In the past couple of week since I last blogged I have been mostly doing the following:

WOMEN’S STUFF:

Planning, planning, planning. We have now had our first committee meeting and our campaign planning meeting. Both of which went really well I thought. As a result this is where the Women’s Campaign is at:

- Committee Meeting Dates set for the year

- Decided to put our minutes onto the website so that people can see what’s going on with their committee

- Decided on our 3 priorities for the coming year (Pro-Choice, Stop Violence Against Women, Women and Work)

- Decided to take forward the Dignity.Period Campaign as our priority international issue this year

- Done the initial planning for the year ahead including some extremely exciting campaigns, and events….starting in October

- Begun to organise our first set of Regional Feminista Extravaganzas (for October). There will be at least 2 in each Super Regions before Women’s Conference

- Come up with a plan of action to at least double the amount of voting delegates and observers at Women’s Conference 2007!!!!!!!

- Met each other properly as a Committee

- Assigned Super Region Feminist Teams from the Committee

- Planned the first meeting to come up with a proper strategy to deliver Liberation Campaigning to Further Education

- Decided on a key central objective of BUILDING OUR MOVEMENT this year throughout all of our campaigns

This Women’s Committee is one bunch of really exciting women activists who are going to do some brilliant things this year. I have been so motivated by them in our last two meetings and I think that our Campaign Planning session was really imaginative and exciting.

SOCIETY AND CITIZENSHIP STUFF:

I am co-convening the Society and Citizenship Zone, which is running for the first time this year and so far it has been…..interesting! Actually it’s an amazing Zone with some really important policy to be actioned. So far we’ve been doing:

Whilst acting on our policy from annual conference, it’s also important that we take a serious look at how the NUS deliver this Zone of campaigns. This Union needs an active Soc and Cit campaign, and was indeed founded to campaign against conflict, for peace. We need to get back to our roots and run co-ordinated, accessible, and focused campaigns that win for people around the world, and that facilitate student activists (and generate new ones) across the country to work together to campaign against conflict, to demand human rights, and to raise our voices in solidarity with those around the world who need us to. BIG WORDS from little kat. But I think that if we make sure that we leave ourselves time to think outside the box, we can launch a new era of NUS Society and Citizenship campaigning: an era where the NUS is once again at the forefront of campaigning for justice and peace around the world IN ACTION and not just through words.

Well that’s what I think anyway.

OTHER STUFF:

BAROS: Behaviour As a Result Of Sexism…..

It’s the word you can use to describe behaviour in women and men that we would otherwise use a negative term for. Allow me to demonstrate…..

You’re in a pub and talking about your mate’s girlfriend. “she’s been a nightmare recently….” “she’s really insecure about her body…” “she’s also insecure about me going out on the lash with other people etc…” blah blah blah.

Now usually this woman would get called a mentalist or a psycho or a bunny boiler (see Fatal Attraction for further details)….basically she will be called a name that refers to her unstable mental health.

This is clearly problematic on 2 fronts: it’s sexist (there is a strong history of women being associated innately with mental health problems), and it’s disablist (saying that somebody has mental health issues and using it as an insult is just like using someone’s skin colour as an insult…not ok).

So you can say that it’s a case of BAROS!

My friend Sam made that up. Nice one.

Well, anyway, I’ll defo be using it. Possibly on my own though…

FEMINIST EXTRAVAGANZA SUPER REGIONAL 1 DAY EVENTS

Women’s Committee will be doing several regional 1 day feminst days (for women’s officer, and women student feminists and activists). They should be free and there will be a mix of speakers, workshops, networking, banner making, campaign planning, FUN etc. They are going to be great so watch this space for further details.

BIG BROTHER Commentary

Aisleyne is a legend.

Honestly, she is such a brilliant woman. So far she has fended off some extreme objectification and harassment from one of the other housemates (now evicted…brilliant). The way in which she dealt with it was awesome. More recently she has initiated conversations with Imogen about how the other housemates think that they’re stupid cos she’s blond and Imogen is Miss Wales but then Aisleyne starts talking about why this is….brilliant. Aisleyne negotiates A LOT of sexism in the house. For example the other day, during the shopping task, Aisleyne was picked as the stupidest and the most unstable housemate by the other housemates (she was neither of these things). Her and Jenny often don’t get listened to in team tasks cos Mikey and Richard are so all over everything.

Pete is still my fave to win, although people are loving Glyn and I would not be utterly surprised if he won. I hope that Aisleyne wins….in fact the campaign for Aisleyne to win Big Bro starts here (I have looked but cannot find a campaign website for her yet).

That’s all for now,

Kat

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