Catriona Crowe - Forty Years Of Feminism Notes
On August 13th, Catriona Crowe, former President of the Women's History Association of Ireland, spoke as part of our Forty Years Of Feminism event. Her talk, in particular, went down a storm with the people in attendance. She gave such a comprehensive run through of writers and works associated with the feminist movement that we found ourselves getting frequent requests to publish her speech from the event. Catriona Crowe has very kindly given us permission to publish the notes for her speech and you'll be able to find them below after the jump. I've also included a video from the event if you've not yet seen it. - John
Catriona Crowe's Notes From Forty Years Of Feminism
The second wave of feminism was an international phenomenon originally sparked by Simone de Beauvoir’s book, The Second Sex, which I would regard as the most important philosophical treatise of the twentieth century.De Beauvoir designated gender as a cultural contruct, an idea with as much force as the theory of evolution. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” The book was published in a deficient English translation in 1953, but the message shone through the misunderstandings of the translator, and 10 years later, Betty Friedan’s The Feminist Mystique appeared, and the second wave was launched.
The first wave of feminism, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, had focused overwhelmingly on achieving the right to vote. In Ireland, that right was granted to women in 1898 for local government elections, and in 1918 for general elections. It seems unbelievable now that French women did not have the right to vote until 1944. In Ireland, the early feminist struggle was intertwined with the burgeoning struggle for national independence, perhaps best personified in the person of Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, who combined sufrragist and republican activities, and has left us one of the most comprehensive collections of personal papers, held in the National Library and fully exploited by her biographers, Leah Levinson, Margaret Ward and Maria Luddy.
The second wave had a large smorgasbord of issues to explore, some of them peculiarly Irish, some common to the feminist agenda internationally. They included the marriage bar, equal pay, childcare facilities, violence against women and a range of injustices broadly related to marriage and reproductive issues: contraception, divorce, single motherhood, deserted wives, same-sex rights and abortion (although this most contentious of issues was explored further in the 1980s, in the context of the daft and dangerous amendment to the constitution which has caused so much unnecessary suffering).
The people who played significant public roles in the second waves were, in the beginning, journalists like Nell McCafferty, Mary Maher, Mary Holland, Mary Kenny, Mary McCutcheon and June Levine, who has done the movement great service, by writing Sisters; The Personal Story of an Irish Feminist, first published in 1982, and reprinted last year near the first anniversary of her death. Sisters was not just the autobiography of a very interesting woman, but the biography of the first decade of the Irish Women’s Liberation movement.
Among June’s other contributions was her editorship of the section on 1970s Irish feminism in the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Vol 5; Irish Women’s Writing and Traditions, where she succinctly outlined the development of the parallel streams of the movement, on the one hand through the consciousness-raising activities of the IWLM, including the famous contraceptive train, and on the other through the work and reports of the Commission on the Status of Women. And of course, June, with Lyn Madden, gave us our first glimpse into the dangerous and squalid world of prostitution.
Mary Holland, another veteran feminist, is, like June, sadly no longer with us, but her courage (she was the first woman in Ireland to publicly admit to having had an abortion), her espousal of many women’s causes, and her beautifully lucid prose live on. Her collected columns, edited by Mary Maher and published in 2004, is an indispensible volume for anyone interested in Iriah feminism.
Rosita Sweetman’s On Our Backs; Sexual Attitudes in a Changing Ireland burst into our lives in 1979 and caused intense debate about Irish female sexuality, with its documentary style and frank interviews with women about matters which were not usually talked about. The broadcast media also played a large role in highlighting the hidden Ireland, with the tragic death of Ann Lovett in a grotto in Granard in 1984 unleashing a torrent of stories of suffering from women all over the country who had remained silent up to then. The work of Nuala O’Faolain, Betty Purcell and others in Irish radio and television played a huge part in placing women’s issues in the foreground. Nell McCafferty has operated for 40 years as a one-woman force of nature on feminist issues, and continues to be active, angry, analytical and hilarious to this day.
The history of second-wave feminsm is starting to be written, and it is an extraordinarilly rich seam for exploration. Young women today are amazed at the idea that less than forty years ago, women in the public sector and in many private companies had to resign their jobs on marriage; that women were regarded as dependents of their husbands for tax and social welfare purposes; that women were paid on average 57% less than their male counterparts; that contraception was banned; that divorce was banned; that there were no state supports for single parents or deserted spouses; that sex education was non-existent in Irish schools; that the idea of a female Irish President was so unlikely as to be laughable. We have a lot to be proud of, for a small country with a powerful patriarchal state and church, and proper reflective understanding of how all of this was achieved can only help to inspire and motivate young women today with the remaining hard work to be done.
