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In loving memory of grandpa, Richard Beale,
and his endless love of books
1930–2018
L.C.
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Red Shed,
an imprint of Egmont UK Limited
The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN
www.egmont.co.uk
Text copyright © Laura Coryton 2019
Illustrations copyright © Egmont UK Limited 2019
First e-book edition 2019
ISBN 978 1 4052 9469 0
Ebook ISBN 978 1 4052 9574 1
A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is not responsible for content hosted by third parties. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.
Egmont takes its responsibility to the planet and its inhabitants very seriously. We aim to use papers from well-managed forests run by responsible suppliers.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication and Copyright
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 2: TOOLKIT
STEP ONE: GOALS
STEP TWO: DECISION MAKERS
STEP THREE: RESEARCH
STEP FOUR: PLATFORM
STEP FIVE: LAUNCH
CHAPTER 3: BOUNCE BACK
FAILURE
INTERNET TROLLS
CHAPTER 4: SPEAK UP EVERY DAY
RELATIONSHIPS
CONSENT
SELF-LOVE
CHAPTER 5: YOUR NEXT STEPS AND KICKING ASS
TAMPON TAX CAMPAIGN TIMELINE
INDEX
RESOURCES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHAPTER 1
YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE THE WORLD.
IF YOU USE YOUR VOICE,
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.
This book will help you to change the things in the world that shock you. Or even just annoy you. There is no issue too big or too small that YOU are not able to change. It might take time. It will take a lot of work. But every step we can take to make the world a better place is worth it.
How do I know? I ran a successful campaign that ended the hugely unfair ‘tampon tax’. That’s right, I said tampon. Don’t be shy. I even made the prime minister say the word ‘tampon’ out loud in Parliament (for the first time in its 800-year history). More on the tampon tax campaign later, but the upshot is: if I can do it, you can too.
There are many issues to feel passionate about. Maybe your local park is being sold off for fancy houses. Maybe your school doesn’t offer food for vegans. Maybe you want world peace (don’t we all?). Big or small, you can make a difference, but it can be hard to know where to start. So I’ve written this book to help you change your world.
Before I started my campaign, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t have training, I don’t have any campaigning superpowers or global politician parents to help me. I’m really pretty ordinary. If I can do it, so can you, by using my FIVE-STEP TOOLKIT for change.
This book outlines the key steps you need to take to change the world. Together we will get specific about your goals (STEP ONE) and get focused on who to target (STEP TWO). I’ll show you how to be smart with your research (STEP THREE) and get creative with your platforms (you guessed it – STEP FOUR!). Finally, STEP FIVE will give you the confidence to plan your launch.
I had a lot of success in my campaign, but I also had a lot of knockbacks. I think it’s really important to talk about failing and how to BOUNCE BACK. It’s not easy, but with help I managed it. We’ll also cover a very modern and very unpleasant phenomenon: TROLLS. In Chapter 3 we’ll talk about how you can use trolls to your advantage. Their biases can empower your voice and legitimize your campaign. Never let them knock your campaigning confidence.
I’VE SAID IT BEFORE AND
I’LL SAY IT AGAIN:
IF I CAN DO IT,
IF THEY CAN DO IT,
SO CAN YOU!
If you really care about an issue, don’t hold back. Make a change. Ask yourself who else will speak up about your issue if you don’t.
Channel your inner Emma Watson and speak up about what you believe in. Emma launched the HeForShe campaign at the United Nations, and in doing so she changed the face of feminism.
During her speech, Emma questioned her ability to talk about women’s rights, asking: is an actress qualified to speak up about this? Yes. I think she absolutely is – because, as she said in her speech, she cares and wants to make things better. And this is what qualifies you to speak up about the things that you care about too.
So, if you’re scared about speaking up, you’re in great company. You don’t have to start by giving a speech to the whole world. You can start small.
BUT ALWAYS TRUST
THAT YOU CAN MAKE
There’s a time for big campaigns but there are also many times for tiny, everyday actions that have a huge impact. In Chapter 4 we’re going to talk about some difficult things.
RELATIONSHIPS
CONSENT
SELF-LOVE
These are big topics. You can speak up about them on an everyday basis. It’s these conversations that change the world. In Chapter 4 we’ll talk about how political the personal really is. By sparking conversations with those around you about these topics, you can challenge prejudices and change narratives.
