Out in The Commons: FiLiA 2025 | 16

Natalie Blundell 00:00:25  Welcome back to Chat In The Commons, where we tear it all down. One sensible conversation at a time. I'm Natalie Blundell. I'm in the corporate world and also the founder of an online support network.

Elle Kamihira 00:00:39  And I'm Elle Kamihira. I'm a documentary producer and podcast host. We actually have another kind of special episode for you today.

Natalie Blundell 00:00:58  Yes, yes, we did one earlier in the fall called women in the wild. And we're going to take you on a journey in a similar way to the feminist events that you and I love to go to every year. I wasn't able to go with you, unfortunately. Well, no, but I am actually so excited that we're finally recording this because I get to hear about it. We've not talked about it.

Elle Kamihira 00:01:25  I know I've been dying to tell you all about it, and we just haven't.

Natalie Blundell 00:01:29  Yeah, I really wanted to have a beginner's mind to hear about what went down and the experience that you felt.

Natalie Blundell 00:01:36  Going to Brighton, England, to the FiLiA conference.

Elle Kamihira 00:01:41  Yeah. And so I just want to like for background, I don't think feminist gatherings are all that common these days, certainly not in this country. It's not like your girlfriends all like travel to feminist conferences or whatever. It's fairly unusual. And we traveled to FiLiA twice before. The first year we went to Cardiff 2022 Glasgow 2023. So this year it was actually FiLiA's 10th year anniversary. It was an extra large, you know, attended by like upwards of 3000 women from all over the world. The venue was in Brighton, which is a small beach town in southern England. Really, really pretty place. And so I traveled there and we're going to take you along.

Natalie Blundell 00:02:31  Yeah. And they did pick Brighton because that was the first conference they had, I think with maybe a hundred people or something. Ten years ago.

Elle Kamihira 00:02:40  In 2013 actually was the first.

Natalie Blundell 00:02:42  Oh 2013 yeah, yeah.

Elle Kamihira 00:02:44  Okay. Because they've skipped a couple of years.

Natalie Blundell 00:02:46  Well, yeah.

Natalie Blundell 00:02:46  And this conference with over 300 speakers, as I understand, took two years to plan. So there wasn't a conference last year. So it was a big event.

Elle Kamihira 00:02:57  FiLiA is founded by Lisa Marie Taylor, who's still the CEO and an army of volunteers who put this conference together each year. So they changed location each conference, and they work closely with women's organizations in those places, and the local women in the towns that they're holding it.

Natalie Blundell 00:03:20  Yeah, it's almost to raise the vibration or the consciousness of the town, not just drop in for a three day event and leave, but they really work within the community, which is a great part of. And what makes FiLiA very different than other conferences?

Elle Kamihira 00:03:36  Yes.

Esua Goldsmith 00:03:36  There are so many local women who've gifted their time. I mean, just in terms of the energy, the creative narrative across everything, the banners, the screens, the witches room. I mean, I don't know whose full it is, but I love it. and, just, I think collectively as a sisterhood, can we thank the local women for having us and is.

Speaker 5 00:03:56  Helping us today?

Elle Kamihira 00:04:00  But as local as it is, it is equally global. The amount of women from amount of countries and continents from around the world that I saw at this conference was just absolutely mind blowing.

Natalie Blundell 00:04:16  It's a melting pot. And I bet you heard about things or conversations or sessions that you would never have known that was going on unless you went there.

Elle Kamihira 00:04:28  Yes, we all live in our own local worlds, right? And, don't necessarily have an eye into how other women live in different cultures. And it was very, very eye opening.

Natalie Blundell 00:04:43  Let's go. Let's go to Brighton.

Speaker 6 00:04:49  at the airport, waiting to board. and now taking an overnight flight to London and then a train ride to Brighton.

Speaker 7 00:04:58  Good morning everyone, as the captain is sure to send you to London's Heathrow Airport. If you haven't, please return to your seats and pass your seatbelts for the flight. In just a few moments since, we've been coming back through the cabins in the International Garden.

Speaker 8 00:05:13  We are now arriving at Acton Mainline.

Speaker 8 00:05:20  Mind the gap between the train and the platform.

Speaker 6 00:05:26  Just arrived in Brighton and are walking down the station. To find a cab to go to the hotel. It's overcast and the Brighton train station. It's really beautiful, actually. So now it's evening. It's, sunset, and I'm looking out over an absolutely gorgeous view in Brighton. And I think I see the conference center, Brighton Center, where FiLiA will take place. It is, lit up in purple. I headed to FiLiA. It's a lot, and I'm getting there early to register and check in. Just taking in the hotel, taking the elevator down to the to the first floor. I'm nervous. There's going to be a lot, a lot, a lot of women there. Some of whom I know, and some I don't. A lot of a lot of new friends.

Speaker 9 00:07:01  I know.

Natalie Blundell 00:07:16  That opening music gets me every time, the two years that I was there in person, but it seemed like it was even more elevated this time.

Elle Kamihira 00:07:27  The energy was electric. I have to say. But that said, women who attended that first day, we had to make it through a gauntlet of protesters. So the venue, it's a glass building. And when we arrived in the morning, protesters had broken almost half the bottom half of the glass building. And they were it was glass everywhere. They had spray painted the entire front of the building.

Natalie Blundell 00:07:56  So they did this all overnight. Overnight before the opening day?

Elle Kamihira 00:08:00  Yes. So it was completely vandalized.

Natalie Blundell 00:08:03  Do they really think it's going to deter women from walking in?

Elle Kamihira 00:08:07  Well, the protesters were protesting so-called turfs. Was the idea there trans activists? There weren't many of them, maybe like 20 or 30 people, but they were standing right at the entrance. So the entire file of women walking through were subjected to screams and shouts and very, very aggressive men and women both. They had the siren machines. Women were traumatized and frightened, actually.

Natalie Blundell 00:08:40  So like on the megaphone, you're saying like the megaphone, there's a siren button.

Elle Kamihira 00:08:45  Exactly. And just really a hardship for like all the women who had sacrificed to be there from all over.

Natalie Blundell 00:08:54  Sure. And I think the thing that gets me to is they think we're going in there and talking about anti-trans. It's not a focus of the conference.

Elle Kamihira 00:09:02  Yeah, I didn't go to a single panel that talked about transgenderism or gender ideology at all. I know there were some well-known turfs in there, but there were no panels about it that I know of or that I attended. So the demonstration felt to me just very out of place and very inappropriate. Like, what are you protesting? Are you just protesting women or feminists in general? Like, I didn't get it at all.

