Lecture Response: Let's hear the quiet ones

What is a feminist city? It is not a material manifestation of “womanhood,” because no such thing exists. It is not a surveillance culture ratified in the name of “protecting women.” It is not a Barbie-dominated Dreamhouse market, and Kens do not live at the beach. As suggested by the title of Dolores Hayden’s 1980 essay, “What Would A Non-Sexist City Look Like?,” the sexism of the built environment is implicit, and the work of feminist design is corrective.

Eva Kail’s keynote to the Domestic Revolutions Symposium embodied this same premise: “If the timetables of public transport consider different everyday patterns… If in participation processes the quiet ones are heard… then it’s gender planning.” Kail flew us through forty years of her work as a planner for the city of Vienna, framing gender as inextricably linked to climate, mobility, aging, and labor. It wasn’t until Friday’s first panel that Kail named these pilot projects as “evidentiary feminism,” explaining that feminist projects are far more likely to be ubiquitously implemented if first “proven to succeed” via experimental pilots.

Such valuable insights could have been revealed Thursday night if the keynote were treated as a symposium sneak-peak rather than an endless setting-up. Four introductions of figures who “needed no introduction” shortened Eva’s lecture and the much needed Q&A was omitted. Perhaps hosting a debate, or simply opening up the entire evening to questions, could have balanced the amazing legacies of Hayden and Kail with the spirit of discourse at the heart of the symposium.