Beverley Ditsie on the fight for queer freedom
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In my early days as an advertiser, running commercials on TV was guesswork. I knew TV was powerful, but it was impossible to see which ads truly worked. So I teamed up with the best data scientists to create a better way to buy and measure TV ads. Tatari was born. Today, hundreds of brands and agencies use Tatari and we help them optimize with metrics that actually grow the business.

Learn more at tatari.tv. I was drawn to your statement, the patriarchy is dying, it's fighting for its existence. Do you still feel that? The last kicks of a dying horse. I think if we all saw it that way, we would be a little bit more tenacious in our resistance. Because I think the world is feeling powerless right now. And yet, for me, what's glaring...

Everything that is going on is an attempt for white male supremacy to just take a hold and take their place at the top of the totem pole. And you know what? That time is up because once the genie is out of this box, you can't push it back in.

Hello and welcome to a podcast of one's own. I'm Julia Gillard and today I have the immense privilege of speaking with Dr. Beverly Dietze, pioneering filmmaker, artist and activist who has spent decades fighting at the forefront of the queer rights movement in South Africa.

Bev is gender non-conforming and uses all pronouns but in this introduction I will use they/their. Bev started their career in the entertainment industry as a child actor on the newly established South African Broadcasting Corporation. At the age of nine, Bev appeared as the first black child actor on the channel and this was in the days of apartheid.

This ignited their passion for storytelling that would launch a 30-year career as an award-winning filmmaker and TV director.

Beverly is known for being the first of many things. The first lesbian to come out in South African media, challenging discrimination against queer people. The driving force behind South Africa's first Pride March in 1990. A founding member of an organisation called GLOW, the first multi-racial LGBTQ+ organisation in South Africa.

and the first out lesbian to address a UN conference, speaking at the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. This landmark moment was the first time LGBTQ+ issues were formally presented at the UN, marking a significant step towards the global recognition of queer rights.

Beverley's life and career are testaments to their relentless pursuit of equality and representation for queer communities.

Their pioneering efforts have not only advanced queer rights in South Africa, but also inspired global conversations on inclusivity and human rights. Through their activism and storytelling, Beverley continues to challenge societal norms and advocate for a more inclusive world. This is a warm-hearted and inspiring conversation. I hope you enjoy it.

Beverly, it's an absolute honor to have you on the podcast. Welcome. Thank you so much. The honor is all mine, Julia.

Really looking forward to this conversation. And I thought the right place to start was at the very beginning. You were born in 1971 and you grew up in Soweto in South Africa. So you were growing up in the era of apartheid. Can you tell me a bit about your family background, a bit about what it was like to grow up in those days? I grew up in...

a really beautiful warm home, very maternal. My grandmother, my mother, many aunts, had grandfather, had like the guys, you know, they came and went. Uncles, they came and went. And that had a lot to do with how the migrant labor system worked under apartheid, how families were really broken. And if you didn't have a pass, a passbook,

which I suppose would be like a visa now or a passport that you carry around on you all the time. A lot of the uncles would actually be arrested because they were the ones who would get a job in a mine. And then when the job is finished, if their book does not get re-published,

signed or re-stamped. They are deported to a homeland. Sometimes it's a homeland that not even anybody's coming from, but we had been separated by tribes and separated in so many different ways. And so there was a lot of fracture of the family as a result. And a lot of us grew up in maternal homes because the mothers who were domestic workers and worked in factories were the ones who were most likely home a lot more.

It was really great growing up, actually. I was allowed to be myself. I was very loud and boisterous and very inquisitive. I asked why all the time. And I was very happy that I grew up in a home where I wasn't dismissed a lot. My whys were responded to. I was

My mom was a musician and she had had opportunity to travel different parts of not just our country with apartheid laws, but stepping out of the country and coming back with all this information about how other people are living. What's going on in Botswana? Oh, there was a couple and there was a black guy and a white woman. Oh, that's possible.

Yes. You know, like I would say, why do we live like this when I've been in town and other people live like this? I would they would explain to me. So I grew up being very aware of what was going on around me, which turns out to have been a blessing because then it informed everything that else that I did with my life.

