cook column in the FT, great piece in the current FT magazine, and she also presents on BBC Two's Back in Time. So Food and Feminism. What else is there, Polly? Next is Raphia. Hello, Raphia. Raphia Zakaria is a lawyer, human rights activist and author of, among other things, Against White Feminism. This isn't the real cover. The real cover is very much more beautiful because it's a review copy. The actual book comes out in the UK on the 9th of September and we're putting a pre-order link onto the platform so that you can pre-order the book now. Raphia is currently a research scholar at the Colin Powell Centre for Civic Leadership at City College, New York. We're also joined by Alison Phipps. Alison's been a scholar, activist in the movement Against Sexual Violence for over 15 years. She's currently Professor of Gender Studies at Sussex University, but soon to be moving to Newcastle University to be Professor of Sociology. So I'm glad to catch you in between and she takes a talk about this book, Her New Work, Me Not You, The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism. We're also going to be hearing later on from writer Shelly Mitchell of The Outsiders Project, more on her soon. But first, Polly, can I come to you? What is Unfinished Business? What is the exhibition? So Unfinished Business, thanks so much. This is just wonderful to be able to talk about the exhibition with you and Raphia and Alison. I'm really excited to have a conversation because what this exhibition is about is a landmark exhibition at the British Library, which was trying to connect the current moment of feminist activism and engagement with women's history with a longer history of that. And because it's trying to tell a really big story, it's really ambitious, it's slightly different from other exhibitions that have taken place in this kind of subject area where they've tended to focus in on, for instance, women in suffrage or women in work or a specific area of a women's rights story. This is trying to tell a big ambitious story and so because of that, there are of course gaps. I think of it like a mosaic in a way. You could rearrange this story in different ways, you could tell it in different ways. It's not definitive, but it's a kind of invitation into a big conversation and that's what we wanted to do. And from the very start, from the get-go, there were some sort of concepts which were sort of at the core of the way we were thinking, although lots of it changed in our three years of planning, a couple of things really... Three years! Three years, three long years, and another year if you add on the Covid chaos. So yeah, it's been a long time. But one of the things that was kind of central to our conceptual thinking was this idea that there never has been and there never will be one sort of woman, that what it means to be a woman has always been contested, it's meant different things, experiences of varied, experiences of progress, but also experiences of oppression and freedoms take place at different times for different women. So this was never going to be a kind of chronological story or a positivist story, which is just of progress, but it's a version of a story that you could tell it in different ways, but the point is it's about a kind of complexity. The second thing is that for space reasons, we had to focus on the UK and kind of 19th century onwards, we would love to have told a story which was much more able to tell a story of the world, because this is not just the UK story of course, but because of Britain's colonial links and also links of slavery, we were able, and also the British Library's collections, we were able to draw in stories that connect to the rest of the world. So it is sort of UK in a broad sense of that. It's got 150 objects in it, that was selected from a long list of probably about 700, which was torturous to choose. That is horrible. It sounds like picking your favourite kid. It was like choosing a favourite. In fact, choosing a favourite kid will be easier, I think. I know because I've got three. And we organised this massive story into three sort of overarching sections, body, mind and voice, in recognition that those are the areas over which women have historically and continue to struggle for agency and freedom and the sort of right to live a fully realised life. And then each of those sections is broken down into three more. So there's nine sections altogether. So for sake of argument, the body section splits into image, biology and autonomy. And each one of those is headed up by a contemporary activist organisation that's campaigning in that sphere or in that area. So for instance, in the section on protest and partnership, we have women for refugee women. In the sectional work, we have United Voices of the World Union in biology. We have Bloody Good Period, who campaigned for periods, the end period poverty. And we asked each of them to curate their own cases so that they were telling their own stories of their own activism. It's very much a myriad entity, isn't it? When you go in, and apologies for anybody that's not in London, but when you enter it, and there are two more weeks of the exhibition, the first thing you meet is a sort of mix of voices and that's deliberate, isn't it? Yeah, we really wanted the, we did not want it to be kind of mausoleum-like and sort of reverential as a space. We wanted it to be loud, colourful, disruptive, joyful, but we wanted people to feel angry and happy in a sense to kind of reflect the story that we were trying to tell as well. So it really is quite kind of in your face in terms of sound and also in terms of what you see as well. That's right. And I should also add there are two more weeks to see it. It's free on Tuesdays if you're in London Town, but for viewers that are joining us by the Living Knowledge Network, which is the British Library's friends and relatives around the country, there is also a travelling version that continues on beyond the end of the exhibition, so it does have an onwards life. Because how does it fail, Polly, to bring something together that is so precious? It's such a snapshot and to know that it comes apart again. Well, I don't even, I haven't got a metaphor for it yet for what it feels like. It's been an amazing project to work on, we've worked with some fantastic partners, amazing, an amazing advisory board of sort of