I look forward with curiosity to every one of your future pronouncements, and everything that still lies in store in your civilised cavern with its secret drawers for the appropriate moment...
I look forward to hearing you say once again that the emperor has no clothes on and you can't put up with it any more …

An epistle to you and about you in continuous tense

"Take a note of that girls. It'll go down in history one day!" - that's what you whooped in true soothsayer style when we reached the top of that South Bohemian hill called Kremesnik, where we all came together in the summer of 1993 in a group of women, girls, female Americans and children of all ages in order to spend a week of concentrated discussion about gender studies issues and the shape of feminism in the Czech lands… I store those comments made by you with your amazing "sense of the moment" in a special drawer. I treasure each one of them as they are received, and they are constantly with me, like the little gifts you bring from your travels: that coiled dragon from the Great Wall of China, carved out of a tree root, which just fitted into the palm; the alpaca spoon from Mexico that found its home in a pocket of my laptop computer bag, the little pewter statue of a Celtic warrior goddess attached to my car keys.

Now, thanks to the initiative of your and our dear friend Jim Ottaway, I have an opportunity to open my memory drawer after all those years of chats together, and remind myself - also by using your inimitable exclamations - of the time when we founded Gender Studies in your apartment. These are my comments and I know that many of those who gradually joined us might have a different perception of your activity in the field of women's and gender issues. I feel not only love and gratitude for our shared experiences but also a desire to look with hindsight on this theme that I was privileged to help you develop. It is my private reflection, Jirina. I'm fully aware of your qualms about premature assessments and pigeonholing.

I am aware of and respect the privilege that pioneers such as you enjoy to reflect on their activity in the continuous tense, i.e. via each new enterprise you engage in. I share your awareness of the power and powerlessness of words, which is why it is so hard to write about you, which is why I am addressing this tribute to your personally.

I know very few people who share your ability to "let fly" the way you do when you encounter crass stupidity or stick-in-the-mud attitudes. You yourself knew all the risks that your spontaneous and often impatient directness involved. But I and my other friends who have spent time in your flat, as well as our joint colleagues, cherish the memory of your verbal tornadoes, often immediately compensated for by your unselfish and practical help to those you occasionally scolded like little children. What's more, you have an incredible memory and the gift of storytelling, so that your listeners not only get a very lifelike picture of a past event they are also marvellously entertained. You have become a hero - not only for me - because of what you irradiate youthfully but full of wisdom, something that derives chiefly from your boundless energy in the battle against intractable situations. How do you do it? The curiosity with which you embark on all new ventures, the sense of humour you display in situations that would normally make one weep, your playfulness, but also your powerful determination to create a legacy and process "data" responsibly. Ought I to recall how you once urged me to stop you in time, if you ever start to go off the rails? It was obvious that the very fact of making such a request was proof that you're unlikely to be derailed. I know few people who would have the same conscientiously self-critical attitude to themselves and their present possibilities that you always adopted - in my view, at least.

The beginning in the new flat

I was an eyewitness of one of the "starting points". We first came together to discuss the founding of Gender Studies in September 1991. I remember your first instructions, which were repeated periodically to the subsequent Gender Studies team "Record it, Jana, this all has to be recorded!" To tell the truth I had never encountered such a witty paradox, because the room where I received my first initiation was the so-called "cavern" - the room beyond the kitchen, which was then full of enormous piles of press cuttings, lecture notes, papers, magazines and envelopes. I'd never before met anyone who received so much post at home and who managed to write so many letters! At that time you didn't have your computer yet, so you wrote letters everywhere, whenever the opportunity arose, but most of all at academic conferences, and board meetings of foundations and institutions, and similar events (I would scarcely be surprised if I heard you wrote letters during your own lectures). And yet you managed at the same time to follow the essential of what was going on around you and would intervene at moments when people least expected it, and when it was simply necessary to "let off steam" .

But the record really was there: in the middle of the cavern an almost sacrosanct place was reserved on the divan for a large, black, ancient-looking notebook in which you punctiliously recorded every letter received or dispatched, including the date and possibly even the time it was sent! However time has performed wonders: fourteen years have turned the cavern into a civilised study, and instead of the big black notebook amidst piles of stuff, there is now a large desk by the window with a computer and a printer, and in the area beyond, a divan with nothing on it but a painted wooden figure of a cat curled up on itself !

