Urban Future Ljubljana: Feminism for Men Night Walk with Nourhan Bassam (NL)

As part of Europe's largest smart city conference, Urban Future, Nourhan Bassam from Amsterdam 5th Wave Feminist consultancy Gendered City, and Eugene Quinn explore Ljubljana at night, and how a city can be made more inclusive and respectful. We explore how women and men use public space differently, and what this tells us about gender justice and urbanism.

The origins of the walk are useful to understand. In 2019, Eugene was asked by Amira Ben Saoud of feminist seminar, Rrriot Conference, to make a tour for their meeting in Brigittenau. We first made it, Persy Bulayumi and me, for Vienna Walking Week, as a liberation experiment, showing men how exciting and important feminism is for us.

Eugene finds the soul of Vienna deeply female, and we will look on this tour at how the Slovene capital compares.

We want to show the potential for men - and boys - to embrace their full personality, including the freedom to explore less binary roles and responsibilities. In this sense, the tour is a humorous and joyful experience, full of storytelling. Everybody is welcome on the walk, but our focus is on opening up feminist ideas for the other half of the population, who may be less familiar with the subject. The future is female, and women's issues do not just affect women. We want to teach our boys/men that sensitivity is a super power, and empathy makes them powerful. Toxic masculinity leads to violence, disrespect, suicide and poor friendships. And it might even help some of htem find a partner.