you
[Applause]
women get more radical with age and men
get more conservative that’s what Gloria
Steinem said in an interview she did
with the Telegraph newspaper a British
newspaper in March of this year and when
I came across that quote most likely on
social media you really grabbed my
attention and I began to wonder well why
because wondering why is what a person
like me loves to do I’m an academic I’m
a mature woman who has just started her
PhD at Simon Fraser University with the
department of gender sexuality and
Women’s Studies now why do women get
more radical and men more conservative I
think as men go through life they
retreat behind the castle walls and
they’re going to fight to protect the
power and privilege that they’ve enjoyed
over their lifetimes women as they go
through life realize they’re just be all
those castle walls and their struggle is
to bring the barriers again so it has to
do with power but what do I mean by
power there are any number of
definitions you could come across
depending which disciplines you’re
familiar with or which reference books
you consult but when I’m talking about
power I’m talking simply about this it’s
the ability to live our own lives and
not to accept simply to live according
to the standards and the rules set by
others now this idea I got from the work
of Michel Foucault and in academic
circles you don’t get very far talking
about knowledge and power and society
without running into the work of Michel
Foucault and um I I was really taken
with his work I’m not a Foucault scholar
at all but what I do know of his work
has had a tremendous impact on my
thinking especially an essay he wrote in
1988 called technologies of the self
now when Foucault talks about
technologies of the self he’s talking
about that process we have of going
through life of collecting experience of
gaining knowledge and we do that to get
to know ourselves better to decide
whether changes or
needed but most importantly to decide
how we want to live our lives and as I
started to work with this SAF fucose I
started to think about travel and I
thought travel actually really functions
as a technology of the self think about
it there’s a pattern to travel we leave
we have our adventures and then we come
back and we either pick up our lives
where we left off or we start living in
new ways and there’s long been a
tradition of linking travel with
learning because when we travel we learn
about the outer world and that’s the
other and we learn about the inner world
and that’s the self there was a time for
example when travel was thought to be
really important because if you could
see things with your own eyes you knew
whether they were true or not there’s
also tradition of travel as preparing us
to become adults so you had the Grand
Tour for example and that’s where the
young rich men of aristocratic families
in England would take off what I talked
about that would take off for the
continent and travel extensively before
they came back home to pick up their
duties or obligation to family to
community into the Empire and funnily
enough Gloria steinem’s latest book is
called my life on the road and in that
book she tells about her experiences
with travel and how they affected her
and they affected her life and when we
read a book like Gloria steinem’s or any
other travel account those stand is the
public Testament of how that individual
used travel as the technology of the
self but if we’re going to talk about
modern travel writing by women there’s
one book that kind of stands out from
from among the rest especially in terms
of commercial success and that’s be Pray
Love by Elizabeth Gilbert now when
Elizabeth Gilbert released 8 e Pray Love
in 2006 she she shared her story of
travel and transformation with the world
there are over 10 million copies of the
book in print and I likely don’t have to
tell you
knew that it was made into a feature
film with Julia Roberts and Javier
Bardem but the interesting thing about
the book is that very passionate
responses it gets and people either hate
the book or they really love the book
and when I first read it I loved it and
I thought there was a message in there
about faith and belief that really
deserved a closer look but as I worked
with the text as I dug deeper for my
Master’s my feelings got more
complicated and that’s because I
realized Eat Pray Love was not really
about travel it was about self-help and
it kind of captures a a pop culture
formula for happiness and that formula
really really worked for Elizabeth
Gilbert when she left New York she’d
gone through a terrible divorce she’d
ended a love affair and she had her own
experience with depression and she came
back after eating great food in Italy
and she made a connection with God in
India and she fell in love in Bali and
she came back with a book that took her
right to the top of that pyramid of
international celebrity she even went on
tour with Oprah but Elizabeth Gilbert’s
book Eat Pray Love is about how she
fixed her broken saw how she healed what
ailed her and so in her work I saw a
movement in travel writing from learning
to advice to self-help and the essence
of self-help is exactly that there’s one
way there’s one recipe that anybody can
follow to solve all their problems and
make all their dreams come true
so what’s the problem the so what is
this Eat Pray Love and that pop culture
self-help formula that recipe puts the
entire burden of transformation on the
shoulders of the individual
with no consideration for underlying
conditions there is nothing in Elizabeth
Gilbert’s book about social injustice or
social inequality except on a very
individual basis and I think we see this
in pop culture this tendency to give
individual answers to very complex
problems and I suspect that this is
distracting I suspect that this might
make women a little bit less radical
unless willing to tackle the challenges
that we face so what’s an example of a