I soon made myself at home in Klimentská Street. I knew nothing - the only thing I knew about you was that you had been in prison as a dissident for smuggling books - the ideal boss for a librarian who yearned to establish her own library! It was my friend and English teacher at gymnasium, Mirka Holubová, who had drawn my attention to the basic stock of books - which would subsequently fill just one shelf in the future gender library. You were sent those books by feminist professors and sociologist colleagues living in the West, and you met Mirka after she returned from the first central-European feminist rally in Dubrovnik, as a result of which you also made friends with Ann Snitow, a very pleasant and charismatic woman who was to become the matron and first sponsor of Gender Studies in the Czech lands. So I resigned from the University Library where, for the first time after seven years' maternity leave, I worked as a librarian in the excellent, though rigidly organised, English Department. In those days, the terms "gender" and "curriculum" were mysterious and comical expressions as far as I was concerned. All I knew was that you wanted to introduce gender curricula into the curriculum of the Philosophical Faculty and it was my job to create a support system of data and source material. Academically speaking. I myself had been picked while still unripe - I only properly started to study in 1987 (already having three children) and that was still in the underground; I did not enter the Czech Studies faculty until 1990. When I started to immerse myself slightly in the issue of Gender Studies, I immediately realised what had really attracted me to Czech literary history - the theme of women writers and heroes from the end of the nineteenth century: Eliška Krásnohorská, Karolina Světlá, Božena Benešová and Božena Němcová. These were women whose works and lives powerfully reflected the theme of strong female identities - women motivated not only by their fateful relationship with men, but also their relationship with society whose outward aspect was admittedly determined by men above all, but whose form was definitely influenced by their powerful and acknowledged feminine charisma.

Neither of us really suspected how our ambitions would fare…

For many reasons, the beginning of the nineties was for me such a fundamental moment in my life that it was impossible for me to remain in the well-conserved Clementinum. It was a vital time, unadorned, charged with the felicitous shock of freedom that gave its blessing to all new undertakings, the first test of the intellectual flexibility of all of us for whom events had finally thrown wide the doors of the glasshouse, letting in fresh pulsating air. It was one of the most beautiful times of my life, when I happened to be taking my exams on the period of Czech Baroque …

Your first bookshelf of feminist literature was a fateful challenge for me. I believe that for you the founding of Gender Studies was your first opportunity not only make contact with outside stimuli but also to allow your own profession to grow and be aerated. You were able to combine theory, research and practice; it was as if everything was starting from scratch, and the opportunity to experiment in a new laboratory was a challenge. Your response was to establish a chair of Social Work. The decision to establish Gender Studies was by no means due to identification with feminist theories and movements, instead it reflected the need you had to discover distinctive and provocative alternatives that would provide themes for social dialogue. I was later to be faced frequently with the question as to why we stuck to the term of Gender Studies when we were a nest of feminists. Nobody had much of an idea about what Gender Studies were; when we opened our first bank account the bank manager thought it was something to do with sexual massage! I think on that occasion you didn't disabuse them; perhaps you felt Feminism wouldn't be sexy enough. I don't think Gender Studies met that requirement very well either, but we got away with it at the bank that time. I expect you were initially driven by an instinctive conviction that the word "gender" contained within it a much broader potential and one that was more appropriate to this country. The word was to be an investment (which, incidentally, I don't think has yet paid off.) Like you, I regarded Gender Studies and Feminism as a medium, one possible way of observing what was happening among us, in terms of intimacy and of society, economics and history. Besides, you have a fantastically developed capacity to sense what is going on beneath society's skin (that was the time when your brilliant "Grey Zone" article made its mark) and you sensed the complex historical situation of women's and men's collective identity in Czech society. The resistance to Feminism was not surprising and unfortunately it prevented the gender issue being developed to a degree that society deserved.

Our almost six-foot feminist Mirka Vodrážka remarked that you actually "walled up" Feminism slightly - by charmingly insisting from the very beginnings that you weren't a feminist. Of course there was a contradiction there - on the one hand, you were the first do anything about it with courage and on a large scale, and on the other hand you truly did so in the style of a clever fence-sitter. Anyway Mirka had to admit that you had no alternative.

Gender revival through study?

One of the first things that you demanded as early as October 1991 was a logo. As soon as you voiced that demand I set my mind to it while sorting out papers, women's studies syllabuses from various universities, flyers that were literally all over the place - in cupboards and drawers, on shelves, between books, in the "cavern", and on the kitchen table among heaps of envelopes… It was a fantastic experience; until then no one had ever opened up their private world to me so quickly and wholeheartedly. I often recalled later that sense of work and privacy being utterly merged! Subsequently, during various feminist wrangles at home and abroad I was amazed that this modern female deviation was somewhat ignored in research. What is possibly a slightly maternal need to link one's private and professional lives, which in extreme cases evolves into a hectic alternation between telephone or sewing machine and computer, preferably across a table with half-written letters and a book in the process of being read… (But is this really a deviation? Shouldn't the results of this extensive superficiality be valued just as much as in-depth analysis in a necessarily limited framework?) That inner conflict combined with the coexistence of the personal and the public was also major capital for us, and it helped get debate off the ground within society and instil it with the energy necessary to open up traditionally "cut-and-dried" issues.

