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