Natalie Blundell 00:09:31  And for listeners that may not know what a TERF is. Would you just mind?

Elle Kamihira 00:09:36  Yeah, it's a slur essentially trans excluding radical feminist.

Natalie Blundell 00:09:42  Right.

Elle Kamihira 00:09:43  Is what it stands for. But at this point in the UK, I think we don't call it TERF Island for nothing. And so, you know, a lot of feminists have engaged in the battle for women's sex based rights and FiLiA certainly is that also fighting for women's sex based rights? Very articulately that.

Elle Kamihira 00:10:07  But that said, transgenderism or gender ideology is such a small issue compared to all of the other battles that women are engaged in all over the world.

Natalie Blundell 00:10:21  Yeah, to the point that it even feels like it's a distraction to just focus on it.

Elle Kamihira 00:10:26  Giving it attention.

Natalie Blundell 00:10:27  Yeah, all the attention the media has given it for such a small minority of people, when we are when we're in legal battles and other things over transgenderism or trans rights, there's a whole lot of other bad things that are happening for women that is taking our attention away from this to focus on that. So yeah.

Elle Kamihira 00:10:48  And I just want to say a last thing about that demonstration. So there is a huge focus overall, FiLiA, of violence against women in various forms, male violence against women. And so here we have a demonstration of male violence against women, essentially right at the building where we're having this conference. So the ironies like crazy.

Speaker 6 00:11:11  Yeah. I'm I'm standing in line. It is a very, very long queue. And the protesters are up front, but there are police kind of patrolling the line and also security folks and ushers.

Speaker 6 00:11:33  So it's a fairly small group, and I doubt that they'll be here the other days.

Elle Kamihira 00:11:41  So once everyone got in and checked in through security and all of that, we gathered in the main auditorium and attended the opening. And that's what the music you just heard, which was it was truly electric. Yeah. Just to be in a hall full of so many women from everywhere and the stage was beautiful. It had this like design of FiLiA through the ages from 2013 till 2025. Everything was like bathed in purple light and like it was gorgeous and everybody was in, you know, incredibly high spirits and supporting every speaker that came out. And the emcee ran the show like a circus director. It was fun. And what I really appreciated was that they talked about Brighton's history of suffragettes. The women's suffragette movement was really strong in Brighton. And so they talked about all the heroes Emmeline Pankhurst, Mary Clarke, all of these people who sacrificed. And I think feminists these days don't know. They look at these like Victorian ladies and like elaborate dresses and they think, oh, that's such a long time ago.

Elle Kamihira 00:12:59  And it was like kind of a romantic fight. It was not. It was violent. It was very, very violent. And men beat women, beat these suffragettes to death several times, like Mary Clarke was beaten to death in the streets.

Natalie Blundell 00:13:15  For having a voice, for standing up, for pushing back.

Elle Kamihira 00:13:18  For wanting a vote, wanting to participate politically. We have forgotten how hard this fight has been.

Natalie Blundell 00:13:28  Here in the US as well. You're right. You look at those old photos and the the big sashes and the white dresses and it feels unrelatable.

Elle Kamihira 00:13:39  Yeah, like it happened in a whole different time. That has nothing to do with the present.

Natalie Blundell 00:13:44  Well that's great that they brought that in and I did not realize that happened. Brighton too.

Elle Kamihira 00:13:49  Yeah. It's a kind of a feminist stronghold Brighton. And you kind of realize like why they put the 10th anniversary conference there. Yeah. So that was cool. And then there were a few kind of veteran feminists that welcomed everyone and, you know, kind of a rousing, welcoming speech about everything that we're facing and what we're going to be talking about and who we're going to meet.

Elle Kamihira 00:14:15  One of the most exciting, welcoming speakers, I thought was Esua Goldsmith, and she just said some profound things. And, let's play some of her.

Esua Goldsmith 00:14:27  Collection is something that Rahila talks about, and it's really, really important. And we're doing that to this day. 75 countries represented in this room. How brilliant is that? That. And I've spent my whole life working in the international feminist movement in every continent, working with women at grassroots, up to national. And it's just it gives you that kind of feeling. I think feminism and women's liberation is an emotion. It's not just an ideology. It's not just a system of thought. It's not just a world through which we look at the world. It is a lens through which we look at the world. It is an emotion. Just when you think about what we're up against. It's the the economics and the mega capitalism and the environmental crisis, the pandemic, racism, colonialism, crisis in housing and all those other issues and crisis in democracy itself where people are losing faith in leadership to lead.

Esua Goldsmith 00:15:25  So all women hitting women particularly hard. And I think since the word feminism was was invented and since the word the phrase women's liberation was coined, there's been a backlash against it. In my opinion, people didn't like it as soon as they heard about it. Of course, because this is the you know, we are living in the patriarchy.

Natalie Blundell 00:15:47  It's absolutely incredible. I mean, she's been doing this. It sounds a long time in this space, not only as a feminist, but as a black woman facing such racism in England during the last 50 years. Incredible.

Elle Kamihira 00:16:08  Absolute veteran.

Esua Goldsmith 00:16:10  I will see you around, but whatever you do, have a fabulous time. Women.

Natalie Blundell 00:16:18  I'd love to hear some of the things that you attended, or what you were hearing in the hallways, because I wanted to be there so badly.

Elle Kamihira 00:16:26  I know, I know, I felt a little alone without you by my side. I have to admit, because we had done this together.

Natalie Blundell 00:16:37  Yeah, I know that was our thing.

Natalie Blundell 00:16:40  And it broke my heart. Obviously, I was doing something very special. My daughter was getting married, so I had to be here. But, Oh. I wasn't jealous that you were there. I was glad one of us was there.

Elle Kamihira 00:16:54  There were just so many moments where you just had to, like, be there. And if you remember, when we're in Cardiff, when we went to for the first time together, like, I think a lot of women feel lost in the current feminism and not sure if like feminism is for them or whether it's accomplishing things anymore or whether it's needed anymore, etc. and I think when we went in 2022 to Cardiff, like I think we were in a little bit that same position where it's like, well, I don't know. You know, it says for us, really.

Natalie Blundell 00:17:36  I did not know what to expect. I was just happy to like, travel with the sister type of thing. And it was life changing that first one for me.

Elle Kamihira 00:17:46  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for me as well.

