On Jan. 22, the University of Manitoba Consciousness-Raising Association of Feminists (UMCRAFT) will be having its first event of 2019.

The second spoken word and feminist manifesto presentation night — titled “Slamming the Patriarchy!” — will be held at the Hub at 8 p.m. It is a communal event where both students and non-students alike are invited to share their stories about feminism.

Slamming the Patriarchy! was first held last spring. The warm reception from the audience prompted UMCRAFT executives to organize a second staging of performance artists, where people are invited to speak on their experiences with feminism.

Alicia Edoo, one of UMCRAFT’s social media directors, said the association aims to foster community.

“What we’re trying to do is not to make people believe that they should be feminists, but rather create a strong community within feminists,” she said.

With enough feminists present on campus, the committee that established UMCRAFT began to take shape early last year.

Christina Trachenko, UMCRAFT’s public group co-ordinator and one of its co-founders, said the group was founded based on the need for a feminist platform extending beyond classroom discussions.

“When you go to a women’s and gender studies class for example, we open up these really eye-opening, thought-provoking and mentally stimulating conversations about social justice and about feminism,” said Trachenko.

“And we have these conversations in class, but then we leave class and it just kind of ends there.”     

Trachenko explained the work the UMCRAFT executives are doing in strengthening the stand against all form of disenfranchisement and marginalization of different people, an incentive underpinned by Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectional feminism.

“What we’re all about is community building, about building ourselves back up,” said Trachenko.

“We acknowledge that it’s very strenuous to constantly be turned down by oppression, talking to people who know nothing about it, reinventing the wheel every single time we have one of these conversations. It’s very, very draining.”

In addition to spoken word performances, UMCRAFT organizes monthly discussion meetings, called consciousness-raising discussion meetings.

“Consciousness-raising is a known form of feminist organizing and it’s for the explicit goal of the people who are there at the meeting, who have sort of like minded views, coming together and talking about themselves, their experiences and theory,” said Trachenko.

Each meeting has its own theme. Previous discussions have been held on LGBTTQ* issues and black feminism during Black History Month.

Trachenko said such events are aimed toward exploring how people are affected by intersectional oppression.

“Intersectional feminism in itself […] considers how people are oppressed in every sense,” said Trachenko.

“You can’t just look at sexism, but have to consider race, class and sexuality, because all of these systems of oppression work together as it exists within individuals.”

RSVP to UMCRAFT’s Slamming the Patriarchy! by Jan. 21. The event is free and open to the public.