Last Updated: July 21, 2010
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Susan Hawthorne

I have two extreme views on this. As I said, the word itself creates fear. Sometimes I think it is just a matter of time, we just have to sit back, wait, maintain things without exhausting ourselves. At the depressing end, I have great concerns about the impact of globalization and global forms on feminism itself. I think the pattern of that is like the pattern of the superstores

Everything is for profit. It comes in under the rubric of choice but it is no choice at all. I see a lot of things go into the public arena that are called feminist that I think are just a con. In the same way I think carbon trading is a con; GM foods are a con; the idea that nuclear energy is the saviour of the earth is a con. So ‘feminism’ is distorted and then sold back as if, well, “We have solved the problems of the women of the world”.

I worry enormously about that because I think it is distorting feminism. Who would want to have anything to do with that? I wouldn’t. If I had been my twenty-two-year-old self coming into the feminist movement and I saw that as what was on offer, I wouldn’t want to be involved.

On the other hand, at one end, with my other hat on – that of poet, writer, and aerialist – I am really keen to have fun and be creative about the way I live. If you can’t make jokes about yourself, if you can’t laugh at yourself you also can’t take yourself seriously. It is that balance between seriousness and optimism and a good sense of humour that matters.

On the taking seriously end of things, that is another area that is a problem. Feminists are not taken seriously. Ideas and concepts we put forward are seen as a joke in the worst sense of the word. As well as that, it is as though to call ourselves feminist means the only thing we have a view on is women. I have views on everything. I have a view on trade deals. I have a view on what is happening in Iraq. I have a view on what is going on in the Northern Territory with the Federal Government right now, marketed as great thing but absolutely disgusting and horrible.

So, I have these two contradictory views. On the one hand, I am very concerned about the way in which feminism is distorted, re-marketed, relabelled, profited from and sold back but has nothing to do with us as feminists. On the other hand, I have this wild optimism about the future. Every now and then I see something that really gives me hope. I see young women, old women and women everywhere in between doing fabulous things. I see a lot of women outside the Western world doing terrific things – the women I know in Bangladesh and India - Wow!

So, on balance, I think there is a future though is a bit uncertain in the near term.