Elle Kamihira 00:17:48  I mean, I knew a little bit more what to expect, but still it was just the atmosphere. When you arrive in the building with only women, like the welcoming and the warmth and the sort of sisterhood is just, you cannot describe.

Natalie Blundell 00:18:05  That energy part of being basically an all women's space and an all women's event. You do feel safe. It doesn't feel like you're being judged in any way or have any safety issues.

Elle Kamihira 00:18:19  You're not looking after your purse. You're not looking after your wallet. You're not looking after your ass or your tits or anything else. You know, you are completely at ease. Yes. And I think that's hard for a lot of women to appreciate. Like feeling that way.

Natalie Blundell 00:18:36  You don't know what that feels like until you are at an event like FiLiA. And then you suddenly realize, oh, all my cortisol adrenaline levels are all down.

Elle Kamihira 00:18:49  Exactly.

Natalie Blundell 00:18:50  It's like a sigh of relief that you're in this space, and it feels good, and it nurtures some part of the heart or the soul.

Elle Kamihira 00:18:58  You're in throngs and throngs of women from absolutely every corner of the globe. You know, you have African women, Chinese women, South American women, Swedish women, representatives from absolutely everywhere.

Natalie Blundell 00:19:13  It's like the Olympics, the Olympics, the feminisms.

Elle Kamihira 00:19:16  It is absolutely like the Olympics. I kind of had my eye on panels that talked about, and this is kind of where my interest is. You know, panels that talked about the status of women worldwide. That's where my interest was this year. Like big picture, like the relationship between women and nation states that they are in. And so that is what I gravitated towards for much of the conference. And so the first panel that I went to was feminism and militarism, essentially. And on the panel was a Palestinian poet, Rouda Morcos, Israeli peace activist, Yvonne Deutsch, Serbian peace activist Lepa Mjaldovic, and Saudi academic Miriam Aldossari. This panel was chaired by Bronwyn Winter. But you know, you can imagine here we are at a feminist conference in Brighton, UK, and you have a Palestinian woman, an Israeli woman, a Serbian woman and a Saudi woman talking about what women face with men's military might Right.

Elle Kamihira 00:20:26  And so in some sense, my take away from like the entire conversation and it wasn't an easy conversation, was that we acknowledged that we don't have any power as women. These are patriarchal wars. They are patriarchal conflicts. Military is a male affair. And we can sit here and ruminate and tell you what we would rather do to create peace, to move towards peace, and to avoid the horrific things that are happening in the world. But we're women. We are only women, and we don't have the power to affect these large geopolitical changes that we wish we could. That was kind of the the takeaway for me from that. Very sad.

Natalie Blundell 00:21:25  Yeah, exactly. I was saying that I would think that that would be a very heavy feeling to walk away from. It doesn't matter how far we've progressed and how many rights we've gotten in that kind of nation state relationship, we're still powerless.

Elle Kamihira 00:21:43  And, you know, we have words, but we only have words. And we have organizations who are political activists, etc. but we aren't the powers.

Natalie Blundell 00:21:55  Yeah. Sorry. I just for a second had a little fantasy of, well, how would that ever change? And my mind very quickly went to what if just some kind of virus attacked only the male of species, the male gene that's here for me. I don't see how how we would ever get there without something like that. Sorry, man.

Elle Kamihira 00:22:19  I'm sure you are not the only one who's had that fantasy, In fact, I heard several women in the course of the three days at FiLiA kind of voice is similar sentiments. Wow. Yeah, the despair runs pretty deep in that. And, you know, again, and we've talked about this before. You know, we're watching several genocides happen. The primary victims are women and children and the elderly. And the violence just is orgiastic. It is just relentless. And it it is done by men from start to finish.

Natalie Blundell 00:23:05  Yeah. And the violence begets violence. It just seems to just keep on going. We're always in some kind of wars or wars somewhere in the world.

Elle Kamihira 00:23:16  Exactly. This panel, this first panel kind of set the tone for me a little bit. A good portion of the group of attendees at the panel were pro-Palestine or Free Palestine. They were came in varying keffiyehs, and I think that I started to feel at this point, I started to feel that friction between the pro-Palestinian Free Palestine contingent of FiLiA attendees and people who were then claiming anti-semitism, or there was definitely Jewish women that attended, were deeply offended. I think overall at the how loud and how much space the Stop the Genocide or Free Palestine people were.

Natalie Blundell 00:24:14  So that was right from the get go. You could feel that right from that first session.

Elle Kamihira 00:24:19  Yeah, absolutely.

Natalie Blundell 00:24:20  I mean, how did that land in you? Were you expecting something like that? That feeling was going to be the space where women were going to bring that in.

Elle Kamihira 00:24:30  Not at all. It really shocked me. And I have to say, like, personally, what shocked me and kind of what I really wish just for a different world, I suppose.

Elle Kamihira 00:24:41  But these are old patriarchal wars. They're imperial wars. They are fought with terrorism and state violence. And I feel that the idea of women stepping into these patriarchal wars and taking sides and standing against one another on behalf of this patriarchal side or that patriarchal side, just filled me with despair. I understand women don't live outside their culture. I understand that women don't choose, like whether they're Jewish or Palestinian or any other ethnicity. So it's not like you can just step outside of your religion or your culture. You are born into it. We all are. And so I don't expect women to, like, set aside their inborn cultures or inborn religions. I don't think that's possible, but I do wish there was maybe more acknowledgement of, like these wars, these atrocities, this terrorism that happens is on account of patriarchal men who are doing this. It's not a woman's affair.

Natalie Blundell 00:25:58  Let's never lose sight of that, because when we get pulled into it, then we are part of the problem too. Then we are the patriarchal maidens getting involved.

Elle Kamihira 00:26:10  We're just taking sides. I think women know that if we're going to have peace in the world. Women need to lead that. I don't think we can leave it to the patriarchs to do this. We'll just have more war.

Natalie Blundell 00:26:25  Yeah. We don't need a department of war. It was renamed here. The Department of Defense is now the Department of War. We need a Department of Peace. Why are we continuing to prop up thoughts of war and violence? Where's their Department of Peace? That's the goal, is it not?

Elle Kamihira 00:26:47  That is the goal, exactly. Yeah. And so to kind of clock the whole Palestinian Jewish friction and tension in the space so early in the conference colored my experience, no doubt. The next session I attended was called beyond the misogynist backlash.

Natalie Blundell 00:27:18  That sounds right up our alley.

