Bringing disabled women together, mobilising
and sharing through lived experiences

Kirsten Hearn

So the two things we’ve got before we even think of a single word is how do we want other people to feel, and how do we want ourselves to feel? And then we do some little work around those things. So for each of those things you might want to find a word that illustrates that thing like ‘in the bath’ or ‘on the bus’ or whatever it is and you remember that, so you anchor that in some kind of way. So if you’re going to write things down in the end if you’re making your speech, you might put down somewhere ‘in the bath’ to remind yourself to get into that state at the beginning. So when you’ve done that for all the qualities you’ve named that you wish to feel in order to make the speech, you’re going to be feeling pretty good, aren’t you, by then. You’ve powered yourself up with feeling calm and relaxed and knowledgeable. Even some of your things like be prepared, I would say think of a time when you felt prepared, think what that was like, what did it feel like, look like, all those kinds of things. Try and make it real so you can feel it again and then you remind yourself of it before you go on to start your speech: you get yourself into that state, it’s a very powerful thing that, to prepare people before they actually give a speech to be able to do that is really important and those of you who’ve experienced lots of panic attacks and stuff like that and who’ve done a bit of work on it will recognise some of these things, especially those who’ve done CBT and things like that … So, let’s get on with this speech, what is this speech about? Okay, ‘What the World Would Be Like if Ruled by Me’, that what this speech is going to be about. And where do I want to end up with this speech? A convincing rallying call to support my bid? To, you know, dominate the world, if ruled by me, what would the world be like? What might be the essential ingredients? The skills, the vision, the consequence, what might they be? So I might think of I want the world to be equal, I want disabled people to have rights, I want no one to be poor, all those kinds of things for example. So I’m now ready to write the speech, because I’ve made a little list of the key things I want, the ingredients that is, and I’ve got the how I want the audience to feel, and I’ve got the how I want to feel, then I can begin and then I can put on that lovely template of feeling the good beginning, think of where you’re going to at the end and the middle bits: proof for example, the proof, the example, the extra decoration, the celebration, all that in there too. So that’s where we would be

I did a little bit of work earlier and I am now going to give this little speech-ette in two versions – here’s the first version.

“If I ruled the world, all our differences would be understood, motivated by respect for everyone. We would live in peace and harmony. If I ruled the world, we would share and share alike all that we have. Poverty is gone and capitalism smashed. We would honour women’s lives and end patriarchy. If I ruled the world, all disabling barriers would be gone. Discrimination and abuse would outlawed; there’d be no glass ceiling any more. If I ruled the world, if we did all this our lives would be so great, we would claim our power, dignity and rights and the world would be so glad that we’re in charge and we will rise.”

That’s version number one. Interesting, that was a bit over me. This is what might happen if I did it differently and I’m going to sing it to you – I’ve pinched a song from somebody else it’s actually called ‘If I Ruled the World’. And if you sing it’s quite interesting because when you make a presentation you don’t actually have to speak it necessarily – you can dance it, you can draw pictures, there’s different ways of doing it, so this is what it would be like if I sang it and excuse the slight hesitation because I literally wrote it this morning so I haven’t learned it properly!

“If I ruled the world, all our differences would be understood, motivated by respect for everyone. We would live in peace and harmony. If I ruled the world, we would share and share alike all of it. Poverty is gone and capitalism smashed. We honour women’s lives and end pa-tri-archy. If I ruled the world, all disabling barriers would be gone. Discrimination and abuse would be outlawed; there’d be no glass ceiling any more. If I ruled the world, if we did all this our lives would be so great, we would claim our power and dignity and rights and the world would be so glad that we’re in charge and we will rise.”

