Living While Feminist

Gabriella is a writer and filmmaker from Cape Town. Traversing art and journalism, she is interested in telling stories about the human condition. Her website includes several examples of these – a documentary about a prosthetic leg maker, a short documentary on the artist Amy Ayanda, and a PSA about child trafficking.

Gabriella has worked as an arts writer for the online publication Between 10 and 5, where she has written about everything from sneaker exchanges to the #MeToo movement. She also hosted an art and culture show on Cape Town TV. She is also an actress appearing in the films Eye in the Sky, American Monster, and Jamillah and Aladdin and as a writer on Stag Knights.

Currently, she is very busy working on two feature films, developing a play as part of the University of Johannesburg's 2020 playwriting laboratory, and is a contributor to Politically Aweh, a South African infotainment satire show.

Gabriella’s piece in Living While Feminist is titled ‘You Look Like a Lesbian’. In it she says:

‘It’s almost as though when a certain type of heterosexual man (and a certain type of heterosexual woman) comes into contact with a straight woman with power, who wears the shirt/sneaker/jeans combo, their brains short circuit. They equate women with power, and in particular lesbian women with power, as a threat to their very way of life.

The piece is short but it explores relationships, the silencing effect of derogatory language, the power of clothes and performance, and the male gaze, and that’s what we’ll be talking about today.

Today on the podcast I’m talking with writer Arja Salafranca.

Arja Salafranca has published three collections of poetry, A Life Stripped of Illusions (1995), which received the Sanlam Award for poetry, The Fire in which we Burn (2000); and Beyond Touch(2015) which was a co-winner of the SALA Awards.

Her fiction has been published online, in anthologies and journals, and is collected in her debut collection, The Thin Line (2010), longlisted for the Wole Soyinka Award in 2012. She has participated in a number of writers’ conferences, edited two anthologies and has received awards for her poetry and fiction.

Her next book is a collection of creative non-fiction essays, travel writing, personal essays and journal entries, to be published by Modjaji in 2021. She lives in Johannesburg.

Arja’s piece in Living While Feminist is called Rafiya and it takes the form of a series of diary entries at the point where Arja embarks on her first lesbian relationship at fourty years old. In that piece she says: Sometimes what is not said, doesn’t exist.

We talk about the importance of writing through the good and bad times, the value of different forms, and the recent collection from Modjaji - Fools Gold.

Jarred Thompson is a queer researcher and academic whose poetry, fiction and non-fiction has been published in various journals, notably the Johannesburg Review of Books, The Gerald Kraak Award Anthology Volume 3 and ImageOutWrite Anthology. He recently won the inaugural 2020 Afritondo Short Story Award. 

Jarred’s piece in Living While Feminist is called ‘The social dynamics of penetration’ and in that piece he says:

The social dynamics of masculinity, femininity and gay sexual positions made me think about how the act of penetration or being penetrated, comes with assumptions about masculinity and how one portrays oneself as a gay man.

Jarred and I talk about gender norms, masculine and feminine energy, yoga, and writing.

Anelile Dlamini – Gibixego is a Pietermaritzburg-born author, mother and scientist. Anelile completed a Bachelor of Science in microbiology and cellular biology in 2011 from the University of Kwa Zulu Natal and an Honours degree in environmental science at North-West University in 2017. In her day time, she is a researcher and environmental activist.

Since moving to Johannesburg in 2015, she has published her debut novel iGoli Dreams. She became a network builder, has published opinion pieces, spoken conferences and earns the title “motivational speaker”.

She has contributed for publications like Living While Feminist, Ayana Magazine, Daily Maverick, Imbawula, Live Literature Market and My Black Matters. Alongside these, she has presented at research conferences like the Water Show South Africa, Indlulamithi Scenarios and 25 Years of Democracy conference.

Her passionate activism is against gender-based violence and discrimination. She identifies herself as an eco-feminist which embodies the oppression of nature within the oppression of women.

In her piece in Living While Feminist called Feminism In the Church, Anelile writes about her experience of becoming a mother within her faith, and makes her argument for why Jesus is a feminist. She says in that piece:

“I had seen the structural sexism in my church and partaken in its rituals. After coming across some feminist literature, books, novels, and speeches, I realised that Christianity has portrayed feminism as an enemy state, but that was not the case. In my journey to becoming the catholic ecofeminist that I am today, I played with the idea that Jesus himself was feminist.”

Today on the podcast I speak to to Alice Draper.

Alice is a freelance writer and editor currently based in Nottingham Road, KwaZulu-Natal.

She finished studying a Bachelor of Journalism at Rhodes University in 2019 and has had the fun job of trying to cultivate a career during a global pandemic. Right now, most of her time is spent on copywriting work with a few editing projects. She's also trying to invest more of her energy into writing for publication.

Alice has always been a feminist. Her early primary school creative writing pieces reimagine fairy tales where the princess chooses to save herself without having an arguably toxic prince in the picture. Alice's writing can also be found in a few places like HelloGiggles, The Tempest, GroundUp, The Daily Maverick and elsewhere.

Today we’ll be talking about the piece she wrote for Living While Feminist – called, Shaving. It’s about body hair and deciding what to with it. In it she says:

“Reflecting has made me wonder how much of the decision to remove body hair was mine. I thought I was making an active choice, and at a physical level, I was.

… My realm of information (consisting of the media, friends, teachers and strangers) all told me I should remove my body hair. This wasn’t something to talk about and contest. It just was. But, as I got older my thoughts about the practice started to shift … one day I hope to have enough self-esteem to love my body as it is. Hairy and all.”

We talk about the male gaze, what it means to defy it, the many benefits of having an orthodox feminist mother, and the steps on a feminist journey. Welcome Alice.

