By Joëlle Koorneef
This Saturday, the 11th of March, the Women’s March on Amsterdam will take place.
Go to the Women’s March to hear other people’s stories. Go to understand that we are all there for different reasons, with different backgrounds and different demands. If you think you know who is a ‘woman’, think again. Learn to include all of those who look in the mirror and see a woman – whether or not society recognizes them as such. Go there and be loud, but listen to others and gain insight into their experiences.
At 12:30 the crowd meets at the Dam Square in Amsterdam, where the organisers will explain the guidelines and principles of the demonstration. The march will then move from the Dam to the Museumplein. There will be multiple speeches at Museumplein, starting with Anouscha Nzume, the event MC, whose book, “Hallo Witte Mensen” (“Hello White People”), will come out next month. Devika Partiman’s speech is about voting for women in the upcoming elections in the Netherlands. She is followed by the spoken word artist Babs Gons and by journalist Clarice Gargard. The last speaker is Orville Breeveld, who will talk about his initiative ‘Vitamine V’, a supportive platform for fathers.
When I was fifteen, I thought my t-shirt with ‘Feminist’ on it was the biggest middle finger to the patriarchy and I believed Lena Dunham would save us all. I watched Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDx talk to make myself believe my feminism was inclusive. Big surprise: it wasn’t. Being an angry white feminist online is not going to make any change. Slacktivism isn’t enough in an era where the reward for misogyny is the velvet throne of power and access to a Twitter account to spew more hate. I’m going to the Women’s March in Amsterdam to apologize for my lazy white feminism. Also, I’m going to the Jagwar Ma concert in De Melkweg that night. Hey, I never said I wasn’t opportunistic.
Go to the Women’s March this weekend if you have questions. Why is everyone yelling? What is the goal of third wave feminism, and aren’t we almost there? Why aren’t we there yet? Am I more than my feminist comment on the UCR Confessions page? Am I radical enough? Why are popular things so sucky through feminist goggles? Wait, why is everyone so angry with Lena Dunham? Why don’t we speak about Female Genital Mutilation? What should my opinion on La La Land be? How would I experience the Women’s March as a man? Find answers this upcoming Saturday in Amsterdam.
Joëlle Koorneef, Class of 2018, is a literature and antiquity major from Zwijndrecht, the Netherlands.
Photo source: Maarten Delobel via Vice