Yes, your mother was a very famous singer, wasn't she? So having this experience and bringing it back home to you. And yet you've talked about how the women in your family would conduct themselves differently once the men were in the room. So you had two different experiences with these maternal figures, them being their strong, passionate selves, and then a character change. Can you explain that to me? Mm-hmm.

I found it fascinating to watch these strong women who did everything that needed to be done without question, without thinking, oh, I need a man. We need to move the fridge. The three of us will come and we will push the fridge. You need to change a light bulb. You need to climb the roof because the chimney is blocked. Well, I was the climber. Yeah.

But I learned from my mom who climbed to the roof before me. But as soon as a male suitor walks through the door, the deference to men was fascinating to me.

I would watch wiggle and like lessen themselves and be less than themselves and pretend to be a bit dumb, but just a fraction. I began to see this performance. It was all a performance. He walks in, he's all puffed up. He's the man. And then, you know, my really strong grandmother goes, good afternoon. Hello, good afternoon.

Oh, yes, please could you help me fix the light bulb? Oh, thank you so much. Oh, what would we do without you? I think that's one of the reasons I really, really don't care for what pronouns people use for me. It's all a performance. And that was for me very, very stark growing right throughout my entire childhood. I watched this performance and I knew then how also to play the role because I was also very gender nonconforming in my own personality.

And so sometimes I would be a boy and people actually thought there were twins at home, you know, because, you know, there was always the question, where's the other twin when I was either, you know? So if I wanted to be really loud and just be myself, I would be the boy. The girl me would sit. I know I sound schizophrenic, don't I?

The girl me, on the other hand, knew that when I was in a skirt, a lot of the time I'd be left alone. So I could actually read. I could, you know, contemplate. You know, so I knew how to play the roles. I knew how to to be the one and be the other because I was watching the performance in my own home.

And that question of performance became more formal for you, didn't it? Because you actually were cast as a child actor. And when you were cast as an actor, you were cast as a boy. And so your lived experience was there you were performing as a boy in films on TV, and then presumably you would come back and

and go to school and have to wear the girl's uniform. So how did you reconcile that in your mind? Did you just see this as another aspect of what you'd observed in your family home, that there are gender norms and people perform those gender norms, and if you want to, if you choose to, you can adopt one and then adopt another? I was, I think, a bit more fluid and less calculating than that.

I was just going with how I felt. Having the role on TV was so affirming to me. It just felt like it was a recognition of all of me that I could be any of this because why not?

But the rest of it, I was pathfinding on my own. I think I got really miserable when I had to go back to school because then the other side of me was not seen or recognized. And also this is 1979, 1980, and TV had just come into the country about three years before then. So we had no TV, no official broadcasting corporation until late 76, early 77.

And so this is just about, you know, about to be 1980. Many families didn't have a TV. So it's not like people saw me on TV and said, ah, that's the same person. Oh, now she's a girl. Oh, no, but we know her. You know, like none of that. So it almost made it such two very separate lives, right?

because the TV me was the freest I have ever been. And there are a few moments in my life that I can pinpoint where I felt that specific freedom, but there's a few.

But that was the freest I've ever been. And then, of course, coming back to school and now I'm in school and now there's all these extramural and extracurricular activity and all these other vocational things that I've been taught and I'm forced to sit and do needlepoint. Yes.

And I would watch the boys get into a bus to go to a woodworking workshop to go learn woodworking. And it broke my heart because right now my passion is woodwork. That's what I do. But I had to teach myself. I don't have the foundation of it. I mean, I can sew this shit out of a button. Yeah.

or whatever needs sewing. But I would have, you know, the other me was not acknowledged in school. I'm with you on the pain of these classes at school. I got subjected to learning about laundry for a term when I was in high school. So if you ever need to know how to launder a silk shirt, I'm your woman. Just feel free to get on the line. That is crazy.