academic citizen researchers, activists. As you say, it's the work in the library, the kind of exhibition in the library is just kind of one part of that work, so it is a kind of centerpiece, but then there's the Living Knowledge Network, which went out to 22 libraries across the UK where they, we sent them panels and then they supplemented them with their own kind of exhibitions and events that were related to their own kind of areas, events and histories. We've done an amazing website with digitizing objects from the exhibition and then telling all sorts of kind of histories and stories around that from like the history of women in cycling to disability, activism to so many different working parts and then of course the pandemic hit. What was the impact of that and also what did that mean in terms of the relevance of the exhibition? Yeah, it's a really, I think it's been really interesting. I mean this history is a very live history or this story is a live history. It's been, it's not just the pandemic, it was changing even before the pandemic, you know, so three years ago, four years ago is a different, it's a different country to today. If you think about some issues, I mean I'd say something like when we started, for instance, there was a much less historical attention around trans issues than there is now. On the other hand, I think people, a broad audience are more accepting and understanding of trans issues now, so you know that's just one example of how the landscape has changed. So this is, you know, there's never going to be finished business, that was a good thing about doing this exhibition. It was always unfinished, it was always in flux, but it's absolutely true that COVID, you know, it closed down the exhibition, so it closed us down in one sense, but it absolutely thrust into the limelight many of the issues that the exhibition is trying to highlight and the issues of kind of structural inequality, a recognition that, you know, freedoms are never, never have been experienced equally and, you know, everyone will know that COVID impacted disproportionately on women because they bear the burden of care work and domestic work and precarious jobs, and that that especially impacted on women of colour for who are more likely to work in that sector. And then, so we had COVID and then at the same time, you know, Black Lives Matter also heightened this recognition of taking into the need, the imperative to take into account Black Lives and diverse lives as a kind of absolute insistence on that. And so it feels to me like since we reopened, audiences have come in a sense with more open minds or perhaps more of a sense of the urgency of the issues that are being discussed in the exhibition. And how do you, I mean, how do you actually see that as a shifting dynamic? How then do you see the role of feminism in the public domain? Is it a snapshot or is it a process? Yeah, I mean, I really, really want to hear what Rafaia and Alison have to say about this because it seems to me that both of them have really talked to you in just a moment. Absolutely about feminism in the public realm, you know, and their work is like deep analysis and then also kind of solutions and how we can think about moving forward. So I don't want to talk about the role of feminism. I'll talk about our role and a case study, which I think is unfinished business. And, you know, I think it's really crucial to think about who needs to come to the table to do public culture. And in the case of unfinished business, you know, that was a mixture of our internal teams, expertise within, you know, on the marketing or exhibition teams or curatorial teams, but then also working with, you know, advisors, you know, people who could campaigners, nonprofits, citizen researchers. So it's kind of bringing into that conversation as many people and voices as possible. You know, it absolutely came out of a commitment to gender equality, to highlighting structural inequalities and a kind of commitment to women. But it was very much shaped by an idea of public culture, both shaping, shaping debate, but debate shaping public culture. And I think in the way that feminism makes you live your life differently, it makes you think about history differently, it makes you do curation differently as well. And I think it's unsettled for us or forced us up against to get any idea that, you know, the curator or the library as the expert is the definitive answer into something. Actually, it requires us to kind of give up and seed space for different stories and to let the subjects of history speak for themselves and to allow for sort of different and divergent views. So I think that's what we've tried to do. And I think I want to turn now to Raffia, if I may, Raffia. Polly's just explained the reasoning behind why the exhibition was limited to the UK facing history of women's rights, but you're in your book, which I just want to bring up on screen again, against white feminism. You're very emphatic about the need to look outside of European and American perspective. Can you tell us why did you write the book? Here's my book. Sorry for being muted and thank you B and Polly for giving me the chance to be included in the discussion. And I think be your question about why I ask, you know, or why I make such an emphatic case for that feminism is to be found elsewhere is because as someone who grew up in Karachi in Pakistan, you know, I received a very patchy and contested version of my own history. So I think when I grew up and as a scholar, the decolonizing work that is essential for, you know, millions of people like myself women, especially to recover their own history is to provide them with the access to, you know, the sort of epistemic collection that the British library represents. So because, you know, our histories were lost, you know, they were lost in partition, they were lost before that they were, you know, they're not available to us. But before we, before I go any further, I wanted to point out why I find Polly's perspective so interesting. My book against white feminism begins with the story of a different exhibition. You know, and it looks, that exhibition in particular is the World's Fair of 1893. That was, that took place in Chicago. And this is a time when women did not, women American women did not yet have the vote. And the sort of startling thing that happened