My generation’s lives were changed by Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, Germaine Greer, and other writers and activists who challenged the patriarchy, but also by our own predecessors: Anna Haslam, Isabella Tod, Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, Margaret Cousins, Constance Markievicz, Helena Molony, Louie Bennett, Hilda Tweedy, Nora Herlihy and Mamo McDonald. And Eileen Proctor, now almost forgotten, who wrote a letter to the Irish Times in 1966 which led to the formation of the powerful, supportive and effective National Widows’ Association.
History is one of the ways in which communities deepen their self-knowledge, learn to trust evidence rather than rumour, and get to study matters of importance in the present from the vantage point of past events. History teaches us to re-imagine the past, to attempt to understand what it might have been like to live in the time I’ve just described. Those of us who are old enough remember what it was like, and for us it was necessary to try to understand what previous generations of women suffered and achieved.
I am an advocate of women’s history; Margaret has talked to you about the history of a century of women’s activism, but with her characteristic modesty she has omitted mention of a splendid project in which she played a central and crucial role. I refer to the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Volumes 4 and 5, Women’s Writings and Traditions, published in 2002, containing 3250 pages packed with Irish women’s writings, oral traditions, songs, experiences and history from pre-Christian times up to the end of the last century. Margaret and her seven fellow Editors have created a resource which is unique in the world; no other country has produced such an expansive, inclusive, multidisciplinary, creative compendium of material by and about women.
You can read medieval spells, accounts of religious life in the fifteenth century, prose and poetry from women ranging from Lady Morgan to Ann Enright, letters from great houses in the eighteenth century, newspaper reports on the Curragh wrens, prostitutes who lived in holes in the ground next to the curragh camp in the nineteenth century, and acerbic comments on Irish society in the twentieth century. In scholarship terms, it is as important as the recently published Dictionary of Irish Biography, and a feminist achievement of incomparable worth.
Many historians of women have produced important work over the last 40 years, ranging from Margaret Ward’s Unmanageable Revolutionaries on Irish nationalist women, to Mary Cullen’s Girls Don’t do Honours on biases in the educational systen, to Rosemary Cullen Owens’ Smashing Times on the female suffrage movement, to Carmel Quinlan’s biography of Anna Haslam, to Maria Luddy’s Prostitution and Irish Society, to Linda Connolly’s The Women’s Movement in Ireland, to Margaret’s own wonderful collection of essays, Ariadne’s Thread. And many others too numerous to mention. Irish women’s history is thriving, despite attacks on women’s history centres in some of our universities.
Interestingly, women’s history has now started to become mainstream, with Diarmaid Ferriter’s Transformation of Ireland, the first survey history of twentieth century Ireland to appear in some time, taking it for granted that women are a huge part of the narrative. Tom Bartlett’s newly published Ireland: A History also assumes the centrality of women’s experience. The magnificent Dictionary of Irish Biography, published last year, contains a commitment by its editors to include as many women as possible, and they were as good as their word. As well as the usual suspects, we get to read about Katty Barry, who ran a terrific shebeen in Cork city, Annie Moore, the first woman to land at Ellis Island, and Madge Davison, Belfast Communist and civil rights activist. This mainstreaming of women’s history is most welcome and long overdue; the idea that half the population could be largely excluded from accounts of our past is over.
But a great deal of work remains to be done. The Women’s History Project, directed by Maria Luddy and staffed by Leeann Lane, Catherine Cox and Diane Urquhart, carried out a survey of the contents of repositories of archives all over Ireland, and published the results in a database which is accessible through the national archives website. This survey and database reveal untold riches of material available for historical research, ranging from convent and school records to the material buried in major repositories like the National Library and the National Archives. Unfortunately, the project ceased to be funded 10 years ago, and the database is badly in need of updating. It was the first step in uncovering the hidden narratives of women’s lives which lie in our archives.
Having lived through the last 40 years as a adult woman, insofar as one ever grows up at all, and partaken in some of the struggles of the feminist movement, I am conflicted about where we are now. Not because the battles we fought for equal pay, control of our bodies and rights to autonomy were not essential; not because I am not intensely proud of Irish second-wave feminism – I think it produced some of the truly great women and men of my or any generation; not because I think these gains can be reversed – once the genie is out of the bottle it’s very hard to stuff it back in again.
