I organized the recent West Coast North America Women’s and Men’s Leaders’ Workshop that Diane Balser [International Liberation Reference Person for Women] and Tim Jackins [International Reference Person for the RC Communities] led. The workshop was originally supposed to be a three-day workshop in person, but due to the current pandemic, it was a one-day workshop over Zoom. One hundred and thirty-four people attended. A little more than two thirds of the participants were women, and a little less than one third were men. It was a big organizing job and a very different job doing it over Zoom. It was incredibly useful to have a big technology team led by Chris Selig that facilitated the technology running smoothly and allowed the rest of the workshop to go well. 


Diane led a class just for women in the morning. She asked us to work on what it is like to prioritize ourselves as females during this particular time. She reminded us that during crises, like war and the current pandemic, we women are asked to sacrifice ourselves to ensure the survival of others, the species, and our culture. She emphasized the brutality of sexism while also drawing our attention to the fact that it is systematically trivialized. Both of these make it hard to put our minds on it and discharge regularly on it. Diane reminded us that, internationally, domestic violence and sexual exploitation go up during times of crisis, including right now. She also reminded us that the majority of those who are essential workers right now are women, because women do the majority of the work that is about taking care of people and sustaining humanity. Diane counseled women on these issues.


In the afternoon class Diane led the women and the men. She pushed us as women to be vulnerable in our relationships with men and to communicate clearly the effects of sexism on our lives—not blame them for the effects but reach for them as our allies in the fight against sexism. She did a panel with several women on the effects of sexism on their early lives and also pushed them to communicate to men how sexism affects them now.


Tim then led a class for both women and men. He emphasized how one of the effects of oppression is that if we are not targeted by an oppression, we can’t really understand it. We can and need to learn about it, and we also need to be aware of the fact that we won’t ever really understand some things about it. 


Despite people’s unawareness of our oppression and their oppressor material, we can still reach for them as our allies. We can teach them about how their oppressor material [distress] or other things affect us and have affected us. For example, women can tell men how their sexism affects them as women, and men can tell women how men’s oppression affects them as men. In order to do this effectively, we cannot get lost in our restimulations about the oppression. We have to remember that we are reaching for the other human’s mind. 


We also can’t wait to resolve all of the oppression issues before we try to work together as a united front to change society. It will not work to bury the effects of oppression, but it also won’t work to remain divided, unaware, and blaming each other for the effects of the oppression. We need to assume every human is our ally, regardless of where they have been hurt into acting out oppressor material. But we do need to push them to understand how their oppressor material affects us or how a particular oppression has hurt us.


A personal highlight was getting to work so systematically on how sexism has affected me as a female. One effect has been to be preoccupied with other people’s feelings and take care of those feelings, so much so that I often can’t put attention on myself. I was able to work on this. A benefit of being on Zoom was that I could notice how much I am distracted at in-person workshops by other people’s sessions. In this context, I was much more able to keep my attention focused squarely on my own battles against sexism.