Elle Kamihira 00:27:21  We have said we're going through a major awakening, a mass awakening. We have said that we're amidst a patriarchal backlash. And that is exactly what these women talked about.

Natalie Blundell 00:27:34  Wow.

Elle Kamihira 00:27:35  Sonya Sohda chaired it.

Elle Kamihira 00:27:37  She's a British broadcaster, reporter, very sharp and did a great job handling. And then it was Sahti Patel from Total Woman Victory. Krisztina Les, who's a young Hungarian feminist. Then Li Wen Qin is a radical feminist from China. And then Max Dashu, who is a American women's history researcher.

Natalie Blundell 00:28:05  Powerful panel.

Elle Kamihira 00:28:07  Gosh, yes. And so each of these women talked about completely different aspects of the misogynist backlash. So we got a Chinese perspective. We got a Hungarian perspective. We got kind of a world history perspective from Max, I love her. I'm such a big fan of hers. She runs the Repressed History Archives. She's been working on it since the 70s, and she has essentially like unearthed enormous library of women's history, women's visual history. They just gave such a varied perspective on Krisztina talked about how in Hungary it has become extremely patriarchal and very, very conservative. Now with crackdown on divorce and abortion and birth control. Really? Yeah.

Natalie Blundell 00:29:03  I feel like we don't hear anything in the news about Hungary.

Elle Kamihira 00:29:06  Eastern Europe is still so like unknown in a sense to us. I think she's also young. And that was another thing about the whole conference, by the way, when we went in 2022, you know, it skewed older, middle age, whatever. This year was so young, really. I want to say half the attendants were in their 20s or early 30s.

Natalie Blundell 00:29:33  That's so encouraging.

Elle Kamihira 00:29:35  I know it was amazing how many young women there were both on the panels and attendance. So it shows you like young women are coming to radical feminism or feminism, period.

Natalie Blundell 00:29:49  Especially if they were on panels and speakers that they're willing, you know, they've got enough knowledge, even in their 20 years on Earth or 30 years on Earth, that they know things are not good at the moment and they're speaking about it and educating others about that. So that's that's great.

Elle Kamihira 00:30:08  And you know, what's so fantastic about that also is that you are together with like all generations, you know, older women, younger women talking together, communing together, learning from each other and connecting, which is.

Natalie Blundell 00:30:23  Patriarchy doesn't like that. They always try to put that division between the older women, the crones, the women with all of these answers and wisdom that look back on life and go, oh my gosh, I was so played by the male world, the male gaze, male domination. And we want to share that with younger women. But we're often separated that, oh, she's irrelevant. Your beauty, your youth, you know, you don't need to be in touch with these older women.

Elle Kamihira 00:30:56  And where you get discarded and devalued as you age. You're told that the only thing that matters is your sexuality and fertility.

Natalie Blundell 00:31:05  Invisible, invisible women as we age.

Elle Kamihira 00:31:09  Glad to be, by the way. Yeah. Glad to be invisible. Ta ta ta. Men.

Natalie Blundell 00:31:16  Move on. Soldier.

Elle Kamihira 00:31:18  Yeah. Keep on pushing. One of the speakers on this panel, Sahti Patel, is a young American woman, actually from Worcester, Mass. Who runs? Yeah. Runs a brand new zine called Total Woman Victory.

Elle Kamihira 00:31:32  She's, like, kind of doing a 2025 version of consciousness raising with her magazine and the website and everything.

Natalie Blundell 00:31:40  So so the patriarchal backlash, was there anything that you discovered in that that we haven't thought about or talked about that? Is the backlash bigger than you even thought?

Elle Kamihira 00:31:51  What was interesting to me was that, oh my gosh, how this shape shifts across the world in different cultures and how differently men strategize to control Full their female population, you know. The women in their countries, whether it's Saudi Arabia or Hungary or Russia or some other, it seems each culture or country has their own, like bespoke patriarchal tactics to control and keep women down. Yeah, sadly, and one isn't worse than the next. Honestly. Very true. It's just like different means. Same problem.

Natalie Blundell 00:32:40  Yeah, 100%.

Elle Kamihira 00:32:42  And it's easy for us here in the West to look at the burka and cry about it. But we have our own means of oppression here.

Natalie Blundell 00:32:58  All right. Take us to some other sessions.

Elle Kamihira 00:33:01  Yeah.

Elle Kamihira 00:33:01  The last session was one with Rachel Hewitt, Victoria Smith, Onjali  Rauf and Susanna Rustin. It was about the erasure of women's history, and each woman on the panel spoke of different sort of chapters of erased women's history. It was just fascinating. I won't go into details, but when you heard these women speak about their different historical chapters, you realize that, oh, this is all so by design. This like erasure of women's names and women's presence and women's accomplishments. It is by design.

Natalie Blundell 00:33:42  Yeah. I was watching something where they were talking about the statues in Central Park in New York City, and just like men after men after men's statues, and there's like one of women, it's so disproportionate as usual.

Elle Kamihira 00:33:56  So that was day one. I was super jetlagged. I just had to run back to the hotel and crash out after day one like it is overwhelming.

Natalie Blundell 00:34:06  See what happens when you travel solo. You need me to shake you out of things. I guess when you're alone, you get to sneak away.

Elle Kamihira 00:34:14  Yeah. So crashed out. Got a thing? A fish and chips and fell asleep.

Natalie Blundell 00:34:19  Are you killing me?

Elle Kamihira 00:34:24  Yeah. I'd never had it that style before. You know, lots of, like, brown vinegar and stuff.

Natalie Blundell 00:34:29  That would be malt vinegar, l mop.

Elle Kamihira 00:34:32  Sure. Yeah. There you go.

Natalie Blundell 00:34:34  And salt and salt and vinegar. We just say salt and vinegar. We don't identify the vinegar.

Elle Kamihira 00:34:38  Okay. So day two come back and things were a little bit calmer. They had also erected a long fence so that the protesters were kept at a distance.

Speaker 6 00:35:01  But they were still like loud.

Natalie Blundell 00:35:03  And I know that FiLiA, when they're organizing and picking their venues, they've often been rejected from a venue. We it was either Scotland, I think, where we went and it was being cancelled like a few days before because of the pressure from trans rights activists. So they always have a lot of struggles when they're dealing with a venue because of that possible violence.

Elle Kamihira 00:35:34  I didn't know that being feminists was a controversial thing anymore.

Elle Kamihira 00:35:40  Like, and why is it why is a feminist conference even controversial?

