Interventions

This is our suite of feminist interventions into everyday sexisms in the academy and elsewhere!

#FEAS Signature Spruik 2023

#FEAS Signature Spruik! is a call to action against comparison, competition, and complicity. Replace your cv-long-boasty signature with a link to a feminist work or scholar you are reading right now. Tell everyone who you are reading and why!

Have you noticed how professional email signatures are becoming boasty and long, almost like a mini-CV?  #FEAS Signature Spruik is an intervention into this masculinist, hyper-individualised, and outcome driven practice that many of us take part in. We list our achievements in our signature because it is one of the ways that individuals are encouraged to professionally showcase their work. Whilst it is a common way to announce a book or article that has recently been published, these extended signature lines also make us complicit in neoliberal practices that are designed to encourage competition,  and can also make those who read them feel bad in comparison because they often read as a list of an individual’s accomplishments. 

#FEAS Signature Spruiks are intended to raise profiles, but of others. It is generous, while also poking fun at the performativity that we have all found ourselves complicit in. 

The idea is that instead of listing your own accomplishments in your signature, you list and spruik someone else’s (for non-Australians, to ‘spruik’ means to promote or advertise).  

Because this is a citational practice, consider who you can spruik and why. Don’t just go to the familiar and famous, expand and make pathways for others. This is a form of feminist field building…we all have a part and responsibility to play. 

If there is a current project you are working on, consider spruiking this side-by-side with another work or scholar.

Are you interested in taking part in this initiative? 

Here’s what you can do:

1. Copy the GIF’s link. Once you have found the GIF you’re looking for, your first impulse may be to right click and save to your computer. …
2. Open your email account. …
3. Maneuver to the “Insert Photo” section. …
4. Paste the image address. …
5. Click “Insert” …
6. Underneath your GIF, copy and paste the following blurb: #FEAS Signature Spruik! A call to action against comparison, competition, and complicity. Replace your cv-long-boasty signature with a link to a feminist work or scholar you are reading right now. Tell everyone who you are reading and why! To find out more or to learn how to participate, go to: https://feministeducatorsagainstsexism.com/projects
7. Then add your spruik, for example, Feeling and Hearing Country by Anne Poelina, Sandra Wooltorton, Sandra Harben, Len Collard, Pierre Horwitz, David Palmer. I appreciate how these authors teach me the importance of experiential, creative, propositional, and participative ways of knowing as practices of ‘becoming family with place’. I give it five stars!

Below are some specific instructions for both Outlook and GMail that will assist with setting up your #FEAS Signature Spruik!

If you use GMail

1. Download GIF
2. Open settings in gmail (right hand corner) – click all settings
3. Scroll down until you find signatures
4. Create new signature
5. Click on the image icon (little square with a mountain inside) – it will open to a screen where you can upload the gif 
6. Once uploaded, right click in the signature section where you want the gif to go
7. Click save at the bottom of the settings

Voila!

If you use Outlook

1. Download the gif
2. Open manage signatures (can be found when creating an email, go to add signature, then it should come up with manage signatures) 
3. Edit or add new signature – 
4. Click on insert picture, upload the GIF
5. The gif will either show up automatically, then you can drag it to where you would like it – or you will need to right click once and it should show up

If you can’t upload the GIF, don’t worry! You can use this static image and follow the rest of the instructions above. Happy spruiking!

Project P: 2020

Project P: The Political, the Personal, the Practical

Welcome to PROJECT P: the most recent #FEAS Intervention. In light of the COVID-19 Pandemic we are setting out to put a PAUSE on the PANIC that many of us are feeling. Now, more than ever we need solidarity. PROJECT P: focuses on the political, the personal, and the practical as we attempt to slow down the endless accumulating news feeds and unrealistic work expectations about productivity during this pandemic.

Project P: has a colon, because it is an emerging project and we encourage you to make your own contribution to the beyond as new ways of being emerge from pandemic living.

A suite of 3 micro zine workshops took place between April-July 2020. Participants were all over the world, at all academic levels, were women and non-binary people. We worked together to create micro-zines that were then sent by post to Perth, WA. We created time to stop, pause, and create together in a supportive and safe space to alleviate some of the pandemic-related panic. 

The zines featured in a #FEAS short feature on The Sociological Review website. 

And also Jo and Mindy presented them at Perth’s Xerox Days Zine Market

 

The #FEAS 2020 Survival Kit

Business As Usual!Business As Usual!Business As Usual!Business As Usual!

