Women in the Climate Movement (Part 2)

Alienor Rougeout  0:00  

And a lot of us don’t want to be activists, we just want to be actively solving the problems.

Hayley Brackenridge  0:26  

Hello, and welcome back to Establish a podcast by Shake up the Establishment. In the second and final instalment of our Woman in Climate series, the conversation between Manvi Bhalla, Alienor Rougeout and Payton Mitchell gets even juicier, as the guests share stories about being a woman in leadership, and provide recommendations for getting involved in the climate movement. If you missed part one of this series, definitely go back and listen to catch Manvi, Allie and Payton’s background in activism, and their critique of leadership and power dynamics. Now, let’s jump back in.

Manvi Bhalla  1:01  

Being a woman in leadership, I personally have experienced misogyny and racism in my own organizations even, so it’s really interesting how you know, you’re really not immune from any place. It’s not like you can vision this utopia, you can think that this community all has the goal of climate justice. So how could it be oppressive? Or how could it be misogynistic? Or how could there be anything of that sort, but then it still perpetuates in spaces like that. What I’m finding is that a lot of the women and gender diverse folks, they just they don’t challenge your authority, you know, and I found a lot of people, I’ll give feedback, and they’ll like, mansplain different things to me, or I’ve had, unfortunately, a former person who was involved in SUTE, and in other work, I’ve had the same experiences not unique to just this setting but other settings as well, guys talking over me in meetings, or I’ll say something and they’ll say the exact same thing, every single meeting, as if THEY thought of it. And it’s so infuriating. And I’ve actually had situations where I’ve politely been like, “Hey, I’ve noticed this is happening, and it really frustrates me. And I know, you’re an ally, so could you please like, maybe stop doing that, maybe you don’t recognize you’re doing it” and really trying to be even, like, polite in my approach in providing feedback. Never been received well. Mostly, they just like leave the movement. They just think like, oh, this is another one of those situations. And then oftentimes, it’s kind of like gaslighting, you kind of think like, as a woman, like, “Am I overreacting?” Am I being to quote, you know, I think those popular, popular sayings like, you’re a boss, not a bitch, but you kind of feel like a bitch, you know, in those situations. And you kind of feel gaslit. It takes so long to undo the harm of gaslighting in these situations when you are a woman in leadership. That’s what contributes to that imposter syndrome then – it’s just this big cycle. So, I’m curious to know if you guys have had any experiences with misogyny, or any other kind of, you know, oppression or discrimination in any of the, in any spaces you’ve been in really, and how that’s impacted your life and your leadership.

Payton Mitchell  3:02  

I’ve been fortunate enough that I haven’t had too many negative experiences with men in the climate movement. But getting involved in kind of like the Student Life space in university, like I first started in the Political Science Student Association at my school, and I started on the debate team. And in those spaces, I faced a lot of misogyny. And a lot of sexualization. The student organizing space, I found that really, really challenging. In activism specifically, and in my like climate activism, the main experiences I’ve had is men taking credit for my work. That’s something that I’ll be having conversations with people, months, months later, explaining to them just talking to them about like, you know, there are other people in the movement. I’m just talking to them about like, stuff that I’m working on, this, that, it was actually specifically there was somebody, who, when I mentioned earlier that I mobilized my university for kind of like the first climate strike that we did at Concordia in March 2019. And months later, I was chatting with someone. And they were like, “Oh, I thought that like so-and-so had planned that entire event”. And I had met with him one single time throughout planning the climate strike. He was more involved with the sort of like provincial coalition that was being built. But then I found out he wasn’t that involved with that either, because he had been telling people he was working on the Concordia climate strike. So the way that like men will sort of just like push work onto women and allow like, just to take credit for work. It’s really strange. It almost kind of circles back to this idea of power and taking power or imposter syndrome that we were talking about before, that I think women have a really hard time bragging about the things that we’ve done. A really hard time. I have a really hard time that I feel like really self conscious whenever I talk about the work that I do, because I feel like I don’t know, it’s just so it’s really exciting stuff. And I do feel like the stuff that I’ve done is really cool. And so it just it sometimes feels awkward. Men have no problem talking about work that they were like slightly involved in as if they led that meeting. Like men will attend an anti-racism workshop and be like I was involved in BLM.