Natalie Blundell 00:35:46  This has been going on ten years. It would be interesting to know if they've always had protesters opposing women gathering and speaking together.

Elle Kamihira 00:35:56  I don't know if it's gotten worse or not. So day two, the first panel I went to was a really interesting one about modern matriarchy, which is another interest of mine. It was a woman from Indonesia by the name of Mina Elvira, who is a Minangkabau woman, and Minangkabau is the largest matriarchal or matrilineal society in the world. They live kind of under or side by side with patriarchy in Indonesia. And the patriarchy is a muslim. They live kind of like a state within the state, but they keep their matrilineal traditions alive. And she spoke about, you know, how they do that, how they sort of circumvent the patriarchal culture around them and how they preserve their matrilineal things like Inheritance rights are passed from mother to daughter only.

Natalie Blundell 00:37:03  Yeah, the property.

Elle Kamihira 00:37:04  Land and money is owned by women only.

Elle Kamihira 00:37:08  my impression of what she was talking about, really, it was just like, oh, my God, they're so clever.

Natalie Blundell 00:37:15  It must have been fascinating to hear that. Like. Yes. Tell us the answers to this. How do we get there? We have it on a sweatshirt, but we need the answers to. We need the blueprint.

Elle Kamihira 00:37:27  We sure do need the blueprint. And the main cable culture is very old. The patriarchal layer that's kind of over it now is much newer. So these matriarchal traditions are ancient, and they've just so been able to keep them alive.

Natalie Blundell 00:37:46  So I'm guessing there's not a website we could link in the show notes we need to set out next autumn trip there, please. Thank you.

Elle Kamihira 00:37:56  I would love to go. And I know there have been Western anthropologists who have studied with them and documented how they managed to do this, how they pull this off. But it was great to, like, meet an actual Minangkabau woman who's a scholar also in modern matriarchy.

Elle Kamihira 00:38:12  So yeah, it was fascinating. So then I attended yet another panel that was literally called women and the state and yeah, my thing. Yeah. Yeah. And not just my thing, but.

Natalie Blundell 00:38:38  No, obviously it's top of mind for women. That's why they probably had so many panels like that. Because I think women are worried about that. Like, are we going to lose all autonomy? Are all of our rights going to be rolled back? I think we're worried.

Elle Kamihira 00:38:54  Yeah. And of course, like part of the panel are people who live in countries where women's rights really have been taken away. So we had Jo Phoenix, chaired by Marzia Babakarkhail I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right from Afghanistan. You had Maggy Moyo, an African refugee living in the UK. You had Atena Daemi, who's a Iranian refugee also. So Marzia Babakarkhail is an ex judge. She grew up under the Taliban, then experienced the Taliban crackdown. She had gone to law school pre Taliban, became a judge and then Taliban removed all women from the profession.

Elle Kamihira 00:39:43  There was a attempt made on her life and she was in the hospital for six months. She fled Afghanistan and started over her whole life in the UK at the age of 42. God as a woman. You know, just a story of being directly targeted for, you know, they wanted to remove her. They wanted her out of existence. Educated women like you. There's no room for you here.

Natalie Blundell 00:40:09  They wanted to erase her. Yes. And make sure she doesn't influence any of the other women.

Elle Kamihira 00:40:15  Their women like her being in the judgeship was like, you know, couldn't have it. And then Maggy Moyo was an African refugee. She runs an organization called Right to Remain. She talked about the loss of rights that women refugees have, even when they land in a Western country, and how, subject to the British state, they become just as refugees. And I think a lot of immigrants and refugee women can attest to that.

Natalie Blundell 00:40:55  So it transfers in a way it transfers because they leave who they were behind in their country of origin, and now they're under the control of the state of the new country.

Elle Kamihira 00:41:09  In the UK. Yeah. And so they're subject to all kinds of government agencies and rules and regulations, and their every movement is tracked and monitored and controlled and.

Natalie Blundell 00:41:24  And racism too. Really if you think about.

Elle Kamihira 00:41:26  Heavy duty racism.

Natalie Blundell 00:41:28  Yeah, yeah.

Elle Kamihira 00:41:29  And then at a time, she was imprisoned during the woman's life freedom uprising in Iran. She was a feminist activist there and fled eventually when she was, you know, led out of prison for moments. She fled on foot through the mountains and sought asylum in Canada. She talked about that journey, also from Iran. The crackdown in Iran of the kind of descending oppression that women in Iran have experienced in the last few decades.

Natalie Blundell 00:42:07  I don't think we have any idea what some of these women go through.

Elle Kamihira 00:42:22  The next panel I went to was the surrogacy panel. FiLiA stance against surrogacy and radical feminism certainly does. Officially, it's viewed as just another way to exploit women. There's no way to do it ethically or safely or humanely or well or anything.

Elle Kamihira 00:42:43  It's just this should be abolished, just like prostitution should be, right?

Natalie Blundell 00:42:47  It's monetizing women's bodies.

Elle Kamihira 00:42:49  Hey, man. Exactly. Yeah. So Julie McGee, who's a Scottish feminist. Chaired that. And she did a great job. She interviewed a French activist, Marie-Josephe Devillers. And then they had three women, women who have experienced surrogacy. One was a Christian surrogacy story who agreed to do a surrogacy in the Christian context. But she was very, very heavily deceived and was put in one horrific situation after the other through these really serious deceptions. The second woman was a British altruistic surrogate, as they called themselves, which is one where payment is not involved. But you create a child for family member or close friend. So this woman agreed to be a surrogate for her cousin. It turned into a massive situation of coercion and control. And part of her agreement with the intended parents promised that she was going to be part of the child's life. They reneged on that the moment the baby was out of her belly, and she hasn't seen the child since.

Natalie Blundell 00:44:11  An energetic and soul connection of growing that baby inside your body as a woman, and then just not having any connection to that baby afterwards.

Elle Kamihira 00:44:24  She's still the mother, and as far as I'm concerned.

Natalie Blundell 00:44:27  Yeah, that's traumatizing for the baby. It's traumatizing.

Elle Kamihira 00:44:32  And the idea and we can do a whole again like separate episode on surrogacy, but, like.

Natalie Blundell 00:44:36  I think we need to.