You can use your voice to find power in lots of everyday situations. Catcalling is just one. When I was at school, I experienced catcalling, sadly, like many, many other female students. It shouldn’t happen, but it does. It made me feel uncomfortable. It still does. But since then, I’ve learned how to deal with the men who call out to me and my friends. What are they thinking anyway? That we’d reply? ‘What a great chat-up line! Can we make out right now, please?’ Come on.
For years I didn’t know what to do, so I did nothing, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
This book will help you discover the many ways you can find your power by using your voice.
IT WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO
BE THE BADASS I KNOW
After all, changes don’t happen by themselves. Voices make change. Voices like yours.
Just like Lucy Gavaghan, teenage animal welfare activist and my inspiring friend (who, in her spare time convinced supermarket giant Tesco to stop selling caged eggs), always tells me:
‘Never forget the power a single voice has to make an incredible impact.’
THE INTERNET IS OUR SUPERPOWER!
I never set out to become a campaigner. I didn’t dream about ending the tampon tax when I grew up. I’d never even heard of the tampon tax. In fact, our school careers advisor suggested us girls should aspire to careers such as wedding planning, while the boys should aim to be business managers or politicians.
It wasn’t as though I had nothing to speak up against. Believe me, there was plenty I wanted to change! The problem was I never thought I really could change anything.
All I knew was that changing the world sounded pretty far-fetched. What could I, an average person, do anyway? My parents had always reminisced about their generation, which changed the world through rock ’n’ roll. In comparison, my friends and I didn’t seem too interested in shaking things up, or so I thought . . .
It’s confession time: I hate revision. (Surprise!) When I was studying for my university finals that extremely rainy summer I just could not concentrate. I would take any opportunity to be distracted. Luckily my friends felt the same and were posting articles and obscure documentaries all over their social media feeds that happily sent me down an internet rabbit hole for a long time.
And that’s when it came to me:
THE INTERNET IS OUR
GENERATION’S SUPERPOWER.
WE HAVE REDEFINED
THE WORLD BY CREATING
A NEW ONE ONLINE.
While the internet has enabled us to fill our time with not exactly valuable activities (hello, kitten videos), it has also given us the power to change the world.
OUR GENERATION DOES CARE
ABOUT CHANGING THINGS
AND SOLVING THE
INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS
THAT WE FACE BECAUSE
OF OUR GENDER, RACE,
RELIGION AND SEXUALITY.
Just because we’re not doing so through the same means as those before us doesn’t mean that we aren’t already making our own changes in our own, quieter, new ways.
Eventually I ran out of social media updates. I had to start revising. That made me realize something else. (Come with me down this rabbit hole!) Studying had been impossible for millions of women before me. Women had been excluded from university until barely more than a hundred years ago.
When I studied at Oxford I felt this sexism. While men have been studying at the University of Oxford since the 1100s,
IT WAS ONLY IN
THE 1920S THAT THE
INSTITUTION DEEMED
WOMEN WORTHY OF
ATTAINING A UNIVERSITY
EDUCATION.
Although the institution is making efforts to be progressive, there are many reminders of its past. The dining halls are lined with pictures of professors and alumni to inspire students, but almost all are men.
This got me thinking about politics. Did you know that the word ‘democracy ’ comes from ancient Greek? The very word combines the words demos δῆμος, which means people and kratos κράτος, which means force or power. But when democracy was born – in Athens in the 5th century BCE – you had to be a man of a certain age and class to be considered a person or citizen of your city-state. From the birth of democracy, women were excluded from the very concept.
Political realities today continue to discourage women from engaging in politics. Less than a third of UK MPs are female.
OUT OF THE 193 COUNTRIES
THAT ARE MEMBERS OF
THE UNITED NATIONS
ONLY 16 HAVE A FEMALE
HEAD OF GOVERNMENT.
THAT’S JUST 9 PER CENT!
Online, the world is different. The world we have created via the internet can be truly democratic. Virtual institutions like the Open University have offered educational opportunities to men and women equally since it was founded in 1969. The internet’s political institutions have also smashed gender barriers since they began. Perhaps the most striking example is online petitions.
For years I had signed and shared many petitions and campaigns, and I could see they were super effective! From Lucy-Anne Holmes’s NO MORE PAGE 3 campaign to Laura Bates’s EVERYDAY SEXISM PROJECT, there was no doubt that women were using the internet to change the world.
