Knocking on Asia with Feminist Action [Download-Click!]
Unninetwork’s @Asia Team(formerly known as the ‘International Solidarity Team’) took off in 2003 and til date has worked toward establishing a ‘New Feminist Solidarity’, filling it with sincere thoughts on issues of how to intertwine ‘Asia’/'Women’/'Solidarity’ together along with colorful events held on the way.
The team started out as the ‘International Solidarity Team’, but as the current name ‘@Asia Team’ implies, Unninetwork’s new outlook on feminist solidarity focuses not on the generally westernized manifestation of the term global, but right here in ‘Asia’. The unquestioned rationalization that ‘the world equates to the Western’ left Asia invisible, thus ‘international solidarity’ was naturally assumed to be that with the West. But in truth, in the overall global context, Asia constitutes a pivotal part of how we identify ourselves as individuals, nevertheless, it stands as an unfamiliar name to disclose and entitle. ‘Asia’ was labeled long before given a chance of self-definition and it’s substantiality demarcated by the ‘Others’. Because perceptions toward women as the Other and that of Asia are resemblant to one another, it becomes even more important for us to build an Asian discourse capable of describing the position of Asian women. Such a process does not take the route of coming across unified and fixed issues, but unearths points of interface amidst one another’s differences and diversities and use that as the basis for bringing about mutual understanding and solidarity. ‘The Asia Project’ is thus a practical effort to bring such mutual understanding and solidarity into light.
In 2007, we met feminist organizations and activists through ‘Asia in Me, Made by Us’ project we coordinated and found more realistic and concrete ways of raising issues than we had previously done through Western-centered texts when struggling over questions surrounding the Asian women’s movement.
Unlike South Korea, entrapped in the ideology of a ‘racially homogeneous nation’, it gave us an opportunity to catch the real picture of previously vaguely known issues, such as different religions and lives of women, economic gaps between Asian countries and women’s poverty and other diverse agendas confronted within the Asian women’s movement. The 2007 Asia Project gave us a chance to reflect upon our truth and false perceptions of Asia and encouraged us to look into a new Asia or elaborate on preceding thoughts on Asia. As for in 2008 the ‘Asian Women’s Patchwork Solidarity’ provided an opportunity to talk about the possibility of how we could establish a long-term network rather than a series of short meetings.
In August 2008, feminist activists from five countries(Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, Hong Kong) gathered in Taiwan to hold the workshop entitled ‘Let’s talk, difference and solidarity between you and me!’. Activists from every country shared similarities geographically, racially, ethnically and historically along with the same experience of having been colonized. Nevertheless, behind such closeness, also lay numerous divergences generated by religious, cultural and economic differences. Amidst such internal differences within Asia, we understood the fact that being aware of who I am and who we are does not mean we have to spread out each and every difference like grains of sand, but rather concentrate our efforts to weave a close net and then try to find common ground between one another. Moreover, through our workshop in Taiwan, we found issues of fundamentalism, economic problems deriving from Western globalization, migration, intergenerational conflict between feminists to be of common interest among us. At the same time, in-depth discussions were held on the issue of control over women’s maternity, normal family ideology and strict gender roles, heterocentricity and oppression of sexual deviation.
While working on the Asia Project, our intentions and understanding on the issue of establishing an Asian feminist solidarity further deepened, but questions still remained over how to sustain the solidarity while overcoming time and physical barriers. Unninetwork’s interest on the internet as an alternative way of communication created ‘Femisia’, English blogging service for Asian feminist alliance(www.femisia.net). A conjunction of the words Feminism and Asia, as the name itself implies, was put together in order for Asian Feminists to actively engage in exchange and solidarity activities. It is also an experimental space, further extending possibilities of networking beyond face-to-face meetings through consistent online interaction.
Based on the preceding experiences, the 2009 Asia Project is an effort and practice to understand ‘Asian Feminist Activism’. The ‘Knocking on Asia with feminist action’ will bring Asian Feminist activists from Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea and Hong Kong, the Philippines together to unfold numerous activities. Year 2007 and 2008 was a time for us to increase our understanding of one another, finding agendas for solidarity and an opportunity for us to further strengthen the network. In 2009, based on past fruitions and our understanding of ‘The herstory of Asian Feminist action’ we will try to find agendas we can put into practice individually and together and also carry out practical planning and carry them out.
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