The cancellation of the TEDx talk on feminism this week, and the discussions triggered by it, exhibit the extent to which we are all slaves to our own inherent biases.
As Lian Bell – one of the women due to speak at the panel – wrote in the Irish Times yesterday, “we were all white women, and yes, of course I should have noticed that”.
“I should have noticed that”, was the overarching sentiment of most people when the lack of diversity on the panel was raised. With the line-up all female, most thought the job was done. Equality had been served.
However, no matter their success or contribution to feminism, a panel of five white women doesn’t contribute enough to the discourse about equality in this country. While calling them “pale and stale” is a criticism too far – they have, after all, given large amounts of their own time and resources to the feminist cause – there’s no doubt that the panel should have been more representative when it came to women of colour, women with disabilities and queer women.
The fact that few of us detected that these groups were unaccounted for – and that it took the women who felt unrepresented by the panel to draw our attention to it – shows that there is still a lot to be learned about what feminism in this country should look like.
It was unfortunate that the online conversation descended into a quagmire of “us versus them”, with the debate becoming unhelpfully personal at times. While meritorious in their cause, the unyielding rhetoric of activists left little space for mistakes.
However, the day-to-day discussions informed by the event’s postponement provide an opportunity for Irish feminists to look in the mirror.
As the rest of the world pats Ireland on the back for its recent progress, closer to home there has always been this shadow of exclusion hanging over our biggest achievements.
The postponement of the TEDx event was a disappointing move. But what the outcry over the lack of diversity shows is that there are plenty of women with differing experiences willing to add their voices to the discussion. They should be given the chance.
