Radical Gathering of Women

Encuentro Radical de Mujeres

Escanda, Asturias, Spain

21 - 24 September 2006

     
PHOTOS!
Groups / Equipos

Textos /Texts

The Gathering
El Encuentro
 

Welcome to the all new website. We have put some of the photos up and will be putting loads of notes and texts up in the next few days!

Bienvenida al nuevo sitio web. Hemos puesto unas fotos y vamos a poner mucho textos y noticias en las proximas dias!

Texts & Presentations
Textos & Presentaciones

Healers, witches and midwives

Witches, Midwives and Nurses
by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

Burning Women, The European Witch hunts, enclosure and the rise of capitalism
Lady Stardust

Cancer, inc; the politics of breast cancer and the cancer industry
by Sharon Batt & Liza Gross, Sierra Magazine

Migration

Migration, Gender and Domestic Labour
by Lady Stardust

Helping Women Who Sell Sex: The Construction of Benevolent Identities
Laura María Agustín

Social interventions aimed at helping the group positioned as most needy in Europe today, migrant women who sell sex, can be understood by examining that time, 200 years ago, when ‘the prostitute’ was identified as needing to be saved. Before, there was no class of people who viewed their mission to be ‘helping’ working-class women who sold sex, but, during the ‘rise of the social,’ the figure of the ‘prostitute’ as pathetic victim came to dominate all other images. At the same time, demographic changes meant that many women needed and wanted to earn money and independence, yet no professions thought respectable were open to them. Simultaneous with the creation of the prostitute-victim, middle class women were identified as peculiarly capable of raising them up and showing the way to domesticity. These ‘helpers’ constructed a new identity and occupational sphere for themselves, one considered worthy and even prestigious. Nowadays, to question ‘helping’ projects often causes anger or dismissal. A genealogical approach, which shows how governmentality functioned in the past, is easier to accept, and may facilitate the taking of a reflexive attitude in the present.

Patriarcy and Capitalism

Una huelga de mucho cuidado
Precarias a la deriva

A very careful Strike
Precarias a la deriva

Ein sehr vorsichtiger Streik um sehr viel Fürsorge
Precarias a la deriva

No Escape from Patriarchy; Male dominance on road protests sites
Missy Goldman
Written ten years ago this description and analyisis of the gender dynamic in the UK anti-road movement still

Women and Anarchism
Marianne

Reflexiones personales sobre cómo superar la supremacia masculina
Chris Crass

Personal Reflections On Challenging Male Supremacy
Chris Crass

"Here's the Movement, Let's Start Building":
An interview with Barbara Smith
by Kim Diehl
Kim Diehl talks to black feminist pioneer Barbara Smith about the racial politics of the Millennium March and the sexual politics of Anti-Racism.
Since the 1960s, Barbara Smith's ideas, courage, and spirit have infused social justice work in this country.

Anarchy or patriarchy?
In 1998, La Gryffe, an anarchist book shop in Lyon (France), organized a series of anarchist days. Despite a stated desire for openness re: the struggle against patriarchy from the organizers of these three days of discussion, we have nonetheless experienced a denial of the oppression of women and a stigmatization of the non-mixed feminist movement that denounces that oppression. This is an article reviewing what happened...

Redstocking Manefesto
A 1968 radial feminist manefesto

Advaned Capitalism
Lady Stardust
An overview of the current stage of the capital / class relation using the analyis of Beverly Silver and looking at Operasim. ´The motor of history is class struggle´, by which the actions of both capital and the working class change and mutate according to the dynamic between them.

The Renaissance of Operaism
Wildcat
An excellent historical and political overview of the political tendency ´Operaism´ including the concepts of workers inquiry and class composition. Very relevant for non-hiarchical groups focusing on the workplace or class.

Struggles and Strategies
Luchas y Estrategias

History of women´s struggles
A workshop template

Historias de las luchas de mujeres
Borrador para un taller

Other

A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century
Donna Haraway,
"...about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. At the centre of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg. A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction...."

Mujeres Libres (Free Women) were a group of women anarchists who organised and fought both for women's liberation and an anarchist revolution during the Spanish Civil War. The work they did is truly inspirational. Their example shows how the struggle against women's oppression and against capitalism can be combined in one fight for freedom.

The Personal Is Political
by Carol Hanisch

Some Fun Quotes

Workshop notes
Notas del Talleres


Womens Experiences of being involved in movements for social change

Capitalismo y Patriarcado:
”Manifiesto” feminismo anti-patriarcalista + anti-capitalista

30 years of feminist organising

Mass Debate 1: Exclusive spaces? How to work with men, or not?

Sexwork, Prostitution and Trafficking

Queering-up Feminism

Women’s Solidarity?

Evaluation of the gathering