Appreciating the Contemporary Women’s Issues Workshop
The part I loved most about the recent Contemporary Women’s Issues Workshop led by Diane Balser [International Liberation Reference Person for Women] was being able to “drink Diane in” in a particular way because it was a Zoom event.
I am so grateful I have had Diane in my life. She always shows up [is present]. She cares deeply about individual women and girls having their minds and being unafraid to think independently about anything and everything. Like Harvey [Jackins], she will override her own fears and wounds, to support and inspire other females.
Diane has given me a model that I can always draw on for remembering that the problem is not me but rather sexism and male domination. She honors me as a longtime sister activist in a way that the culture surrounding us never does, and it means so much to me.
At the workshop Diane emphasized the significance of our histories as girls. It was moving to see her show the Jewish girl in herself, all the fragility and the strength. The courage it has required for her to provide us with this inspiring model of female leadership makes me cry.
In my role as Regional Reference Person and as a women’s leader, it has been essential to have a powerful support group of other women leaders. The difference between leading with and without such a group has been profound for me. Attending Diane’s workshop and having two hundred women addressing their liberation issues together has empowered me and reinforced that putting myself in the center of all liberation work makes me a stronger leader.
There were many “aha” moments at the workshop. In the leaders’ portion, Diane reviewed the history of the women’s movement in the United States and in RC. A key insight for me was how our liberation was trivialized into a fight for individuals, mainly middle-class individuals. Fighting for the liberation of all women and our solidarity was lost to helping individual women achieve their goals. The issue of classism was lost. The real liberation fighters became invisible. Over the 1990s and early 2000s I felt the movement slipping away, and in some way I blamed myself.
At the workshop I also felt a new clarity about females showing their minds to men. Diane sees this as one of our biggest struggles. Many men can’t allow our brilliance. I loved her direction to young women on how to deal with men and male domination: “Assume you are the most brilliant person in the world and keep talking.” I realized that even though I had learned to think independently and hold and communicate strong opinions when I was growing up, I had never felt comfortable showing my mind to a man. I have always been on guard and expecting to be diminished. I am now committed to change this in my relationships with my close male family members.
Micaela Morse, Diane’s assistant, led a powerful class on “rape culture.” Her description of women being raised in a “rape culture” was new for me in some way. There is no question that I was raised in that culture, yet in my experience it was never talked about to young women. At age twelve I came across an article about rape in my brother’s Sports Illustrated magazine. It was a big shock. I realized for the first time that I was and would always be a target just because I was female. It was like being in a war in which I could be targeted at any time just because I was the “enemy.” I now realize that this has been the foundation for my not feeling safe in the world for all my life. Micaela referred to the “rape scene” in the novel Gone with the Wind (a best-selling book particularly beloved by teenagers in the 1950s). I now realize how much that romanticized version of a man overpowering a woman sexually shaped my life.
I will use the valuable directions Diane suggested for the elder women’s and single women’s support groups, both in the groups I lead and in my own sessions. I am inspired to lead women more than I already have, both inside and outside of RC, and I want to focus more on women supporting women’s leadership.
Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of women
(Present Time 204, July 2021)