I’m conflicted mainly because of things we did not foresee 40 years ago: the inexorable and astonishing rise of the internet, which on the one hand gives women access to information in a completely unprecedented way, but on the other contains vast amounts of pornography.
The statistics are truly staggering. Every second $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography. Every second 28,258 internet users are viewing pornography. In that same second 372 internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines. Every 39 minutes a new pornographic video is being created in the U.S. It’s big business. The pornography industry has larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined.
Andrea Dworkin came in for a hard time when she pinpointed pornography as being overwhelmingly exploitative of women. Her position conflicted with cherished liberal beliefs about freedom of expression and speech. But there is now plenty of evidence that ease of access to pornography, some of it viciously degrading to women, creates unrealistic expectations of sexual behaviour in both women and men, and overwhelmingly reinforces the traditional stereotype of the woman ever-ready to please. There’s not a lot we can do about this, except not to let ourselves be fooled by shallow assertions of so-called empowerment for women from this type of stuff. If turkeys could vote, some of them would actually vote for Christmas.
Another thing we didn’t foresee 40 years ago was the celtic tiger and its attendant prosperity for some. There was a very large rise in expensive vulgar weddings, with dresses costing thousands, queues at Brown Thomas for handbags, of all things, boob jobs, nose jobs, tummy tucks and facelifts, not to mention lunchtime Botox, and not a lot of attention to one of the most disturbing side-effects of our little boom – sex trafficking, often of very young girls. It must have been Irish men who were paying for sex with these new, exotic, often terrified, often brutalised women. They’re still here, still being paid for, and still getting a tiny fraction of what’s paid for them.
A lot of the bad stuff is around sex. Can we combine freedom of sexual expression for women with opposition to blatant, brutal, fabulously lucrative exploitation of our bodies? I think we can. I think it’s time it got cool again to despise multinational corporations that make money out of people’s misery. I think it’s time it got cool again to refuse sex to anyone unless you actually want to do it. I think it’s time it got cool again to celebrate the female in her many manifestations, not just the horrible Barbie doll created by the porn industry. Let’s diversify, let’s resist, let’s have fun.
Catriona Crowe
13 August 2010
A Sit Down With Derek Landy
Ahead of the publication of the new Skullduggery Pleasant book, the writer of that very publishing phenomenon Derek Landy took the time to sit down with us. Murt Brennan is a writer and a big fan of Landy's books so we thought who better to ask him a few questions. Here's a video of the chat that took place on Saturday in Hotel Kilkenny ahead of Derek Landy's event.
Children's curator Joe Brennan also informed us that Landy stuck around late into the evening to sign all the books for the children in attendance. What a lovely man!
read more...
PRESS RELEASE on the close of the festival
Hi there,
We thought you might be interested to read what the press received today at the close of the festival.
Our super-human in-house team of bloggers will be giving their own insider round-up of the highlights for them of the 2010 KAF in the coming days, as well as releasing further podcasts and audio clips from events that took place during the festival. In the meantime, here are some facts, figures and highlights from the festival this year. Plus, some great pix from the brilliant Tumle Circus, who performed earlier today (photos by Dylan Vaughan).
... and don't forget - it ain't all over yet!! You can still catch theatre in the form of the show that made John Morton want to go home and dance with his ma - Susan & Darren - and music in the form of the much anticipated Tindersticks gig, with support from 3ekpano, plus the chance to party out the end of the festival in style with Scullion. There's also some fantastic visual art still on display including work by Turner prize nominee Susan Philipsz, Willie Doherty, Tony O'Malley and many more. Catch it all while you can. What are you sitting in front of your computer for?!
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PRESS RELEASE: KILKENNY ARTS FESTIVAL FINISHES ON A HIGH NOTE
The Magic of the Festival Choir
Last night something magical happened. For the first time in the 37-year history of the festival, a festival choir performed at St. Canice's Cathedral. Conducted by Fergus Sheil (he who composed the choral piece for the launch of the festival earlier this summer), the likes of tenor Christopher Lemmings, baritone Raitis Grigalis, mezzo-soprano Bridget Knowles, pianist Finghin Collins and soprano Aileen Itani took to the stage to perform Beethoven's Choral Fantasy and Rossini's Stabat Mater.
