About

The Feminist Duration Reading Group (FDRG) focuses on under-represented feminist texts, movements and struggles from outside the Anglo-American canon. The group has developed a practice of reading out loud, together, one paragraph at a time, with the aim of creating a sense of connection and intimacy during meetings.

The group was established in March 2015 by Helena Reckitt, at Goldsmiths, University of London, to explore texts from the Italian feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Later in 2015 it relocated to SPACE in Hackney, East London where it was hosted by Persilia Caton until April 2019. From June 2019 to February 2020 the group was in residence at the South London Gallery, where it focused on intersectional feminisms in the UK context (a planned year-long programme that was moved online due to COVID-19).

In 2023 we were one of several groups selected for the eighteen month Residents programme at Goldsmiths CCA, London.

From 2023-2024 FDRG partnered with Cell Project Space developing CEED (Central East European and Diaspora) Feminisms, funded by the British Art Network, with Cell Project Space.

FDRG sessions have been organised with Emilia-Amalia at Art Metropole in Toronto; Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof and HFBK Hamburg, Germany; in London with the Advocacy Academy, Artangel, Barbican Art Gallery, Cell Project Space, Chelsea Space, Chisenhale Gallery, the Drawing Room, Flat Time House, Goldsmiths CCA, Mimosa House, Mosaic Rooms, The Showroom, South Kiosk, Studio Voltaire, Tate Modern, in collaboration with AntiUniversity and the Department of Feminist Conversations, and as part of The Table at the Swiss Church. Elsewhere in the UK we have been hosted by Grand Union and Eastside Projects, Birmingham, esea, Manchester, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, and Hypatia Trust, Penzance.  A sister group, NW FDRG, was set up in Liverpool by Kezia Davies in 2019.        

Six members of the FDRG - Giulia Casalini, Diana Georgiou, Laura Guy, Helena Reckitt, Irene Revell, and Amy Tobin - organised the two-week long events programme, ‘Now Can Go,’ focused on legacies of Italian feminism, across the ICA, The Showroom, SPACE, and Raven Row, in December 2015.  

The group usually meets once a month, in art spaces and community venues as well as non-institutional venues such as private homes or gardens.

The FDRG aims to create an inclusive trans-positive space. We welcome feminists of all genders and generations to explore the legacy and resonance of art, thinking and collective practice from earlier periods of feminism, in dialogue with contemporary practices and movements.

Working Group

FDRG sessions are initiated by a Working Group. Current members are Beth Bramich, Sabrina Fuller, Taey Iohe, Helena Reckitt, and Dot Zhihan.

Support Group

FDRG activities are supported by a Support Group comprising former Working Group members Lina Džuverović, Mariana Lemos, Katrin Lock, and Ehryn Torrell.

Other former Working Group members are Giulia Antonioli, Angelica Bollettinari, Lily Evans-Hill, Félicie Kertudo, Ceren Özpinar, Sara Paiola, Justin Seng, and Fiona Townend.

Working with the FDRG: A Note for Institutions

The FDRG is run by members of the voluntary Working and Support Groups. We regularly partner with community and arts organizations to offer free events to the public.

The reading group is our collective practice that we enjoy and like sharing with others. Facilitating sessions does of course involve considerable time and effort. We also have running costs for web hosting and communication, invited speaker fees etc.

We understand financial constraints within the cultural sector, but appreciate any contributions that support our efforts.

The FDRG operates an ‘Honesty Box,’ and asks funded organisations to pay what they can.

For organisations who can access funding, we suggest a fee of £300 - £600 per session, depending on the scope of work entailed.  This roughly follows the a-n artist payment guidelines for 1-1.5 days for an artist with seven years professional experience (the FDRG was set up in 2015).