So in terms of time, you’re not all expected to do that. How much time have we got? About ten minutes, now do you want to try – shall we try a joint speech with all of us? Would that be – ooh, don’t nod, it doesn’t help – shall we try it together? So let’s try it, I think we might need … a bit of paper or something … someone might have to come and read it to us afterwards, on behalf of all of us. So we might have to have a scribe and a reader but that’s okay because I should’ve brought some fancy flip chart thing that rolls up, but never mind. So, who’s going to be a scribe? Can we have a scribe, and offer to be a scribe? Yes, okay thank you. So, if our heading is ‘If I Ruled The World’ I now want us to write about a hundred words on ‘If I Ruled The World’ if we think about what we’ve learned. We’ve learned about, we know, that what we want to begin with is a feeling of calm and all that kind of stuff and we know what we want other people to feel is, I would say, entirely enthusiastic and on our side, that’s what we want to do. So let’s go … ‘If I Ruled The World’ is called the speech so we might just think what would the beginning be? Anybody got any thoughts? People want to feel safe, okay, so ‘”If I Ruled The World people want to feel safe” might be the first thing you want to say. And what would be the last thing you’d want to say? The first thing you would want to say is the thing that sets the scene, so this is about safety and respect and what would be the last thing, the last thing we would want to put, the thing at the end that would – join me? So like a call to join – what? Party? So “Join me and party”. So we’ve got – what’s the first bit we’ve got? Join the party (small ‘p’)? So the first thing we’ve got is ‘I want to feel safe, right? ‘People want to feel safe? What about ‘Women want to feel safe’? Since we’re women, you can spell that how you like, ‘Women want to feel safe’ and the last thing is ‘Join us and party’. So what would we have in between? … Everyone should feel safe, there is so much abuse and fear … So everyone should feel safe, there’s abuse based on fear, so we’re beginning by talking about what it’s like, aren’t we, so abuse based on fear so we’re beginning to talk about what it’s like. Is there another example of what it’s like, is that what you want to actually put down, are these things that you want to change, is that right? You want to end violence? So people feel abused and we want to end violence okay. Anything else we want to do as in this is how it is now? People should have food? No hunger? Okay, so we’ve got: ‘We want to feel safe, … people feel abused and we want to end violence and we want to end hunger. So those might be the things that we want to change. Why do we want to change them? We need to have a reason as to why we want to change them, because so what, people are hungry, so what people are abused, so what people experience violence? What – we don’t think it’s right, yes. So we don’t think it’s right, why don’t we think it’s right? Yes – because everyone has the right to feel safe back to our main theme. I want to feel safe, yes, good. You can keep just adding to it because you’ll find when we read it back it’s quite interesting.

Okay so we’ve got all the way through that thing so far I think we might have about 80 words there I suspect. So we need to think about the – what we want to happen, what’s going to make this happen? So what do we want to make this happen? Join together? Do what? Everyone should have a chance to fulfil their full potential? Okay, so everyone should have a chance, not just some people, but everybody should have a chance to fulfil their full potential. Okay, what else about the solution? Everyone should be valued? Yes, okay, good. We should teach tolerance? … Tolerance? We should teach tolerance and full inclusion was the next point. Listen to people? Yes. Anything else? We’re coming towards the final solution. Formal rights? Yes so formal rights should be … Our end solution, I beg your pardon … so our end solution, the thing we want to resolve at the end, what is it that we want to make it really happen at the end, we’ve got ‘party’, right at the end, what comes to that? … Everyone can attend the party? Yes, it’s open to everyone – oh, everyone can access the party? ‘Cos it’s all very well being open, but … and we should organise it? Oh, self-organisation – we should organise it? Okay. Now, we might have pretty much the bones of a kind of speech, it looks as if it will probably sound quite interesting but actually this is pretty much the bones of what you would say if you were talking about liberation struggle in your own words. … So, Vicky would you like to come forward and slowly and clearly read that, you can say it or sing it or dance it. So this is our joint speech everybody …

I hope I’ve to this right:

“People want to feel safe, women want to feel safe, people feel abused. We want to end violence and we want to end hunger. We don’t think it’s right, because everyone has the right to feel safe: I want to feel safe. Everyone should have the chance to fulfil their full potential; everyone should teach tolerance, full inclusion, listen to other people. We want formal rights and equality. We should organise a party – it should be open to everyone – we should be able to organise and access this party. Join us and party! “

Great, thank you. So there we go, so I know it seems a bit left field actually, but I do think that if we wokd on the ‘how do I feel, how do I want other people to feel?’ everything else rolls out quite nicely. And actually, don’t worry about your inner panicer, just give her a big kiss, and go ‘I love you Inner Panic-er, shut up and get out the way’. There we go.

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