One of the world’s leading online petition organizations is CHANGE.ORG. They are amazing. Their UK director, Kajal Odedra tells me that in her experience, women sign, share and support online petitions far more than men do. Women drive change that’s instigated and legitimized by online campaigns. As a result, women truly are winning online. Via the internet, women are changing the world. While the majority of online petitions are started by men, more winning petitions are started by and run by women. In many ways we hold the equivalent of political offices and the power to persuade political decision makers through the internet.
That is pretty astounding. It is new. It is exciting. We do not know where it will lead us yet. That is up to us.
Back on that depressingly rainy afternoon, my phone vibrated. I STILL had not started revising . . . so, I looked at my phone and saw my friend Verity had sent me a link to an article.
THIS ARTICLE PRETTY MUCH
CHANGED MY LIFE.
It discussed the 5 per cent tax we were paying on period products. At first I presumed this tax must make some sense. If the government backed a tax on period products, then there must be some logic behind it, right? But I wanted to check the logic, so I began to research the UK’s taxation system (yes, I really was THAT desperate to avoid revising). This was when things started to get annoying . . . and then shocking. I discovered the extent of the absurdities that riddle our taxation system.
Since 1973, our government deemed products such as tampons and period pads to be luxury items. Yet they aren’t plated with gold, nor do they come with a side serving of diamonds. They aren’t even an item most of us would want to purchase if we had the choice. Period products are needed by half of the population to engage fully in public life all through the month. It’s as simple as that.
While women have paid tax on period products, other more frivolous items have escaped tax altogether. Why? Well, because astonishingly the government appears to have deemed many items more essential than women being able to participate in daily life.
Things such as maintaining private helicopters, eating exotic meats and playing bingo.
Of course, period products are essential to people who menstruate. Yet the government deemed them a ‘luxury’. But what makes this story even more astonishing is that the UK was NOT alone in the absurdity of this tax. Oh no. Get this. In Texas, the state government also taxes period products for being ‘luxury’ products, while they have a zero tax rate for what they deem to be more ‘essential’ items. Here’s the shocking part. Such ‘essential’ items include
COWBOY BOOTS!
PEOPLE WHO MENSTRUATE
WERE BEING TAXED FOR
HAVING PERIODS. I WAS
SHOCKED. THEN I GOT ANGRY.
Women have been campaigning to end tampon tax for generations. But they haven’t always been able to utilize the internet or the new online political world. I was gunning to sign a petition to end the tax, but I couldn’t find one.
When I discovered this tax had existed for so long I decided to do something I had never done before.
I STARTED A PETITION.
I didn’t think it would be very popular – it was a campaign cocktail of menstruation and taxation after all, not exactly the most thrilling combination of topics!
But I had our generation’s superpower to rely on – the internet – and if I didn’t try to launch this petition now, who would, and when?
I was shocked again: people did get behind my END TAMPON TAX petition. To be more specific, over 320,000 men and women! With this kick-ass cohort of supporters, we got the prime minister to say ‘tampon’ in parliament and eventually ended this tax in the UK and then in Europe. Not only that, but my initial online petition also spurred women from across the world to start their own End Tampon Tax sister petitions, which are now axing the tax in countries scattered across almost every continent, from India to Australia. Even Michelle and Barack Obama offered their support for the campaign!
That was the beginning of the End Tampon Tax campaign. Since then it has been tackling the period taboo and encouraging women to feel more confident and comfortable in their bodies. Period!
The internet offers a new platform upon which to organize, demonstrate our work and speak up. It’s powerful. It makes us distinctly powerful too.
There is power in your voice. There is possibility in the internet. In combining the two, you can change your world.
So what do you think? I’m guessing if you picked up this book in the first place, you were already interested in some kind of activism. If you picked it up because of the awesome cover (thanks, Elaine!), then I hope this introduction has given you some things to think about.
This book will arm you with the weapons you need to take down the problems you want to tackle. You can read it from beginning to end, using the SPEAK UP TOOLKIT as a step-by-step guide to creating your own successful campaign, or you can dip in and out, depending on the kind of advice you’re looking for.
Remember, you don’t have to launch a global campaign right this second. (You can if you want to, though!) Everyday, small actions can have a big impact. I want you to be confident in your voice, in your views and to give you the tools to make change.
What shocks you in the world? What annoys you? Where do you see injustice that you want to challenge? And who are you to be leading this fight? You are you.
YOU ARE AWESOME.
You are unique. You are powerful and your voice matters. It’s time to
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