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VISIONS OF FREEDOM - AN ANARCHA-FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE Organised by an anarchist collective in Sydney, Visions of Freedom in January 1995 held for me the promise of something much more politically relevant than other conferences i have attended over the past few years. Although there were a large number of workshops/presentations scheduled forthe weekend, organisers urged participants to set up their own workshops - directly in contrast to the rigid scheduling of sessions in academic, student-based and left conferences. This freedom meant that theoretically there was no one agenda set for the weekend, that it was up to us to create meaningful discussion. Being an anarchist conference, i also hoped that i would not need to do as much sifting and reinterpretation of political ideas, as is so often necessary at the usual type of conferences, and was looking forward to meeting with a whole heap of activists with a lot of interesting and challenging things to say. The plenary was opened by a blessing from Monsignor Porca Madonna, presenting a queer mockery of the recent papal visit. Following this, people from various anarchist perspectives spoke, with a short time for questions of each. What became apparent during this opening session was the reluctance of women to ask questions (and this relative silence was evident throughout the weekend) This reluctance had also make it difficult for the organisers to find a woman who would speak about feminism at the plenary. The male speakers for the most part focussed on theoretical and historical analysis of anarchist struggle, the woman who spoke about feminism offered mainly anecdotes and personal stories. Although i value and think necessary the subjective experience of women as political, in this context it seemed that the *real* anarchist politics was the domain of men, and that women's political experience and analysis was not taken as seriously, was marginalised and not placed as central to debate. The Anarchy and Feminism workshop on the Saturday afternoon was one of the most well-attended workshops of the weekend - with over 100 people in the room a lot of our time was actually taken up with working out how to get the most out of it. By the time we broke up into small groups we had half an hour for discussion, then 20 minutes to report back to the larger group. Not long. The number of people and the range oftopics - pornography and sex work, violence and militarism, direct action, essentialism and strutures, racism, feminist responses to the state and media representations - suggested that this workshop was merely a starting point, a means of finding common interest. It also shows that we shouldn't be letting feminist politics be seen as only vaguely relevant to anarchism, as a single issue, a women's issue. Many feminist concerns are absolutely central to the anarchist struggle, and challenge and inform the way we actually perceive anarchism. Queer visibility at the conference was often in contradictory ways. The organisers recognised queers within anarchism from the beginning, with the opening blessing and a speaker from the Sisters of the Order of perpetual Indulgence on the links between gay struggle and anarchism. However, this was undermined throughout the weekend by other participants - s/m was referred to several times in the context of violence, homophobic material was circulated and when it was removed notions of censorship and freedom of speech were invoked, leading us to question just who exactly is free to speak, it seems to help if you are a white heterosexual male. In the queer workshop we also had the same problem of not enough time to discuss all the thingsthat came up - isolation withing anarchism,critiqueof mainstream heterosexuality, critique of mainstream homocapitalism, coalition politics, direct action and ideas for change. Throughout the weekend, i spoke to many women who were frustrated and angry at how they were being treated in workshops and how their politics were belittled or dismissed. The predominantly white men at the conference seemed to think that by taking on the label anarchism that they have magically transcended the racial, gender and sexual prejudices that are in our society, that a commitment to the politics of anarchism automatically justifies their behaviour. They are ready to point out the injustices of mainstream society, but unable to see when they are reinforcing the same inequalities. Working towards eradicating such prejudices means more than paying lip serivce to concepts of autonomy and equality, considering that some groups have more access to getting freedom than others. Even in the Anarchy and Feminism workshop, the one workshop that placed women as central to discussion, men were unable to restrain themselves from trying to dominate and undermine discussion. If as anarchists we are serious in our challenge of authority, hierarchy and violence, then we need to recognise the very complex ways in which power is exercised in our society. The hierarchy is systematic and multifaceted, and is not changed by adhering to a code of so-called revolutionary politics that repeatedly excludes the experience of and refuses to be open to challenge from the other. At the same time, i think that if women had been better organise before the conference we would have had more of a chance of directing debate in relevant and useful ways. If we had felt more confident about challenging the male domain and had been stronger as a group, then it wouldn't have been left to a few brave individuals to put themselves on the line. Quite a few women said to me that they would have liked to have seen more workshops organised by feminists and queers, but seemed unwilling to organise them and i wonder why this is the case. Sadly i feel that sometimes it is easier to complain about what is offered to us than to create what it is we really want. Overall, i feel that most of what i learnt and valued over the weekend were the conversations outside of the conference itself. I met a lot ofimpassioned and inspiring women (and a couple of men) and had some really challenging discussions. I am also aware of just how much more preparation i want to do before the next one so that i am a lot clearer about what i want to get out of it, and how that might be done. nicki