Manvi Bhalla  5:18  

Totally agree with you, they take up so much space. And this is obviously, these are generalizations, but these are real lived experiences that we’ve had also. So I completely agree with you. And I really want to like say, extra snaps to the whole idea of like, taking credit, I always say to people, I’m like, don’t have the title, if you’re not doing the work. Like if I’m up at 2am doing your job for you, I might as well take on the role formally. Like, what are you doing here? You know. And I would never say that years ago, but I would say as of like 2021, a lot of like, just like badass like, I just don’t care anymore. We’re doing need to get shit done. And we need to do it efficiently. And you taking credit for work that I’m doing at 2am is not efficient, because it’s harming my mental health. So that’s also an important aspect where it’s like it is oppressive, and it has an emotional toll. And you don’t talk about it ever. Because what do you say? You’re, you’re you’re being annoying? Like you’re taking credit for my work? You sound like a little brat saying that to them. But that’s the honest truth, you know. And so I really appreciate that take 

Payton Mitchell  6:16  

On that, because you only experience life as a woman, you don’t know that this isn’t how they act when they’re working with men. I think that it’s really interesting that so much communication that you get kind of like growing up, like as a young girl. And even just like in TV and media, it’s about how women hate each other and can’t work together. And like women, like you can’t bring two women to like the same group of men, because they’ll hate each other, they won’t be friends, they’ll be gossiping, they won’t be getting along, when that has never been my experience. Ever. I’ve you know, I’ve had a girl here or there who I don’t jive with, and we’ve had not good times. But for the most part, anytime that I’ve been working with women, especially when it’s exclusively women, it’s been so efficient, SO efficient. Nobody is trying to like take power of the conversation. Nobody’s trying to prove to everybody that they’re like, much smarter than everyone else in the room. And you know, here or there that does happen. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t have the same impact or doesn’t cause the same amount. They don’t, even when women are doing that they don’t take up as much space. And so it doesn’t have the same impact or disruption to the conversation. And I find that so interesting as like we’re moving into, like, we’ve all been working in activism for a couple of years now. SUTE is being pretty much run by women at this point. Like that’s really, that’s a really interesting, like, that’s a really interesting development and movement forward. And so I wonder how much of like those of us who are doing a lot of work when we’re young, how much it was, we’ll just be kind of like moving towards doing just like a lot of really like women heavy work as we get older and like, kind of like you were saying being, you know, tired of chasing people.

Alienor Rougeout  7:57  

There are so many instances of sexualization and of misogyny, me being a woman activist and facing just the world as a whole. And I think like even when you were speaking so many examples were coming to mind, and I was trying to think of like, what made most sense to even share but the most, like obvious moments of sexualization have been, um, men coming up to me and – often my age or a little older – coming up to me at the end of a strike. And I just, you know, ran a strike and was like dealing with like traffic and crowds and like, giving speeches and whatever, and them be like, “Oh, you look so good up there”. And you know, things like that. And “can I have your number” and like, or, you know, like, DMing me afterwards being like, I think you look like, you know, making it clear that the language was like, “You look super, like, cute when you’re so passionate” or “you you like you look really hot when you’re talking about these topics”. And I’m like, I’m talking about the end of civilization as we know it, but I’m glad you think it’s hot. And so those those have actually happened a few times. And I had moments where I was like, is it because I make a point to always like wear a dress and have my like, and look nice when I go to strikes and so are people just confused by that? It doesn’t mean I’m going to change it’s just like is that the reason? And then I realized no, I think there’s a there’s a little bit of an of an issue or people just I guess maybe don’t see enough women in power that when they do for some reason they manage to fetishize it because it’s, I don’t know the dynamic there I really don’t like master that kind of the understanding behind it, but it is an experience that’s happened several times. And adding to that, I’ve had like whole arguments dismissed with comments that just like threw me off completely because it was a sexist comment and that like happened once with a reporter and happened, it wasn’t a big like channel it was like some, like I don’t know if it was student journalism or something small, but you know, I said a whole kind of thing and the reporter did not agree. And, and their comment was, “Well, we disagree on many things, but you do have a very nice smile”. And it’s like, I don’t think that’s the answer to me explaining to you why we have to phase out of fossil fuels or, or anything of the sort. So again, kind of those constant, I think that constant feedback that you probably don’t get if you’re a man, and you’re an activist that I’ve gotten. And I’ve actually heard from, from folks that are racialized, that imagine adding that, is when you’re this, you become this public figure. Sure, people always think, oh, but it’s cool, you get to be on TV, or cool, you get these, you know, followers, but also the level of risks, like increases. And so even if I count, like the amount of very sexist and sometimes threatening sexist comments that I’ve gotten on like Twitter, or through DMs, and then I imagine that multiplied by any other identity that you have, I think that’s where I’ve experienced the most, you know, harm in that way, is, is that outside world that’s just very, very harsh with you when you just kind of take leadership. 

