2013/14 President Says Hello

Hey, everyone. I figured I should do a little 'Hello' spiel to any new faces and to anyone already involved who isn't familiar with me. I'm also going to tie in a little introduction to what the Feminism Society does and how it operates. Please note, anything I'm about to say does not necessarily represent the views of this society or any of its committee or members.

So. My name is Rose and I'm the 2013/14 FemSoc President.  I study English and Classical Studies here at Royal Holloway, and I'm about to re-take my second year. Things I like: cake (you'll learn more about that during any events that require refreshments) photography, peppermint tea, writing, positive attitudes to mental health and gender equality. I also like trying to make a difference in areas of society I feel are problematic (mainly the last two. I don't worry too much about the representation about cake. Although... http://rhul-fem-soc.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/food-guilt-societys-tool-to-make-you.html)

So, it was a bit of a no-brainer when I started here to try and get involved with things I thought were important within our SU (that's Student's Union.) I won't go into the inner dealings of GMs (General Meetings) Sabbs (Sabbatical Officers) and heated debates by way of microphone, because I don't want to overload you.

I got involved in second year, because I was too busy thinking I was a super awesome fresher in my first. At the beginning of my second year, I soon realised there were quite a few like-minded people within our union, and I started learning about some really important issues that hadn't really crossed my mind - trans* people's representation, BME representation and LGBT issues. Getting involved with the Feminism Society made me realise that every minorities representation in society interlinks, and it's important for us all to realise that.

For a while, like anything new, I was a little nervous about turning up to FemSoc events as I went by myself, but I can honestly say that now there are at least 6 members who are close friends. And I mean the kind of friends you Skype, not the ones you wave at awkwardly in Crosslands every now and again. So, FemSoc is friendly, and really welcoming. There were loads of great social events last year - we went out for meals, for drinks, hosted Come Dine With FemSoc (that also turned into an impromptu birthday celebration for me) went to SU club nights together and travelled into London for events, amongst others. There was a huge variation, and that's something we're going to continue doing next year - if you don't like clubbing or you don't drink alcohol, totally not an issue. We try to make sure every event is accessible, both in terms of disability and also atmosphere.

As well as social events, most of our sessions are designed to get our members thinking about Feminism as a whole, and also individual issues and how Feminism looks at them. Last year we talked about politics, diets, body hair, sex, porn, mental health, the representation of BME women in the media, Islam and Feminism amongst plenty more. Some sessions the society invited speakers to visit us and lead them, and others we would set up ourselves and just chat about. We also linked up and put on joint sessions with other societies, including the Islamic Society, the Afro-Caribbean Society, the Debating Society and the LGBT society. Like I said before, we work hard at being intersectional.

As well as discussions / presentation events, the society has also worked on campaigns that directly affect our University and its members. It's proposed and passed many motions at GMs (sorry if I've lost you here. I'll post a crib-sheet on Student's Union language at some point to ensure everyone understands why Twitter goes berserk every few weeks) that support other student women. For example, the society wrote to and offered our support to students at a University which was being targeted and harassed by anti-abortion activists, and did the same to a university finding it difficult to set up their own Feminist Society. On campus, we've worked with Sabbatical Officers and Students Union staff to ensure our SU is a zero tolerance union - put simply, it and its staff have a zero tolerance approach to sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is a huge issue within society, and university campuses don't escape that. We've helped implement an atmosphere that means there are ways of dealing with and reducing the occurrences of these issues, and that students feel comfortable reporting anything.

I plan on writing another post within the next couple of weeks about why I think Feminism is still so important in our world today; there's way too much to include within this. I hope this has been an interesting overview about the society and the kind of things it does - if you have any other questions relating to the society, feel free to send me or any of the committee a message or post in our Facebook group. It would be great to see a lot of new faces in September - I hope this post has sufficiently piqued your interest.

Oodles of feminist love,

Rose Walker

How not to pull at the SU

Trigger warning: Domestic violence and sexual harassment 

Over the past couple of weeks I've gone out with my housemates and girl friends, celebrating the end of exams, birthdays and just having a good laugh after all it's the end of term. Naturally, these jubilations were done in a stereotypically student state (with a heck of allot of alcohol). But does my unsober state give anyone the right to grab my bum and make an inappropriate comment? Personally - I think not, no one has the right to invade mine or anyone else personal space. But many of my friends at RHUL have just accepted this to be the norm, their reasoning is "What can you really do about this?"

