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'The life-changing lessons I learned at the All About Women Festival.'

“‘Go fuck yourself’ is a phrase I often find to be useful,” Jessa Crispin, author of Why I am not a Feminist told the crowd at the All About Women Festival at the Opera House on the weekend.

She was answering a question from a woman in the audience; ‘How should I respond when men at work tell me I’m ‘being too emotional’?”

Crispin’s gift for packing a punch with well-placed profanities is enviable. The audience was hooked.

Crispin doesn’t call herself a ‘feminist’ but she also believes in tearing down the institution of marriage. That we need to change the system because it’s based on patriarchy. “Striving for equality with men is unambitious,” she told the crowd. “Women can create radical change.”

Crispin was one of many speakers at this Sunday’s festival. It was a day of ideas. Intelligent women talking abut real issues facing, not only the world’s females, but the world as a whole.

Jessa Crispin (right). Image by Mamamia.

Author Lindy West spoke about body shaming and growing up believing she was "failing at being skinny". She took questions from mothers who were worried about the self esteem of their teenage daughters. West spoke about her own experiences; that it took a long time to decide to be happy in the body she was born with.

Rape victim from Iceland Thordis Elva stood on stage alongside her rapist, Australian man Tom Stranger. He was her boyfriend when they were teenagers. He took her virginity without her consent. She spoke about victim blaming and survival.

Before she was raped, Thordis said she loved silence and spending time on her own. Afterwards, the silence became toxic. Dangerous. She needed to find forgiveness to make the silence kind again. "The forgiveness was for myself, not for him," she told the crowd.

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we got a standing ovation at the sydney opera house AND there were unlimited macarons in the green room nbd

A post shared by Lindy West (@thelindywest) on

Researcher Karen O’Brien spoke about climate change and how the issue needs re-framing. "We are making CO2 the problem and, in reality, climate change is a relationships problem; it's an issue with our beliefs, ideas and world views," she said. "We are blaming CO2 and we aren't blaming ourselves."

A panel of women - Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Catherine Fox, and Ann Sherry - showed how 'women don't need fixing'. That we don't need to 'act like men' to succeed professionally. When a member of the audience stood up to ask the panel about dealing sexual harassment at work, she was applauded for her bravery.

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Karen O'Brien. Image by Mamamia.

Crispin doesn't use the word 'feminist' because it's become "too universal".  She believes women who call themselves feminists, and then go on to give head jobs and get married, are contradicting themselves. "The word is used because it helps sell records," she told us.

She wants an entirely new approach. "Asking a system that was created for the sole purpose of our oppression, to please stop oppressing us, is senseless work," she said. "It's time to think about the power we have."

"We need to ask, 'What do we value?'. We think we value compassion, but we are too-often dis-compassionate. We think we value community, but we spend time being angry at people on Twitter. Let's stop playing to this patriarchal bullshit. The system that oppresses us, oppresses everybody."

Throughout the day, huddled together in the darkened Opera House theatres, listening to talks and questions and discussions, those of us in the audience shared nods and murmurs and snorts of recognition.

Women who were strangers leaned into each other, commenting on the speaker, sharing their own experiences.

One woman's baby started to cry and, without hesitation, she began breastfeeding. No one looked twice.

The words of those on stage started to sound more possible, probable, even: We are compassionate. We are a community. And, together, women have the intelligence and the passion and the power to create a brand new system. Not something equal. Something better.