In my early days as an advertiser, running commercials on TV was guesswork. I knew TV was powerful, but it was impossible to see which ads truly worked. So I teamed up with the best data scientists to create a better way to buy and measure TV ads. Tatari was born. Today, hundreds of brands and agencies use Tatari and we help them optimize with metrics that actually grow the business.

Learn more at tatari.tv. Your teenage years into young adulthood would have been, I suspect, a time of great change for you and a time of great change for South Africa.

In 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of jail and you would have been a very young adult at that point. And presumably during your teenage years, you started to grapple with questions of sex and sexuality. So you're thinking about who you are as the nation is trying to work out what it can become. What are your memories of that time? I think there's a big nostalgia in the country for that time because I

When you are at a place of birthing and you are imagining what that birthing is looking like, you know, we were imagining the future. We were imagining the kind of freedom that we would have. And everyone was defining it for themselves, obviously. But as a country, the country was kind of defining what it would feel like to be able to have access, whether it's public spaces or education or health or whatever.

Whatever it would be, there was a deep desire for change. And that longing and that desire gave us an impetus to want to do. We were very on top of being active.

We attended rallies and workshops and everyone was learning about everyone else because we also understood the separation of apartheid. We understood that racially we were all separated, but we also understood that there were other separations that were going on. And so if you were living in this township and those people were living in that village,

the differences, you would think that we were not in the same country or we were not the same race sometimes or the same cultures really because the Zulu people were put aside and the Sotho people were put aside. And so the late 80s and 90s, the levels of interaction were phenomenal.

Also, it was the first time I was in a room with white folk who were also gay or lesbian or trans or queer in whatever form or way. And that was a first because obviously we'd been separated by race and white people were the enemy, the oppressor. And now, you know, I'm saying hello and we're looking at each other and we're like, oh, wow.

Hi. It was an incredible time. My sexuality, that was a whole different matter. I think hormonally, oh my goodness. I look at teens now and I go, I get it. Because you don't know what's going on, you know. But what's worse is if you fit into the mold,

And if you're able to quickly adapt into the roles, the gender roles, the societal expectations, then you cruise a little bit better. That's my opinion. All the expectations that were on me, I could not fulfill. I could not be this girl that society expected me to be, just in terms of gender identity alone, you know.

Men making advances and passes at a 13-year-old is seen as normal. Young men and boys, it's seen as normal. It was hugely offensive to me. Hugely. But so much so that the group of friends in my high school would look at me and say, but that's strange. Aren't you flattered? I mean...

He is a good looking young man. He likes you. He's saying hello. He's giving you attention because, you know, the girls are craving attention from boys and vice versa, I suppose. And there's me being hugely offended. How dare he ask me out?

That's because also I had not come across words like gay. I had not come across anything that had to do with sexual orientation. So I didn't know anything about the fact that one could be attracted to the same gender, the same sex, the same, you know, I never knew that except for I knew what I was feeling.

And some of the girls who were flattered by boys were making my heart go flutter. And I couldn't do anything about that because what was that? So the confusion was quite radical for me until the words came about. And when the words came about and I realized, oh, wait, there are people who are different, who are like me. Oh, my goodness. Yes.

That was its own kind of liberation because then that meant I had a community of people that then I can't be alone. And I'm going to talk to you about the advocacy organisation you founded at just 16, GLOW. But I just, before doing so, I just want to join this conversation to that because by 16, you were actually an activist, a

activist as a lesbian and bringing together a community of people. Can you join for me these early feelings to those activist days? You just talked then about having the words. Who gave you the words? Where did the words come from? Ironically, the words came from the United Kingdom.

The words came from Boy George himself. I was a big fan of Culture Club. I was a big fan of the new romantics music that was emerging at that time. Remember them? Spandau Ballet,

I loved all of them. I loved all of them when I was growing up. Exactly. Depeche Mode. I was a very big fan. I mean, obviously there were the Americans as well, but I was a very big fan of that type of music, which also made me a little bit edgy because everyone else was listening to mostly, you know, American soul and disco and, you know, R&B.

