Lauren kent's Page

What issues are most important to you?

Spiritual and personal growth and development; the environment; family.

What kind of social activism do you engage in?

Anything that promotes something and does not slander or fight AGAINST something.

What organizations do you love or work with?

Slow Food; Dance For All

What books, music, films, etc. do you think educate and empower women?

Leaving the Saints, Expecting Adam and The 4-Day Win, all by Martha Beck
A Thousand Splendid Suns by...
The Red Tent by Anita Diamante
Daughter of Fortune by Isabelle Allande

Career: what do you do or want to do?

I want to dance, be a researcher, have a farm and write childrens' stories!

What skills and interests to do you have to offer to others in the Red Tent Women's Project communty? This is your chance, so sell yourself!

I have a BA in Anthropology and isiXhosa and am currently finishing my Honours degree in Anthropology. Anthropology enables you to think - really really think and challenge stereotypes and question structures in society. I can do this, and I can write pretty well to. Languages are also one of my strength :)

What would you like other members of this community to know? About yourself, about the world...anything (try not to be profane, though)!

I love the open savannah, imagination, quiet chats, dancing wildly in breakdancing or beautifully in ballet. I love performing and making things, scrapbooking and jewelery. I love gypsies and travelling, Morocco and South Africa.

I love to laugh, sing in the shower, fly in my dreams, magic. I love believing in something and doing what you love and writing and children's books and and drawing and believing in magic.

What was your "women really matter and I'm going to do something about it" moment?

I think, and I might be shot down by feninists all around the world, that women need to stop trying to be LIKE men and start finding strenth in being a woman. In my 2nd year of Anthropology we did a Power and Wealth course and of course, touched on feminism. When the movement first came about, women wanted to break away from patriarchal structures and create power in their own way. Now-a-days, women are trying to find a niche for themselves within already firmly intrenched partiarchal structures - they are even wearing suits (not that I am condeming women who do - hey if it looks good, wear it!).

I read a story about Hillary Clinton who went on a charity work venture to a rural village in Bangladesh - poor women, poor in our industrialised way of thinking. But because Hillary only had ONE child and didn't want more; she owned NO cows are animals of her own and DID NOT work (at the time anyway), those women felt more empowered that what they thought Hillary Clinton was.

It made me stop and think that we are so egotistical as to think that we know exactly how other women must be thinking a feeling. In a way, those women were more free and more feminist than "western" feminists are.

What, I want to ask, is so wron with CHOOSING to be "barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen"? I want nothing more than to spend my days at home, in the sun, reading, writing, cooking, when I am pregnant. I want to grow my own vegetables and get fat and happy.

Is this not the most important thing I can do? ONLY women can bare children and that is soething we have above men. I can be just as much a feminist while cooking and baking.

Just as a woman who chooses not to have children or not to get married who owns her own company can be a feminist.

Also men and women in a relationship should strive for balance i a relationship - sometimes the woman makes the decisions, sometimes the man makes the decisions - sometimes they both do.

And women are not passive prawns that are "controlled" and forced to behave in a certain way. Women have agency and are active players in the creation of their lives.

I realised that women are a lot stronger and brighter and more feminist than we give most of them credit for (obviously there are exceptions where they are phisially or sexually abused, or incredibly marginalised - but even n these cases, women have agency to be able to do something to make their lives better, even if just a tiny thing).

And gender is socially constructed, so on the sign up page, please rather ask "sex: male, femal" not gender...

And I apologise for any spelling errors ;)