Feminists hail explosion in new grassroots groups
* move over old time third wavers, the new generation of feminists are taking a stand. booyah.....
It was the lads' mags – with semi-naked women in suggestive poses on their covers – being sold at eye level at her corner shop that did it. "I just don't think I should have to look at that – it's degrading," said 17-year-old Isabella Woolford Diaz. "If people want to buy it, fine, but I don't think 11-year-old pupils should have to look at it." Deciding to take the matter into her own hands, the student formed a feminist group at Camden school for girls, and before long a core group of 15 teenagers – boys and girls – were attending. "I was getting so frustrated at how women were portrayed and I wondered if I was just being pernickety," she said. "But I soon realised it wasn't just me."
The group is one of dozens of new feminist organisations springing up around the UK, according to the campaign group UK Feminista. Research carried out to mark the group's second birthday has revealed that the number of active grassroots feminist organisations has doubled in the past two years. These are feminists who do not fit easily into stereotypical moulds: young and old, men and women, urbanites and country dwellers. A new breed of feminists is starting to rise up. "It's a really exciting time. We are seeing a real resurgence in feminist activism that is moving from the margins to the mainstream," said Kat Banyard, founder of UK Feminista and author of The Equality Illusion. "People are willing to put up their hand and say they are a feminist without the fear of being ridiculed. Particularly in the past 12 months, we are seeing people standing up and willing to be counted." Like the Camden group's members, many of them are young, passionate and unafraid to take direct action.
Anna van Heeswijk, from the campaign group Object, told of a group of year 10 students from an inner-city school she had spoken to about the sexual objectification of women. The students went to their local supermarket to protest against the sale of lads' mags at eye level. They were armed with banners, horns and slogans, and before the end of the day the manager had agreed to order "modesty" covers to obscure the sexualised images of women. "A new generation of young women across the country are sick and tired of being sexualised, objectified and trivialised," she said. "There is real power in the voices of these young women. This is a good moment for feminist activism. The tide is turning." For decades, activists have questioned whether men can be feminists, but according to campaigners men are now swelling the ranks.
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With twice as many women as men expected to lose their jobs in the public sector, women hit hardest by services and benefits cuts and concerns that as state services shrink women will have to fill in the gaps, women may find hard-won gains in sexual equality are rolled back, according to the Fawcett Society. "We are at a watershed moment for women's rights," said Anna Bird, acting chief executive of the Fawcett Society. "Women are feeling the brunt of cuts and job losses. Instead of seeing progress in women's rights we could see the pay gap between women and men widening. We can't be complacent and I think a growing number of women are aware of that."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/09/feminists-hail-explosion-grassroots-groups
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