Manvi Bhalla  11:10  

Yeah, Allie, honestly, like, everything you said, just really resonated with me. Something that Payton said, and you said kind of, in my mind kind of clicked. And it’s interesting that like, as a woman of color, and I shouldn’t generalize too much like, as a South Asian woman, particularly like, I have experiences, I have opinions, they don’t represent the South Asian community completely, nor do they represent women completely. I also have ADHD, you know, neurodiverse person. And I really make a point of that. I don’t represent the neuro diverse community, but I create space for those people to be authentically themselves. So I think that that’s the misconception is people think you, like representation is you speaking for people, but it’s just you increasing the availability and almost like you’re, you’re trying to be in those spaces to be gatekeepers, and let more people like you in and then collectively, we can kind of come bring all of our opinions into these spaces. And over time, we’ll see a change and see policies reflect our best interests. I think that’s the goal of representation. It’s not to have this power to be the voice for the voiceless. And that’s not anybody’s intention. And when you’re a leader, you have to take these opportunities and do them, you almost feel like you have to because if you don’t, like, you know, your group is needing you to do that, or your community, your network wants you to do that. Or maybe you have a duty as a woman or woman of color. And like all those things that I said, but the thing is like there, it is a very kind of abusive process as well. And it really messes with your head sometimes.

Alienor Rougeout  12:34  

Switching gears, let’s go into more of like an inspirational area. I think we’ve covered a lot of challenges, and experiences. And I’m so grateful that we’ve been able to have kind of this like very open conversation. I think it’s helpful, because I’m sure there’s people out there that are going through similar experiences, and we can kind of connect over them. And, and it’s how community is built – it is through storytelling. Having said that, let’s talk a little bit about what we want to tell people that are looking to us as leaders, but also looking to us as fellow community members. And you know, let’s have a conversation with them asynchronously and share some of our thoughts about what kind of future we want. And any advice that you can offer to people that maybe are listening that maybe they aren’t as involved as us yet. And they want to be and they will be and we want them to be, but what advice would you give them if they’re just starting their journey?

