Interview with Susan Hawthorne, author, poet, philosopher, feminist and publisher.

Together with Renate Klein, she is co-founder and director of Spinifex Press, a leading independent feminist publisher that celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2016 in Melbourne with a festival of radical feminism.

(00:00) Cows in Chennai 

(01:24) How controversial was the concept of separatism when Susan Hawthorne was working on the book in the 70s?

(06:29) When the oppressed want to fight the aggressors, they do set up separate groups...

(07:42) Is thinking of the women's movement as national struggles and the opposition as IMF useful? 

(12:49) Are non-political women only spaces useful too? 

(16:39) Where should we stand on the issue of protecting women (for example with women's only carriages) and changing men's behaviour? 

(20:30) Class and gender - how does class change the ideas of Susan Hawthorne? Memories from India. 

(24:28) Is separatism a long term solution? 

(31:41) For the men who has never been in the position of struggle because of their gender or background, what can they do? 

(34:00) The difference between the image of feminism and what it has turned out to be as we have studied it. 

(35:10) The clarity of In Defence of Separatism

(36:12) Final thoughts, recommendations for our reading list.