or the kind of curveball that came to these women was that the men who were leading the Columbian exhibit exposition said for the first time that there could be a special exhibit devoted just to women. And this was going to be called the Women's Building. And so began the task of this board of women, the lady managers, they were called, and their effort to sort of encapsulate and then present, you know, what the achievements and the skills and talents of American women were. And the point, of course, being to show to America and to the rest of the world just how modern the country was and how forward looking it was. But of course, you know, if you look in the story of that exhibition, I'll just move on to like how it ended up, what ended up being the result of this exhibition. First of all, there were tremendous squabbles here, right? Within figuring out what represents America, this question of what represents America. And now, even though Black women had been freed by this time, they were no longer slaves, they ended up almost being completely erased from this building that had thousands. And it's not unlike, you know, poly, it wasn't 150 objects. These are thousands and thousands of different things that were in this exhibition. It was a pure battle, wasn't there, in the running of it? Oh, there was a tremendous battle in the running of it. And then, you know, it came down to these, and I emphasised this for a particular reason, to the sorts of administrative decisions, like for instance, you know, finally an African-American woman was hired at one point to organise and curate all the entries for exhibits coming from Black women all around the country. But then there were budget cuts, and this woman's job was one of the jobs that was cut. So you ended up at back at square one where, you know, once again, there was nobody to curate these exhibits, and that was then used as a reason to leave out those exhibits, right? So in the end, there were no, and so I begin with this story so that if a Black woman, a contemporary Black woman, or a woman like me, a brown woman from the subcontinent, tries to look for herself in the story of this world's fair. Black women would have to look in the Haiti Pavilion because that's where African-American activist Ida B. Wells was told to be, and she was distributing a pamphlet called Why the Coloured American is Not in the World's Fair of 1893. And if there was a woman like me, we would be found in this sort of human zoo that had been created, you know, which had exhibits from South Asia, it had exhibits from Africa, and the people, the brown women or the Black men, were told to sort of enact the most sort of exotic and savage version that existed in the American mind. So, you know, on the back of one souvenir book, if someone went to this exhibition at the World's Fair, was that they could rank the women in order of beauty, the women of this pavilion, so they could literally go stare at these women and then rank them, you know, based on what they thought were women that were pleasing to look at. And I begin with this, this story because it's a question of, you know, how much have we managed to change the narrative? And, of course, it's very, very, it's very hopeful to hear, you know, both UB and especially Polly and the effort that went into this exhibition. But the question, of course, is that, you know, women like me are still not able to control the story of of our own telling. Even as I sit here, you know, we were talking earlier about where I was and I mentioned that I was in Indiana. And here in Indiana, at this very moment, there are pending, there is pending legislation that would ban books like mine because what this book tries to do is to tell the story of feminism through the perspectives of the men who were erased from the story of feminism. And by that definition, it belongs to, you know, a category of books that teach critical race theory. And critical race theory right now is in the process of being banned in at least 20 legislatures in the United States. So, so this is an embattled book from, from the get go. And of course, it's not just the United States, you know, while this book is being published in the UK, you know, I expect it will not be published, for instance, in France, where critical race theory is once again being banned, you know, with the sort of tacit approval of the Macron administration. So, so this is an embattled topic because the question is how do I get back the epistemic material that made up my history? How do I get, I mean, you know, it's interesting that you say 700 objects. I have not seen 700 objects about women in the subcontinent back when I was in the subcontinent. Because, like I said, you know, the other, the other woman that stars in the first few chapters of this book is Gertrude Bell, for instance. What did Gertrude Bell do? Well, one of the things she did is that she dug up a good part of the Middle East, got all of those artifacts, and took them to the UK. And, I mean, similar things were done, of course, by Americans who were part of the ideological. Yeah. There's a key phrase that lets out there, and it's about controlling the narrative. And I think that's a really important theme throughout your book. And one of the areas I was really excited and interested by was your study of NGOs, of global NGOs, and of international journalism. Can you tell us a bit about that, about empowerment and wood-burning stoves and this theme of controlling a narrative? Could you talk to that, please? Right. So controlling the narrative in terms of, you know, of course, in the NGOs, that, you know, came from research, it also came from personal experience, because I've been part of large NGOs doing transnational work, doing work to, you know, provide women with reproductive rights, provide women with, you know, all dimensions of, you know, in terms of like what it says in their campaigns. But of course the problem is that within these NGOs, within the politics of the boards of these NGOs, within the understanding of how campaigns are structured, it is entirely focused towards the donors and the consumers of these campaigns. And the donors... I'm sorry to burst in, but I'm just conscious of the time limits that we've got. And there's some such powerful examples of it. I wonder if you could give one that illuminates. I think one powerful example that