The professional singers (that's what they are, and some of them were already involved in this years festival) were joined by around seventy or so amateur singers who had answered the call earlier this summer to join the festival choir.
I got up in time for the second half of the performance and the place was buzzing both inside and out, the cathedral packed out for the second last event it hosts for this year's festival. Up tonight is Tindersticks with 3epkano but for the moment, look back at the video above for a peek at what was one of the most unique events the festival has ever hosted.
- Ken
Evan Christopher’s Django A La Creole
One of the musical highlights of the festival thus far has been Evan Christopher's Django A La Creole gig in Set Theatre on Wednesday night. From the get go, Christopher made it clear that they weren't going to be a Django Reinhardt cover band but rather would be infusing the great jazz guitarists tunes with their own New Orlean's flavour. And even at that they managed to throw in a few Jelly Roll Morton tunes for good measure. A Reinhardt cover band they were most definitely not. They paid tribute to the work of the great man but it succeeded in being completely different. And anyway, they all had more fingers than Django Reinhardt. The two hour plus show certainly went down a treat on the night with plenty of foot stomping and quadromania in the air. There was a real party vibe in the air for the whole night, you could well have been in a hip Parisian bistro in the 1930's if you closed your eyes. It was a great gig and only further underlined the enduring appeal of Reinhardt's extensive back catalogue. Check out the video for a flavour of proceedings. - J
Chatting with Adrian Howells
His work has been proclaimed as being intimate, moving, soothing, heartfelt, close, mind opening, and more. It has brought happiness, sadness, smiles, tears, joy and sorrow. He's performed in large venues, small venues, pubs, theatres, houses, kitchens, roadside tents and this week, Adrian Howells brought Footwashing For The Sole to Kilkenny's Hole In The Wall (restored 16th century tavern and house) for thirty performances. Though in reading the reviews and speaking to those who have paid a visit, it's more of an experience than a performance. Each one this weekend, as with some of his other work's like Held, has been for an audience of one.
John takes the reigns on this one as we caught up with Adrian yesterday on his lunch break (hopefully he got to eat that sandwich) at The Hole In The Wall for a chat about the show, which is an Irish premiere, and how it has been received both here and abroad.
- Ken
Chatting with Halves
We hope you've been enjoying the festival interviews this year, a new addition to the blogging side of things from last year's coverage. In continuing the interviews, myself and John went along to the festival hub at Left Bank yesterday afternoon and invited Martin Bridgeman (one of the venue managers at this year's festival and presenter on KCLR96FM) along to have a chat with Brian Cash, see what goes into Halves, the gig, the music, the new album and what lies ahead in the future.
I've been a fan of the band myself since their previous incarnation as Skylight several years ago and as Irish bands go, they've come an awful long way since. The new album is due out Hallowe'en-ish and they're looking at coming back to Kilkenny and Set Theatre around the release of the album as well. We'll let Brian fill you in on the rest, check it out above.
- Ken
40 Years Of Feminism In One Night
One of the quirks of a festival is that the events you think are going to be massive hits mightn’t be that at all and events you think might have niche interest are insanely popular. Not that this event wasn’t going to be popular but demand was such that it was moved from the Parade Tower to the Ormonde Hotel so it could fit as many bums on seats as possible. Even at that there was still a lot of folks standing at the back eager to take as much of a gander as possible at the event. So yes, a sell out hit for sure.
The focus was on tracking where Irish feminism begin and where it was going to. Chaired by Diarmaid Ferriter (last seen around these parts for last year’s GAA Blood and Thunder) the event featured contributions from Margaret MacCurtain, Catriona Crowe, Nell McCafferty and Bridget Fitzsimons. The first speaker up was Margaret MacCurtain who gave a quite short but to the point contribution in which she spoke of her roots in the movement and how the focus of her generation was on getting the vote. She also spoke fondly of her involvement with the Kilkenny Women’s Group of the 1970’s and was delighted to find so many members were in attendance. She got a great reception throughout, rather fitting for a woman that was repeatedly referred to as a ‘national treasure’.
Next up was Catriona Crowe, former President of the Women’s History Association of Ireland. She focused mostly on shining a light on the early members of the Irish feminist movement and providing a bibliography for works she felt best chronicled the movement (I’m hoping to get my hands on that bibliography soon and I’ll post it up as soon as I do). She finished by checking off the to do list in terms of what was demanded by Irish women in the past and remarked that we have come remarkably far, but that there is certainly a lot more work to do.