I eventually found a logo in a prospectus from a Danish university. It was used there as a tiny decoration between paragraphs. It is interesting that in spite of all the changes in Gender Studies it has remained: an art-nouveau representation of a fine female face framed by a chignon, gazing down at some books… In spite of subsequent attempts to replace it with something more militant, it has survived until now! Maybe it's because it alone reflects the need to go on studying, ferreting out and concentrating on what our till now hidden identity actually is, as a basis for our own gender themes… Yes, Jirina, I do think that at that moment it really was a matter of trying to find our own language. Emancipation, the patriarchate, equal opportunities - such issues could have been regarded then as taboo, but they were not really new and revealing of an old-new dimension of private/social relations. At that time we were confronted by the question: What to make visible and how? What was Czech women's focal issue? Again and again it turned out that the liveliest issue for Czech men was women, while women's chief concern was men… or rather men's fear of women's aggression, and women's fear of the isolation they would find themselves in as the result of unacceptable stigmatisation. Besides, there were by then a good number of highly emancipated and independently-minded women in Czech society that there was no friction to provide the change-inducing energy needed by every movement. As far as I recall, women's priority was, on the contrary, a powerful need to define themselves as individuals, both professionally and in their private life. The social consensus not to accept Feminism became a local issue (not only in the Czech Republic but, with local variations in other post-Communist societies).

It was in that context that a nest was created in Klimentská Street from which we emitted - like bubbles - questions and issues that we considered inspirational… Our objective at the time was clear: to add a gender perspective to social research and academic study and to promote broader social debate! But at the same time we were largely inspired by the difficulty of the terrain we had entered and the opportunity to start provoking a vigorous reaction, while seeking to moderate it and prevent it sliding into aggressive ineptitude or academic sterility…

A reaction was not long in appearing anyway. Do you recall, for instance, how quickly the term "sexual harassment" took root in Czech? That was as a result of the first public debate organised by Respekt weekly, chaired on that occasion by Vladimir Mlynar, the main topic of which the controversial nature of an Feminism (that no one wanted here, and if they did, what for?), why there was a high incidence of rape and harassment of women in the Czech Republic, and whether they like it that way… And all of a sudden Josef Škvorecký intervened from overseas and with his brilliant translation into Czech of the term "sexual harassment" endowed us with a famous neologism: harašení! The word had a tremendous effect: it was a gently mocking warning of something that Czech men and women could be deprived of - perhaps the right to sex and erotic tension, which in our circumstances were probably more important than the protection of private space.

The search for issues, or "Undo all the knots in the house and the birth will be easier…"

The Centre for Gender Studies curricula (you strangely insisted on the word curricula) attracted a number of personalities at that time that set to work to formulate the identity of Czech Feminism and the role of women as it emerged from our local historical and social circumstances. That first coming together of women sociologists, philosophers, literary historians and linguists to promote a feminist approach to the revitalisation of scholarship and introduce personal enthusiasm, impressed me with its refined rebelliousness and almost revivalist spirit! The group of authors of the first articles (Jirina Siklova, Laura Busheikin, Jirina Smejkalova, Marie Cermakova, Hana Havelkova, Mirka Vodrazka), which gradually grew, invested its specialised know-how and energy towards the aforementioned objective of creating an authentic local basis for broad reflection on gender issues. It was also helped by pressure from women in the West who visited us with their long internalised feminist mission, rather in the way we now sometimes use various humanitarian missions to export the values of civil society to countries where populations have been damaged by military conflict and repressive regimes.

