feminist
The event is open to everyone from inside and outside the university. Source: Shutterstock.

Next month the University of Arizona (UA) is holding a day-long conference on “feminist social justice” through its Women’s Resouce Center in order to engage students in feminist discourse.

The Feminist Liberation and Learning Conference will feature all manner of issues including discussion on the #MeToo movement, consent, body positivity, masculinity, gender identity, the Black Lives Matter movement, and sex education.

Already more than 850 students have expressed interest in the conference on Facebook with over 100 confirming their attendance.

The event is not just restricted to UA students; students from local high schools have also been invited along with members of the public.

As well as discussions, debates and speakers, workshops will be running throughout the day. From button making to bike mechanics, yoga to gender identity, expression and pronoun de-coding.

Campus Reform claimed the yoga workshop was “a notable addition” to a social justice event considering the “ongoing concerns that yoga perpetuates white privilege”.

The session will be taught by UA researcher Leah Stauber who told Campus Reform: “It is not the case that most activists have disavowed yoga and other engaged contemplative practices.”

“The core is that […] any time we look within our being (in any sort of contemplative practice, not just yoga) we can identify how our behaviors might be contributing to the suffering of others,” she said.

This is a “foundation of social justice”, Stauber added.

UA’s Women’s Resource Center hosts many programs other than The Feminist Liberation and Learning Conference. Annually, student interns are hired to rally for feminism and other social justice causes including ending racism, ageism, and homophobia on campus.

Past workshops have included craft making out of expired condoms, and discussions designed to break the taboo of abortion, Campus Reform reported.

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