Nobantu Shabangu is a gender non-conforming South African writer of plays, poems, short stories and essays. They started writing when they were nine years old, and at eighteen they won a national essay competition on the cruelty of farm animals. This was the first of many prizes including Leopard’s Leap 2018 Message on a Bottle writing competition, and the January (2019) Igby Essay Prize on Kahalari Review.

Between 2012 and 2014 they were part of the British Council Playwright’s Residency in conjunction with the Royal Court Theatre in London where their play Candyland was developed. In 2015 a reading of their play Candyland was held at the Market Theatre. Nobantu is a contributor to BrightRock’s Change Exchange webpage where they write about life changing moments. In 2016 they were facilitator for The Zwakala Festival, a Market Theatre initiative to develop community theatre. An ardent feminist they have published essays in My First Time and Living While Feminist.

Nobantu has a BA in Communication Science and Public Administration. They are currently studying a postgraduate degree in Drama Therapy at the University of Witwatersrand.

Nobantu’s piece in Living While Feminist is called ‘A decade of feminism’ and it explores their journey to a new form of feminist identity, as well as a series of haircuts over the years. At the end of the piece, Nobantu says:

“My hair is growing, and I do not comb it. I feel the thin areas, the thick areas, the short areas and the few straight hairs that poke out of the forest of tight curls. This is what feminism is like: a vast area fertile for growth with strong parts and waning parts, all growing. In the forest of feminism, identities are formed, nations are built, young women are fierce warriors, continents are bridged, and age is worn proudly like the rings of a tree.”

The season finale is SHORT, but SO amazing!

Today on the podcast I’m talking with Naledi Maponopono.

Naledi is a grade 4 to 12 isiXhosa teacher at Reddam House Atlantic Seaboard. She is also a lecturer at the South African College of Applied Psychology.

She’s the Deputy Provincial Secretary of the Young Communist League of South Africa in the Western Cape, and the director of her own company -- Inkwenkwezi Language Services.

Naledi was the first person to send me a submission for Living While Feminist. Her piece is called ‘My body as a site of violence’ and in that piece she says: "I find liberation in understanding my oppression because understanding my oppression helps me to define the tools I can use to constantly liberate myself and other women."

So today I’m going to talk to Naledi about liberation, about teaching, and about a more equal world.

Today on the podcast I talk with with Helené Prinsloo about fitness, fat phobia, and feminist freedom.

Helené works in publishing, promoting fiction and nonfiction for NB Publishers. She is a ‘professional bookworm’ and she has been active in the book industry for eight years helping writers tell and promote their stories.

She is originally from Queenstown in the Eastern Cape but now lives in Sea Point. When not busying herself with books she plays five-a-side football with the Badgers Football Club – something she talks about in her piece in Living While Feminist – Being Fit While Being Fat. It was her first piece of writing to be published in a book, but – exciting news – she’s is working on finally finishing her debut novel.

Before Corona struck Helené was learning Xhosa, making pesto, playing nerdy boardgames and finding new playlists on Spotify. Full disclaimer – Helené is the fantastic publicist for both Living While Feminist and Feminism Is – and we are all so very grateful.

Today on the podcast I’m talking with Neoka Naidoo.

Neoka always wanted someone to do something about the issues that plague our society, then she realised she was somebody, and got straight to work.

In 2014 she was selected as the Leadership Development Fellow in South Africa for the Climate Action Network International working on international climate change policy and civil society coordination. At the end of 2016 she started to working with this group on Climate Transparency relating to the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

In 2016 Neoka was selected for the Mail and Guardians 200 Young South African list due to her experience in the environmental movement. In 2017 she was selected by the Ecologist as one of 10 global activists to defeat President Trump’s climate change agenda. She was also listed by TreeShake as one of 76 South African voices speaking up for the environment.

Neoka attained her BSc in Environmental Science in her hometown of Durban at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. She followed this up with a post-graduate diploma in in Sustainable Development at the Sustainability Institute and is now enrolled in the MPhil program looking at climate transparency.

Neoka joined GIZ in July 2018 in an advisory capacity. Her role supports and engages with implementation the Paris Agreement in the South Africa context. She currently works on climate finance, digitalization and the IKI projects in South Africa.

Neoka’s piece in Feminism Is is called feminism and diplomacy, and in that piece she says:

“For me, patriarchy is not just the dominance of masculine traits in society, but also an egocentric and anthropocentric approach to solving issues by presenting the illusion of choice, rather than real choices. In my opinion, feminism means the intentional motion towards a holistic eco-centric world by ending the dominant patriarchal and archaic establishment.”

So today I’ll be talking with Neoka about the links between feminism and climate change, and what we can all do about it.

M.A. Warden is a philosophy lecturer, aspiring writer and artist.

Marc has their own YouTube Channel, called Indecent, where they discuss issues around philosophy, politics, gender and queer studies, and whatever else tickles their fancy. They spend most of their time engaged in some or the other creative endeavour, some of which we’ll get to talk about today.

Marc’s piece in Living While Feminist is called Living The Queer Question and explores the themes of gender identity and performance, the difficulty in coming out to their parents, toxic masculinity and institutionalised trauma, and the importance of asking questions.

In their piece, Marc says:

“The solution, though not itself an answer, comes from Rilke. Live the questions. I must inhabit the life-world of my gender identity until I disclose my authentic self to myself, free from intellectual constraints and revolutionary compulsions. I must discover, or perhaps even define, what it means for me to be queer. And whether I am gay, bi, ambi, pan, demi, trans, NOS, fluid or non-binary, there is one thing I know for certain: I am me.”