Feminism for girls... (and boys too)

Ova knjiga najpre je namenjena devojčicama, ali nipošto ne samo njima. Njena idealna čitateljka ima godina koliko i pripovedačica, 12, možda 13 ili 11, ne manje, ali sasvim moguće više.

Ona, ta zamišljena mlada čitateljka, najverovatnije ide u školu, plus-minus sedmi razred, u kojoj se zvanično ne pominje feminizam.

Zašto mama posprema kuću, a ne tata? Zašto nosim tatino prezime, a ne mamino? Zašto znamo više za sportiste i naučnike, nego za naučnice i sportistkinje?

– samo su neka od hiljadu pitanja koja u ime svih devojčica postavlja Likica, junakinja ove knjige.

Iz knjiga i sa zidova silaze među školske klupe muškarci – sedi, stari, bradati, mrki, ozbiljni, važni, uredni, beli, imućni... Pesnici, kompozitori, fizičari, matematičari, vojskovođe, kraljevi, piloti, genetičari, botaničari, lekari, pisci, moreplovci, vladike, astronauti...

Iz nekog razloga među njima nema žena, ali se o tom razlogu ćuti.

Ova knjiga napisana je da to ćutanje prekine.

Lekcije koje ti možda neće pomoći da imaš sve petice, ali će ti pomoći da činiš svet pravednijim i boljim mestom za sebe i svoje prijateljice. A prva i najvažnija lekcija glasi: Ne postoji ništa, baš ništa, što devojčice ne bi mogle, ne bi smele ili bi morale da učine – samo zato što su devojčice!

Tamara Zablocki

Iz recenzije Nenada Veličkovića

M S I N I FEM

Za feminizam nikad nije prerano. Drage devojčice, ako razmišljate odakle da počnete, ovo je odlično mesto.

Nađa Duhaček

S L R I G R FO O) O T , S OY B D N A (

M S I N I FEM )

!

O O T , S Y O S ND B A L ( R I G R O F

Lamija Begagić Marina Veličković Ana Pejović

FEMINISM

The first edition Priručnik „Furam feminizam“ Lamije Begagić i Marine Veličković originalno je objavljen u ediciji „Lektira narodu“ magazina „Školegijum“, Izdavač: „Mas Media“ Sarajevo / „Fond otvoreno društvo BiH“, 2016.

Za izdanje na srpskom jeziku © Kreativni centar 2017

CONTENTS Foreword to the Serbian edition IT’S NOT BECAUSE WE MADE HER, BUT BECAUSE SHE’S GOLDEN 5 FEMINISM 11 Glossary FEMINISM 89 About the authors 111

FOREWORD TO THE SERBIAN EDITION IT’S NOT BECAUSE WE MADE HER, BUT BECAUSE SHE’S GOLDEN The idea for this book was born after a successful lecture titled Feminism for Beginners, which was organized for elementary school students in Gradačac, a small town in Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Hasan Kikić Literary Gatherings. The curiosity expressed by these girls, and the confession that their questions on sex, gender and equality often ran into doors with seven locks, encouraged us to open the eight one – this manual.

This book is primarily – to use theoretical speak – a didactic tool.

Writing the first part in slang, which we assumed was used by our readers and, as such, would be adopted quickly and organically, was a literary trick. We utilized these literary tools to attract and hold their attention, but we did not create a literary work. Our target audience was not book awards jurors and literary critics, but girls who are interest-

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ed in the subject matter, their friends, teachers and mothers, as well as their fathers, male friends and teachers…

The first edition of this book was published in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was included in a special library called Lektira narodu (“literature to the people”). Books from this library are not stocked on shelves in bookshops, they are sold as a part of a magazine. The magazine’s name is Školegijum and it is dedicated to fair education, a cause supported by the entirety of its editorial staff. The authors of the book also work for this magazine, which is something they proudly highlight in their resumes. There are no taboos in fair education, and anything that might interest girls from Gradačac, Sarajevo or Prijedor, as well as those from Belgrade, Užice or Čačak, is free to be discussed in school. In fair education, school is both a playground and a safe space.

This is why the first and original edition of this book, published alongside Školegijum magazine, rightfully saw schools, classrooms, school yards and school libraries as places where it would be opened, flipped through, borrowed, have its pages underlined, dog-eared and doodled on…

The fact that the Serbian edition was issued by the Kreativni Centar publishing house seemed like an organic next step of the expectations we had when this book was first published. Kreativni Centar’s books are carefully kept in our personal libraries, and its dedication to publishing good, modern and open-minded textbooks for the generations who are changing the world are, in fact, part of the shared battle for fair education.

