WLU women’s centre launches feminism campaign

To think about how feminism exists in our own community, we should acknowledge the various definitions and facets that it offers.

That is the message that the WLU Women’s Centre aims to spread on campus through its new campaign which launched last week.

On Thursday, Jan. 14, the Women’s Centre held an exhibit called “Find Your Feminism” to promote this campaign at the Hall of Fame. Various staff and students from the university are able to answer the broad question: “What’s your feminism?”

By gathering perspectives on what feminism means to various individuals, the event strives to expose the concept’s diverse nature. Answers were adapted to individual posters placed on campus.

Women’s Centre co-ordinator Kate Klein said that “[the exhibit] is about feminism at Laurier and what we are trying to do here is show that feminism isn’t dead. It’s thriving on this campus in places that you wouldn’t necessarily expect.”

This project began in December when the Women’s Centre began its search for people’s “feminisms.”

Klein further explained that they asked to know the feminisms of those who represent the Laurier community and of those whose faces would be recognizable, as well as general people in the community.

The exhibit featured campus figures such as psychology professor emeritus Don Morgenson and Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union president Laura Sheridan.

“I was surprised by how many people said yes [to participating],” said Klein.

Klein acknowledged that perhaps not all the people in the posters would actually use the word “feminist” to describe themselves, but because they were allowed to say what feminism means to them personally, they were given freedom.

The reasoning behind this, according to Klein, is that “there are as many kinds of feminisms as there are feminists – it’s not some dogmatic sort of rules you have to follow, it’s something based on who you are, what you’re interested in, where you come from and what your experiences have been.”