Collaborators and Partners

FDRG sessions have been led by Adomas Narkevicius, Ximena Alarcón-Díaz, Giulia Antonioli, Diana Baker Smith, Fari Bradley, Beth Bramich, Giulia Casalini, Laura Castagnini, Catherine Cho, Leah Clements, Morgane Conti, Lauren Craig, Cinzia Cremona, Galit Criden, Giulia Damiani, Oana Damir, Kezia Davies, Department of Feminist Conversations, Flora Dunster, Lina Džuverović, Lily Evans-Hall, Lucia Farinati, Lynne Friedli, Sabrina Fuller, Diana Georgiou, Rose Gibbs, Valeria Graziano, Laura Guy, Haley Ha, Nora Heidorn, Minna Henriksson, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, Yurika Imaseki, Taey Iohe, Félicie Kertudo, Alexandra Kokoli, Jessie Krish, Mariana Lemos, Mai Ling, Jet Moon, Gabby Moser, Roisin O’Sullivan, Ceren Özpinar, Frances Painter Fleming, Grace Eunhye Park, Sara Paiola, Raju Rage, Helena Reckitt, Irene Revell, Lidia Salvatori, Elif Sarican, Justin Seng, Something Other, Cecilia Sosa, Amy Tobin, Ehryn Torrell, and Dot Zhihan.

Artists, Writers & Collectives

Sessions have been dedicated to texts and artworks including those by Naadje Al-Aali, Joan Anim-Addo, Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis, Gloria Anzaldua, Jenn Ashworth, Margot Badran, Khairani Barokka, Chiai Bonfiglioli, Anne Boyer, Brixton Black Women’s Group, adrienne maree brown, Wilmette Brown, Octavia Butler, Sakine Cansiz, Hazel V Carby, Adriana Cavarero, Teresa Hak Kyung Cha, Anne Anlin Cheng, Catherine Cho, Barbara Christian, Lia Cigarini, Eli Clare, Leah Clements, Lauren Craig, Galit Criden, Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, Maria Puig De La Bellacasa, Leah Clements, Silvia Federici, Leta Hong Fincher, Shulamith Firestone, Lauren Fournier, Ruth Frankenberg, Olivia Guaraldo, Johanna Hedva, bell hooks, Sanja Iveković, Juliet Jacques, Marie Elizabeth Johnson, Jane Jin Kaisen, Jasleen Kaur, AE Kings, Larissa Lai, Teresa de Lauretis, Clarice Lispector, Carla Lonzi, Fereil Ben Mahoud, Alex Martinis Roe, Lea Melandri, Fatema Mernissi, Milan Women’s Bookshop Collective, Trinh T Minh-ha, Adriana Monti, Jet Moon, Antonella Nappi, Astrida Neimanis, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyen, Abdullah Ocalan, Lola Olufemi, Sue O’Sullivan, Tanja Ostojić, Cecilia Palmeiro, Queer Beograd, Darija Radaković, Raju Rage, Claudia Rankine, Tabita Rezaire, Rivolta Femminile, Lucia Egana Rojas, Sasha Roseneil, Gail Rubin, Suzanne Santoro, Selma Selman, Christina Sharpe, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Rhea Storr, Latif Tas, Miriam Ticktin, Tiqqun, Iris Uurto, Nafu Wang, Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Katri Vala, Vron Ware, Wages Due Lesbians, Wages for Housework, Linda Zerilli.

Contact us

If you would like to join the reading group mailing list or propose a focus for a session, or invite us to lead a meeting, please contact: feministduration@gmail.com 

Website Design by Angelica Bollettinari

Beating Around the Butch: a conversation on uncertain transmasculinities

Beating Around the Butch: a conversation on uncertain transmasculinities

Feminist Duration
2024

In recent years, demands to prove and know our genders — to present evidence of ‘really being’ — have been levied increasingly at trans people. What would it mean to reject these pressures? Starting with the ambivalent figure of the ‘butch,’ our speakers Dr Sita Balani, Ray Filar, Tanaka Fuego, D Mortimer and Francis Whorrall-Campbell, share some seminal butch texts, and discuss the spectres of trans ambivalence and regret in relation to their practices and research.