you definitely should take away from this is, you know, deals with the war in Afghanistan. And it involved a journalist who went to Afghanistan and she had no background in Afghanistan, but she was sent there by the New York Times. And one of the things that she did is that she learned that the Taliban had banned schools. And when she found out that there was a secret school that was being run by certain people in Afghanistan, which were who were hiding from the Taliban. So she goes to this secret school and what she does is she hides a camera and with this camera, this hidden camera, she essentially takes pictures from inside the secret school. These pictures are then published in the New York Times and this woman wins a Pulitzer eventually for her work in Afghanistan. So all of this happens without a single person asking the question of, oh my god, you gave away the identities of people who were running a secret school. What on earth would happen to them once their identities are outed? Nobody asked this question. And I'll stop with just this. That in itself is completely unethical and a bad journalism, but the wider framework is what you're illuminating with the missing part being that it's the people who are in that story that should be describing the narrative and that's the point that comes again and again. Yes, and there are different sort of arguments that are used to cover it up in that okay well I'm giving this news to the Americans and that's what they're interested in or I'm presenting this exhibit to the French or the British and that's what they're interested in. But the cumulative result of all of those sort of individual concessions that are made by people in power is that you have a situation in which brown and black women are at the front lines fighting all the feminist battles. I mean the secret schools after all were being run by Afghan women and but there are nowhere in the narrative so it's sort of you know an all encapsulating narrative of white and western supremacy and nobility, particularly moral nobility and you go around the world searching for what bits and pieces of news can be used to bolster that idea, bolster this idea of at first colonial benevolence and now sort of aid-centered benevolence in that you know first we save the world by sort of you know giving people the railroads and the English language or whatever and now we're saving the world by giving them food aid. We're burning stoves. Right oh yeah and stoves please. But I'm conscious of the time running by and there is some there's a part of the but well much of it's very personal you've put yourself in it and there's a point where you reflect on conversations with women where you felt the pressure to talk about performative sexuality to kind of prove that you're not on a oppressed Muslim woman. I just found that so striking and I wondered if you wouldn't mind reading out that that short section. I think I don't I don't have that that that section pulled up in front of me but I do want to speak about this idea of performing you know whether it's a kind of a sex positive image of sexual liberation or whether it is performing this idea of that I'm one with the gang you know I'm not I'm not going to say anything that's going to make white people look bad in a very pointed sense and you know I mean and that just that just comes from the ranking of cultures where white and western cultures are at the top they're most sexually liberated and hence empowered because that's the equation that if you're sexually liberated that's the sum total of empowerment and you're not subject to the sort of dark and medieval type of ideas that per pervade other cultures and the other cultures are always cultures that are formerly colonized and yes and so if you are going to play with the big girls it is very much considered that you know that I should say oh you know if people are talking about all you know the bad date they had over the weekend that I'm going to chime in and give a story of my own somehow or or or talk about you know various sort of the various ideas of sexual intimacy I mean that's all part for the course because it's part of performing whiteness I mean the point the largest point of this book is that in order to be considered feminist in the world today I have to perform whiteness I have to adopt the language the means the content of conversations the epistemology the narrative of a white woman and that's how I have to present myself and also what's happening there that that sense that you have to sort of prove your credentials and prove you right because I'm almost a woman I'm not wearing a hijab but I have in the past and the issue just really becomes is that everything I do is an interpretation for what my politics might be so if I'm not wearing the hijab then I'm you know I have a greater chance of being a the the cool Muslim that's not sort of a concern with issues of spirituality or covering my hair or whatnot and and then you know I can go further and talk about how sexually liberated I am and that's going to get get me even more points in terms of like my my efforts to become white essentially and you know the the book is just about the fact that this has got to stop feminism is in a dire place is is is at a crossroads I would say in the world today a lot of black and brown women are are absolutely aware of everything that I've just said but have no means of escaping that they have no means of establishing I mean two white women without sort of saying that the white women who are doing the work of reaching out are somehow um you know disingenuous so um so that so so that's what we've got and it's uh I mean I would say with a very particular and specific appeal to the British Library because it has the capacity far far more than probably any other institution at which I will present this book to change this narrative and to provide you know people who are doing this decolonizing work with this with the spotlight that in the past has been afforded to narratives of colonization that are based on you know retaining this sort of glorified version of history um you know I think borders and divisions can be erased I mean we're having this virtual conversation from we are there's there's there's so much to unpack here Raffi and I'm very very sorry to jump in but so many things that you've said speak to what Allison is also writing