It is no exaggeration that our lives have changed dramatically since the COVID-19 crisis, forcing academics to work from home. Like most disasters, this pandemic has gendered effects. Recent research conducted by Ruomeng Cui, Hao DIng, and Feng Zhu (2020) shows the disproportionate impact that lockdowns have had on research productivity for women in the social sciences. During the 10 weeks after the lockdown in the United States, Cui and colleagues found that although total research productivity increased by 35%, women academics, as compared to men, had their research productivity dropped by 13.9%. So, one of the most visible effects of the pandemic is the gap between men and women widens. An intersectional analysis of COVID and academic work is also urgently needed, and yet, during this crisis, university workplaces are forging forward with a ‘business as usual’ approach.

We were concerned with how everyday sexisms were playing out during the pandemic.  We wonder how women academics located in Victoria were experiencing everyday sexisms  as they were forced to juggle research, teaching, administrative work, all while at home, with many having to carry out increased household and caring duties. We also want to consider how everyday sexisms play out  now that the workplace has been brought into our private homes. In regards to challenging everyday sexisms in the workplace, for #FEAS it’s business as usual as we work to interrupt  the notion that we can all carry on ‘as normal’, despite challenging and unequal circumstances. One thing was clear, and that is for our Victorian colleagues, who were experiencing a Level 4, 6-week lockdown, a survival kit is necessary during these hard times!

WHAT IS A #FEAS 2020 SURVIVAL KIT?

A survival kit is an assembled package of basic tools and supplies needed to survive natural or huMANmade disasters. Most often associated with the US military, survival kits have been around for a while and in various  forms. Although there are different types of survival kits, such as medical kits, military kits, or those found on a lifeboat, the #FEAS SURVIVAL KIT 2020 has been made for our Victorian colleagues who are in lock-down, working from home and taking part in endless Zoom/Teams/Skype meetings, as well as listening to Vice Chancellors and line managers telling them that it is business as usual, AND endure endless updates from research office about research productivity.

The kit included an instructional video by artist and #FEAS member Lyndall Adams on how to complete your embroidery project. Lyndall will put the uncrafty at ease, as she assures you that ‘messy is okay’ and that this project requires ‘nothing fancy’: Click here to watch the video

Cite Club: The Zine #1 2019

Welcome to our first #FEAS zine! This zine was designed by Higher Degrees by Research students, postdoctoral fellows and academics at Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Western Australia.

ECU kindly funded a 2-day event in November 2019 where #FEAS conducted two workshop presentations to interdisciplinary audiences about the ethics of academic citational practices. The following day, we ran our first face-to-face zine making workshop and Cite Club: The Zine #1 is the result.

It is available here for you to download, print and share as you wish!

Click here to download the zine

Power Dressing

Sexist/anti-sexist bingo

Research shows that women often articulate their success in the academy as being due to luck or chance (see Diezmann and Grieshaber for examples). Therefore, we were interested in playing with the idea of luck and chance through a sexist/anti sexist bingo game that women delegates were invited to play throughout the AARE conference in 2016. The bingo card offered a commentary on the notion of luck and chance and also attends to the idea that academia is a game that we need to learn how to play.

#FEAS workshop participants designed the text boxes that replaced the traditional bingo numbers and we decided to include both sexist and anti-sexist experiences to acknowledge the diversity of experiences women have at conferences. Bingo was chosen as a format for intervening into sexism in the academy at conferences because of its association as a game of chance. Bingo is also closely associated with women, and with working class women in particular (Casey, 2003; Dixey, 1988). We therefore aimed to address both sexism and the notion of women’s achievements in academia being the result of luck and chance through our bingo intervention.

Bingo prizes and free feminist gifts were distributed through out the conference and included butterfly nets ‘for catching those elusive opportunities’; field glasses for ‘spotting sexism’; and whistles to ‘blow when no-one is paying attention’.

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Stand up comedy – Sexism, it isn’t funny!

Our workshops we asked participants to condense their discussions of written testimonies about sexism in the academy into single sentences or phrases on postcards. We then took these and turned them into ‘jokes without a punchline’ that were performed as a pop-up, stand up comedy at AARE in 2016. Linda dressed as a 70’s style stand up comedian and read out these not so funny statements accompanied by canned laughter that was activated by Emily who stood to the side wearing a ‘feminist killjoy’ t-shirt. This performance is intended to draw attention to the slippery, evasive nature of everyday sexism by drawing upon irony. Because the statements are based on tragic experiences and we are presenting them as if they are funny, we are deliberately subverting sexism and literally representing the notion of the ‘feminist killjoy’.