Elle Kamihira 00:44:38  Yeah, there's an exchange of cells that happens between the baby and the mother Are that not just. You're not just giving yourselves or building this human, but that human is also feeding back their cells into your system, and that those cells from those children stay in, in your body for years and years and years. So that was the British surrogate. And then the French surrogate agreed to have a baby for a gay couple. So it was her egg and one of the men's sperm that made this baby. And she had been promised contact and involvement, and then they reneged on that. And then one of the fathers died.

Elle Kamihira 00:45:27  And so this single father that was left neglected the child, but yet didn't allow visitation for her.

Natalie Blundell 00:45:35  And people may be listening today thinking, oh, that's a nice thing to do. A woman to help a gay couple that can't obviously conceive a baby on their own or the cousin. What a generous gift to give. Maybe, you know, infertile couple a way to have a baby. It can, on the outside, seem like it's a nice thing to do. But these are the stories that you're telling me that we don't hear about the realities where it's like, no, I pay for that, and that belongs to me, and you need to answer to me. We don't hear about that in mainstream media. We only hear the good, generous women that are doing this.

Elle Kamihira 00:46:19  And aside from the psychological, emotional battles that happen and the custodial battles that happen, there's also health risks and health hazards and death and disasters that are common in the industry of surrogacy.

Natalie Blundell 00:46:33  Yeah, it's dangerous to have a baby.

Natalie Blundell 00:46:36  We talked about that in our babies episode.

Elle Kamihira 00:46:39  But the risks for surrogate mothers are three times as high as a regular pregnancy.

Natalie Blundell 00:46:45  Probably even, especially when they're implanting an egg. That's not your egg. It's a foreign body.

Elle Kamihira 00:46:52  Exactly. Lots of issues around that to talk about. But the panel was essentially hearing these women's stories, these people who had actually experienced surrogacy and had turned into activists against, as a result, just being radicalized through the experience of being used and abused and denied their rights through agreeing to surrogacy.

Natalie Blundell 00:47:19  Yeah. Must have been emotional.

Elle Kamihira 00:47:22  It was emotional. A lot of tears on this panel. A lot of pain. And then the final lighthearted panel of the day was the homicide panel.

Speaker 10 00:47:43  Oh, lovely.

Esua Goldsmith 00:47:46  Whatever you're doing in the next three days, I hope you will enjoy. It's not, you know, just about the serious stuff. We know how to party, don't we?

Speaker 5 00:47:56  Yeah, yeah. See you on the dance floor on Saturday night. Because.

Natalie Blundell 00:48:01  So when Esua said, go out there and have fun these next three days, she.

Natalie Blundell 00:48:06  She wasn't talking about the panels you were going to in the sessions.

Elle Kamihira 00:48:11  She definitely was not talking about any of the panels I attended. Now I'm a little bit drawn to, like, more serious subject matter. You know, I have to say there were, like, more not quite so serious panels. I just happened to end up at the dark ones.

Natalie Blundell 00:48:27  I don't know how you can have a radical feminist conference and have lighthearted fun sessions. These are heavy matters. They're important issues.

Elle Kamihira 00:48:38  And, you know, these are women who come to speak at this, are all engaged year round in these very serious matters, and they have things to tell us.

Natalie Blundell 00:48:49  That's a good point. There all. And that's what I love about failure, is that all of their speakers that they bring in, you know, this is their life's work for most of them.

Elle Kamihira 00:48:59  Absolutely.

Natalie Blundell 00:49:00  They're living this day in, day out, all year long for many years, fighting the good fight that half the time, all of us, we don't hear about them.

Elle Kamihira 00:49:10  A lot of these women are on the front lines for sure. And this one certainly was the Femicide Panel. So this was chaired by Karen Ingala Smith. Oh yeah. And Clarrie O’Callaghan, who are partners at Femicide Census. Karen and Goldsmith started an organization called Counting Dead Women UK.

Speaker 10 00:49:33  Yes.

Elle Kamihira 00:49:33  In the absence of any data on women killed, right?

Natalie Blundell 00:49:38  Was never being collected. Crazy. In this day and age. It wouldn't even be that hard for police to gather that information and create that information and data.

Elle Kamihira 00:49:50  Yeah. So she started that organization, and then she started from that. She started a femicide census with Clarrie O’Callaghan. What they said very pointedly, Clairre kind of did a presentation at the start. And she said as many women as were attending FiLiA this year, which nearly 3,000 was as many women that had been killed by men since 2009, in the UK.

Natalie Blundell 00:50:20  Like look around the room that was giving you a chill.

Elle Kamihira 00:50:24  So you see this women that you have encountered all day, and you think about a building full of 3,000 women, and that's the number that have been killed by men since 2009, in the UK.

Speaker 10 00:50:35  That's so shocking?

Natalie Blundell 00:50:36  It's a small country. I mean, we get big numbers here in the US, but we're a big country. Yes, and we have guns in England. They don't.

Elle Kamihira 00:50:45  That's right. Then we also had Cherry Smiley, who's an indigenous woman from Canada, and Ninotchka Rosca, who's a veteran feminist from the Philippines, and Sharon Holland, the woman from the UK whose daughter committed suicide because of domestic abuse. And so, between all of the panelists, I think they sort of painted this picture of femicide from very different viewpoints.

Speaker 10 00:51:14  Yeah.

Elle Kamihira 00:51:15  Cherry Smiley talked about missing and murdered women, indigenous women in Canada and the causes of femicide in Canada. Ninotchka Rosca talked about how the Filipino state kind of uses Is the public murder of women as a means to terrorize the population.

Natalie Blundell 00:51:39  In what way?

Elle Kamihira 00:51:40  In the regime of Duterte, who's actually now imprisoned in The Hague on trial for crimes against humanity. Rodrigo Duterte was doing something that is kind of what the Trump administration is now trying to do, which is to clean up the streets.

Elle Kamihira 00:52:02  It's a war against drugs, essentially, but it turned into just state terror against the general population. A lot of random violence against civilians and a general population in the Philippines, and in particular against women. They killed women in very grisly manners and in very public manner, displaying the corpse kind of in public, really, just to strike fear and terror in people in general.

Natalie Blundell 00:52:35  To comply into compliance. Yeah. And hello, this is a wake up call. This is what we're going through here. Exactly that. You and I both have talked about how upsetting it is to see these Ice raids and what they're doing, and this excuse to throw women on the ground with a knee to their neck and on their chest, multiple men, weapons drawn. And handcuff her and take her what she's like, not even fighting back.

Elle Kamihira 00:53:07  We're seeing it more and more on our social media, just like you described ice. These like men in military tactical gear going after small unarmed women of all sorts, women and children, by the way, and this kind of terror that Ninotchka talked about in the Philippines is feeling more and more familiar, and.