about feminism's in a bad place this has to stop Allison's book me not you the trouble with mainstream feminism does go to some really uncomfortable places Allison it's I'm going to just jump right into some of the really chunky stuff um prison as angry dad now I've read a little bit about castle feminism from Lola Femi and and how that informs the feminist debate prison as angry dad can you can you tell us what that means Allison sure um I mean I think this refers to the relationship that white feminists have with the patriarchal system so we know it oppresses us but we want it to protect us anyway so this is kind of a macro version of what Susan Griffin called the patriarchal protection racket which is the threat of stranger rape that pushes us into the arms of our husbands or our fathers or the other family members who are more likely to abuse us um and at macro levels this protection racket mainly targets bourgeois white women so our fear of sexual violence which shapes our behaviour and makes this kind of docile subject of capitalism drives us into the arms of the castle state and it enables other kinds of violence in the service of capitalist accumulation so protecting white women has enabled violence against colonised and enslaved men it justifies contemporary border regimes and it legitimates the criminal punishment system that kind of puts away unwanted populations so angry dad is the system and we have a relationship with the system which sort of replicates an abusive heteronormative family dad might be scary but we're dependent on him as well and I think white feminists can be quite infantilised in our relationship with the castle state and that's something that we need to understand and sort of work on it does need work um I notice that you really annoyed the daily male with this idea not that that's hard to do but um for people that aren't familiar and haven't read into into some of these ideas and you pick on a really good example there was legislation um Raphael I don't know if you've heard about this but a couple of years ago there was attempted legislation around something called upskirting where people put a phone up your skirt and you know when I know I've got teenage girls it's rife in secondary schools and for people were like yeah make it a crime this is terrible they should face consequences and yet you you're sort of subverting that entire instinct aren't you but it's a very hard thing for people to let go it's very hard and I think we saw that as well after the murder of Sarah Everard didn't we you know who was raped and murdered by a policeman but still kind of mainstream white feminists were calling for more power to the castle state for street harassment to be made a crime for misogyny to become a hate crime and it's almost like we kind of can't let go of this idea that safety means the castle state we're so deeply attached to it and I think that's what the book tries to do it tries to sort of go underneath and explore where those some of those attachments come from and of course as white feminists we've always been kind of very deeply attached to white supremacy that was that was connected to my next question question which is can you talk about feminists and the far right yeah I mean in the book in in chapter six I basically talk about trans exclusionary and anti-sex worker feminism I want to kind of distinguish between anti-sex work feminism and anti-sex worker feminism because I think you can have a critique of the sex industry which I do but still be very much pro kind of sex workers rights and in chapter six of the book I kind of explore how these these types of feminisms tend to come together and they exacerbate kind of what I call the political whiteness of feminism which is to do with not only centering the experiences and narratives of white women but also a kind of deeply threatened kind of positionality which is very much about the victimised body which is always kind of implicitly coded as white and a will to power which we kind of find quite easy to notice in white men but in white yeah well I mean we can we can see very easily how white men you know in powerful positions or reactionary white men kind of exercise this will to power but we don't notice it as much in white feminism and I think that's because in white feminism it's exercised by proxy through the punitive power of the state and I argue that in trans-exclusionary and anti-sex work feminism these kind of dynamics become quite extreme and they become so extreme that anti trans feminists in particular are prepared to ally themselves with far right groups to kind of promote that anti trans agenda and we've seen this very much in the UK but also over in the US as well with groups such as kind of hands across the aisle and I think white women have always been prepared to ally ourselves with authoritarian white men while our own interests are at stake you know look at our role in colonialism and empire as Rafia talks about in her book and as you cover in the exhibition Polly look at all the white men who white women sorry who voted for Trump and perhaps to ally with these authoritarian men they have to suppress the knowledge that these men are not their friends and will abuse them themselves kind of given half a chance that the anti trans feminism in particular seems so single-minded in its kind of focus at the moment I mean I do wonder as well if this is really about keeping all the others out because you mentioned the Daily Mail and I was kind of castigated in the Daily Mail by trans-exclusionary feminists about my abolitionist stance or my prison abolitionist stance and in that they kind of expressed horror at ideas that have been expressed by black feminists for almost two centuries if not longer so I do notice it when they said them well I don't know I'm sure they did notice it but there's something about kind of that horror that just arose and I don't know whether it was because a fellow white woman was saying it or because I'm a trans-inclusive feminist and it kind of all got caught up together but I do wonder if the single-minded obsession with trans women is really about keeping all the others out because of course the idea of real womanhood is a deeply colonial project which was used to oppress enslaved women colonised women as the science of sex and the science of race were co-constructed as you say very much