I have two little stories to tell you now. The first began after a night at the SU on a Friday, walking home and feeling rather tired and drunk and considering ordering Papa G's when I got in. I noticed something in the corner of my eye and had to double take when I saw a good friend being hit by her then boyfriend. I don't condone violence or ever say that it is a way to solve a situation, however I had to step in and stop her from being hurt. She is my friend, it was an innate reaction to protect her, after all I know exactly what it's like to be an abusive relationship to the point that I never want anyone to experience that type of pain. Anyway I ended with a ton of bruises but I got my friend out of that situation. It wasn't my smartest decision to get involved in a fight with someone twice my size but I wasn't prepared to sit on the side lines and just watch on.

The second story is less dramatic yet knocked what little self confidence I had at the time. Typical Wednesday at the SU, my housemates spent two hours convincing me that I looked good in a dress I had  borrowed from one of them, but we finally got out and down to the SU and had a laugh. While I was standing outside in the smoking cage with a friend, gossipping about the day's events, a very tall ill-mannered guy came up behind me and grabbed my bum and said "you've got a bit of a tummy on you, haven't you?" I went into shock, I couldn't believe that at a stranger could dare touch me and comment on my appearance. Thankfully the friend I had with me got rid of him and I was later told not to worry, as he did this all the time. But that made it even worse for me, that some "lad" felt that it was socially acceptable to treat, not just me, but other women on campus in this way. I spoke to a few of my guy mates back home and agreed that it was the weirdest approach they ever heard of. 

These experiences sound awful and have spurred me on to want to help bring up awareness for RHUL FemSoc's Zero tolerance campaign. I told theses events to an someone who is going to be in an official SU position next year and they genuinely replied with "What can I do about it?" This seems to be the mindset of most people, they don't report what has happened to them because they don't know how to, or argue "whats the point? It happens all the time and nothing will change". I want this mentality to be changed to say "it's not okay to enter someone's personal space without their consent".

Note from Rhul FemSoc President-elect:
Sexual harassment and abuse is not acceptable, If you are made to feel uncomfortable in a SU please report it to a member of security or send an email to vpedwelfare@su.rhul.ac.uk or us and we will pass it on to people that can and want to help. Stories like these aren't normally shared out side friendship groups, however there are plans in place to make next year better with our soon to be Zero Tolerance Union. Zero Tolerance doesn't exist to spoil peoples fun, its there to remind people that whatever people are wearing, however drunk they are, what ever gender or sexuality they identify as, treat them like human beings and respect their rights and their bodies, and try and make our campus a safer place. 

#LiberateSURHUL

On the 29^th of May 2012, the Students' Union Annual General Meeting at RHUL voted to introduce four liberation officers onto our executive committee: a Disabled Students Officer, Black & Ethnic Minority Students Officer, LGBT+ Officer and Women & Marginalised Genders Officer. To many at other universities, this won't seem like a big achievement – many Students' Unions already have these officer positions, and to those with any interest at all in liberation, the necessity of their existence is obvious. However, the successful passing of this motion was the result of a sustained campaign to convince students of the importance of putting liberation at the heart of what SURHUL does. SURHUL has traditionally been a very inward-facing union, with a focus on student activities and internal politics rather than on campaigning, and the introduction of these officers is a massive step forward.

The introduction of these officer positions, and particularly of the WMG officer, has been a major aim of RHUL Feminism Society this year. Our members have attended NUS Women's Conference, as well as many feminist events where they have spoken with other students, and have often been faced with dropped jaws when they told others that SURHUL was entirely without a Women's Officer – especially considering the rich feminist histories of Royal Holloway and Bedford College! Whilst the creation of the Feminism Society in the last academic year was fantastic, we were aware that it was not enough for us to run Women's Campaigns from inside our society, and that in order to truly “liberate SURHUL” we needed someone to represent the interests of women at the heart of the Union. The creation of the WMG Officer will allow NUS Women's Campaigns to be co-ordinated from within the Union, as well as ensuring that issues of gender equality are taken into account in every decision the executive committee makes. In a Union where, over the last few years, we have had bitter arguments over the introduction of women's officers, women-only votes for NUS Women's conference delegates and the introduction of gender-neutral toilets and the use of gender neutral pronouns in General Meetings, this truly represents a massive step forward.

An incredible amount of work went into the campaign to introduce liberation officers. Meetings and working groups were held over several months with interested groups in order to produce the motion that was taken to the AGM. It is probably not a controversial statement to say that this was probably the most campaigned upon motion that a SURHUL GM has ever seen, and the fact that such effort was expended in trying to convince students of the value of liberation shows how important this motion was to the people involved.

