Starting feminist group for high school students

[ChaChaDeGregorio]

I work in a high school and yesterday a fantastic conversation about gender developed and I offered to facilitate a feminist discussion/ activism group for students in school.

4 girls left my office very keen and I've agreed to get them together soon to start a group. I said they could invite other interested students and stressed that that could include boys.

Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas about how this should best be run??
I've wanted to do this for a while but haven't had time to think about it or do anything yet.

Thank you!

I'm just finishing Caroline Criado Perez's book and it strikes me that you could copy one chapter and get them to read it so you can discuss it.

It's a great way into the salience of biological sex! Would give you lots to talk about.

I have heard good things about Deborah Cameron book about feminism. I think it's just called Feminism. But I still haven't managed to read it.

And getting them to analyse some media in relation to gendered expectations could be fun.

This is so fantastic! I wonder if a session on media bias is also worth a look, how and where 'women' appears or something on language and free speech (a chapter from 1984?)...possibly not too early on but a suggestion anyway. It just be hard to know where to start!

Could you find a programme with equal numbers of male and female panellists (a challenge in itself) then get your students to use this website to compare amount of air time:
arementalkingtoomuch.com/

Deborah Cameron's "the myth of Mars and Venus" is great, as is Cordelia Fund's "Delusions of Gender."

Brilliant, thanks all. Definitely will provide manageable chunks of reading matter for discussion.

I also thought of getting guests to come and speak to them and getting them to do questionnaires around school about gendered discrimination to find out what needs to be tackled in our own setting.

Hope to build their confidence to eventually present in assemblies to their peers.

My partner suggested they could make a short film or recording to play in form groups to generate discussion.

I'd also like to take them on trips. Maybe theatre to start with.

Also a look at gendered toys and clothing for children.

I think a pretty fundamental question is whether you think gender identity is an actual thing or a misogynist concept tied to sex-role stereotypes. Do women & girls have sex-based rights or is it all about what gender people identify as?

Also, it's an old book but a good one - Susan Faludi's "Backlash". May be a bit depressing to launch onto teenager, but it would give you some brilliant ideas for project work/discussions - e.g. double standards round sex in Hollywood, the way women's magazines teach women to internalise misogyny.

Also Kat Banyard's book 'The Equality Illusion' is an accessible read and eye opening.

This article was posted on Facebook today and I think it provides an excellent summary of all the GC critical issues, starting from scratch.
Good luck with this group. It's so important to get young women on board!

"I'm coming out as a gender critic"

medium.com/@BeaJaspert/im-coming-out-as-a-gender-critic-a4bf0d0cb3?fbclid=IwAR229t0hYUdF_bHe6wojmXG-FyvmNUuPNVZRHzeZx2G8KjN9LUHhXErrsZI

In any school setting, I think you have to be careful about being GC otherwise you'll end up with the group being shut down.

However, if you concentrate on issues you stand a greater chance of giving the girls in the discussion group the raw materials and critical thinking skills to smell a rat when they encounter the excesses of trans ideology.

Reproductive rights, male sexual violence - where the "means, motive and opportunity" for women getting the shitty end of the stick are clearly connected with biological sex.

Issues like the sexual double standard, arbitrary sexual stereotypes like women being expected to remove pubic hair, the pinkification of childhood and the way it restricts women's aspirations - all the things that show "gender" up for the made up crock of shit it is.

I agree with fermats. You don't need to bring up the internal sense of gender (unless they do) you can just keep it to how men are encouraged to different behaviours by external messaging and upbringing.
Toys will be toys, and clothes will be clothes will be worth looking at.

Field trip to kids clothes section of a supermarket to make a note of the messaging and designs on t shirts / pj's etc?

Also, most people don't know where we have come from, so some women's history? In the 19th c women campaigned to have custody rights of children under 7 if they separated. Previously children stayed with dad if he wanted and mum had no rights at all. There was also campaigning for girls education, and the married women's property act allowed wives to own stuff, enter into contracts etc and be a legal entity in her own rightbfor the first time. That's before the suffragettes.

This is getting me thinking. It would be great to produce some resources for setting up a feminist soc for teens. Session plans etc.

Brilliant , thank you all.

@Manderleyagain if you do, please let's share!

*I think a pretty fundamental question is whether you think gender identity is an actual thing or a misogynist concept tied to sex-role stereotypes.

@EmpressLesbianInChair*
The above is one of the conversations where I hope this will go but I'd like them to come to that question themselves via exploring various stuff

Manderlay's suggestion of history is a great idea.

For instance it's only within my adult lifetime that rape within marriage has become a crime in the UK. I was a child when the equal pay act was passed. When my mother was an adult with a young child (my half sister) she couldn't get a mortgage in her own name without a male guarantor.

A quick timeline of what dates women got the vote in various countries. The Guttmacher Institute's maps of reproductive rights across the world.

Fawcett society has a good time line of women's rights since 1866. But from memory I think they have missed married women's property acts? But it's pretty good.

How common is it for a secondary school to have a feminist society? I don't know of any near me. Is it v rare, or is it a thing?

I know of a group called Brave Young Souls that was set up by some teachers in the TeachFirst scheme that did some good stuff with girls in Bradford area. I think they are active on Twitter.

I'm going to let the students at my school grow their own group from scratch though according to their interests. Maybe naive but also am hoping eventually boys will join and it'll be an equality and justice discussion and activism group.

If boys do join, it will cease to be a feminist group. Equality is a jolly good thing, and to be lauded and encouraged in society, but it's not what feminism is about. Feminism is about centering women, in a society and culture which defaults to centering men.

(Think of the type of white person whose knee-jerk reaction to the "Black lives matter" movement in America is to say "All lives matter": well, yes they do, but it's not middle class white kids being shot dead by the police for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.)

Yes @FermatsTheorem , it's why we don't need straight pride marches.

I'm not wearing my specs, and I read this as "Skating feminist group for high school students". I thought it was about skateboarding.

I'm now feeling mildly disappointed. Does anyone fancy starting a skateboarding feminist group for high school students?

Haha! Well if they want to skate I will support them!

I'm having a great time right now searching all of everyone's book recommendations and making a shopping list.

How ironic- Deborah Cameron is the 'Rupert Murdoch' Professor of Language and Communication at Oxford Uni! I think I've had a brainwave and planned the first discussion starter for the new group... I think I'll take some copies of The Sun and The Star and ask the girls how they feel about the representation of women therein.

Wow... Check out www.amightygirl.com

I was looking for a few more kid friendly book ideas. Absolutely tonnes here.

I would love to encourage my daughter to seek out a group like this at secondary school. Watching with interest.