And I was just that radical kid that wanted to listen to metal. In the middle of Soweto. Look, once I embraced my difference, I really embraced my difference. Yes, you certainly did. It frees you. When people think you're mad, there's a freedom to it because then it allows you to just be yourself without having to fit into a box because you're already considered a bit odd anyway.

So that was where I took my freedom from, you know. And so my sister, I think I was 13, and we were listening to Boy George and Culture Club. And I think it came out in a headline of a newspaper that I saw that said Boy George is gay. And there was a whole conversation about what this means, gay. And my sister said, and she was 11. She said, look, this was gay means you like the same gender.

Isn't that you? And that epiphany. It was mind-blowing. And I mean, you know, when we had a chat with George a few years ago, because we did actually get in touch with boy George, and I said to him, you know, I mean, how incredible that I could have never imagined, not just... I was madly in love with him also. I mean, besides just being a fan. He was just the most beautiful with the most incredible makeup. I just thought...

what is this ethereal being? And so having a conversation with him, you know, where he's like, I don't believe that in the tiny little corner of a four-room house in apartheid Soweto, you heard of me. And I was like, mm-hmm.

Just to go back a little bit, Julia, I was very fortunate to, when I came out, meet other young gay folk. And they were, you know, gay boys mostly. In fact, nine gay boys and a lesbian is how we were known because there were these nine really flamboyant, really beautiful beings and me. Yeah.

And of course, you know, playing the gender roles now became a thing once you are in this community where there's only two ways of being. You're either gay or you're lesbian and you're either butch or you're femme. There was all these prescriptions. And of course, if you're femme, you're a lot more effeminate, which I kind of never really was. So I was like the butch 13-year-old with these really effeminate boys walking up and down the streets of Soweto and everyone going, girls?

No, boys, boys, go. These are all go. No, these are boys. We lived for it. In fact, we started dressing up and walking as much we would walk each other to each other's homes. And because Soweto is so big and vast, to walk each other would take the whole day. And so the whole day we'd spend walking up and down to each other's homes.

Just being a flamboyant self. This is the group of people that introduced me to any kind of understanding of queer community. And it is through this group of people that then they said, wait, there's a whole meeting that's about to happen. Um,

And do you want to come? And of course, what do you mean? Also, my political activism really was reduced to throwing rocks and stones and petrol bombs at the police cars that were driving around shooting at us.

So that was my, you know, 14, 15 year old high school going to meetings and being chased by police and the rubber bullets and the tear gas. That was my other political radicalization right there. But that was also hindered a little bit by the fact that these spaces were also deeply patriarchal.

and women were reduced to comfort for the men. I was constantly told how I'm going to make sure that I give babies so that there's more soldiers in this war coming, that I was the tea maker, the caretaker, roles are going to be placed back where they belong, where men take care of women. And it had to do with the men feeling emasculated under apartheid, which is

Not necessarily untrue, but, you know, the levels of patriarchy that they wanted to go back into as opposed to seeing a new and different way did not work for me. And so by the time the organization GLOW, as in the now the formal movement happened,

It was marrying my politics on a kind of national level, on a racial level, but also it was marrying my gender, my sexual orientation. And it was all now becoming one at this first meeting at 16, 17 years old.

that that's how that formalisation happened. And GLOW, I think, is the best acronym of all time. I love it. So can you describe what GLOW stands for, the letters, and describe to us, I mean, this was South Africa's first multiracial LGBTQ plus rights group. I mean, it must have got incredible pushback and

And particularly because through GLOW, you and your activism was so visible. You sponsored the first historic Pride March in Johannesburg in 1990, the first of its kind in Africa.

I mean, what did that all mean for you? But also, what were the risks and personal strains for you? I mean, this must have been an incredibly dangerous thing to be doing in those days in South Africa. GLOW stands for the Gay and Lesbian Organization of the Witwatersrand. Witwatersrand was an area. It's not called Witwatersrand anymore. But that's what GLOW stood for.

At the time, what for me is fascinating is that it was all so new. Initially, instead of pushback, we just got curiosity because this had been...

