Feminist Group

[Companion42]

Morning all!

I've been thinking about setting up a Feminist group for my local area for a while now and was wondering if I could get some advice and support?

There aren't any at all at the moment, although I'm quite near a city which has it's own branch of Fawcett and a few other smaller groups.

So I thought;
Rent a room in a nearby pub for a tenner a time
Ask people to pay a small contribution towards the room hire - £1? (Just so I'm not out of pocket but not so expensive as to exclude people)
Have a 'topic' each week to discuss alongside something to 'do' eg organising, a workshop, making things, guest speakers
Have tea/coffee/juice available? Maybe biscuits?
Last for around an hour and a half? Long enough t get stuff done and socialise but not take too much time from kids/work/mumsnetting etc

Does that sound like something you'd like to attend? Have I missed anything? I'm autistic so organising is not one of my skills but I'd really like to give it a go

Thanks!

I'd be there in a flash, childcare allowing. I bet it would go on longer than an hour too, sounds like a fab idea OP, let us know how it goes !

Do it, you won't know how successful it will be until you try. I belong to a rad fem group.

We meet in a pub, it's free, we just have to commit to buying food/drinks from the pub.
We get the use of a side room for 2 hrs; we discuss feminist theories and texts usually on a particular theme in conjunction with examples from our own lives/experiences, we then adjourn to the pub itself and carry the discussion over, or talk about notable happenings that have occurred during the week; that has been known to go on for longer than the meeting!

Seems to me you have thought of everything!

But I was just curious to know how you were thinking of letting others know about it? Social media? Local paper? Leafleting? Word of mouth? smile

Would it be early evening?

I am sure it will go well - please do let us know.

It's very heartening to hear about what women are doing IRL!

It sounds much like my local feminist group, which sadly I can not attend often due to work commitments on the evening it is on.

They had to lock down membership of their social media pages after attacks after campaigning on lap dancing clubs so something to think about.

Thanks so much for all the responses!

I thought I'd just advertise it locally on Facebook/Twitter etc and hope it spread via word of mouth over time. I don't really know any other local feminists in real life hence starting the group.

I'm not sure about the time. I'm home from wrk by 6pm and childfree so as long as it's not going on til the early hours on work night, i's cool. Is there a best time for moms? Like, once tea is done and the kids are in bed? Or before that so they can be back for bedtime?

Any particular subjects or topics that would lure you in?

I joined a feminist group years and years ago. It was amazing and I made lots of friends there, some of whom are my best friends now. Unfortunately the group died a horrible death, because of infighting basically - one of the members sent a very critical email to the whole group (criticising the actions of several members including one of the main founders and organisers) and we tried and failed to salvage it.

It was all very sad, although I still got my lovely friends out of it so the net result was positive for me.

So my advice is to go ahead but please be aware of the risk of big disagreements, the trans debate is the obvious topic that could lead to issues, but our group fell out over all sorts 🙄

I would love to join one of these

I wouldn't attach a formal debate topic tbh, I'd just see how it goes. Suggestions maybe, rather than "this week is about".. I'd be happy to pay towards room hire.

I'd avoid group sharing of contact details. I belonged to a local writing group but they wanted to do stuff like that, which made it hard to avoid people you didn't like. (Actually in my case there was a particular bloke who made me uneasy).

To answer your question about timings..
I would prefer to meet at 7pm or later. If it was around 6pm it would be an awkward time because if I went straight from work I'd be too early, but it wouldn't be worth going home and going out again, as I'd have such a short turnaround.
Also, I have a young DC, and if I'm going out in the evening after a work day, I still like to go home from work to see him for a bit before going out again (I wouldn't put him to bed though, DH would do that so I could go out).
Obviously would be different for single mums although I'm guessing they might be a tougher audience to entice out if they have limited babysitting available to them.

Single parents and disabled women can join in if you can work out how to do a livestream on Youtube. It doesn't have to be fancy, the main thing is to get the sound right.

We absolutely need a return to groups like this, old fashioned second wave, consciousness raising. Go for it!

I would like to attend a local group. I think you would need to be careful how you advertised it so you don't attract unwanted attention. Once you have a few members I think it would work best by word of mouth. I would just love to talk to like minded people and know what I can do practically to support women's rights.

Potential infighting does worry me a bit. I'm more of a radical feminist but I'd like it to be quite open. I mean we wouldn't all have to agree on EVERYTHING for it to work, right? Definitely women only though

Just make it very clear in the group/event descriptions that it's women only, you will of course have to qualify it with some kind of universally acceptable definition of a woman - good luck with that