When Subjectivity Ends Teen Activism Begins

[Music]

i wanted to come here to talk a little

bit about myself

and my work um but first of all before i

get started to do that

i’m going to tell you a little bit about

my favorite book so it’s called kafka on

the shore

was written in 2002 by a japanese writer

called haruki murakami

then translated into english in 2005 and

it’s this

magical realism novel that goes a little

something like this

so kafka is a teenager who runs away

from his home in tokyo in order to

escape this dark

odypus like prophecy and on his journey

he ends up living and working in a

library in the small town of takamatsu

now the journey seems very innocent

right but as the narrator will put it

it’s no fairy tale no matter what spin

you put on it and it’s

true because his story interwines with a

few other narrative lines and suddenly

fish are raining from the sky and cats

can talk to people

and their soldiers from world war ii

still wandering a forest in japan

and the journey seems physical enough

until you realize that it’s really

not because it’s rather an exploration

of the self and of the consciousness

a battle with personal demons and

questions human desires and instincts

it’s a story about growth and i’m going

to talk to you about growth

because i first read kafka on the shore

when i was 15 and as it so happens the

main character

kafka also begins his journey on his

15th birthday

he talks to his harbinger of protection

and advice his

inner voice and that voice tells him

that he’s about to enter a sandstorm

and when he comes out he won’t be the

same person who walked in

the voice tells him from now on you’ll

need to be the toughest 15 year old in

the world

and to do that you’ve got to figure out

what it means to be tough

now i’ve learned because i was born and

raised right here in bucharest romania

and as a result

i’ve had way more interactions with

violence against women

and harassment and lack of trust in our

experiences than really anybody should

ever have to go through

and yet i’ve experienced just as much as

the average girl who has lived here

i’ve been that could have been harassed

right scanning the crowd

trying to figure out who looks the most

likely to intervene if something were to

happen to me

i’ve been the harassed i’ve been the

friend of the harassed

in the front of the assaulted i’ve been

a classmate to those who tell rape jokes

and a student to teachers who think

humiliating girls in front of the entire

class is

funny i’ve been a neighbor to a wife who

once stormed out of her house covered in

blood screaming he’s going to kill me

and i’ve been a neighbor to her husband

who somehow always seemed to get away

with it

i’ve been so shy and so scared and

introverted to say anything because i

didn’t think that people would believe

or just they didn’t care enough to say

something

and i’ve been so angry because you know

what at 15 i was also one of the

facebook users cheerily scrolling

through the metoo tag

and reading these stories from these

awful experiences that women had and

thinking

i’m 15. why these feel so real to me

why do i connect with these stories that

those women were tough

and i’ve learned from them but it really

only takes a number of stories from

tough women like them

to realize that for somebody like me

enough is enough

and that it’s time to embark on my own

kafka like journey at 15.