in one your book roughly but also in the unfinished business book which is marvellous so I think this really is a border control project. I'm going to add though that to that trans rights the heat of the well just the heat around it is is curiously geographical in that it just isn't happening in other parts of the world so it's very white-centric in comparison to say India. Yes yeah I mean there have been recent recent discussions in India where some prominent kind of quite privileged feminists have made anti-trans statements and but the the kind of lines and I'm not an expert on this but the lines of kind of demographics seem to be going in in a similar way in that it's the feminist the more privileged end of the spectrum who are more likely to be anti-trans and certainly in the UK and I think in the US as well it's very much been a white and middle class project because I think I think it was something you said right at the beginning Polly you know there is no one kind of real woman there are many different kinds of women and I think that if you are part of a group that already recognizes that then the trans you know the trans issue becomes somewhat different you know I mean the people who are able to feel comfortable with the idea of real womanhood are people like me you know white middle class. Examining those responses and understanding why they are there's a very brilliant piece by the writer science writer Angela Saini in Prospect at the moment on this exact theme and she examines this this this inability to respond as as perhaps being culturally determined to the extent that you know we find it hard to accept what we've never seen she says yeah there's one thing that I wanted to pick up on I found your book really exciting because sometimes you're writing about whiteness and you're being it and sometimes that's really uncomfortable for you and for the reader and it's just like oh so naturally the uncomfortable bit is the one I want you to read there's a section on it in early on in the book would you would you mind sharing that with us please. Of course sure okay I'm ambivalent about writing about whiteness I'm concerned as some readers might also be that in critiquing whiteness from within I'm trying to absolve myself of my own I'm worried that I'm trying to be one of the good white people who perform what feminist scholar Sara Ahmed calls a whiteness that is anxious about itself and see that as anti-racist action and deep down that might be the case whiteness is wily white supremacy is so embedded in our psychies that we end up doing it even while we claim and believe it is what we oppose you are entitled even invited to make up your own minds about my motivations but regardless of why you think I've written it I hope you find something in this book of value and if not I'm happy to be told I'm wrong knowledge is always partial and we learn through dialogue with one another we do and can I just ask where are all the royalties from the book going oh they're all going to projects focused on sexual violence which are led by black women and I've already been able to make some donations which is lovely well from plastic well keep buying it everybody please do buy these books on on the platform here you can also submit your questions via the platform if there's any questions you'd like to put to my brilliant panel I want to move on now to a very special performance we're going to take the personal and the political all the way with a performance from the writer Shelly Mitchell Shelly went through rehab 10 times got clean in 2016 it's fair to say she is not afraid to put her own life on the page and since 2019 she's been performing with an organization called the Outsiders Project they're an arts organization that was set up to show that people who have been sidelined from society can write perform and create work of outstanding quality and worth Shelly Mitchell reads her poem Spenser and the Stairs Spenser and the stairs in the only Jamaican pub in Luton you stood among the cannabis smoke pork you had you look like a short chaff version of Jimi Hendrix you asked about a pound and I knew I had to have you you stood a foot shorter and 20 years older than me you winked and said I'm not afraid of heights although the smallest person in the room in my mind he became the largest but heights didn't matter that night on the stairs in the higher-ice flats even two steps up you towered over me I didn't see it coming my face connected with the bottom of your Dr Martins you made animal noises I made out the words slutt my legs gave way first but it was the crack of my jaw and the concrete that vibrated throughout the tower rock I lay motionless a trick I'd learned I lay rid of the pain and held it close I tasted rust and blood but I laid perfectly still I sensed your face next to mine before I smelt the rum and anger I hoped you still loved me fear and pistol by nostrils and my head cried blood over the stone steps the floor began to shift in soft waves beneath my eight stone body your footsteps faded away after a parting gift to a kick to the face my eyes stayed shut I drifted time flew like water and I remember no more hospital nights rise me from unconsciousness my secrets hidden well beneath my black eyes I tried to make jokes with the nurses but the only punchline was my fat swollen face I find an abandoned wheelchair away from the doctors and make my way to a payphone I hold my breath until you answer and then I tell you I'm sorry writer Shelly Mitchell reading her poems Spencer and The Stairs and Shelly is part of the outside of the project so many massive questions flow from this reading the first of which is around violence and even a deeper internalized violence which means that the writer apologizes at the end. Alison can you respond to this in the context of your many years working around understanding of sexual violence? Sure I mean I think that's incredibly moving that piece incredibly affecting I almost feel I don't you know I don't have anything to say yet I haven't kind of managed to formulate anything yet but of course that is an incredibly common dynamic that somebody wants to describe sexual violence to me as a process by which somebody else puts their hate inside you and I think that that is a really good kind of description for how it can make you feel and how deep the shame can go and you know at the