mixed message in pop culture let’s take
the song by Beyonce where she talks
about girls are going to run the world
and every time I watch the video for
that song I cannot figure out how girls
are going to run the world if they’re
trying to fight in stilettos and with no
body armor on but a young woman
challenged me on that and she said well
what are the messages that women can do
the impossible and you know what she’s
right my question would still be this
why should women have to do the
impossible
just to claim their power as equals now
here in British Columbia some high
schools young women in grade 12 will
start a Facebook page in September
enough to show off the Grad dresses they
bought so that they don’t show up in the
same outfits in June well that’s fine
but to me that’s putting more emphasis
on the dress than on the 10 months of
hard work they have to do to earn the
right to wear that dress and if life is
all about the power of the dress how do
we teach young women about the power
they need to tackle the obstacles that
life will throw in their way that their
lives will be much more profoundly
shaped by things like access to higher
education or affordable housing or their
own personal safety then it ever will be
for that one dress so for every pop
culture message that we get that is up
to us
fix ourselves that it’s up to us just to
lean it that it’s up to us to pay more
in addition to the taxes we already pay
for things like health care and
education then we are being led away
from fundamental notions about how our
democracy is meant to work to take care
of its citizens especially the most
vulnerable now women have come a long
way but we have a long way to go and
we’re not going to get there on our own
and we are not going to get there by
ourselves because it’s never been just
about you or me or him or her or they
it’s about all of us and we’re more
connected than we’ve ever been before
women need to seize the power to define
how they want to be in the world and how
they want the world to be because power
is a lot more than answering questions
like what will I wear or art what makes
me feel good or or Who am I
power is about claiming that right to
make our own life choices and as active
citizens using that power to make sure
the social conditions exist for others
to do the same as well power is not
about seeing ourselves as broken power
is about seeing ourselves as valued and
valuable power is not just about our
personal happiness it is about social
justice power is taking what we know and
will learn whether that’s through travel
or any other needs and making the world
a better place for everybody because to
paraphrase that famous feminist Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau
because it’s 2016 because it’s time to
get radical and because it’s time for
all of us to live at that castle
together as equals thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
women get more radical with age and men
get more conservative that’s what Gloria
Steinem said in an interview she did
with the Telegraph newspaper a British
newspaper in March of this year and when
I came across that quote most likely on
social media you really grabbed my
attention and I began to wonder well why
because wondering why is what a person
like me loves to do I’m an academic I’m
a mature woman who has just started her
PhD at Simon Fraser University with the
department of gender sexuality and
Women’s Studies now why do women get
more radical and men more conservative I
think as men go through life they
retreat behind the castle walls and
they’re going to fight to protect the
power and privilege that they’ve enjoyed
over their lifetimes women as they go
through life realize they’re just be all
those castle walls and their struggle is
to bring the barriers again so it has to
do with power but what do I mean by
power there are any number of
definitions you could come across
depending which disciplines you’re
familiar with or which reference books
you consult but when I’m talking about
power I’m talking simply about this it’s
the ability to live our own lives and
not to accept simply to live according
to the standards and the rules set by
others now this idea I got from the work
of Michel Foucault and in academic
circles you don’t get very far talking
about knowledge and power and society
without running into the work of Michel
Foucault and um I I was really taken
with his work I’m not a Foucault scholar
at all but what I do know of his work
has had a tremendous impact on my
thinking especially an essay he wrote in
1988 called technologies of the self
now when Foucault talks about
technologies of the self he’s talking
about that process we have of going
through life of collecting experience of
gaining knowledge and we do that to get
to know ourselves better to decide
whether changes or
needed but most importantly to decide
how we want to live our lives and as I
started to work with this SAF fucose I
started to think about travel and I
thought travel actually really functions
as a technology of the self think about
it there’s a pattern to travel we leave
we have our adventures and then we come
back and we either pick up our lives
where we left off or we start living in
new ways and there’s long been a
tradition of linking travel with
learning because when we travel we learn
about the outer world and that’s the
other and we learn about the inner world
and that’s the self there was a time for
example when travel was thought to be
really important because if you could
see things with your own eyes you knew
whether they were true or not there’s
also tradition of travel as preparing us
to become adults so you had the Grand
Tour for example and that’s where the
young rich men of aristocratic families
in England would take off what I talked
about that would take off for the
continent and travel extensively before
they came back home to pick up their