Something that no one really spoke about out loud and people were just teased and sometimes terrorized rather than, you know, spoken to as especially, you know, masculinity being affronted in that way by women pretending to be men and all these men wanting to be women. Oh, my goodness, what a thing. But people were more curious, which kind of gave us the impetus

because then we could just go into meetings with just about anyone because there was just such curiosity, which helped because then we could inform and direct the narrative as much as we wanted to. And it wasn't all rosy, of course. We had

bits of pushback, but there was just a lot more curiosity than pushback. Until the first Pride march, of course, until religious leaders were the ones who were the first ones to say, "No, no to this, no to these people, no to this movement, no." And of course, you know, quoting the Bible and citing all kinds of nonsensical things. Until then,

I think I was a bit naive because it had been such smooth sailing. And even in the streets when we were 13, 14, 15, walking up and down, no one was trying to attack us. You know, we were just a curiosity, but we were also, you know, singers and dancers and we were entertaining.

We were no threat. And so I did not think of myself as a threat to anyone and did not even see the formal movement as being a threat to anyone. Our first Pride March happened. We thought we would be attacked. We were not. We've just had some, you know, loud homophobes holding their weapons, their Bibles in their hands. But that, you know, that's something we used to. That's

Nothing. Except for personally, when one of them started saying that I must be killed because I need to be made an example of, then it became real. I think that was when I realized that this is actually deeper than just, oh, we are flamboyant entertainers who are a curiosity. Because now I had men surrounding my home and threatening me and my family. I think that that changed me.

I think one doesn't realize how you live with the trauma of that, you know, when people are coming for you directly. And also they're being bolstered by the rest of society who thinks that it's okay to attack queer people. And so you know that there's not going to be much justice, that your life has no value to them. That was hard. That also lived, that's lived with me. That's lived with me.

Yet you were undeterred despite all of that and you took your advocacy from –

the Pride March of Johannesburg, so on a South African stage right to a global stage when in 1995 you made history by addressing the United Nations at the Fourth World Conference on Women. It was in Beijing and you were there advocating for LGBTQ+ rights as human rights and the inclusion of lesbian rights in the full broader discourse on women's empowerment.

How did you get to that moment and what did that feel like? Did it feel an affirmation that after all of this pushback, the death threats, the potential violence, there you were on a global stage? Is that how it felt or was it different to that?

There'd been other factors at play that made it not such a triumph as I would have liked it to be. I'd already been fighting within my own organization by then, like 23 years old. I'd already been fighting for a little bit more of a recognition of lesbian issues and of the misogyny that we don't talk about amongst gay men themselves, of just the focus on gay men, which was...

And understandably, this was also the height of AIDS and the AIDS epidemic. And so we were losing friends. We were losing comrades. We were losing brothers. I was losing family members. We were losing people. We were losing people in a very big way. And so the focus was very much on gay men and gay men's health.

And so I was one of the people that went and trained how to do HIV AIDS education, how to be a counselor, how to, because I was losing far too many of my own of the nine gay boys. There's only three of us that I left. And they all died from AIDS related illnesses.

And, you know, they passed then already. So I understood why the focus was there, but no one was talking about us and what was going on with us. And I even started asking, wait, has anybody actually done research on transmission amongst lesbians?

Has anybody done any research on how this affects us in any way at all? Especially considering anatomically we are different. How does this affect us? And of course, you know, those kinds of concerns were met with a lot of, you know,

Oh, come on. You know, like this is not a big deal. So my then getting an invitation to the Beijing conference and I got this invitation through the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, which is now called Outright Action International and Outright. I'd met some folks from Outright when I was at another international gay association conference.

And they were, you know, these are people who are already preparing for the Beijing conference in 94. And in their preparation, we're already setting up documents to include sexual orientation in the Beijing platform for action. And so by the time I met with them and they said, is somebody coming from South Africa? Do we need as much, you know, lesbian presence and visibility as possible? And I said, oh, I didn't even know about this.