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We still believe that the book, regardless of the distribution means, will finds its way to girls (and boys!), but also their teachers.

Maybe it will be strange for all of them to read about periods, contraception and abortion at first. Maybe Dudette, our protagonist, will sometimes irritate the readers or maybe her decisions won’t make sense to them. Maybe, at times, she won’t feel real or relatable. She is a girl who is growing up in a big city, both of her parents have jobs, her aunt is educated, and her sister, who is teaching her about feminist values, is always studying and reading. She likes science, volunteers for school projects, collects books for the local library, goes swimming, thinks about how to actively occupy her time during the school break… Maybe some readers lack the opportunity to do a lot of these things: maybe they can’t afford swimming lessons or maybe there are no swimming pools where they live, maybe they don’t have a sister who is able to study, maybe their everyday life looks much different.

But this does not mean that Dudette’s problems aren’t the same problems of every girl in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. This also does not mean that the problems the readers of this book face are, although different, somehow less important than hers. The fact that Dudette enjoys certain privileges (which she gradually realizes not everyone has access to as she is writing this) does not mean that what she writes about wasn’t also intended for those who don’t have them. Dudette found answers with the help of

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her aunt and sister (her mum and dad were helpful, too).

Her aunt and sister can be a stand-in aunt and sister to all of you.

We believe that fairness, solidarity, equality and other feminist ideals have no borders: they are not meant only for people who are wealthy, educated or white – they are for everyone!

To this fictional blog we also added a glossary, which was derived from contemporary feminist theory. Of course, it has been abridged and simplified, so it can be used as a clear and accessible introduction to some of its key concepts and terms.

The end result is (we hope) an honest, fun and useful manual.

However, in order to make it more understandable for girls in Serbia, we decided to alter and adapt the language or slang that the Dudette is using. The challenging task of adapting the text was done by Ana Pejović, a cultural worker, translator, feminist and, above all, a friend. To this end, Ana has consulted language experts big and small, her sister Maja and niece Milica.

The slang and language of Dudette from Sarajevo and Belgrade might be a little different, but their reality is the same. Their problems are the same, just as the challenges that all girls who are growing up in these patriarchal societies face are the same.

We hope that girls from Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac or Prijepolje will feel less lonely with Dudette by their side,

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and understand that the injustice they experience in everyday life annoy them for a reason.

We also thank Ljiljana Marinković from Kreativni Centar, who recognized this book as something worth publishing in Serbia, Dunja Begović for her useful suggestions for this edition, Ana Janković, Marija Bešević, as well as all the girls and boys from the Nada Matić elementary school in Užice, and Snežana Cvetković, their teacher.

Finally, a thank you to all the wonderful women and girls who were part of Dudette’s upbringing, regardless of whether that was in Sarajevo or Belgrade: Selma, Vedrana, Nađa, Jasmina, Sandra, Tamara, Hana, Kristina, Ružica, Berina, Dunja, Alina, Lejla, Sanja, Klaudija, Vanja, Mum and Aunt and other courageous women and girls who live inside them.

It’s not because we made her, but because she’s so brave, proud and confident in herself. In short, a golden girl! – this is how we used to joke with Dudette, the two of us authors, who still like to present as her aunt and sister (even though we still haven’t decided who is who).

Authors Lamija Begagić Marina Veličković Ana Pejović

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FEMINISM INTRODUCTION TO THE SUBJECT OF GENDER EQUALITY IN FORM OF A BLOG

monday my name is dudette and today is monday. ok, my name is obviously not dudette, but since i will be using this space to freely write about subjects that usually aren’t discussed freely, for freedom’s sake, my name will be – dudette. i am 13 years old. i am a girl, which you’ve figured out by now, and as a dude-ETTE i use the feminine gender and all, but it’s worth repeating that i’m a girl, since the fact that i’m a girl will often influence how others treat me, even when they don’t have a clue about who i am or what i am like. i will write about this, too. other than that, eight grade, best friend, cool sister, mum, dad, school, swimming, books. that’ll do for now. anyway, today is monday and i started my period for the first time. period. first time. i started. my period. but let’s go back to the beginning. the period thing happened around 3 o’clock, and before then, in retrospect i can say with certainty, many things occurred which hinted that my period