When it came down to it, the main arguments raised against the motion were administrative and bureaucratic: that, for example, the introduction of new officers would make the executive committee too large. In the end, however, the 100+ students present at the meeting decided that liberation is much more important than issues of bureaucracy, and the victory was by a landslide majority. The fact that an amendment to make the officer positions non-voting was voted down shows that the students in the room had genuinely been convinced of the importance of liberation groups having a genuine say at the heart of Union affairs.

There is still much work to be done to truly “liberate SURHUL”. The new positions will not come into effect until the academic year 2013/4, and in the next year, the Equality and Liberation Officer who currently sits on the executive committee, as well as all liberation activists on campus, will need to work hard to build energy and awareness around the liberation campaigns in order to build towards a position where these roles can elected next year. Royal Holloway Feminism Society will continue to be involved in building awareness around women's issues, and also – importantly – of issues of intersectionality. We are proud to have been a part of passing an historic motion for SURHUL, but we know that the fight does not stop here.

RHUL Feminism Society would like to thank everybody who was involved in the creation and success of this motion. We'd also like to thank the fabulous Kelley Temple, NUS Women's Officer Elect, who came along to lend her invaluable support to the motion.

RHUL FemSoc supports Michael Chessum, Vicki Baars and Edd Bauer in the NUS elections

The Royal Holloway Feminism Society has decided to back Michael Chessum for Vice President of Higher Education in the NUS elections. Michael has a consistent record of backing free education - and other public services including the NHS. He has mobilised 30,000 students for a national demonstration, and been vital to the success and endurance of the anti-cuts movement through the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. Particularly impressive is Michael's advocacy for liberation politics - Michael has backed from the start the NCAFC's liberation caucuses, and has attended the NUS LGBT Conference advocating progressive politics on the welfare state, LGBT rights, feminism, and direct action. We call on all delegates to vote Michael Chessum #1 for VP HE. On a similar basis, we would also advocate votes for Vicki Baars, and for Edd Bauer with 2nd preferences for Sean Rillo-Raczka.

CALLING ALL STUDENT PARENTS AND CARERS

Royal Holloway Women Against Cuts: Better Care to Learn Campaign

How often have you thought about dropping from your course?
How many times have you had a panic attack over the stress of your responsibilities?
How often have you sat in a room full of students and felt tired, not because you spent your night getting drunk, but you spent it looking after your dependent when they took ill?
How often have you felt guilty for studying and leaving your dependent for a few hours?
How often have you had to ask for an extension, because you haven’t finished the last essay due to responsibilities?


his is your reality, and we can only imagine the rest. But we need to know the rest. The on campus Nursery “Little Echoes” is being closed and moved, the government Care to Learn grant was almost eradicated and the courses at RHUL are designed for students without dependents.Please download and answer this questionnaire, it is anonymous and will take 10mins. Then email it back to us at rhulparentscarers@gmail.com. We need this input, to make sure you can complete your course, that you have equal opportunity, and that you have support throughout your time here. We need to know what you think.

If you study at RHUL with a Student Parent and/or Carer, please  pass this on. Thank You.

NUS Women's Conference BME Report

by Susuana Antubam 

When I started talking to women of black and ethnic minorities before the conference I realised that the student union's liberation setup had major gaps. There is an ethnicity position on the Inclusion and representative senate but no one in the place and therefore there is no focus group or committee or anything. Therefore the closest thing was the Afro-Caribbean society and looking at other cultural societies around campus. There is also no women's representative on the inclusion and representative senate and therefore there is also no focus group. The closest thing to a focus group was the Feminism society, which I am a proud member of but still, it is not women's committee, we encourage people of all genders to join. There is a gender representative on the Inclusion and representative senate, however, this member is required to look at the representation of gender as a spectrum and not favour any gender over another.

A women's officer is a huge role, they look at campaigning for all women, including lgbt, BME, disabled, Student parents carers, postgrad, international and mature women. The gender representative position comes with an enormous amount of work, and unpaid! I personally think that mandating them with the job of an women's officer on top of the wok they do is too much work. It disheartened me to see  that every student from every university that I talked to had a women’s officer or representative, and even FE colleges saw the importance of female representation. It surprised many delegates from other universities and colleges when I told them that neither me or my of fellow delegates were not part of a women's committee (which was what was written down on the NUS motions paperwork), and that we were just feminist society members, a society which seems to be the main, if not only link with NUS women campaign's in absence of Royal Holloway's women's committee. Yes The majority of Royal Holloway is women, but the majority of the roles in the Student's Union are men. In my opinion, Royal Holloway needs a proper committee with women from all walks of life, including: BME, lgbt, international, disabled and parents and carers and more. 

Also I realised that international students can also fall under the category of ethnicity but their views would be very different from home students. I was glad that this was raised at the conference and that there was a motion passed to have a international rep on the NUS Women's committee.