What kind of future we want is complicated, because I think I spend so much time knowing what I don’t want as a future. And so it’s very hard to imagine what I really do want. But I think in terms of the broad idea, I always kind of dream of a future in which systems and it could be all systems, it can be anything from literally your family structure to your, the company you’re in, to the country that you’re in, has the feedback loops in place, and it really comes to feedback loops, so that no problem can ever become a huge problem that we can’t deal with anymore. So that you never ever, ever have to grab a megaphone and scream in front of the place that holds power to get your point across. Because there should always be a normal way of engaging with the folks that are governing your life. And really it has to be you should never be outrageously, you know, screaming to get a simple and often, you know, common sense point across. And so in terms of vision of the future, it’s just a system that’s built to have regular feedback loops and regular feedback cycles. Instead of constantly like going to extremes and just having to constantly be fighting. I find that so violent, and I find that so aggressive of an existence to have to go through. There’s one thing I don’t think most folks understand is that a lot of us want to be fighting the climate crisis directly or climate injustice directly. And our language is always we’re fighting climate injustice, but what we’re doing most of the time, is fighting government or corporations for them to then fight the climate crisis directly. Like a lot of what I do is not retrofitting buildings in order to get efficiency, what I do is asking someone else to do it. And I really feel like that is such a huge loss of human power and of brainpower. Because I just studied economics for four years, I have a solid understanding of how things work. But instead of being able to design an economy that works for everybody, I’m trying to convince someone to get me to design that thing. I’m still in that first stage. And so I really want to put out there that there is such a massive loss. And a lot of us don’t want to be activists, we just want to be actively solving the problems. And I just really hope people can kind of understand that when they also think about, you know, are they power grabbing, are they doing this because this is not, this was not our end goal. And I don’t think any of us saw this as the dream career or the dream work we’d be spending our time on. That being said, if you do want to currently address the system that we are in, because you can’t, you want to go to that vision – I think the main one really is reach out to the folks that you eventually want to work with. And I can’t stress enough how much I adore, that people just send me a message and are like, “This is who I am, this is what I want to do. What’s your advice directly for me personally”, because it’s really hard to give a generic advice, because I don’t know you, the person that wants to get involved. My addition to that is when you do reach out to the person, like you can be humble in terms of what you know, or you don’t know. But be firm about who you are. If you know that you have a skill set, if you know that you are a very detail oriented person, or a person that’s very good at, you know, managing certain things. If you’re, you know, if you already know what you can bring to the movement, also present that right away in your intro. That’s just being again, efficient for the movement. I hate that that’s becoming my word today. But, it’s not usually, but um really knowing your your, what your experience and what your skill set can bring to the movement and present that right away. And the last one is, the movement needs you and wants you. But you don’t have to go into the first place that like that you find that finds you. And I always kind of say, like audition the groups that you want to join. And so if that means for the first few weeks, you go to the meeting of Fridays for Future, and then you go to the meeting to la CEVES, obviously, they’re not in the same place. But you get what I mean. You just you go to those several meetings, and you see which organizing style works best, where you’re most needed, what leadership also just corresponds to who you are. Don’t, don’t just think that because it’s the cause that matters, you should just sacrifice everything that you that you are. So yeah, audition the groups and present yourself or what you want to contribute, would be my advice.

Payton Mitchell  17:47  

As young people, as women, and especially for racialized women, there’s a lot of groups that want to use your energy, that want to use your image and want to have you involved for reasons that might not be the best for you and your professional development, or for the movement at large. It’s really easy for folks to get caught up in like charities and not for profits and doing a lot of labor for organizations that you’re benefiting that organization, and not always necessarily having direct impacts in the community, and having direct impacts even in your own skill development. They’re really great places to start, and to kind of get your foot in the door. And to kind of like start to get a sense of what you like and what you don’t like. But really being involved in those like the youth movements, the movements of your peers, your student union and these like, like these, like youth controlled organizations, I think is really, really important. And really important to keep in mind. Because you have the ability to have that flexibility at the top where you can get involved, you can have different like, you can be really not like there’s so many people who are involved in the student movement, who come infrequently, but because their perspectives are really interesting, or because they have certain skills that are really helpful. They’re in, that infrequency is fine, and they’re still able to participate. But then you can also have so much space to like move up into further leadership positions that you just don’t have in those other spaces. So I think that’s like a great place to start really good to, like, move into like where you can have more control and like, make a concrete change. And in that like when, when I was getting involved in organizing. I tried to think really, and I still think constantly about what my place is in relation to everything else that I know is going on around me. Like maybe I would love to have like XYZ position or career or experience. But maybe I’m not the best person to be there, right? There’s only so many spaces. There’s only so much going on. And it’s important to not necessarily take opportunities just because they’re opportunities because maybe you’re not the best person for it. And you can refer somebody who would be a better person to the opportunity. And maybe you are the best person but you need to be being conscious of that. The space that you’re taking up, of the type of attention that you’re getting when, when we’re taking on that work. And that’s especially for, especially like for men, obviously, but especially for white folks, and especially for folks who are, who are more wealthy like upper upper class, upper middle class, you get a lot more opportunities. And people will give you a lot of credit for very small amounts of work, compared to what poor students are working on day to day. Because they just, you know, these people who have opportunities, they see you, they know you, you’re in their space. And so always good to be like remembering what your position is, in the grander scheme of things when you’re trying to get involved in stuff. Obviously, that shouldn’t inhibit you from getting involved. It’s just like, where are you best, you should be getting involved, it’s not a question of, should I not be getting involved, you should be, it’s just a question of what space that should be in.