now my journey in particular and the one

that i want to talk to you about today

is about subjectivity

see i told you that i was angry and

truly i was but i wasn’t really angry at

the people around me

i wasn’t angry at police officers or

politicians or my parents or teachers

mostly i was angry at myself because

here i was

you know face to face with this huge

issue that directly affected

not just my community but me as a person

and yet i wasn’t doing anything about it

i’d convinced myself that i was too shy

or too bad of a public speaker or that

somebody with a degree would probably be

better suited to stake up and take

responsibility

so i became angry at 15 because i had

this huge issue i had this massive issue

in my own backyard

and yet i knew exactly what i needed to

do to overcome it right i knew

externally and internally what needed to

change

but i was just accepting those gaps of

knowledge as simply something that i

should

consider a constant barrier between me

and creating change rather than

something that i should be actively

trying to overcome

so that meant i was being subjective

right

i was considering my own feelings and

fears

which is insane right because we we live

in a country that has one of the highest

human trafficking rates in all of europe

where street harassment has just become

part of the daily commute

so normalized and not one word from our

representatives about it

and i was still thinking about myself

now this journey that i went on really

it goes to show this huge transformation

because you go from somebody who’s so

shy right and so scared

and then you end up doing what i do

today because i ended up channeling that

anger and that frustration

into what is now and currently still is

the only gender equality organization

for teenagers in our country

and it’s called girl up romania now this

is solely our team here in bucharest but

we are actually a team of over 60

teenagers in 21 cities and counties

across the city across the country sorry

and what we do is basically we mobilize

our generation to advocate for gender

equality

and we try to aim to teach that even as

teenagers we can create an impact within

our own communities

we do that through several different

means whether that is

protests or marches walkouts classes

courses debates

presentations whatever it takes to reach

our generation

really aim to empower these young people

now in a way you can really say that i

had a sort of a kafka-like journey of my

own right because there is no way

you go from somebody like me who’s so

shy to even be up on the stage

to somebody who can run this type of

organization

and there’s really no way that you go

from somebody who’s so scared to speak

up

to somebody who can confidently walk

into the office of several u.s congress

members and explain to them

why they should support a bill that

would fund global access to education

for girls

there is no way you go from somebody

who’s so scared to speak up

to somebody who can stand in front of

the ministry of internal affairs right

here in bucharest

and give a speech after karakal about

the horrors and how much

how much this country has failed as

young girls

and yet it is because i’m here

yet few people address their anger in

the same way now my experience i think

this experience in general teaches a lot

about our world

because we are all deep downs some to

some extent being subjective in our own

lives

now there really is just sort of this

parallel because few people

they they few people recognize that flaw

within themselves right i did but

in a way you know we’ve become very

focused on ourselves

we’ve become very detached from our own

communities very distant from our

responsibilities

and that needs to change because it’s

not just here it’s a global phenomenon

and it’s something that’s a challenge

all across the globe

people are becoming very detached from

their own communities because they think

that in their own bubble

what happens outside of it doesn’t

really affect them now there’s this

quote that i really like

it’s called it’s from democracy in

america which is a classic french text

and in this quote the author says this

which is he identifies the tendency as a

tendency to withdraw into small

private communities united together by

similarity of conditions habits and

customs

in order to indulge themselves in the

enjoyment of private life

now even as a high school student when i

read that i thought well

that’s incredibly familiar isn’t it

because he in

1835 when he wrote that predicted what

has become a reality today

which is a society where we neglect our

own duties

due to self-absorption he was worried

that people would become so focused on

themselves

that they would indulge themselves in

petty and paltry pleasures

and as a result would fail to recognize

their own duties as citizens

and he was right to feel that way

because we’re living in a time where

everybody points fingers and passes on

responsibility and blame

we never actually step up and do

anything because we all expect the next

person to do the things that need to be

done

and as a result well you can’t really

trace back any of these issues that

we’re dealing with to anyone or to any

mentality

because nobody’s to blame and suddenly

we’re hiding behind terms like

traditional and normal because really

they just imply that things have always

been this way

but they haven’t it’s just giving us an

out you know why bother investigating

when you’ve stripped

these problems and the victims of those

problems of any history

now this as a whole it really just goes

to show a lack of interest

in our own i guess in our own society

now sorry

there is a lack of clearly a lack of

accountability and responsibility

that’s what we have to address because

this is a time that we’re living in

a time of self-centeredness and

self-gratification you know

there’s another code that i like

christopher lodge called it a culture of

narcissism

then tom wolf called it the me decade

right and we’re living right in the

middle of it

because i’ve grown up and i think a lot

of my generation has grown up as well in

this environment that really

nurtures and feeds personal gain right

apathy carelessness short-term solutions

an environment really that in turn just

promotes this idea that if an issue

isn’t directly affecting you or your

community

that it’s not real or simply that it’s

not

your responsibility to take on not your

responsibility the same way that really

