Post-Election Reactions

Capturing reactions after an incomprehensible and shocking event like last night is difficult but important. Since the early hours of Wednesday morning, I have felt as though an alien has taken over my body and I’m walking around in a surreal, deeply saddened and fearful state. The prospect of having a first inspiring, female President seems like a lifetime ago and all of the progressive greatness that has been achieved throughout Obama’s administration seems to have been swept away.

It is so hard to be optimistic. My wise cousin has tried to reinforce this optimism that I once had inside of me. This hurts the Republican Party , he says, and it gives the Democrats something to point to and say “look how ugly you are”. My cousin is right. Now, more than ever, is a time for those of us still sane to come together and defeat the facist, racist, misogynist that is Donald Trump and his moronic supporters. I’ve gathered together some initial thoughts from friends and family who have been affected greatly by the outcome of this election. 

My chat with Mike Buonaiuto about LGBT issues

This week, I had a chat with Mike Buonaiuto. I work with Mike at Shape History, a social change company. He started Shape History just over a year ago. Since I first met Mike, I’ve come to realise that he has an incredible amount of passion and drive to create social good. One of the issues that Mike is determined to change, is the way in which LGBT people are seen across the world. I remember having a chat on my first or second week at Shape History with Mike at a pub (where all good conversations take place). We somehow got onto the topic of being gay, but in particular, language, categorisation and stigma. The conversation that we had was too good to keep to ourselves (well, what Mike had to say anyway). Mike’s enthusiasm of LGBT issues, coupled with his own personal experiences, combined with me sucking up to him, I thought that this week, it was a good idea to expand our little chat in the pub.

 I wanted to start by asking you about your own experience with being gay and the story of when you first ‘came out’?

The interesting thing about coming out is that you never stop coming out. When you start talking about your first time coming out, it’s obviously the most important because it’s most likely to be the people you care most about. Telling your loved ones is far more likely to be more momentous than telling the shop assistant when you’re buying flowers and they say “hey, nice bunch of flowers for your girlfriend”. You then have to question whether you want to actually come out again. It’s a pivotal moment and I think that given my personality, I take every moment to do it because it forces people to question their outlooks on gender and sexuality; the norms and what is acceptable and what isn’t.

I came out to my parents when I was 19. My dad was from a very strict Italian background, my mum, British. What was fascinating was that my dad was far more accepting of it at first than my mum was. This wasn’t because either of them had a problem with it but because my mum and I have such a close relationship and she felt very hurt that there was a ‘secret’, as it were, that I had kept from her when she thought that I could tell her absolutely anything. In essence, that was it.

My chat with Miriam Onwochei-Garcia on her volunteer experience in refugee camps.

This week I interviewed Miriam Onwochei-Garcia about her experience of volunteering to help with the refugee crisis in Calais (the jungle) and Dunkirk, with a particular focus on the vulnerability of women in these camps. We all know that there is a refugee crisis going on in Europe, but it’s all too easy to forget about what’s going on when we’re asleep, safe at home. To give you some stats, in 2015, over 1 million people (refugees, displaced persons and other migrants) made their way to Europe to either escape conflict in their home country or to find better economic prospects. In April of this year, 180,000 people reached Europe. They’ve arrived with no basic human necessities. There are so many ways in which we are able to help and the support given so far by ordinary Europeans has been enormous. Miriam volunteered her time for a total of two weeks on two different occasions during March. She did a huge variety of work, including helping in a medical centre, distributing aid to children and building work.

What were your first impressions of your volunteering experience?

The day before I arrived for the first time, the new Dunkirk camp, which houses the majority of the women and children had opened. I initially helped move a pregnant woman and her family to the new camp and as we were walking through the old Dunkirk camp, there were gas canisters going off. These explosions were set off by the refugees who’d been left behind because they were less vulnerable and the new camp didn’t have enough space for them. They were frustrated and they were protesting. It was freezing cold, and the conditions in that Dunkirk camp were appalling; you’re up to your knees in human excrement, the camp was built on bog land and the authorities had stopped any major aid getting through. No human should ever live like that. I think I counted 8 toilets, for at one point, 2,000 people and maybe 2 main taps that were functioning, no hot water, one main charging point.

My chat with Ben Leich about domestic abuse

This week, I spoke to Ben Leich about domestic abuse and domestic violence. I wanted to pick Ben’s brains on his knowledge of the issue as he works on social policy in the Department of Communities and Local Government as a Fast Stream Civil Servant. Simply put, he advises the government on issues ranging from domestic abuse, mental heath problems, people that are homeless and sleeping rough, and Troubled Families. Domestic abuse is an issue that will affect 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men in their lifetime. As Ben will explain below, it is an incredibly difficult issue to tackle due to its sensitivity and complexity of each individual case.

 Before we dive in, can you explain the difference between domestic abuse and domestic violence?

Domestic violence is relatively simple. Your partner is physically or sexually assaulting you or vice versa. Domestic abuse is a broader term, which is primarily used nowadays as it accounts for psychological controlling, or coercive behaviour, which may not be as clearly obvious as someone turning up to A&E with physical injuries. Domestic abuse can have huge impacts on someone’s mental health, which can be just as damaging as physical assault.

 

My chat with my mother about her abortion

I wrote the following blog post when interning at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (bpas) last year, with just a few adjustments. 