I’m getting to a point in my organizing, where I really just want to coach up younger people, and get them involved and get them moving. Well, like, you know, moving towards whatever I’m going to be doing, as I get older. I think that like building community and like building up like really strong bonds with our communities. And a really powerful way you can do that is through youth, because then if they’re still in high school, you kind of get their parents involved. And especially and I’m talking I’m not talking about like the provincial scale or at the national scale with like, I know that I have organized in those spaces. And that’s something that I’ve been moving away from with focusing on, like my student union, for example, and like, really wanting to be able to have, like, the ability to push like skill building workshops through my student union. And like, I just want to plug to people that like they need to join their student unions. There’s so many people who are on the left and are a part of like groups like Socialist Fightback and like, want to have all of these like, you know, these powerful movements, and they don’t want to be bogged down by like the slowness of external groups, they don’t have funding. We are all, if you’re in a university, if you’re in a college, you’re unionized. And so if you are a socialist or a leftist, unions are how you fight back! And I, it’s just so important that if you want to be making change, like students in the past have built institutions for us that we’ve kind of let just sort of hang there and sit there. And they’ve been overrun in a lot of cases by, you know, the campus right, where folks who are very centrist and just want to throw parties or just have student events, which, you know, parties and student events are really important – they’re great for community building. But we need to be building up skills for people and we have these spaces, we have access to these spaces. They’re really powerful. Doug Ford tried to get rid of student unions in Ontario, because they have a ton of power that’s not being used. And he saw that they were they’re weak at this time that he could maybe try and get rid of them before we strike them again. So I really, really want to encourage people to join their student unions to run on teams and slates and get involved because that’s how you can build skill development with your peers in your university. You can get paid to do it, you have tons of funding from your student levies. And you get like really solid concrete experience in advocacy that’s in sort of like the sandbox of your university where you don’t necessarily have like the public disgrace of messing up in the same way that you might, if you’re, you know, the Fridays for Future Toronto coordinator, and you do something and then you have like, a bigger kind of spotlight on you. You’re just in your campus, nobody on the outside cares so much. And it’s a really, really safe space that you can start building these things. But we can’t just have like, one, two, or like, you know, just a couple of progressive students in these spaces, because then that’s where like women and people of color end up facing a lot of harm, because they don’t have the support from the rest of their team being there and being on their side. So I really deeply encourage everybody to be running for their student unions through departmental student unions, their like big over- overbearing student unions for their schools like either of these, they’re really great. And like, the skill development for young people, within the universities and outside and in the community, it’s really, really important because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how many people across the country care about climate change, it’s not going to make a difference unless you can get a strong group of people who feel really connected, like where you are, because those are the kinds of things that, you know, maybe you work on a campaign in 2021. But we’re, we’re going we’re in the climate crisis, right? So you’re building relationships that can honestly save your life in 10 years, when you’re going through, like when the world is going to be a lot more stark and, like we don’t know what that’s going to be looking like. So building these relationships and doing this type of work now, it builds community that’s gonna have a really long lasting impact. And that’s how we make change. I don’t think we’re gonna make change by you know, the protests that we’re going to have next semester. It’s not about the protests that are going to be happening in the fall. It’s about the relationship building that you do while you’re planning to protest. And while you’re like going to, it’s like game day, like building up your team and stuff.

