One of the events on Tuesday night’s list was an ILB Special entitled “Resisting Speechlessness – Feminist Voices in Shrinking Global Spaces”, rounding out some fierce feminist festival discussion!
A collaboration between the ILB and the Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung’s Asia Department, it brought together Singaporean author Amanda Lee Koe and the German/Indian journalist, cultural scientist and author Mithu Sanyal, lead in conversation by German journalist and blogger Katrin Rönicke.
After arriving at the venue a matter of mere minutes after kick-off time, the man told us we couldn't even come in. Are you not aloud to stand for feminism in this town anymore? Not to be defeated we managed to put our powers of persuasion to work and wrangled our way in for the good stuff.
After Sunday’s rather eventful feminist panel on whether or not the future is female, we didn’t quite know what to expect. Readings from Sanyal’s Vergewaltigung. Aspekte eines Verbrechens (Rape, Aspects of a Crime) and one of the short stories from Koe’s Ministry of Moral Panic collection were followed by dialogue on everything from Indian/German/Singaporean culture, immigration, the notion of “otherness”, the ‘headscarf debate’, populism, nationalism, religion, class, postcolonial influence, fragmentation in feminism, and of course, in the theme of women’s rights moving backwards, a mention or two of Trump.
A mass of important points were made, one of our favourites coming from Sanyal when she said “It’s not always about women’s rights specifically, it has to be about equality. Even cis men are humans, too” she joked. "It’s the discourse that is important."
In a time where identity politics seems inescapable, Sanyal brought it back to the simple truth that these things are about everyone, not just the word before the 'ism.
With a 40-60 percent balance of female to male writers at the Festival and Congress, we're not quite on an equal playing field just yet, but its headed in the right direction. And it was reassuring to see a woman, Elif Şafak, leading the way by opening the festival this year. Despite only two events dedicated specifically to feminist discourse, there were a wealth of female writers outside of those panels representing in their own readings and discussions such as Marie NDiaye, Ottessa Moshfegh and of course Arundhati Roy.