Natalie Blundell 00:53:33  You almost get numb to it because you're seeing it every day. Yeah. As more and more people post, it's lowering our shock factor about it. I know there was one a couple of weeks ago with a childcare worker. Yeah, dragged out the childcare facility.

Elle Kamihira 00:53:52  In front of like, infants.

Speaker 10 00:53:53  Yeah.

Natalie Blundell 00:53:54  And she's she's not violent criminal.

Elle Kamihira 00:53:56  If you attack women in public, if you brutalize women in public, you're going to strike fear in the hearts of everyone. You're going to have a fearful, obedient populace because it is effective in that way to use terror. And, you know, if there's any justice in the world, this whole story will end up exactly where Duterte is at the moment, which is the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Natalie Blundell 00:54:24  Yeah.

Elle Kamihira 00:54:25  Attacking innocent women and children.

Natalie Blundell 00:54:38  So that wrapped up day two. Yes, and I.

Elle Kamihira 00:54:42  Skipped the party. There was an.

Natalie Blundell 00:54:44  All. Oh, the big disco. The disco. I know, yeah.

Elle Kamihira 00:54:48  It was a all women's dance party at the end of day two.

Elle Kamihira 00:54:51  And when I heard what happened, I couldn't have been happier to have skipped that.

Natalie Blundell 00:54:58  Tell me.

Elle Kamihira 00:54:59  I don't want to go too deep into it because I wasn't there. I actually didn't see it. So everything I'm talking about is just like, allegedly. But what I heard was that people were being provocative with their political kind of demonstrations, and there were drinks thrown. There were kerfuffle was there were security called. There were people getting thrown out of the party. It wasn't a good time.

Natalie Blundell 00:55:26  It doesn't sound like it. I mean, for goodness sake. This is all women. We were just talking about how nice it is to be safe in that space. You don't want to feel guarded. I don't understand why they brought it there into. Especially at the party. But feel your overall, like, keep the politics out of it. We're here for a common goal.

Elle Kamihira 00:55:48  Yes. Yes, certainly. But I also think women are divided. Women are going to be divided. We're going to come from different viewpoints.

Elle Kamihira 00:55:58  We're not going to all agree on stuff. We are sharply divided in a lot of different ways, and I think we're going to have to learn to dialogue in spite of those divisions, certainly not get into bar brawls at least.

Natalie Blundell 00:56:14  Do you think the people that were involved in this were trying to sabotage the event in some way?

Elle Kamihira 00:56:21  No, honestly.

Natalie Blundell 00:56:22  It's just like maybe too many drinks and things got out of hand. Hang.

Elle Kamihira 00:56:26  That was my impression that, like, people got overly aggressive, got into each other's faces and. Yeah.

Natalie Blundell 00:56:33  And that's a shame, because I know even though you and I haven't gone to the disco. Actually, our younger listeners are probably like a disco. Why are you calling it a disco? But they do call it that. I just want to say, that's not us. We're not that old. Well, we are, but. But that that's such a highlight of FiLiA that it is a kind of joyful, like, free spirit. Let it all go and enjoy the sisterhood.

Natalie Blundell 00:57:02  That's just a shame, really, to hear.

Elle Kamihira 00:57:04  Yeah, it was a shame. And you could also on day three when we arrived, you could definitely sense and hear the tea being spilled all over in all the halls, you know, people gossiping and taking sides and etc. so that wasn't amazing either. Not a big thing I think is kind of a blip on the radar. But, you know, some people in the aftermath of FiLiA, you know, there were all kinds of articles being written about FiLiA should get shut down. They have no shame.

Natalie Blundell 00:57:40  No. That's ridiculous. Like how short sighted? Yes. For some differences of opinion. You know, this event that's so incredibly important. Yeah. And served so many women and so many voices. No, you should be shut down. Whoever's saying that, it should be shut down. You should be shut down.

Elle Kamihira 00:58:02  Yeah. I just think to treat it as this kind of like a trivial event that doesn't have any more meaning than that, I think, is just, like, completely misplaced.

Elle Kamihira 00:58:15  This is a crucial gathering. Yeah. And also, the ability to gather as women is crucial. Even with those conflicts that happened, and maybe some naivete on the part of FiLiA about like who was coming and what they were saying, and maybe FiLiA hadn't done due diligence in terms of like vetting who was coming and what their opinions were. But but even so, even with this tension, like, it's not clear exactly where FiLiA themselves are landing in this, but I think they were definitely naive, not considering that this clash might happen.

Natalie Blundell 00:58:57  Well, they know now, and I'm sure that will shape things in some way going forward.

Elle Kamihira 00:59:05  Yes.

Natalie Blundell 00:59:05  Just upsetting you travel all this way. You're looking forward to this event for a long time. The organizers, I mean, they've been working on this huge amount of organizers for two years. And so for something like that to just leave a little bit of a bad taste in your mouth. That's unfortunate.

Elle Kamihira 00:59:39  So day three was kind of like a wind down sort of day.

Elle Kamihira 00:59:44  And I attended a panel that was another panel, kind of like the state as a perpetrator of violence against women. So a little bit the same theme with some other speakers. There was Clarice Saadi from MATRIA in Brazil. Yes. She had an interesting story to tell about. Women in Brazil are really, at the moment attacked both from the left and from the right. So from the right you have the conservative far right. Part of the powers that be, part of the government that's cracking down on abortion and divorce and birth control and everything else, controlling women in that way. And then you have the left. Who's coming after women over gender ideology. Brazilian institutions have become very captured by gender ideology, and feminists who express opposition to gender ideology and who won't acknowledge trans women or women and trans men or men, or will fight for women's sex based rights as opposed to gender ideology, are viciously attacked. In fact, there are women in Brazil who have been charged with hate crimes and who have been imprisoned.

Elle Kamihira 01:01:07  There are Brazilian women who have escaped the country and have sought amnesty in Western countries because they fear for their lives and their rights in Brazil. So. So she talked about that, this woman Frohar Poya who works with European Network of Migrant women from Afghanistan. So she talked about that more on state violence.

Natalie Blundell 01:01:36  You must have come back to the US like listen to all this like we're in trouble. I'm seeing signs of things that they were talking about in their native countries.

Elle Kamihira 01:01:48  It was a lot. It was a lot to take in a lot of emotions. High emotion, a lot of energy, a lot of upset, but also elation. And, you know, it was just like a very intense experience overall.