end when Shelly says sorry I was almost waiting for that to happen because that is so so common. One of the other questions that comes out of this for me is the question of class and when we talk about the evolution of white feminism self-centering feminism corporate feminism savanna feminism all of these things towards intersectionality this is a missing and very elusive part of the debate. Rafiq is that something that you can respond to? Yes and in my book I do you know speak at length about the redistributive aspects that are essential within a sort of revived feminism that is more staunchly and more significantly focused on you know on on on solidarity. So yes I see that but at the same time you know like to me as a brown woman when I when I see what you know when I when I heard her poem and how poignantly it was expressed I also think about the women that I've worked with in you know I've been a lawyer at a domestic violence shelter and you know and the added burden that my black and brown clients who were at the shelter faced in that they felt that their case of of domestic violence and abuse was not going to be it was it was almost like on one hand it was the issue of their own safety right and and getting the police to listen to them and their own credibility but on the other hand it was like almost like a substantiation of a larger societal prejudice that black and brown men are responsible for all the violence particularly intimate partner violence in society and what you know Allison talked about in terms of you know this the protection of white women and I think that that is an important thing to consider even where we consider the the passage of legislation relating to sexual violence sexual assault to prevent certain prevent sexual assault we you know we there's no provision for the fact that for a particular victim the same law might mean something quite different from you know from from what it might mean for a white woman um and I think that's a very valid point but I do want to stick to the idea of class because class is something that you know does does travel across races as well and Polly is there anything that you wanted to add into that debate at this point I mean clearly uh Rathia and Allison have got firsthand experience of working with domestic abuse uh survivors and I I don't so you know to speak to that poem is really hard for me and I found it find it very affecting I suppose this kind of the only things you know I would say about the kind of quest for the intersection of class and and race is that they're not you know they're not necessarily they're not in competition with one another they're they're they're in conversation and they're structuring one another is how I would understand in fact I'd look I suppose to Lucy Dilap's recent book Feminism's a Global History where she talks about um the necessity to sort of look at charting our sort of passionate painful strategic coalitions but also contestations and differences across racial and class lines so it's not to and and that seems to me to be really important and in the exhibition I I you know I hope we paid attention to and again I say all the time it is not the definitive exhibition there are things we could have done differently there are other stories to tell but to try and pay attention to some of those complicated intersections I think yes and Raffia to return to the point you made about about say for example victim the victim of assault being treated completely differently from the get-go and through the judicial process is completely valid the question I was kind of driving at around classes is more on the sort of representational front and I'll share Alison very interestingly when I invited you onto this panel you said I don't do all white panels and you know that's a really positive action um how would theoretically though how would one extend that idea to you know how fantastic if it's a fully diverse panel but can you prove that the people that are there aren't all got PPEs from Oxford got the you know descended from Rajasthani royalty whatever it may be what question would you even ask what I'm driving at is it's so much harder the class yeah so much harder so much harder and you know I mean I say I don't do all white panels that's something I've made a choice to do because I I can't go around banging on about white feminism and then be somebody that that doesn't all white panel it's not to criticize that I just no no no extend on it of course yeah but it's I mean I know it's a very imperfect I mean Rafi as you say in your book it's not about representation and you can't kind of run every event saying I'll have one of those and one of those and one of those and one of those you know I mean that would just be pointless so I think I I don't know what the answer would be to extend it apart from to just think about it as as much as you as you possibly can and of course if you're if you're speaking about a subject then certainly make sure that you have people who have experience of that subject whether that's kind of class inequality or sexual violence or sex work or or whatever um but yeah it's it's very difficult and representation is not the answer is it um it's it goes deeper than that it's about the ideas which is the point that rafia makes about controlling the narrative and who's the person yes rafia I want to add that what I'm talking about is you know and towards the end of the book I deal very particularly be with your question and that is is that in our current framework we have an inordinate emphasis on recognition or representation rather and no emphasis on redistribution and the fact is is that both of those are essential if we are really looking at creating a feminism that is about justice so that you know justice cannot just be about me being I don't do all my panels either um but uh but it cannot just be about having me or any other brown or black person on a panel it has to be thicker than that even as a philosophical concept it has to have a dimension of redistribution and that requires uh sort of making state policies intersectional in terms not just of who they put up and who's represented but also in terms of who gets what and that is sort of I mean you know it seems kind of an idealistic far away goal at this point but that is you know the ultimate sort of end for these these uncomfortable conversations