Those women wanted from us something we were almost incapable of - accepting the fact that we were a subservient and discriminated minority. If we refused to accept that, then they wanted some clearly formulated postulates about what the situation of us Czech women really was. They didn't behave at all aggressively and on the contrary did an enormous amount of practical work in the Gender Study centre (and thanks to their great contribution we now have one of the best specialised libraries in central and eastern Europe). But we were sometimes allergic to them - their determination and self-assurance and their need to take aspects of our reality and fit them into their own matrixes often aroused unfairly irritable reactions. But as a result we felt even more strongly the need to create our own arsenal of arguments. It wasn't easy to find markedly contrasting issues that could convince both Western women and Feminism-resistant Czech society. We tried "Violence against Women", but even though various non-governmental organisations dealing with this issue were already coming into existence, and by now there are even more of them, it did not seem to be an incontrovertible argument (as it was to a much greater extent in Slovakia, for instance). Quite simply, no major demand was created for any movement with a distinct profile and hence no great investment in that direction either. The only issue taken up at grassroots level that has stuck in memory (although it didn't particularly win recognition) was the theme of "family". I remember that I was particularly impressed in that respect by the Fathers' Association, which demanded that the legitimate role of fathers in bringing up children be accorded the same recognition by society as that accorded to women … Nevertheless, the actual search for an expression of gender issues that would resonate with society seemed to us to have a revivalist effect, and this was evident from the reaction of students at lectures given by the first team of Gender Studies lecturers at different Czech and Moravian universities from 1995. While nationwide allergy towards Feminism per se gradually sank to the level of mockery, gender issues proved resistant and attracted interest. The treatment of Feminism took two extreme forms: on the one hand it became an exclusively academic topic and on the other it was the subject of gutter journalism. Even though a handful of journalists and women documentary film makers tried to make it more attractive or even deck it out in appropriate Czech colours, Feminism continues to be generally regarded as a vexatious issue.

We worked fast and hard and had a good time.

We created a network of new contacts and sent out begging letters to every corner of the earth, and we found it exciting. At home I managed to be conceded two whole days when I would work in Klimentská Street - Mondays and Thursdays. The flat soon become a transit and assembly point during the day and the real work only started in the evening, i.e. classifying, filing and also recording and writing, of course. Because I live in the country, it sometimes happened that I would miss the last train and I would stay in the flat overnight… When all the female Americans, young and old, had left we would sit in our separate caverns, I in the public room at the now extinct prehistoric type of computer (which you would carefully cover each night with an oriental rug to keep out the dust), and you at a desk in the parlour near the phone, lest it be left unattended for too long. That was because during the night hours all your friends and former colleagues from the dissent would call you out of the blue from pay phones and you would help them solve all the transitional problems of that turbulent period. In spite of the nocturnal quiet your phone calls would sometimes be reminiscent of a phenomenon - all of a sudden you would indulge in a fit of vituperation against a third party or even against the person at the other end of the line, and I soon began to accept it as part of the local colour of my workplace. Then we'd sit together for a while, I at the computer, you with your correspondence, lectures and books. Once I suddenly heard you laughing and asked the cause. "Nothing," you replied, "just the thought of the two of us here. If someone could see us now…" I didn't pursue it further, but simply appended to your laughter my own mental comment: you do something and you believe you're doing it to the best of your ability and then suddenly, for some mysterious reason, you feel a fraud! It's a capacity to reflect on oneself immediately and continuously from another and momentarily inconvenient or unfavourable standpoint. It was there with you on that occasion that I realised the meaning of the idea of "sound sense" (zdravý smysl) that we encounter in Czech history used by that pioneer of women's education Eliška Krásnohorská, and which is essential to the promotion of any social change. Sound sense - the constant interaction of detachment, hard work, a sense of timing, empathy and tolerance. Recognition plus extremely courageous piercing of barriers in communication about problems that need to remain concealed… for me this was a very inspirational approach. But what was probably most important for the two of us precisely in that initial phase of establishing, opening up and institutionalising Gender Studies was creating a support system that would integrate mechanisms to deal with stupidity and intolerance. Feminism and Gender Studies were a subsidiary product - but who could we tell that to? So we tended not to talk about it to each other either… Nevertheless I take the liberty of quoting one of your recent contributions to an email gender discussion, which reveals much about your input:

"Don't worry, I don't intend to bawl you out. On the contrary it's necessary to learn tolerance and respect for the views of others, otherwise we women will soon turn into Bushes and Ben Ladins. I can't help it: I'm a founder of Gender Studies, which started one day in my flat; I teach at the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University; I'm a sociologist and quite often I criticise our feminists, including the foreign ones, for thinking they would reshape the world if the fellers handed it over to them. And then those women react as stupidly as the fellers - petulant and intolerant. And so I find myself in two fires. At my age I've had experience of so many proclamations and petitions, and it was always… so I don't take it too seriously. What's more, even though I work in the not-for-profit sector, etc., I'm not in official politics; I neither intend nor wish to be a candidate; I've no ambition to be President, etc., so I think that one has to protect one's own identity. Otherwise it will evaporate and it won't even be of use to oneself let alone others. And I sometimes have the feeling that our white civilisation is sometimes extremely self-flagellatory!!!!! Everyone talks about the poor… but not much is said about how tribes massacre each other in Africa (e.g. Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism), or in Asia, because deep down we're 'superior' but we don't show it - a bit like when an adult plays with a child and pretends to 'take seriously' everything the child says. It strikes me as hypocritical, or immature…"

