As activists, we all go through periods of disillusion. It's easy to burn-out when you're involved, active, and passionate about something - particularly when the journey towards progress is slow-going, sometimes so slow that you might not even realize that you're making progress.
Right now, I'm feeling the burnout.
Certainly it's happened before. When I attend feminist conferences and meetings, and see throngs of feminist activist women in their 50s and 60s, still passionate, excited, and motivated, I can't help but wonder - how did they make it this long?
The journey towards progress is a long one. We have Days of Action, Take Back the Night Marches, and March for Women's Lives - and what happens?
Non-profit services have their funding cut and are deemed non-essential services. Women's studies programs are under-funded. Abortion is thrown back into the political agenda and once again we have to fight for this basic right.
The progress is slow, stagnating, and sometimes it's hard to see any at all. And when that happens, it's easy to burn out. To feel frustrated, isolated, and disbelieving that we can ever really make any change.
***
When I first started my women's studies academic career, I fell into a rabbit hole. A rabbit hole called the Women's Resource Centre.
In volunteering there, amongst young, bright-eyed, passionate feminist women, I found a space to voice my own feminist desires, actions, and beliefs. In a world where we're not really allowed to do that, where we're all too often silenced, suddenly here was a place where it was okay to get angry. It was okay to speak up. It was okay to vent and fume and fester and rage over the injustices that women face in society.
I started to come not only into my feminisms, but really, into myself, as a person. Developing my belief system, my passions, and my motivations in life.
Where before, I only silently fumed while reading a magazine over the ridiculous beauty standards that are pushed onto young women - now, I had a space to publicly fume. Before, I may have only thought mildly about the sexist, gendered language or comments that my family or friends used around me - and how much it bothered me - now, I felt the courage to speak up and say something.
That's what I call activism, passion, belief, and making change.
***
It's the small things - speaking up, raising your voice, getting angry, SHOUTING - that make a difference.
Yes, progress is slow. And lately I'm in a rut. My involvement in the Women's Resource Centre has opened up multitudes of doors of opportunity for me to further activism in new realms of the world - from labor rights to the right for education. And in other ways, this journey has taken me further and further away from my feminist roots - from that safe space where I felt open to speak up, and in speaking up, to initiate change.
It's the small things that make a difference.
It's time to get back to my feminist roots, and maybe discover some new ones.
And I'd like for you to do it with me.
***
What makes you angry? What inspires you? What would you like to see change in the world?
How can you make it happen?
It's time for the Empowerment4Women Feminist Challenge:
Look at your life. Look at your surroundings. What would you like to change around you? Where does sexism exist? How does it happen? What causes it? What are its effects? Is it in the way that people speak (for example, always saying "his" instead of "her", or calling a guy a "pussy" - slang for a woman's vagina)? Is it the messaging on t-shirts in the local store? How would you like to change it?
Don't just think about it - do something.
Once a week, create your own Feminist Challenge. Initiate an action of some sort. It might be small, spur-of-the-moment act as an individual, or it might involve a large group of people and take some planning. Each week's action might stand entirely on its own, or they might be linked together to create a larger action. Whatever you decide to do, write it down. Write about how you planned it, what inspired you, and what effects the action had - on yourself and your feminism, and on others. Then, e-mail your story to
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. for an upcoming feature in a future issue.
To start you off, here's a list of ideas that you can use, change, modify, or scrap altogether.
1. Leave issues of Bitch, Ms. Magazine, and Bust in the waiting room of your doctor's or dentist's office.
2. Carry around a copy of Inga Muscio's Cunt with you and make a point of reading it on the subway, the bus, or some other public place. How do people react?
3. Start a local Clothesline Project on your campus or in your community. Visit www.clotheslineproject.org to learn more about this national project to fight violence against women. It's interactive, big, and gets people talking about violence in their own lives, and in others.
4. Go to the local bookstore during a busy time of day. Find a copy of The Vagina Monologues and start performing the monologues with a friend or two in the bookstore.
5. Write a letter to your local newspaper. Start a column in your campus newspaper. Or print your own flyer or zine on the sly and leave it around town for people to read.
6. Make a t-shirt. Make a button. Start wearing your feminisms on your body.
7. Make stickers and post them around town on bus stops, lamp posts, in campus hallways, on windows. What's going on in your community? Is it date rape drugs? Make an awareness sticker and sneak into bathroom bars to post them.
8. Start a women's writing circle. Give each week a theme, and discuss the theme in the writing circle, and then free-write about it.
9. Do you live in a residence or sorority on campus? Organize a bus to take women to your local Take Back the Night March. Have a sign-making night. Let the women talk about Take Back the Night and why they're involved.
These are just a few ideas to get you going. Talk with your friends, your family, brainstorm on your own. Create your own ideas and actions. But start being active! Take the Feminist Challenge and make change in your own community, in the world, in your life, in someone else's life. Some of these actions might be small - but they'll get people talking. They might make someone think. Because however slow change might be for us to see, it is taking effect on some small scale. And the best way to make change happen, is to initiate it within ourselves first.
***
About the Author
Leisha Sagan is a freelance writer/graduate student/compulsive traveler/eternally single woman. She continues trying to do it all by doing steady freelance work and working on women's movement events such as The Vagina Monologues. She gets to see the ocean every day of her life.
My curse is my gift. My nightmares, deep sensitivity, and emotional instability gives the best (and most uncomfortable) inspirations I could ever have. For me, art is passion - and visions are the mirror, which show my feelings and connect me with the rest of the world. Read More...
Leisha Sagan is a freelance writer/graduate student/compulsive traveler/eternally single woman. She continues trying to do it all by doing steady freelance work and working on women's movement events such as The Vagina Monologues. She gets to see the ocean every day of her life. 
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