And so I was fortunate then to be invited to Beijing and landed in a little town called Huailu in China where the NGO conference was happening. And I think more than anything, it is the sense of community and the sense of comradeship and intersectionality. All those words, all those things that we speak of now, those were in action.

because now we're seeing everyone from all sectors of society all in one spot, all talking with one voice about what it is that we wanted as women around the world and what we didn't want as women around the world. And so that really, really bolstered me. It also

radicalized me in a very different way. All of a sudden I became a radical lesbian feminist. I got it. I understood. I was sitting with some of the biggest world leaders when it came to feminist ideology and what it means to have women's autonomy.

You know, this is not about attacking anybody else. It's about demanding the right to be me in all my fullness without anyone trying to make me be or do anything that I didn't want to do. I loved that. That was freedom for me. And so, yes, I came back home feeling very...

feeling righteous almost, you know. I was made to feel like I was crazy for demanding a little bit more from my organization, you know. And so coming back, I came back, you know, bolstered by the whole world of women, by an entire global women's movement.

In my early days as an advertiser, running commercials on TV was guesswork. I knew TV was powerful, but it was impossible to see which ads truly worked. So I teamed up with the best data scientists to create a better way to buy and measure TV ads. Tatari was born. Today, hundreds of brands and agencies use Tatari and we help them optimize with metrics that actually grow the business.

Learn more at atari.tv. And you came back, it seems, determined to tell stories, to tell stories through film. Having been an actor as a child, in your adult life, you've made some remarkable movies and been much acclaimed and much awarded, which is entirely appropriate. Every accolade completely well-deserved.

But it's, you know, a creative outlet and clearly you come from a family that was creative, your mother with her beautiful voice. But can you talk to me about the journey into filmmaking and why for you that's been a vehicle to change attitudes, change the world? Yeah.

I don't feel like I crossed over from activism into film. I feel like film became another way to express my activism. And of course, me and music, it's always been my first love. Growing up acting and performing,

I always thought that I would end up like my mom, either in a band, you know, doing the things. That's where I saw my life going when I was much, much, much younger. But now acting became impossible because now the roles that I was now needing to play were roles that did not feel like my spirit would not abide.

because I started getting roles that were, that I felt harmful to women and girls, that sometimes were stereotypical. I noticed the people behind the cameras were white, mostly men. These are the people who are the ones who are directing and telling my story where I am just the caricature. Something did not make sense.

And so by the time I left the TV industry to get into the activism and activism became the focus. But when I stepped back from the movement and started going back to what my career would have been, I realized that I love the idea of us taking charge of our own narratives because I just thought I would like to be that director myself.

that camera where other people are not feeling like their stories are being told by somebody who doesn't understand them. And so that's how that pivot happened. I started off actually music videos, also just combining my music and the love for music and all the musicians that I grew up around as a child. I was now assistant and running around being music video assistant director.

for a long time and getting back to learning the craft now from behind the scenes. But really, my first film came about when I heard someone say that, you know, my organization was just a social organization with no political impact. And I think the penny that dropped was that if this is how

the history is going to be told from somebody else's point of view. This is how it will continue to be told. Somebody else creates the narratives. And this is the history of GLOW, your organisation?

It was being dismissed. Exactly. In the same way that a lot of our activism gets dismissed, I looked around me and I realized we are dismissed a lot. Our contributions as women in particular are dismissed a lot. Like, oh, yeah, you were a stay-at-home mom. You didn't make a contribution to society. What?

You know, the work that we do as equal as it is sometimes even more than equal is also dismissed. We still get paid less for the same work all over the world, you know. And so a lot came together in my work.

understanding of what kinds of films I would be making. And so when I made my first film, Simon and I, it was to actually say, all right, I'll make this film and you show me where there's no lack of political impact. And Simon was your... Simon was my mentor and friend, yeah. Yes, and co-founder of GLOW. And co-founder. In fact, he was the brainchild behind GLOW.

Coming from having been in prison for four years, in a trial that he almost got executed because the apartheid regime was executing anyone. You didn't even need to be guilty. They interrogated and tortured and terrorized people to signing all kinds of admissions of guilt documents.