We also performed stand up comedy at the Gender and Education conference held at Middlesex University UK in June 2017, this time using women’s written student feedback as an anxiety-inducing performance. Women were positioned by students in their feedback as ‘available 24/7’, ‘’a bitch’, or described in terms of their physical appearance. Research has shown that women get disproportionately bad feedback, especially if they teach gender of feminism. Therefore this performance aimed to highlight the affective dimensions of student feedback for women in the academy as well as alerting university management that feedback is a duty of care issue – staff should not have to read personal or offensive comments about themselves – it’s not funny!

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The pipeline myth t-shirts, business cards and #FEAS logo

Our t-shirts, business cards, and the #FEAS (Feminist Educators Against Sexism) logo intend to draw attention to the marketisation of higher education and the notion of the corporate, neoliberal academic subject (read male). Participants in the workshop, particularly those who research around gender, felt that applying for funding has become increasingly futile because of governmental changes to funding priorities and the conditions of possibility for women generally in the academy. These interventions then reflect the ceaseless calls for self-promotion and the entrepreneurial academic, though these interventions are not for profit.

The statistical data we drew upon came from research carried out by Strachan et al. (2016), which demonstrated that sexism is endemic within Australian universities and that the academic ‘pipeline’ is a myth for many women.

We used Strachan et al’s statistics in a deliberately subversive way – for example the statistic of 7% women professors (Level E) in Australia represents that in the Australian academic workforce, 26% are professors and of those 7% are women, meaning that men outnumber women by more than 2 to 1 according to Strachan et al.’s research. We were not explicit about the statistic, allowing conference delegates to draw their own inferences and use the t-shirts as a discussion point about the gendered division of labour in Australian universities rather than as a social scientific ‘fact’. Each t-shirt was also accompanied with an information card that explains the concept of what we have now called The Pipeline Myth T-shirt, and remind those wearing it that they might activate interest and possibly questions. We encourage women to take this opportunity to explain the pipeline myth and how these statistics, which show that women are not moving through the pipeline from lecturer A to Professor, highlight a form of sexism. These interventions are then creating opportunities for women to practice telling stories of everyday sexism and why it matters to a range of audiences.

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#FEAS Letters

Letter writing campaigns are common in feminist networks, sparked in response to sexism and other injustices. For example in 2009 the London Feminist Network held a letter writing campaign to protest the ‘Girlation’ event held at the Natural History Museum: http://londonfeministnetwork.org.uk

#FEAS contribute to this feminist tradition by working collectively to call out injustices where we see them! We do so by working collectively on letters – if there is something you would like to call out, contact us! We are more powerful as a collective than as individuals.

#FEAS have your back!

If you have an issue of feminist concern that you would like us to send a letter about, let us know at: feministeducatorsagainstsexism@gmail.com

Letter to the University of Melbourne to protest an event entitled The Future of Sex-based Rights, the promotion for which contained transphobic language

Dear Vice Chancellor,

Feminist Educators Against Sexism #FEAS are an international feminist collective committed to challenging and interrupting sexism in the academy. #FEAS are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, queer people, people of colour, trans* people, indigenous peoples, women, gender queer people, sex workers, people who identify with every letter of LGBTIQ and men. The thing that unites us is our feminism and a strong belief in challenging sexist oppression in every form it takes.

It has come to our attention that The University of Melbourne is hosting an event entitled The Future of Sex-based Rights, which is being co-hosted by the Victorian Women’s Guild. This event discusses, ‘A Bill currently before the Victorian parliament would, if passed, allow people to change their official record of sex by making a statutory declaration that they believe their sex to be as nominated’.

The advertising for the event asks, ‘What will this change mean for data collection, for example tracking sex equality outcomes, or for crime statistics? What are the implications for access to women’s single-sex spaces, or for measures put in place to tackle women’s underrepresentation? Why haven’t women been consulted on these changes?’

#FEAS find these statements to be deeply offensive as they perpetuate harmful assumptions that ‘women’ are a unified group whose sex assigned at birth matches their gender identity and that this is stable, true and irrefutable. We fear that trans* and gender diverse people will be framed during the event as ‘imposters’ to the spaces inhabited by ‘normal’ women and that they pose some kind of moral, physical and psychological threat to ‘women’ in these spaces.