Natalie Blundell 01:02:03  Sounds. Yeah.

Elle Kamihira 01:02:04  I mean, you've been so you know, what it can feel like in the aftermath you just spent. But when I landed, I think my takeaway was Is that feminism. As a movement, have been dormant or sleep for like years and years, and that we as feminists in the West, certainly, or what I grew up with, we grew up with, were just like meekly asking for so little and being completely co-opted by our cultures into believing in all this empowerment girl power bullshit.

Elle Kamihira 01:02:48  And we've kind of like, bought all of that. Like, porn is cool. Prostitution and sex workers work like all of the things that have have turned feminism into something unrecognizable to me. Yeah. And you go to a gathering like this, and you get a full scope of what women are experiencing And up against in countries around the world. Like you get a full 360 view and you understand that if we are to like change this at all for women around the world, the feminism that we call feminism today is not going to do the job. No.

Natalie Blundell 01:03:35  I remember exactly what you're saying. Like the vastness of what women face around the world after going to FiLiA, I had a much bigger picture and it was overwhelming. It was like, what hope do we have? Honestly, what the heck do we have? Yeah, we can fight our little tiny piece of the fight, and they're doing their little piece of the fight. But it's a mammoth.

Elle Kamihira 01:04:06  Herculean task to like, turn the tide, you know, turn the tide for for women.

Elle Kamihira 01:04:13  And I think gathering like FiLiA is one way to coalesce around these issues and to gather and get strength from these communities. Learn about what other women are doing. Have face to face conversations around meals, and take in what women are doing around the world, what they're up against and how they're fighting it. We can at times feel like we're all in our parts of the world, and we're safe for now. You know, for now, we're okay for now. And then we can look to other places and we can literally see and hear from women who, in countries where they were at some point, okay, for now, and they're not okay any longer at all.

Natalie Blundell 01:05:13  I wonder, actually, if any of those women from those countries that saw the the steep decline in their rights and autonomy and freedom, whether they look at the US, let's say, or the UK and they say, oh, this is what we it's how it started with us.

Elle Kamihira 01:05:32  Exactly. How do we push back in the most effective way? How do we mount an effective resistance to the sort of coercive control creep that's happening?

Natalie Blundell 01:05:45  Yeah, we need more women in power.

Natalie Blundell 01:05:48  Yes, we need more women leaders at every level.

Elle Kamihira 01:05:51  Yeah. And we need more fearless. We do.

Natalie Blundell 01:05:54  We do.

Elle Kamihira 01:05:55  Even so, even with all the conflicts and everything else, we need more failures. Even if it was a difficult gathering, it was it was not a warm hug. It was more like chaotic and, you know, a lot of tension and friction and didn't leave every day with like this good warm feeling. But even so, even so, I came away feeling like this is crucial.

Natalie Blundell 01:06:20  Yeah, it sounds like it. We have to prioritize that connectedness. As soon as we all become isolated, then that's an alarm bell. We have to stay connected. As women, we've never been more connected, but who knows what the heck we're going into? Yeah. Where there's restrictions or internet or whatever. We don't know. We don't know. We know some countries have that where they really are isolated. And I remember hearing on a panel in Cardiff about a woman from Iran, I think she was talking about just the only thing she had was a radio, and that was the only way she could hear anything connected to other women or feminists was through radio and trying to get into national radio.

Natalie Blundell 01:07:12  So yeah, it is critical. The conference itself is critical and I can only see it getting larger. Or just maybe they need more of them.

Elle Kamihira 01:07:23  I also think FiLiA is determined, you know, in the aftermath. They've written several newsletters and kind of messages to attendance and, and about what their, you know, where they're going from here. And I think they are absolutely committed to learning from everything that happened and to do better in the future.

Natalie Blundell 01:07:42  I'm inspired. And also I feel a little heavy after the conversation, which I remember feeling coming away from FiLiA to just again about the the vastness of the problem that we're facing and try to remain hopeful. Yeah, the women will come out okay from all of this?

Elle Kamihira 01:08:07  Next, it's in Blackpool.

Natalie Blundell 01:08:09  Blackpool? Not exactly where I want to go, but okay. Why did they pick Blackpool?

Elle Kamihira 01:08:15  They pick Blackpool. Because Blackpool is a very depressed area. Sure is. And you know when FiLiA comes to town, it uplifts and they pump money into the economy.

Elle Kamihira 01:08:30  And they give a lot of people things to do. And they also shed light on everything that is happening. Whatever the issues, the problems are because we know that when a place is depressed, guess who suffers the most? Women?

Natalie Blundell 01:08:47  Okay, that makes sense.

Elle Kamihira 01:08:48  Then they want to turn their attention to Blackpool, and I'm sure it'll be a much smaller affair.

Natalie Blundell 01:08:56  Well, I look forward to getting a stick of rock at Blackpool. Did you see the sticks of rock in Brighton? No, it's a long piece of candy and it has the name in it, and it's traditional. You would go on holiday in England by the seaside and get a stick, a rock.

Speaker 9 01:09:14  Oh.

Speaker 6 01:09:15  That's the.

Elle Kamihira 01:09:16  Cutest. Thing in the world.

Natalie Blundell 01:09:18  So we'll go to Blackpool and we'll take a picture with that sticks of Blackpool rock.

Speaker 6 01:09:22  Love that.

Natalie Blundell 01:09:23  Okay, see you next time.

Elle Kamihira 01:09:25  See you next time.

Esua Goldsmith 01:09:26  The thing that is really important about women's liberation is collective action. No single woman would be where they are today if it wasn't for the women's liberation movement.

Theme Song 01:09:47  Hi. Hi.

Natalie Blundell 01:09:55  Thank you for listening. To Chat In The Commons. We would love to hear from you about anything we talked about on this episode. Ode. You can reach us via our social media or on our website, ChatInTheCommons.com. You can also find links to all the resources mentioned in this episode in the show notes.

Elle Kamihira 01:10:15  If you like what we're doing here, please share with all of your friends. And the best way to support our work is to follow us on your podcast app.

Natalie Blundell 01:10:24  Chat In The Commons is produced by me, Natalie Blundell and Elle Kamihira. Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio. Artwork by Reda Tomingas. Music by Midnight Door, Theme song by Moushumi.

Theme Song 01:10:42  You got no conscience. So I'll do it again. Again. I'll do it again and again and again.