Getting into training around single sex work
1985
Pratiba Palmer (now
a film-maker) was then a youth worker, and I remember being denounced
by her in a lesbian youth workers' forum, for some transgression I’d
committed in terms of race, I’d doubtless stumbled over a word or
something. It was when I was doing youth work that I first did racism
awareness and people were setting you up, and jumping down your throat,
it was very bad training practice. That’s how I got involved in
training, I’d been doing the girls’ work and I was then asked to go
along and do some training around single sex work with young women, it
was about sexism and understanding women’s oppression and I didn’t have
a clue what I was doing, it was a very sensitive subject, people got
upset. We didn’t know how to handle that degree of emotion, we didn’t
know what we were doing, there was a whole knowledge and skills base
and we thought because we knew the subject, we could do it”.
Contributed by: Trisha McCabe, 51