Six RAG members attended the anarcha feminist skillshare weekend in Rossport, Co. Mayo, at the Shell to Sea camp this weekend. It was a great weekend full of a fun mix of practical and useful workshops including: rocket stove making, welding, consent, a trans workshop and abusive relationships workshop, to name but a few. One of our members gave a really relaxing workshop on massage- which included massages! The workshops generated insightful and interesting conversations. We even got to get our distro out!
RAG also held a workshop: "Why anarcho feminism?"
Here are some notes taken from the workshop:
We started with a time line of the last couple of hundred years, as a group we tried to fill in, chronologically, the gains women have made historically, including stuff like women's freedom to cycle right up to the morning after pill being made available over the counter in Ireland (for a hefty price!). The most interesting outcome was learning how little we all, including the RAG, knew about our history!! Dates are clearly not our strong point :)
We talked briefly about how there is no one type of feminism or feminist and also how you don't have to identify as a woman to be a feminist.
We divided into four smaller groups, with each group taking one of these four topics for discussion: The body, family, work and society.
Each group discussed what we need to achieve in each of these areas and fed back to the wider group.
Some of the topics discussed were: The failings of the medical system from a woman's perspective and an ungendered perspective, pregnancy treated as a health issue, the classification of 'work', the gendering of work roles in anarchist communities, nuclear families, consent, home birth as a legal issue, bodily ownership, equality not sameness... and the list goes on!
The workshop was wrapped up by highlighting that these are all feminist issues but also intrinsically linked to anarchist politics. As RAG, we believe that true equality can never be achieved through the capitalist system which can only survive through oppression and exploitation. The workshop proved as a reminder of all the failings of this system from a feminist's point of view and increased the feeling of urgency to remove it-
smash the state! :)
The Rag, Issues 1 to 6
