A Feminist Because

I’m a feminist because of a tea towel. 

I was young and small and saw it flapping on our clothesline, two children standing next to each other and looking down their knickers. (Down! Their! Knickers!) 

The caption read: “Oh! So that explains the difference in Our Pay”

I remember asking “the adults” what it meant.  

The best response: “It’s about tea towels and what gets done with them. It’s about what we think of the people who mop up spills and wash and wipe dishes, who polish glasses and mop our floors and what we think of them when they don’t. When women don’t just cook dinners and clean up messes. It’s about how women get treated and about changing it.”


Good answer (& like all the best answers one immediately has more questions. Then more. And more still). 

It is good answers like these and the continual questions that keep me in the movement, that are of the Feminist Movement, that are of my dreams.

I’m a feminist.

Because of bell hooks who writes with characteristic brilliance, “Feminism is a movement to end violence. Feminist struggle takes place anytime anywhere any female or male resists sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. Feminist movements take place when groups of people come together with an organised strategy to take action to eliminate patriarchy.”[i] 

Because of Judith Butler,[ii] Liz Grosz[iii] and Sara Ahmed[iv] who ask in different ways what it means to be a woman in the first place. Who ask us who we mean when we say “woman” anyway?  Who is the “woman” of our imaginings? Who are we leaving out, who are we excluding, what are we taking for granted when we say “woman,” when we say “she”?

Because of Le Tigre.  Nina Simone. Maybe even Lady Gaga.

Because of Aileen Moreton Robinson, who talks about the racist legacy of Australian feminism and with immense generosity urges feminists to learn from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander struggles for justice. [v]Because of visual artists like Tracey Emin, like Nan Goldin, likeCindy Sherman, like Yayoi Kusama, like Catherine Opie who are unafraid. They, like those kids on that tea towel, look down their own knickers. They flesh out their bodies. They make art. 


And Because of the F Collective, who are organising this conference, who are always inspiring and challenging, always busy, calling each others bluff, thinking about feminisms, learning from legacy, holding meetings, passionately licking envelopes, organising a festival, writing books, working, laughing, reading books, creating a zine, blogging, tweeting, facebooking and, with millions of others around the world we are fighting for our lives.


Your turn! Finish this sentence: 

I’m a feminist because...

Blog post by Rosa Valerie Campbell

[i] hooks, bell. Feminist Theory From Margin to Centre. South End Press: 2000. xi.
[ii] See Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Routledge: 1990.  for a brief introduction to Butler’s work see: http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm
[iii] See Grosz, Liz. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. Indiana University Press: 1994.
[iv] See Ahmed, Sara and Jane Kilby, Celia Lury, Maureen McNeil, Beverly Skeggs. Thinking Through Feminism. Routledge: 2000.
[v] Moreton Robinson, Aileen. Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Aboriginal Women and Feminism. University of Queensland Press: 2002.