We understand arguments about academic freedom and freedom of speech, but we also know the cost of these freedoms to oppressed and marginalised groups in our society who are too often spoken for not spoken with. Academic freedom is wonderful when it is academic (that is, based on rigorous research), but this kind of oppressive anti-intellectualism is dangerous because it co-opts the language of feminism to justify a position that can no longer be supported by either the physical or social sciences.

These concerns are reflected in the event because trans* and gender diverse people are not being represented within the group of speakers.

We hope that this letter, and the many other letters and petitions that you will receive about the event, will make the University mindful of the issues raised and to ensure in the future that the University campus is a safe space for everyone.

Sent on behalf of the #FEAS collective

Letter to the Taylor and Francis Group protesting the editor of the journal Disability and Society’s public transphobia.

Dear Taylor and Francis Group,

Feminist Educators Against Sexism #FEAS are an international feminist collective that was founded in Australia. #FEAS are committed to challenging and interrupting sexism in the academy. #FEAS are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, queer people, people of colour, trans* people, indigenous peoples, women, gender queer people, sex workers, people who identify with every letter of LGBTIQ and men. The thing that unites us is our feminism and a strong belief in challenging sexist oppression in every form it takes.

It has come to our attention that the editor of the journal Disability and Society, has publicly promoted anti-transgender sentiments and utilized their position as editor of a high-impact, international journal to suppress important trans scholarship. As examples, they have claimed on social media platforms that “transgender ideology” is harmful to children and adolescents;  has promoted posts claiming trans suicide rates are myths; has argued against children’s self-identification in her own scholarship; and, perhaps most troubling given their position, has(ab)used their leadership role at Disability and Society to block the publication of an already-accepted article by scholars regarding the intersection of trans and disability studies.

This kind of oppressive behaviour does not belong in academia, especially in a publication that should be about championing the rights and vocalising the experiences of marginalised groups.

We understand arguments about academic freedom and freedom of speech, but we also know the cost of these freedoms to oppressed and marginalised groups in our society who are too often spoken for not spoken with. 

We hope that you will listen to our concerns and the concerns of many other academics across the world who have similar concerns to us.

Sent on behalf of the #FEAS collective

Letter to Australian Deans of Education in response to ongoing issues around rape culture in Australia

Dear Dean,

#FEAS Feminist Educators Against Sexism are an Australian-based, international collective of feminist educators. #FEAS are queer, straight, Indigenous, people of colour, and white. We are women, men and non-binary people – what binds us is our commitment to end gender-based discrimination within education and other social and cultural spaces.

We write to you as an Australian Dean of Education to ask that you help us to address a crisis in Australian education. This crisis concerns the lack of policy and curriculum directives around sexuality and gender education in Australian schools. This crisis has been highlighted by a widely circulated petition developed by Chanel Contos in relation to the rape culture that characterises many young people’s lives. This culture is not limited to schools, it is everywhere – including in Higher

Education and all workplaces. It blights the lives of Australians in every occupation and every sphere of life. We call upon you to demand that large scale reforms to gender and sexuality education are enacted in Australia. We urge you to:

– Send an email to all staff with a statement acknowledging the crisis and the critical role of education in addressing said crisis

– Lobby Ministers for Education, state and federal, to incorporate gender and sexuality education into the curriculum

– Ensure that all beginning teachers are well equipped, and feel safe and supported to discuss issues related to gender, sex and sexuality with the young people they teach (recognising that these issues might arise on camp, in the home room, as part of pastoral care, or within diverse classroom and school settings)

– Form a working group at your university that will focus on this issue as a matter of urgency

– Create a long-term plan for a deep review of your School’s or Faculty’s mission, values and objectives and how they contribute to creating an institutional culture of education for equity and fairness with regards to gender and sexuality.

Reform is also needed urgently in regard to teacher education, where AITSL standards do not address gender and sexuality. This means that most teacher education students graduate with no understanding or skills through which to address the issues of gender and sexuality that are present in every classroom, regardless of subject area. We ask you to review your programmes and ensure that all teacher education students graduate with the understanding and skills needed to enact the deep change needed in our present culture.

We are long past the point where enough is enough and we need to move beyond reacting to moments of crises towards responding meaningfully to the issues that underlie an insidious patriarchal culture of masculinism, racism, misogyny, homo and trans*phobia and ableism that contribute to a culture that enables rape, sexual harassment and assault.

Signed

#FEAS Feminist Educators Against Sexism