Eventually, everything that we dreamed of in respect of Gender Studies has been achieved: the library, a lecture programme for experts and the general public, space for discussion clubs and exhibitions, and the establishment of Gender Studies as an academic discipline, for which this NGO paved the way in its fourteen years of activity. The number of women who have already found work thanks to Gender Studies! There has been a heavy turnover and sometimes it has been a severe test of tolerance, not to mention female solidarity! All the nerves and emotions expended at board meetings of different foundations, when we helplessly strove to achieve a standard structure! It has been very instructive practical experience. Lenka Simerska, who for years was one of the fixed stars of GS, recently wrote to me very nicely about your role in the team: "Jirina arrived late, as usual, and immediately a wave of smiles and a sort of relief spread through the room. It was a … meeting, slightly complicated by ambiguous relationships among some of those present. And yet Jirina brought a smile to the face of everyone without exception, and not only by her (virtually silent) arrival. It made me realise that her presence is still a guarantee that "this is something worthwhile", and how her commonsensical attitude, always accompanied by a barrage of experience and erudition, is capable of easing tensions."

Gender Studies is now a professional and reliable non-governmental organisation with an extensive programme that is largely the work of young women. They base themselves on what has been achieved during the period of our activity, but they are also not afraid to search for themselves. It still remains both a civilised experimental laboratory and a specialised support system. The principle of seeking and being open to new opportunities has not been lost. There still remains a sensitivity to what is happening in society, with a certain admixture of stubbornness, and that is good. The Gender Centre is now a recognised information base about issues that are standardly legitimised, such as domestic violence, equal opportunities, etc., which are issues that have gradually been taken up by many other Czech and Moravian NGOs with various specific concerns (ecology, human rights, humanitarian assistance, etc.)

And I would recall just one other aspect of "our" Gender Studies that I rate highly, namely the Women's Memory Project. I regard it as one of the best and most important achievements that you were largely responsible for. I remember it started out as an idea of giving women and women Chartists a "meeting place" (your words in 1993), while I came up with the words "Women's Memory" and three years later Pavla Frýdlová launched a project with that title, which she continues to co-ordinate to her immense credit. Conversations with older as well as younger women, are a kind of reliable and authentic testimony to women's perception of time and themselves within it. The soil has been well prepared to enable the transition from the atmosphere of the relatively distant past to present day topics.

Where from here?

The fact that no outstanding doctrine or vision has emerged yet in the sphere of Gender Studies doesn't mean that the possibility has been blocked in any way. I regard your input, which some might criticise as fatefully "ambiguous" as, on the contrary, extremely honourable and wise. Whatever is wrongly grafted simply arouses ridicule, as you well know. Anyway, in Western civilisation Feminism itself has lost its original drive and doesn't yet seem to have found a way to revive itself. The classic feminist issues have now become more or less entrenched in conformism; the stress on the freedom of individuality is increasingly being transformed into an autistic inability of men and women to live within relationships which themselves are often no longer based on the principle of subordination, but on the mutual intimidation of two solitary individuals. New disturbing problems are emerging (such as "black widows" - women suicide terrorists), which receive the media attention and are the symptom of new, growing and intractable social aggression. Do you recall the title of one my short poems: "Postmodernity - the bloody cow"…? Over these fourteen years the world has speeded up but in one aspect is increasingly stupid. Sometimes I sense the helplessness of women and men, disorientated in the hypermarket of ready-made possibilities and images of themselves prefabricated and dictated by the mass media… That is why your living memory is so important, Jirina, your amazing ability to link the past and the present, to bridge them by seeking fresh connections, while avoiding clichés and ideologies of all kinds - simply refusing to listen to "any old nonsense".

It's possible that it won't be long before the rapid changes, the new migrations and the clash of cultures will enable us to see in sharp contrast a new spectrum of communication codes between men and women. Doesn't it also strike you that reflection on what is happening now is unable to keep up with the pace of events? Isn't this reflection slightly impeded by the mass of institutionalised regulations that can't cope with new realities? On one occasion we chatted about the lack of heroes and prophets. Will we see a gender renaissance in this still hesitant European space? In all events we can be certain that there's still plenty to be done and lots of new openings, and I know both we still have plenty of curiosity…

Thank you, Jirina, for all those years.

Yours,

Jana Kristanka Hradilkova