By Olivia Palmer

We are close to a year from when the first lockdown began, and many of us had actually started to avoid large events before March due to fear of catching the virus. I remember considering not using my ticket to a music festival I had booked in February 2020. It was impossible to weigh up the risk given we knew so little about Covid 19 at the time and even less about the frequency of cases given that at that stage no tests had been rolled out. Anyway, I decided to go and I am so glad I did! Little did I know that would be the last festival, conference, or large gathering I could attend in 2020, possibly in 2021 as well.

I have always enjoyed social events, my main hobbies are gigs, festivals & activism. I usually go to three or four music festivals in the summer. The energy and emotional impact of thousands of people jumping, moshing, dancing to the same music – music that we have a shared love of, singing in unison, feeling the warmth created by the body heat of so many people surrounding you (albeit sometimes a little too closely) is phenomenal. When you listen to music your heartbeat and breathing[i] changes, this is known to be of benefit to your emotional and physical health, when this experience is shared its impact is even greater. It wasn’t just festivals that I loved, it was live music in general, there was nothing more exciting than walking into a pub with friends and discovering a local band or musician.

Aside from my passion for music I have always had a drive to change things in society with which I disagree. I am very into social justice and spent lots of evenings attending local environmental meetings, it was often frustrating but we did have small wins every now and again, for instance I did a presentation to council members about how to improve the ‘reducing plastic’ project they were rolling out and I started a Plastic Free Communities initiative in my village. Victories in grass roots campaigning can seem small but they are equally important.

I also attended larger events like protests, marches, talks, and conferences. It is such an honour to listen to your feminist sheroes telling you about their work – there is something so inspiring about being in a room with these women who are working on all different campaigns. It’s wonderful to hear first-hand about the victories of our movement and important to listen and discuss strategies for tackling the next hurdle. And I’m sure most of you will agree that it’s always a relief to go to the pub at the end of the talk. Some women continue the discussions of the conference, if the topic was particularly heavy, sometimes it’s good just to be around women, comforting or just sitting, all knowing we have had a shared enlightenment or experience. Sometimes women feel empowered to share their own stories with each other, so this informal part can be more important to some women than the actual event. It is really concerning that even protests have been banned[ii] under the Covid rules. The right to protest is protected by Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights[iii] although you can argue that the protection of health clause applies, I am keen to see this restriction lifted at the earliest possible time.

FiLiA sort of epitomises the above experiences. An entire weekend of togetherness, there are highs and lows, I think most of us will have cried at some point during the weekend! But crucially these experiences are shared. Sometimes you go to a session knowing a feminist legend is there and other times you have never heard of the women and can be astounded at the work they are doing. The Saturday party has music and dancing and similarly to music festivals, our hearts and breathing is affected, women enjoy the togetherness and the freedom that is created by a woman only space. I think the postponement of FiLiA last year was such a blow to so many women. A lot of us had been looking forward to it basically since traveling back from the 2019 conference!

When you have a one-to-one conversation, it is normal to make eye contact and mirror each other’s body language. We touch each other more than we might realise, hugging hello and goodbye, a pat on the shoulder to congratulate, a hand on their hand to console. None of this can be truly replicated through a WhatsApp message or even a video call. This technology is sort of wonderful – we can still attend talks, even talks in different countries, we can see the face of our friend or family member. I personally spent a good chunk of lockdown one on Animal Crossing visiting friends’ islands to spend time with their cartoonified self, and researchers actually found that playing Animal Crossing significantly increased happiness[iv], I think in part because it lets us connect with our friends in a different way. I definitely welcome the prevalence of video conferencing considering it was becoming commonplace for business people to fly across the world for a single meeting. I also think working from home is a good thing environmentally. I hope when this is over people will have the choice to work from home more often and also be discouraged from going into the office when they are sick! For all the benefits of this technology, none of us can deny that they cannot replicate or replace in person contact. The thought of in future being hugged via a robot is way more terrifying than it is comforting.

Another real downside for me is that the pandemic and women’s reactions to it has created yet another division within the movement. Some women are pro lockdown and others anti, and like all arguments, discussing this through the medium of social media is fraught with difficulty. When we disagree in person, we can see when someone is becoming angry or distressed, we can change our tone or just change the subject to avoid a disagreement from becoming a row. I noticed back in June that women were beginning to unfriend each other based on their views on lockdown and I drew this cartoon:

Basically, whilst in theory I support lockdown although not to the extent we have experienced it in the UK, I do not think women coming to a different conclusion are doing so out of malice. Yet they are vilified as ‘covidiots’ and conspiracy theorists. Equally there is a tendency for lockdown sceptics to assume the rest of us aren’t heartbroken to not be able to see our friends and hug our family. These divisions are unnecessary – can’t we cope with disagreements with our friends and colleagues? What’s more is that this social exclusion is pushing moderate lockdown sceptics to being entirely anti-lockdown as these are the only people who will associate with them, so this seems like a counter intuitive move for women whose goal it is to get people to follow the rules.

I have suffered from depression on and off for decades, I am so lucky that in the last few years I have almost completely recovered. I remain an advocate for removing the stigma against mental health problems. As a trained therapist I have supported women throughout the difficult year. I have really struggled myself especially during this winter lockdown, there have been days when I couldn’t stop crying. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for people who were not in as good a place as me at the beginning of the year! Something that really concerns me is that those of us who are pro lockdown seem to be discouraged from talking about the emotional impact this is having on us, in fear of being labelled anti-lockdown. If you take anything from this blog please remember it’s OK to talk about your own suffering even if it doesn’t compare to what others are going through. It’s OK to have days when you feel awful, and it’s alright to complain about the emotional impact of something you support in principle. I really hope that in the next year we can reconnect with women we’ve lost touch with, argued with, all but forgotten about. We have to hold onto the fact that we will all see each other again and hug and laugh and cry together, down the pub, at a gig, and at FiLiA.

[i] https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2005/10/10/1478792.htm

[ii] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/peaceful-protests-banned-under-englands-22957468

[iii] https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf

[iv] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54954622