Nell McCafferty was up next and in her own indomitable style, completely stole the show with a freewheeling, often rambling, all encompassing talk. Her talk wasn’t particularly pointed and if I’m being charitable, it didn’t really seem to go anywhere in particular. But what it definitely was, was entertaining. She managed to fly through a series of points like her confusion as to what feminism actually was in the early days, paternity rights, DNA, her enjoyment (or lack thereof) of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, her fears of Larry Murphy turning up near her house, turkey basting and how she has no sympathy for the young. Quite rambling at times but highly entertaining, Nell McCafferty is certainly one of a kind.
Finally, the youngest member of the quartet, Bridget Fitzsimons celebrated her 21st birthday by taking to the podium and addressing the packed house about the issues that effect her generation as it stands. Her focus was mostly from a college perspective but it was insightful and merited strong analysis of how women are portrayed in the Irish media nowadays. She lashed rightful scorn on the stupid promotional launches that focus on naked women and how ‘UCD is an inherently sexist campus’, particularly in the use of gender specific roles when it comes to college promotions. She won’t have won herself any fans from the Twilight brigade when she laid rubbished the publishing phenomenon as being ridiculously anti feminist and a bad example of how girl’s should see themselves. My position at the back of the room allowed me the scope to see a lot of teenage girls shuffle awkwardly for that one. (By the by, here's my interview with Bridget Fitzsimon's from earlier in the day)
All in all, this multi-faceted talk was an entertaining, thought provoking and empowering walk through the last four decades of Irish feminism. The Ormonde’s Kilbride Suite was a sweat box by the end of it (as it usually is), but most people didn’t seem to care as the audience applauded wildly at the end of a truly significant and celebratory occasion.
- John
Chatting with La Baracca (On-Off)
Between the mayhem and melody of the Konono no.1 and Damo Suzuki gigs at Set Theatre last night, we tracked down children's curator Joe Brennan and members of La Baracca ahead of the opening of their show, On-Off which started at Barnstorm Theatre earlier today. There will be two stagings tomorrow, at midday and 2pm respectively. The show itself is designed, in a way, to help young children overcome their fear of the dark by introducing them to the "language of light". It's aimed at children in the 1-4 years age-range, and their families, and according to Joe it's an absolutely beautiful piece and a must-see from this Italian group.
You can take his word for it, or check out the video above...
- Ken
Red Square Rivals Blog The Festival
Oh those Red Square Kiboshers, what ever will they do next. Our rivals. Arch enemies even. They've been following us to the gigs, the talks, lurking in corners - if we says it's good, they say it's great. If we really enjoyed something, they LOVED something. Always looking for the upper hand. We ran into them last night at the Damo Suzuki gig and tonight they'll be watching us from afar once more (insert drum roll there if you like).
On a serious note though, they're doing a cracking job of covering the festival. We could be a bit biased in that review as myself and John were involved with them in the build up to the festival, covering the ground over a two day workshop on blogging, podcasting, video on the web, ways of covering the festival online. This, all being part of a new initiative by Butler Gallery, headed up by Jean Tormey, to put together a group of young critics and introduce them to the world of visual art. As a result, they've been able to link up with journalists, curators, artists, musicians and take in the visual art strand, craft strand and by the looks of things, the majority of the rest of the festival as well given anywhere we turn up, they seem to be as well.
Personally, I think it's a great idea. If there was something like it ten or fifteen years ago (ok, the technology wasn't there for the way they're tackling the coverage) I would have jumped at the chance to spend a summer tipping around a festival chatting to people and learning all the arts have to offer. To further their understanding of the art forms they were going to critique over the run of the festival, the group were also given the chance to work with artists in advance through painting, sculpture and more. Rumour has (and we hope) that they're going to get some podcasts up and keep the reviews coming over the end of the festival and into next week. So, if you would like a look at what some of the younger reviewers doing the rounds at this year's festival are up to, take a look at the following blog posts:
- Journalism workshop with David Donohoe
- Review: Where Did It All Go Right? (Ponydance)
- Review: Steven Loughman's work
- Ciarán Walsh (Rothe House exhibition)
- Review: Group Therapy For One
To all you Red Square Kiboshers - see you at the finish line, and keep up the good work :)
- Ken
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