VISIONS OF FREEDOM - AN ANARCHA-FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE

Organised  by an anarchist collective in Sydney, Visions of Freedom 
in January 1995 held for me the promise of something much 
more politically relevant  than other conferences i have attended 
over the past few years. Although there were a large number of 
workshops/presentations scheduled forthe weekend, organisers urged 
participants to set up their own workshops - directly in contrast to 
the rigid scheduling of sessions in academic, student-based and left 
conferences. This freedom meant that theoretically there was no one 
agenda set for the weekend, that it was up to us to create 
meaningful discussion. Being an anarchist conference, i also hoped 
that i would not need to do as much sifting and reinterpretation of  
political ideas, as is so often necessary at the usual type of 
conferences, and was looking forward to meeting with a whole heap of 
activists with a lot of  interesting and challenging things to say.

The plenary was opened by a blessing from Monsignor Porca Madonna, 
presenting a queer mockery of the recent papal visit. Following 
this, people from various anarchist perspectives spoke, with a short 
time for questions of each. What became apparent during this opening 
session was the reluctance of women to ask questions (and this 
relative silence was evident throughout the weekend) This reluctance 
had also make it difficult for the organisers to find a woman who 
would speak about feminism at the plenary. The male speakers for the 
most part focussed on theoretical and historical analysis of 
anarchist struggle, the woman who spoke about feminism offered 
mainly anecdotes and personal stories. Although i value and think 
necessary the subjective experience of women as political, in this 
context it seemed that the *real* anarchist politics was the domain of 
men, and that women's political experience and analysis was not 
taken as seriously, was marginalised and not placed as central  to 
debate.

The Anarchy and Feminism workshop on the Saturday afternoon was one 
of the most well-attended workshops of the weekend - with over 100 
people in the room a lot of our time was actually taken up with 
working out how to get the most out of it. By the time we broke 
up into small groups  we had half an hour for discussion, then 20 
minutes to report back to the larger group. Not long. The number of  
people and the range oftopics - pornography and sex work, violence 
and militarism, direct action, essentialism and strutures, racism, 
feminist responses to the state and media representations - 
suggested that this workshop was merely a starting point, a means of 
finding common interest. It also shows that we shouldn't be letting 
feminist politics be seen as only vaguely relevant to anarchism, as 
a single issue, a women's issue. Many feminist concerns are 
absolutely central to the anarchist struggle, and challenge and 
inform the way we actually perceive anarchism.

Queer visibility at the conference was often in contradictory ways. 
The organisers recognised queers within anarchism from the beginning, 
with the opening blessing and a speaker from the Sisters of the 
Order of perpetual Indulgence on the links between gay struggle and 
anarchism. However, this was undermined throughout the weekend by 
other participants - s/m was referred to several times in the context 
of violence, homophobic material was circulated and when it was 
removed notions of censorship and freedom of speech were invoked, 
leading us to question just who exactly is free to speak, it  seems 
to help if you are a white heterosexual male. In the queer workshop we 
also had the same problem of not enough time to discuss all the 
thingsthat came up - isolation withing anarchism,critiqueof 
mainstream heterosexuality, critique of mainstream homocapitalism,
coalition politics, direct action and ideas for change.

Throughout the weekend, i spoke to many women who were frustrated 
and angry at how they were being treated in workshops and how their 
politics were belittled or dismissed. The predominantly white men at 
the conference seemed to think that by taking on the label anarchism 
that they have magically transcended the racial, gender and sexual  
prejudices that are in our society, that a commitment to the 
politics of anarchism automatically justifies their behaviour. They 
are ready to point out the injustices of mainstream society, but 
unable to  see when they are reinforcing the same inequalities. 
Working towards eradicating such prejudices means more than paying 
lip serivce to concepts  of autonomy and equality, considering that 
some groups have more access to getting freedom than others. Even in the 
Anarchy and Feminism workshop, the one workshop that placed women as 
central to discussion, men were unable to restrain themselves from 
trying to dominate and undermine discussion.

If as anarchists we are serious in our challenge of authority, 
hierarchy  and violence, then we need to recognise the very complex 
ways in which power is exercised in our society. The hierarchy is 
systematic and multifaceted, and is not changed by adhering to a code 
of so-called revolutionary politics that repeatedly excludes the 
experience of and refuses to be open to challenge from the other. 
At the same time, i think that if women had been better organise 
before the conference we would have had more of a chance of 
directing debate in relevant and useful ways. If we had felt more 
confident about challenging the male  domain and had been stronger 
as a group, then it wouldn't have been left to a few brave 
individuals to put themselves on the line. Quite a few women said to 
me that they would have liked to have seen more workshops organised 
by feminists and queers, but seemed unwilling to organise them and i 
wonder why this is the case. Sadly  i feel that sometimes it is 
easier to complain about what is offered to us than to create what 
it is we really want.

Overall, i feel that most of what i learnt and valued over the 
weekend were the conversations outside of the conference itself. I 
met a lot ofimpassioned and inspiring women (and a couple of men) 
and had some really challenging discussions. I am also aware of just 
how much more preparation i want to do before the next one so that i 
am a lot clearer about what i want to get out of it, and how that 
might be done.  

nicki