that we're trying to have the best of intentions about about these issues about the erasure about silencing about not being on a certain kind of panel and not being a certain kind of curator so ultimately you know it's going to have to be more than that sort of very thin idea of tokenism or thin idea of representation it has to be more um some questions are coming in there's one for you Alison and I'm gonna and apologies to the questioner Francis um but we're very short on time so I'm just gonna say can you answer this one really quickly but it's someone who challenges the idea or questions the idea that feminists who are concerned about trans activists are not necessarily opposed or anti-trans can you can you address that is a complex debate and the questioner points out it doesn't help to point the finger at other feminists in a public place can you can you answer that sure um I mean I don't is that a question or is that just a comment for me um what's the question what's the question have you talked one to one with feminists trans people or non-binary people who are concerned about the trans activists of course of course I mean I do think there's a there's a big difference between having a conversation about difficult issues and having this very toxic debate which tends to be playing out in the mainstream media mostly the right wing media and social media about trans issues I mean what I would say is that to have a conversation you have to kind of start from a place of mutual respect and in the debate as it is playing out online I don't see much respect coming forth for trans people's identities and trans people's rights um I would also say that the platforms that prominent trans exclusionary feminists are now kind of being published in the Daily Mail, The Spectator, The Times, Unheard, Spiked um are not platforms that I would give any credence to in terms of having a constructive conversation so I'm happy to have a conversation with anyone who wants to have one with me about any issues within feminism and actually I recently wrote a letter on my blog to gender critical feminists there you go check out check out the blog everybody take it out check it out there's another question Rafia I'd like to direct this one to you please and it's from Cara Cruikshank who asks about the situation of women in Afghanistan with the troop withdrawal um what ideas or vision can can can support these women Rafia you know wow that that's a tough question but it's a timely one you know just yesterday I was looking at an interview that Gloria Steinem gave in November 2001 when the US was marching into Afghanistan and you know she expressed hope that the US would you know somehow be able to produce peace and produce democracy in Afghanistan and of course we've all seen the seen the result of that and you know I think that in terms of what can be done I think nothing can be done until white feminists recognize that supporting the war in Afghanistan and imagining this top-down feminism through which you are going to bomb this country and suddenly it was going to become feminist is an utterly bankrupt idea and it's a lethal idea and and and and also recognize that when interventions like that happen no matter the the noble intentions that might precede them the result of of it is is always the same which is that you completely annihilate local feminisms indigenous feminisms and you completely you know make the idea of empowerment uh sort of entangled with bombings and entangled with neocolonial domination and that's where I've gone very contested term in your book isn't it actually I wonder if then if I may you know condense what you've just said into an answer for for our for our audience member read afghan women rather than other people writing about them perhaps is that something you'd in terms of a recommendation uh I think the recommendation needs to be to unravel this idea that you can take feminism and export it to other countries uh I I think even the idea of read afghan women has kind of been I don't know um it's it's been misused within the american context by you know all sorts of american women going over there and then saying well we're telling their stories when really they're telling the store their own story um so so I would say um you know pushing to this idea of of of knowing that you can never you can never export feminism which currently I would say is white upper middle class feminism western feminism to you know whether it's afghan women or any other sort of women um that idea like let's just put it to rest and bury it today well you can start by buying the books everybody in the audience for sure and there's one more question and polly I'm going to give it to you and then we're going to say goodbye because we're almost out of time it's a really easy one polly how do we achieve feminist goals practically when we have to operate within a patriarchal state you can do that in a minute polly I'll tell you well here's one way for you Barney, Raffia and Alison's books because they are fantastic pieces of intervention challenge and they are practical they are full of brilliant examples uh they are yeah fantastic so I've that there's a place to start I think to know that it's the longest revolution to coin Juliet and Mitchell we're chipping away at the granite hard face of patriarchal capitalism um there's been progress there's been some progress for some women but I think when you think about as Alison and Raffia makes so clear when you look at intersectionality it's much harder to make that claim with racism so rife so to think about the progress is that some women have made but many women haven't and to think about you know where is where does the work need to be done where does the conversation need to be had keep moving keep chipping away and I'll say welcome time by these books come to the exhibition if you possibly can um and thank you for joining this free British Library event if you feel like donating to the British Library it's right here on the platform and we're also very happy to hear feedback about what you liked what you didn't like what you'd like to hear more of please do get in touch last of all huge thanks to my brilliant panel Polly Russell, Raffia Zakaria and Alison Phipps also Shelly Mitchell thank you very much from the Outsiders Project and my lovely producer Jonah Albert see you all next time bye