At NUS Women's conference I attended the meeting for the Black and ethnic Minorities caucus. They all discussed issues about how little cross liberation there was between their women's officers and their BME officers. I sat there and thought to myself that they were lucky to even have those positions in a union that cares enough to have them. Even with the research that I had done, I had next to nothing compared to the support they had.

Another issue that was highlighted was the election of these officers/representatives in student unions. At the Surhul NUS liberation conferences elections women were allowed to choose their women delegates, however everyone was allowed to vote in the elections for lgbt and disabled elections. I believe this is wrong. Many delegates I spoke to said that only people that identified with those certain liberation campaigns where allowed to vote for them. I believe that one way of voting for liberation officer could be done through the SU website. This may also help raise awareness of elections, committees and sub groups. 

In summery I found it difficult to represent a cross-liberation sector when it was non-existent at Royal Holloway. I found this was the the main issue that came up in my perpetration of the conference and the one I came back with too. When delegates, which are usually officers or representatives in their student's union, return from conference, they usually continue get up dates from the NUS Campaign. We haven’t got a Women's representative, we haven’t got a BME representative. How is cross liberation going happen where there are no stable positions for them to happen between?

This experience, showed me that elections of liberation representatives at SURHUL need to be promoted better and more democratic, it should be more than ticking boxes and bureaucracy, there needs to more grass roots research and truly representative campaigns taking place.

On why a candidate's stance on abortion is not an irrelevant issue

By Megan Down

Fem Soc caused a bit of a stir at the recent Sabbatical and Trustee Election Candidates Question Time. And when I say Fem Soc, I of course actually mean myself, however all of the tweeting going on about the supposedly inappropriate question – and the recent news article in the Orbital about the event – firmly associated the question with the Feminism Society. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by this – I am the secretary of the society, and some would say I am a prominent feminist activist at RHUL. Others would say that I just have a very big mouth, but that's a whole other story.

The question I asked to the candidates for Vice President for Education and Welfare was whether they are pro-choice. This question was initially disallowed by the Democracy Officer, on the grounds that it was “irrelevant”. We'll come to that later. Eventually, after a little heckling from the back of the room, the question was allowed, once I'd reformulated it into... basically, not the same question. I should state at this point that this article is not meant to be an assault on the integrity of the Democracy Officer – we disagreed, and he won, because he is an elected official of the Student Union and I am not, so he was entitled to make the decision he did. However, I would like to explain why I believe that his judgement was incorrect. The question of whether the VPEdWelfare candidates support a woman's right to choose could not have been more relevant, and the women of Royal Holloway deserved to hear the answer.

Let's take a look at Regulation C, which lists the duties of elected officials of the student union. The VPEW is, amongst of course a great many other things, responsible for “providing information and support on welfare … issues”, “organising necessary campaigns on welfare … issues” and liaising with College, charities and community services to ensure welfare provision for students. What this means is that the VPEW will be responsible for the policy of the Student Union on providing information to students about contraceptive and abortion services. They will choose the leaflets that are available in the welfare suite, they will choose whether or not to form partnerships with charities and organisations providing support for students who experience and unplanned pregnancy during their studies. They will decide whether campaigns on contraception and sexual health contain any information about abortion, and what that information is.

We should quickly address a major sticking point in any kind of debate like this: what does “pro-choice” mean. Pro-choice does not, and I cannot emphasise this enough, mean pro-abortion. You can be pro-choice and hate the idea of abortion, you can be pro-choice and have moral convictions that mean you will never yourself choose to abort a foetus. However, being pro-choice means that you support the a woman's right to choose to have an abortion if that is what she wants. The slogan “our bodies, our choice, our right to decide” is common amongst the pro-choice movement, and sums it up really: women should be able to have access to all the necessary information to make their own decision about what they want to happen to their own body. Access to safe, legal abortion is a cornerstone of the women's liberation movement.

It is the right of students to be able to access a full range of welfare information from their Student Union, and that includes comprehensive, unbiased information about abortion and referrals to abortion charities and helplines. I do not believe that a VPEW who held a fundamentally anti-abortion stance would be able to fulfil their duties to the students of Royal Holloway. A moral stance which prevented a VPEW from providing welfare information about abortion, from including abortion issues in campaigning work, from liaising with College and external providers on the issue would be fundamentally opposed to the role of a VPEW. Pro-choice is about just that, choice, and if a VPEW would be unwilling to promote choice for students who experience an unplanned pregnancy during their studies then the electorate had a right to know that. That is why I asked my question, and that is why it was in no way irrelevant.