“My radical feminist and lesbian journey has often been surprising. It is a mix of political and literary activism. My joys have been sharing a life with Renate Klein and our dogs, travelling in Australia to lots of out of the way places, having the chance to travel overseas, and meeting so many wonderful women who have enriched my life many times over. I love to work with women, to read women’s stories and to participate in feminist activism with women.”

“We were informed that we were allowed to carry the banner after all – but only this once! We were definitely not allowed to use it again during the rest of the festival.

And so. it transpired that, in front of a crowd of about 90,000 Cubans lining the parade route, four young Australian women discovered the serendipitous advantage of coming from a country whose name starts with A, and the raised fist inside the women’s symbol first saw the light of day in Cuba in spectacular style.“

A new wave of feminism is taking place and I never thought I would see one. I was involved in the women’s liberation movement (WLM) in London in the 1970s and 1980s before moving to Australia. Like all my sisters who continued to care about the WLM I experienced serious grief for a lost movement in the 1990s and particularly in the 2000s. It did seem that feminism would not rise again as all our women’s facilities disappeared, our discos, bookstores, publishers, women’s centres, bands. But then I was invited to speak at a radical feminist conference in London in 2012 and realised that a new wave of radical feminism was beginning to rise there.

As well as demonstrations, writing and theorising, we need to take up the mantle of practical hard work – the slog of influencing public bodies (which we’re doing), and/or setting up on our own, free of official restraints. And younger lesbians are stepping up, to recreate lesbian feminist culture, which gives some hope for renewing work with girls and young women in the future. We need to get the next generation of girls on their bikes, in their canoes, and on the route to sanity, independence, freedom and sisterhood!