They did all kinds of despicable things, contrary to what anybody's hearing about what's going on in South Africa right now. They never paid. They never paid. And right now they are emboldened, which makes us very furious. And I say us as a collective, I think I can say that.

But Simon was imprisoned for four years. And, you know, while he was in prison, he then says to his comrades that, you know, he's not just fighting for his freedom as a black man, he's fighting for his freedom as a gay man, which also was his own brave thing. Oh, my goodness, Simon was brave. You are in a cell, you are in a prison cell where the trial lasted for four years. And in that trial, at any point, somebody would say,

This gay one, let's just do away with him anytime. And he stood up for his rights in all these ways. And by the time they were released, he then, you know, convened this meeting. And we were all there and agreed that we would formalize this organization on the basis of all our different experiences.

And yes, it was absolutely amazing. I know I'm going backtrack, but yeah. It's fine. Yeah, it was actually, I mean, the glow. At one point we wanted to call our film The Glow of Simon. How cheesy. How cheesy. I'm so glad we didn't do that. I know.

And here we are a number of decades later and many successful films later, and I do want to talk to you about how you're seeing the world now because, you know,

Many people listening to this podcast would wake up and look at the news in the morning and they would see whatever is the news that's happened the day before from the Trump administration in South Africa, of course.

There's been the Elon Musk focus on white South African farmers. There's been incredibly practical implications of the radical dismantling of the US aid and development work around the world, which has included decades of provision of

AIDS medication in many parts of the world, including South Africa. So now people who need AIDS medication cannot get it because that funding has been pulled. How do you think about this world? I was drawn to your statement, the patriarchy is dying, it's fighting for its existence. Do you still feel that? The last kicks of a dying horse. I think if we all saw it that way,

we would be a little bit more tenacious in our resistance because then we wouldn't be feeling so hopeless. We wouldn't be feeling so powerless because I think the world is feeling powerless right now. And yet for me, what's glaring and I know it's like in little bits and ways, but no one is saying it so succinctly is that white male supremacy is attempting to get itself back up on top of the pecking order.

We see it in how, what they call it, DEI, D-I-E? Yes, diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI. We're seeing how...

Because then we see that they're getting rid of, we're seeing how, you know, what they call BEE in South Africa, the Black Economic Empowerment, how you have 30 years of a failing kind of democracy. And you're telling me that, oh, in 30 years, we've done enough now to equalize things, when in actual fact, the majority of South Africans are still living in poverty.

still living in exactly the same situation that they did during apartheid, if not worse, while the rest of these so-called oppressed people are still living in the same affluent neighborhoods, living exactly the same life. Nothing's different for them except for the fact that they are now no longer the superior race. That is the only difference. Yes, municipalities are not working for all of us,

Yes, infrastructure is crumbling for all of us. And so if you're being hit hard in your high tower, we're being hit hardest over here equally, but hardest because nothing's ever changed for us really.

But we are watching it. We're watching how this is not the first time white South Africans supported Trump. Even in Trump's previous administration, you had whites. I had neighbors in my own street who were very viva Trump and all of us being in absolute shock. Looking at the world is infuriating.

Because we recognize that everything that is going on is an attempt for white male supremacy to just take a hold and take their place at the top of the totem pole. And you know what? That time is up. Because once the genie is out of this box, you can't push it back in. You know, you can't push somebody back. I think you asked earlier, you know, when...

When we were coming out and we were so enthusiastic and we were feeling so free to be so out and in the streets. And then the dangers happened. I think you said something like, and yet you persevered and you continued.

It's not like I had a choice. Once you're out of that closet, you're not going to just willingly step back into no closet. That does not make any sense. And I think, you know, the USA, and this is a personal opinion again, the USA being a land of the free and having tasted freedom in a way that people have tasted freedom, when these rights are being taken away, should actually be a lot more

in standing up for their rights. And I'm saying should. I'm not there. But I also grew up under a system where we knew that our rights were being eroded and it was intolerable. And, you know, we stood up, right? And right now, they're all watching the backsliding of every single law. Their own constitution is out the window. Out the window. And people are moving...