Using the opening letter of Leslie Feinberg’s 1993 novel Stone Butch Blues as a springboard, this panel examines the intersections between class, race and ability in relation to the butch experience and the border wars of trans masculinity and butchness. Where is the vanishing point of masculinity? How do questions of uncertainty, doubt, ambivalence and regret get swallowed up in the noise of trans-exclusionary movements? And in what ways might these exclusions be said to construct the transexual in the popular imagination as a bogeyman? 

We are keen for this project to examine whether the medical model is failing a trans and gender non-conforming population forced into performing certainty to access healthcare. As artists, writers and poets working in the humanities we would like to question exactly how human the notion of certainty really is when it comes to gender, and in doing so oxidise a future methodology of uncertain genders. 

Texts

We will reference texts including:

Cameron Awkward-Rich, The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment (Duke University Press: 2022)

 C. Riley Snorton, Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (University of Minnesota Press: 2017) – available here: https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2019-03-17_5c8e04a08bf86_c-riley-snorton-black-on-both-sides-a-racial-history-of-trans-identity.pdf

 Grace Lavery, ‘Egg Theory’s Early Style’, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2020 7/3

Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Duke University Press: 2018)

Jordy Rosenberg, ‘The Daddy Dialectic’, Los Angeles Review of Books, March 11, 2018 – available here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-daddy-dialectic/

Jules Gill-Peterson, Histories of the Transgender Child (University of Minnesota Press: 2018)

Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues (Firebrand Books: 1993) – open access, available here: https://www.lesliefeinberg.net/

 Levi Hord, ‘Specificity Without Identity: articulating post-gender sexuality through the non-binary lesbian’, Sexualities, 2022 25/5-6

Bios

Dr Sita Balani is a Senior Lecturer in English at Queen Mary University of London. Balani is the author of Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race (Verso), and has published in Vice, Tribune, The White Review, Salvage, Five Dials, and Wasafiri.

Ray Filar is a writer and theatre-maker based in London. They are co-creative director of Homos and Houmous, a queer Jewish theatre company. 

Tanaka Fuego is a slam winning, multi-published, international spoken word artist, performing sold out shows at Edinburgh’s Fringe festival and Vault festival, and recently being involved in British Vogue X Prim digital pride campaign, working with brands such as Calvin Klein, Montblanc x NTS, Nike and more. Tanaka Fuego is a BBC Extra words first alumni, as well as a Roundhouse poetry collective alumni. From becoming a qualified mental health first aider, facilitating workshops for all people in identity and expression as a wellness practice to speaking at corporate events on diversity and inclusion - Tanaka is an artist dedicated to practice of autonomy, and confronting self!

D Mortimer is a writer from London. They/he/she is interested in the crip unknown. Their first book Last Night a Beef Jerk Saved My Life was published by Pilot Press in 2021. They are a techne scholar in English and Creative Writing at The University of Roehampton.

Francis Whorrall-Campbell is an artist and writer. Their work has been shown widely, with upcoming exhibitions at Project Art Centre, Dublin and Bologna Towers, Amsterdam. He is currently working on a road trip novel about Twink Death, Kurt Cobain and trans internet culture.

Speaker Portraits:

Francis: photographed by Annabel Ballance

Ray photographed by Holly Revel

Marlo photographed by Yaz Zadeh

Tanaka photographed by Tom Burman

Sita photographed by Sita Balani

Access information for Goldsmiths CCA is available here

Residents at Goldsmiths CCA

This event takes place as part of the Feminist Duration Reading Group’s 2023-2024 residency at Goldsmiths CCA. 

Image

Tanaka Fuego in ‘Beating Around the Butch,’ Goldsmiths CCA, 28 April 2024. Photo Helena Reckitt.

CEED Feminisms, Bibliography Launch

CEED Feminisms, Bibliography Launch
Tonight, there’s no place for me to put down my poem

Tonight, there’s no place for me to put down my poem