This was organized by the London Feminist Network and was attended by 500+ women.  A number of us from OWCH went to the conference (and along with Shirley staffed the OWCH stall).  The opening speakers were Beatrix Campbell and Susie Orbach whose presentations showed that the fight for equality is far from won and there is still a huge agenda (political and social) for us to work on.  Susie Orbach’s talk about violence against women of body image, cosmetic surgery, eating disorders etc. was to me quite chilling and I was introduced to new notions of labiaplasty and vaginoplasty which are diabolical.  The strap line on the website says the conference was about pornification, the pay gap, eating disorders – where do we go from here?  There were sessions focused on racism (and sexism); and on prostitution and pornography, and on Motherhood and poverty and a series of workshops which JB attended reported below. JB stayed till the end and reports that it was worth it as the last speaker, Finn Mackey, was excellent and very inspiring.

There were displays and stalls from a variety of organizations in the main hall.  The anti-porn ones were familiar but also very well displayed and the cards Angela McRobbie had provided (which said “YOU HAVE JUST OFFENDED A WOMAN” and in very small print beneath this:  This card has been chemically treated…..your prick will fall off…..in 3 days)   all 1,000 disappeared – a popular souvenir.  I was actually very impressed by the variety and feistiness of the many young women, numbers with small children, who attended.  Femi chaired the Racism panel.  The ‘What’s wrong with prostitution?’ panel displayed considerable courage and also quite wicked humour in laying to rest the oft cited point that women freely chose to be prostitutes. 


There is a useful and informative website with pictures (including one of Shirley on our stall) and conference speeches etc: http://www.fil.btik.com/p_Home.ikml  Many women took OWCH materials and/or talked to us about what we were doing so from the outreach point of view it was useful and we along with Growing Old Disgracefully and another group reminded the organizers that Feminist Conferences need to go across the age range and include older women and their interests and concerns.    

JB's Workshops report:

FEMINIST SELF DEFENCE AND ASSERTIVENESS TRAINING - This workshop was led by Annie Rossi and Andrew Blackwood from the London Centre for Personal Safety www.londoncentreforpersonalsafety.org.uk They talked about how to avoid potential danger from other people and acted out how to deal with them in practical ways. This did not involve strength or martial arts; it was more about the way you assess situations, hold yourself, move, speak assertively and shout if necessary, the key lessons being to forget about embarrassment, and resist against personal attack rather than robbery (throw your handbag away from you if mugged, so the mugger goes after that rather than after you). Statistically, even in the most dangerous situations women who resist in these ways escape the worst injuries.

MEDIA TRAINING WITH CAMERA - This active workshop was led by Rebecca Morden of Scary Little Girls www.scarylittlegirls.co.uk She explained the importance of expressing the one big thing you want to get across in a succinct, clear and helpful way, so others remember it positively. She invited volunteer audience members to be interviewed by an actor colleague, who was pretending to be a sceptical interviewer. The interviews were filmed and then we all watched and listened to the films and Rebecca, the audience and the actor gave feedback.

ACTIVISM TRAINING - This workshop was facilitated by Anna van Heeswijk, grassroots coordinator at OBJECT www.object.org.uk which challenges ‘sex object culture’ – the ever increasing sexual objectification of girls and women in the media and popular culture through lads' mags, advertising, lap dancing clubs and mainstream popular culture.

The two workshops were really good and I could see OWCH members gaining from both of these in the future, perhaps.