we’ve convinced ourselves that women’s

rights are a women’s issue

or more broadly that corruption is a

government or public office level issue

rather than really addressing it for

what it is which is

a reflection of our society as a whole

something that we’ve collectively put

there

due to our self-absorption due to

lack of civic duty and due to denial of

our power as citizens

because it’s so much easier to believe

right it’s so much easier to believe

that you don’t have an impact

or that you can’t have one on your own

not going to go out to vote it’s just

one vote

not going to send a petition it’s just

one petition nobody’s even going to read

it right

if i go to a protest well i’m kind of

tired tonight somebody else can go for

me i’m just one person it’s not going to

count

false because you do and you can have an

impact

regardless of the stance you take in a

situation there’s no position you can be

in from which you don’t

have an impact now it’s incredibly

important to recognize this because

a lot of people take the stance of

neutrality right so i’m going to step

back

that doesn’t make the problem go away

because when you are faced

with the facts with personal accounts of

these issues existing in our world

ignoring them does nothing but make the

oppressor protected by a collective

silence

you’re not stepping away from the

problem you’re simply contributing to it

now that is the truth and personally i

think you know during a time when truth

is being threatened

as christian and animal would say we

have to learn to be truthful

not neutral now i believe we must learn

to value our own voices and

contributions i really

do be i can tell you is probably the

youngest person in this room

as a future decision maker as a current

advocate

that it is no small thing for somebody

for anybody really for that matter

to step up and say the things that need

to be said and do the things that need

to be done

now i can give you an example for this

right why is it important for instance

for teenagers to be involved in gender

equality well

in short only we know the needs of this

generation

only we can tell you really as people

have grown up with the social media

why when you talk about sexual

harassment you have to talk about things

like instagram and snapchat as well

and only we can tell you why sexual

education in schools

wouldn’t be something damaging to our

communities but rather it’s something

crucial

because we’ve grown up with an overload

of unfiltered

and just simply unfiltered information

and imagery that nobody has really

addressed with us

not just that though but we can also

help strengthen the life cycle of gender

equality

because we are your future decision

makers we’re your future police officers

your future judges and lawyers and

district attorneys

and one day we’re going to be faced with

a case of human trafficking or assault

and in that situation we’re going to

need to know exactly how to address it

to prevent the issues that we’re dealing

with now

and while we’re going to be making those

decisions someday well you’re making

them now

you’re an evil an even more impactful

position really because

you can choose what happens next and you

have that power right now even more

power than i do

or any of my generation does so we

really need you to be the type of person

who puts their own

feelings and their own personal input

aside it really

starts to take that decision-making

power seriously

now with that i do want to tell you

something that i told my team at girl up

during one of our first meetings which

is this

so go something like this you all be

careful

it’s not about you it’s about the

message that you’re spreading and the

people who that message represents

it’s not about how boring it is to write

reports or petitions

it’s not about how tired you are how

much you don’t want to go to a protest

tonight

and it’s not about sleepless nights or

how bad you looked on the day of a big

tv

interview it’s about the women

and young girls who count on people like

you to amplify their voices and

help make their stories heard it’s about

your friends

your family your community

it’s about your community and how will

you fight for your community isn’t

determined

by your age your gender race

or even your experience with activism

it’s about how much you care and i

personally think we should all care a

lot because

outside of these bubbles in these

comfort zones that we’ve built

we’ve really just neglected so many

issues that will in turn affect us as

well

and that need to be addressed today

now i may be young truly i understand

but i think if there’s one thing that

i’ve learned from my work

or from my experience just in general

it’s really that right now

this i guess this um

this self-absorption right that we have

it’s really abdicating our control over

the issues that affect our lives

and the only way to take back that

control is really by stepping up

putting aside these comfort zones in

these bubbles that we’ve built

and stepping forward amplifying the

voices of the people who need us

most whether they are strangers or not

it really doesn’t matter

and it doesn’t matter how uncomfortable

or feeling or

foreign that feeling might be to you

because it is not about you

with that though i’m going to take you

back to my favorite book

talk a little bit about kafka because i

want to leave you on the same note that

the book left me on

because i think it’s a really good

conclusion to both of our journeys

so at the end of the book there is this

paragraph that goes a little something

like this

eventually you fall asleep and when you

wake up it’s true

you’re part of a brand new world now

this itself our journey right it’s a

little bit like that too

except in our world you can only wake up

and start over once

and every day you wake up afterwards

you’re going to have to live with the

consequences that both you

and the people around us have built

whether you take a stance of solidarity

or one of ignorance

the impact that you make on this world

will remain

and will in turn affect future

generations

and that’s something that i want all of

us to remember as we leave this event

today

because we’ve failed our community so

far truly we have

but this is not an insurmountable issue

and i personally think that right now it

is of this incontestable

and national just personal

moral genuine need that we put an end to

these issues today

thank you

you