Manvi Bhalla 25:04  

I think Payton, I really, both of Allie and I have both shared experiences working with so many different groups. And I think the common theme here is getting involved in any way you can is a way to learn different skills. Doing it with different groups and using your energy in an efficient way, respecting your boundaries as well, knowing what leadership style, what group works for you is really critical. But at the end of the day, getting involved, and especially for so many of us that are in post-secondary institutions, we have this sandbox, like you said. For me, it was the same experience, you know, be having money from student levies to host events, organize them, completely from start to finish. And in most situations, you have all this, these resources, you can rent spaces for free, you can do so many things for free, people do not realize the untapped potential. And then, like you said, look at us here, you know, building connections within the community strengthens us, it brings us together, we’ve had so many collaborations between our various affiliations. And it’s only made, it’s only brought that, made the movement almost smaller. Like you know the people in it, because you know, we all have a friendship outside of just the work that we’re doing, which is such an important, amazing thing that comes out of this work as well and really adds to your quality of life working in such, such a bleak issue. You know, like eco grief, one might help it, getting involved, but not just getting involved in like researching and doing work. Getting involved and talking to people that feel the same way you do, which is really a great way. So I guess we’ll end off on that note. But I really, really want to thank you guys for coming. Before we go, I want to give both of you the opportunity to share what your next thing is or what the latest thing that people can maybe look for more of your work towards, if there’s anything going on in your life that you want to share with people. Because honestly, both of you are people that I personally really respect. But I know a lot of people within the community also really, as much as we’ve talked about leadership and everything they really do look up to and respect you as leaders within the community. So I’m sure everybody’s very interested, interested to hear what’s coming next or what you’re currently up to.

We’ve been advocating for divestment for years. And now we’re asking people to divest themselves. And so leave your bank that’s investing in fossil fuels and go to your local nice bank or credit union or whatever it is. So divest yourself and strike on September 24.

Payton Mitchell  27:19  

I want to remind everybody that this year is going to be the 10 year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Bay, Bay Street, Occupy whatever else movements that all happened in 2011, after the financial crash, and we’re entering another semi financial crash. I just I just want people to think about that, you know, it’s been 10 years since this great, this big movement broke off, broke out across North America and into Europe, talking about the wealth inequalities that came out of ’08. Lots of us in Canada were impacted by that, even though it was mostly in the States. And, you know, it’s been 10 years and we’re back in a worse crisis teetering on climate on climate catastrophe. There’s tons of forest fires this week, you know, really stew on the fact that 10 years have gone by and nothing’s happened, and you’ve got a couple months maybe you can start organizing something and get moving on a project to remind remind your local politicians that they haven’t done anything to help you in the last 10 years.

Alienor Rougeout  28:21  

Love that you ended us off on this spicy note Payton. I’m sure this leaves people with a lot to think about. Thank you so much, both of you, for taking the time. So yeah, until next time, thank you everyone.

Hayley Brackenridge  28:34  

Thank you so much to our guests Allie Rougeout, Payton Mitchell and Manvi Bhalla. Allie can be found @AlienorR2 on Twitter, and @alienor.r on Instagram. You can also follow her work with Fridays for Future Toronto at fridaysforfutureto.org. Payton can be found @PaytonRoseMitchell on Instagram and @paytonamobae on TikTok. For mobilization collaborations you can email her at [email protected]. And of course you can follow Manvi’s work with Shake up the Establishment @ShakeUpTheEstab on Instagram and Twitter and  at shakeuptheestab.org. Recently, we launched the initiative Riting History, a collaborative platform where we share stories and histories which have been misrepresented or blatantly ignored in mainstream education. You can find this project at RightingHistory.ca or @RightingHistory on Instagram and Twitter. All of these links can be found in the show notes. 

This episode of Establish was funded by the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada. Music was provided by Greg Markov. This episode was produced by me, Hayley Brackenridge, and transcribed by Acacia Markov. Thank you all for listening!