I don’t know about you, but I think Lena Dunham is great. Her latest campaign #AskYourMother if she’s had an abortion has grabbed my attention the most. A stigma surrounding abortion obviously still exists. Despite 184,571 abortions taking place in England and Wales in 2014, if you’ve had an abortion, you don’t tend to talk about it. However, women are starting to speak up about their abortions, with Lindy West’s #ShoutYourAbortion campaign taking off; thousands of American women are tweeting about their abortion experiences. I decided to jump on board and take Lena Dunham’s advice to ask my mother if she’s ever had an abortion. It turns out she had (and I’m glad otherwise this would’ve been a very short blog post). When I asked her to have a chat about it, she was more than happy to tell me about her experience, as well as her views surrounding abortion today. Here’s her story.

Can you tell me about your decision leading up to having an abortion?

You reflect on doubts and weigh the decision up. To me, I’m very instinctive, I know inside of me what’s right and what’s not right for me. Although I had been with daddy for a long time, I just didn’t feel ready to have a child because I hadn’t forged a career. I wasn’t ready, I was too young. I was about 26 or 27. I needed to grow up a bit more. I wasn’t clear about my life course. So, I told daddy and he, as always, was incredibly supportive and it wasn’t a decision I ever regretted now or at the time. It was very functional for me, I’m afraid.

My chat with Mete Coban about the engagement of women and young people in politics

This week, I had a chat with Mete Coban about the engagement of young people in politics, particularly focusing on women. I first engaged with Mete over Twitter, last year because I was incredibly interested in the organisation in which he co-founded in 2013, called My Life My Say (MLMS). The non-profit seeks to create a platform to engage young people into politics, in a safe, non-judgemental, non-partisan environment. Mete is also a Labour Councillor for Stoke Newington.

Could you tell me a bit about your inspiration behind MLMS?

I’ve always been interested in politics. My experience working for the Labour Party in the 2010 election derives from youth engagement but my inspiration to start my own thing was in my second year of university. I went to an event with my friend, run by an organisation that brought speakers and students together. My friend and I were both really inspired by the work that this organisation had specifically done. Following on from that, we knew we wanted to create a platform for young people across different universities, to come together and talk about issues that are important to them but non politically-affiliated. What we want to do is let young people dictate these issues, in a safe space. We saw other young people doing great things, and we looked at ourselves and thought ‘what are we doing? We’re studying politics but we’re not doing anything.’ We love debating, and from that we just got our inspiration.

My chat with Maria Finnerty on the effects of porn consumption

I recently became very curious about the gender politics of pornography whilst reading Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman (which I highly recommend). I’ve always felt quite put off by porn but Caitlin reminded me that it is not porn itself that is the issue, but rather the industry. I was very excited to talk to Maria Finnerty this week, who researched for her undergraduate dissertation the effects of porn consumption on young men. Here’s what she had to say. 

Why did you choose to write your dissertation on porn and what interests you about it?

I’ve always been interested in the politics of sex and sexuality. In particular, how our ideas about sex and the permissibility of certain sexual behaviours differ with gender. Porn now inevitably plays a part in the formation of these ideas, which I think demands investigation.

My chat with Tasha Fox on manspreading

Let me tell you a story. This is a recurring story. I was at a football game a few weeks ago with my dad (I won’t tell you which team because it might put you off reading future blog posts). The crowd around me was standing for the entire match. Unfortunately, I was distracted from the game because I couldn’t help but look at the man next to me, with disbelief. He was completely unaware that he was virtually on top of me, forcing me to lean into my dad for the entire match. Perhaps he was deliberately shielding my view from watching my team’s crummy performance, but I started thinking to myself that this is a natural occurrence that happens to me regularly. But I’m not special; this is something that happens to most women. Because I am someone who is unable to stay quiet, I made it clear that I wasn’t invisible and that this man was taking up my designated space, even if we were at a football match. I began to stick an elbow out and stand with my legs wide, but it didn’t seem to get through to him. I decided to say something to him- I politely asked him to move up and you know what, he did. The issue of space matters and yes, not all men are guilty of taking up a lot of room, but there seems to be a general feeling that men are entitled to more space than women and this just isn’t true. I decided to speak to Tasha Fox this week about space in general, and in particular “manspreading” (a word now in the Oxford English dictionary). Tasha is completing her masters in Social Policy and Planning at LSE, as well as working part-time in Parliament for an MP.

How would you describe the term “manspreading”?

I think the important thing to note is manspreading is different from just being rude and taking up room on the tube, it’s the way that men do it. It is in a particularly gendered way that makes it manspreading. The issue with it is that men aren’t actually aware of how much room they’re taking up by spreading their legs so far apart that’s not necessary and taking up room of other people’s space.

My chat with James Lindop on being a feminist

At the end of last year, Laura Bates wrote a Guardian article asking what your feminist new years resolution would be. I considered this. Before I indulge you, I want to make clear what feminism means to me. Feminism simply means gender equality and creating a society in which women’s social, political and economic rights are the same as their male counterparts. My feminist new years resolution is to start a blog that encourages us to consider feminism in this simple way. My aim is to sit down and chat with people from all walks of life about issues relating to gender. For my first blog post, I sat down with James Lindop, a friend of mine from University who has, ever since I’ve known him, considered himself a feminist.

Would you identify as a feminist?

Of course! And I wouldn’t even think about it. I’m quite happy to call myself a feminist. I don’t think it’s a big deal.

Have you always considered yourself or defined yourself as a feminist?

No. I think probably the first time I did it was when I studied feminism at A Level. Before that, I was quite ignorant I guess and I assumed feminism was something greater than or something more in depth or something that you had to study or something that wasn’t as clear-cut as what I believe it to be now.