Like it's normal. And I say that with a pinch of salt because I also know how news and media works. From my friends who are in the States who are able to tell me there's protests everywhere. The world never sees those protests. So it looks like there's nothing going on and the USA is all peaceful and accepting. But we know it isn't, you know? But also the danger here is that you would think that it's just the USA, but it isn't.

But I think it's the last kicks of a dying horse and we just need to really, really open our eyes and say, okay, if we had to stand up and fight, number one, how are we going about it? We are in the age of information. We are in the age where we're able to talk to each other like this. We didn't have this in Beijing. We used faxes. They posted my plane ticket to me. Had I not gotten it physically in my hand, I would not have been able to get on a plane.

You know, no one said, oh, what's up me and say we will meet on the corner of Zhaizhong Street. And no, I had to figure it out. And eventually we all like you read the signs and you said, oh, OK, this is where I am. We made it work without what we have now, without the information, without the technology. We can do this now.

I don't understand why we, you know, it's like we are afraid of some other thing that, no, these are just men. Really, they are.

I think that is a wonderfully optimistic message that people really need to hear right now and to not allow the things that are happening right now to hold them back from activism, from really your message is this is the time to stand up. And ultimately, you're clearly an optimist about where we're going to get to next.

I've always been an eternal optimist. I think, you know, I infuriate a few people in my own family. I keep saying it's going to be okay. And they're like, when? But I really, I am learning and more and more as I get older, I am learning to see how if we all collectively sit in the dark space

and sit in the fear, we emphasize it, we make it real, we make it more tangible. So I'm extricating myself from the fear and the angst of it and seeing how there's me, there's Julia Gillard, there is so many others all over the world who see this world, not only in its beauty, but see how we can actually

preserve how we can fight back against tyranny and the killing of Mother Earth herself.

is part of our fight. It's not just, we're not just fighting queer rights. It's not just women's rights. It's our environment so that we can continue to live and thrive. You know, there are so many of us. There are so many of us. And even if we're not linking physically in the way that you and I are at the moment, on a whole spiritual level, on other realms, we are actually gathering in this war. I really believe that.

Because I do also believe that we are spiritual beings before we are human beings. And so as spirits, we are seeing the destruction, we are noting it. And a lot of us are fighting in however many ways that we are fighting. And we just need to just see it and understand it and just shift it.

Can tilt. We can tilt this. We can tilt this. I love that. I'm going to unfortunately have to bring this wonderful conversation to an end, but I'm going to do it in the way that I always end my podcasts, which is with a Virginia Woolf quote.

Virginia Woolf wrote, I will not be famous, great. I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free oneself, to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded. Those words obviously mean a lot to you. That is perfect. That is perfect. That is perfect.

Finding my own personal freedom in my life and feeling blessed on a daily basis, that is freedom. Because also no one is going to give you your freedom. I think that's, I mean, I say that quite a bit whenever I do talks anywhere in the world, particularly to young queer folks, is no one is giving you freedom.

Woman, no one is going to give you your freedom. You take your freedom. You make the decisions for yourself and follow your bliss. You follow what makes you happy. If it's feeling off, step back. Why is this feeling off? Is it for you? If it's not for you, step back. You know, that's freedom. Having the ability to say no. And I know there are countries and places in the world where you can't just say no.

But within yourself, there are things you can do that you can take back your own power. I love that quote. Thank you so much, Julia. Thank you so much for this conversation, Beverly. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you. And me. Thank you.

A podcast of one's own is created by the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the Australian National University, Canberra, with support from our sister institute at King's College, London. Earnings from the podcast go back into funding for the institute, which was founded by our host, Julia Gillard, and brings together rigorous research, practice and advocacy as a powerful force to advance gender equality and promote fair and equal access to leadership.

Research and production for this podcast is by Becca Shepard, Alice Higgins and Alina Ecott, with editing by Liz Kean from Headline Productions. If you have feedback or ideas, please email us at giwl at anu.edu.au.

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The team at A Podcast of One's Own acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today. Thanks for listening, and we hope you'll join us next time.

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