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would be happening on this very day. all in all, it was kind of a weird day. first i got up on the wrong side of the bed. maybe because i generally don’t like mondays, maybe because mum and dad were arguing in the kitchen again, and maybe because i sensed that today was the p-day. anyway, i got up, had a cup of tea that my mum had made me. i had banana and peanut butter toast. this is what i usually have for breakfast, but today i was still kind of hungry. we don’t have nutella around the house anymore, since mum decided to go on a diet. then i went back into my room to check out what’s new on facebook, while my folks continued arguing about who works too much and who should work less in the office so they could work more around the house. this whole argument seemed a little chaotic and pointless, so i played some music. i think that that the conclusion was that this chaos could not go on, then they both left for work. nothing happened at school. i mean, a lot of things happened, but most of it was pretty boring. we learned about some worms in biology class. the teacher was annoyed because nobody found those worms interesting and he blamed the internet for everything. we didn’t feel like explaining it to him that the chances of finding worms interesting would be pretty slim even without the existence of internet – except maybe for the sour gummy ones.

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a very important thing about me – i have a super-cool best friend. i mean, i know how everyone thinks their super-cool friends are super-cool, but mine really is. he is a few months older than me and he lives with his mum. his mum is also cool and i love going to their place at weekends, because she lets us cook with her, then we watch a tonne of movies. the only thing with my best friend is that he has an eating disorder. i mean, that’s what the school counsellor told him and his mum. he thinks she misdiagnosed him. i’m not so sure. i mean, i don’t really understand what that is. i tried googling it, but the online explanations aren’t very good – they just say how people think they’re fat so they don’t want to eat, but that sounds oversimplified. my best friend never says that he doesn’t want to eat, he just has these moments where he accidentally drops his lunch or he’s not hungry or he can’t eat. in literature class, the teacher kept talking about a main character in a ballad who happened to be a woman. i asked if this woman had a name and why we kept calling her after her husband, but my teacher told me not to go off topic. i wasn’t sure which topic was more important than this one. after that, i just zoned out and started doodling in my notebook. i barely made it home after school, i was even supposed to go swimming, but i had a bad tummy ache, so i stayed home. my mum lectured me over the phone how it was pointless for them to pay for the lessons if i was going to be

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slacking. i told them that surely it was even more pointless to go through the hassle while i’m in pain just because they paid for the lessons. then she told me i would understand when i start earning my own money. i doubt it. besides, i’m not even sure why you have to pay for swimming, surely it should be free, so all the children could go, not just the ones whose parents can afford to pay for the pool and the swimming instructor. but i realised it was better not to get into this discussion over the phone. so i finished the conversation with my mum. i went to the bathroom to pee, when i noticed something – a spot on my underwear. i mean, it wasn’t the period that surprised me, i knew it was going to happen sooner or later, as much as the fact that it wasn’t really red, just kind of brownish. and there wasn’t a lot of it. i don’t know, honestly, i thought it was all going to be a little more dramatic. i called for my sister to hand me a pair of fresh underwear, and she showed me what to do with the sanitary pad. to be honest, i already knew what to do, because, it’s not like rocket science or anything: peel it off, stick it on, but still, i let her show off a little bit, because it seemed like it was important for her to take care of me in that moment. she made me a cup of tea, filled up a hot water bottle and ran off to her lectures. my mum got home from work and asked why i was wearing my pyjamas in the middle of the day. i told her i started my period and she informed me that i had become a woman. honestly, i don’t feel like a woman any more than i did this morning.

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i just feel bloated and like i have three knives stuck in my belly. my dad made an off-hand joke about PMS, then told me how he was proud of me. i’m not exactly sure why, since i don’t have any control over my ovaries, so it’s not like this is some kind of personal achievement. just now, they sent my sister over to explain period basics to me, i guess they thought it was too lame for them to do it. basically – my ovaries are now mature enough to release an egg into my uterus once a month. this egg can be fertilised (but only, like, 5-6 days per month) and when it doesn’t get fertilised, then that egg and the lining of my uterus are shed from my body. so, periods are in fact great, not because i become a woman, but because my ovaries and uterus are working the way they’re supposed to. which in turn means i’m healthy, so it’s a #win for me. my tummy hurts a little less, i’m off to the kitchen to embrace that tub of fruit yogurt since there’s no nutella around (yes, i decided i’m allowed to spoil myself today!) and watch gilmore girls. have you ever seen it? the show is about a mother and daughter, they’re really cool and funny and they’re having a great time in general. it’s reaaally old, and there are some things i don’t get, but it’s pretty good. so yeah, if you’ve never seen it, check it out. you can find it online.

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