Keynote by Angela Mc Robbie  

In the last 5-10 years I became increasingly aware that there were very specific changes happening in regard to Gender , culture, young people. This  period coincided with New Labour government in the UK and of course the Bush years in the US.
There was a double movement, it seemed as though girls had now gained equality, feminism had to a point been successful, feminism was even taken into account, girls were doing well, men were getting used to female equality, certain rights had been won, in the workplace, in school, in marriage and intimacy, (against domestic Violence, against sex discrimination) and yet at the same time, the idea of a renewed or revived feminism was discouraged, it was out of date, no longer needed, belonging to the past, indeed it was often repudiated, associated with crude stereotypes of anti-men angry 70s feminists, it was disavowed, old fashioned so that to count as a girl or young woman today to be intelligible, it was becoming necessary to disconnect from feminism or dis-identify, such that femininity itself meant ‘not being a feminist’,and likewise certain topics began to become taboo again, particularly the ‘critique of patriarchy’ the battle with men…too old fashioned, the challenging and critical interrogation of masculinity, that too was somehow unacceptable, it became unspeakable.

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