duties or obligation to family to
community into the Empire and funnily
enough Gloria steinem’s latest book is
called my life on the road and in that
book she tells about her experiences
with travel and how they affected her
and they affected her life and when we
read a book like Gloria steinem’s or any
other travel account those stand is the
public Testament of how that individual
used travel as the technology of the
self but if we’re going to talk about
modern travel writing by women there’s
one book that kind of stands out from
from among the rest especially in terms
of commercial success and that’s be Pray
Love by Elizabeth Gilbert now when
Elizabeth Gilbert released 8 e Pray Love
in 2006 she she shared her story of
travel and transformation with the world
there are over 10 million copies of the
book in print and I likely don’t have to
tell you
knew that it was made into a feature
film with Julia Roberts and Javier
Bardem but the interesting thing about
the book is that very passionate
responses it gets and people either hate
the book or they really love the book
and when I first read it I loved it and
I thought there was a message in there
about faith and belief that really
deserved a closer look but as I worked
with the text as I dug deeper for my
Master’s my feelings got more
complicated and that’s because I
realized Eat Pray Love was not really
about travel it was about self-help and
it kind of captures a a pop culture
formula for happiness and that formula
really really worked for Elizabeth
Gilbert when she left New York she’d
gone through a terrible divorce she’d
ended a love affair and she had her own
experience with depression and she came
back after eating great food in Italy
and she made a connection with God in
India and she fell in love in Bali and
she came back with a book that took her
right to the top of that pyramid of
international celebrity she even went on
tour with Oprah but Elizabeth Gilbert’s
book Eat Pray Love is about how she
fixed her broken saw how she healed what
ailed her and so in her work I saw a
movement in travel writing from learning
to advice to self-help and the essence
of self-help is exactly that there’s one
way there’s one recipe that anybody can
follow to solve all their problems and
make all their dreams come true
so what’s the problem the so what is
this Eat Pray Love and that pop culture
self-help formula that recipe puts the
entire burden of transformation on the
shoulders of the individual
with no consideration for underlying
conditions there is nothing in Elizabeth
Gilbert’s book about social injustice or
social inequality except on a very
individual basis and I think we see this
in pop culture this tendency to give
individual answers to very complex
problems and I suspect that this is
distracting I suspect that this might
make women a little bit less radical
unless willing to tackle the challenges
that we face so what’s an example of a
mixed message in pop culture let’s take
the song by Beyonce where she talks
about girls are going to run the world
and every time I watch the video for
that song I cannot figure out how girls
are going to run the world if they’re
trying to fight in stilettos and with no
body armor on but a young woman
challenged me on that and she said well
what are the messages that women can do
the impossible and you know what she’s
right my question would still be this
why should women have to do the
impossible
just to claim their power as equals now
here in British Columbia some high
schools young women in grade 12 will
start a Facebook page in September
enough to show off the Grad dresses they
bought so that they don’t show up in the
same outfits in June well that’s fine
but to me that’s putting more emphasis
on the dress than on the 10 months of
hard work they have to do to earn the
right to wear that dress and if life is
all about the power of the dress how do
we teach young women about the power
they need to tackle the obstacles that
life will throw in their way that their
lives will be much more profoundly
shaped by things like access to higher
education or affordable housing or their
own personal safety then it ever will be
for that one dress so for every pop
culture message that we get that is up
to us
fix ourselves that it’s up to us just to
lean it that it’s up to us to pay more
in addition to the taxes we already pay
for things like health care and
education then we are being led away
from fundamental notions about how our
democracy is meant to work to take care
of its citizens especially the most
vulnerable now women have come a long
way but we have a long way to go and
we’re not going to get there on our own
and we are not going to get there by
ourselves because it’s never been just
about you or me or him or her or they
it’s about all of us and we’re more
connected than we’ve ever been before
women need to seize the power to define
how they want to be in the world and how
they want the world to be because power
is a lot more than answering questions
like what will I wear or art what makes
me feel good or or Who am I
power is about claiming that right to
make our own life choices and as active
citizens using that power to make sure
the social conditions exist for others
to do the same as well power is not
about seeing ourselves as broken power
is about seeing ourselves as valued and
valuable power is not just about our
personal happiness it is about social
justice power is taking what we know and
will learn whether that’s through travel
or any other needs and making the world
a better place for everybody because to
paraphrase that famous feminist Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau
because it’s 2016 because it’s time to
get radical and because it’s time for
all of us to live at that castle
together as equals thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
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