(crossposted at Amplifyyourvoice.org)

Yesterday afternoon, I attended a break-out session at the Feminism 2.0 Conference focused around generation, gender, and race issues in the past election and how to move forward. The session was run by Shireen Mitchell, the Vice Chairman of the the National Council of Women's Organizations, Karen Mulhauser of Mulhauser and Associates, and Rene Redwood of Rewood Enterprise, LLC. It was a room full of a mix of generations and a mix of races, though it was about 95% women. 

As we went around the room and listened to the stories, it struck me just how emotional this election had been for so many people. From Karen Mulhauser, who had been called a traitor by her fellow (white, older) activists for supporting Obama early on, to Shireen, who shared how attacks on both Obama and Clinton hurt her as a black woman. 

There was some anger in the room that was not constructive. One (white) women said that the animosity from progressive commenters online drove her further into identity politics and a fierce defense of electing women above all else. When others tried to engage in a conversation with her about this choice and whether or not it was helpful, she was defensive and uninterested in reconciling her anger with the current reality.

However, most of the break-out session was cathartic. We shared our frustration at the media for dividing the race and gender as if they didn't often intersect, and our frustration that class has been ignored. We shared our regret that the women's movement had let this divide us. We used these stories to come up with some lessons for the future. 

Some of the lessons that came up:

1. Sometimes, you need to shut up and listen. It is not always about your point of view, but about learning where others come from

2. We need to have a real conversation on race and gender and class and be willing to put it out there. This is something we avoid in the US more than other places, and we could learn from the very public discussions in other countries, such as South Africa.

3. We need to be ready to come to the table looking at each other as positive players who can add to our work and not someone who could hurt us, or challenge us.

4. We need to remember that you could, for example, be Pro-Obama without being Pro-Hillary (or vice versa), just as you can disagree that marriage rights are the right arena to fight the LGBTQ rights battle without being anti-LGBTQ rights- i.e. issues need not be binary!

Most of all, I came out of the session realizing the opportunity that the 2008 election gave us to have a conversation about issues that have been rotting the inside of the women's movement and sexual and reproductive justice movements for too long. Just because the election is over doesn't mean we should not continue to examine ourselves, however painful it may be.

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