CaraLee Murphy (she/her)
CaraLee Murphy has 20 years experience in the nonprofit field, 10 years in anti-human trafficking, and a lifetime of experience dismantling high-control religious trauma and indoctrination. She lives in Charlotte with her partners and personal zoo and spends her free time considering how to solve the world's problems while rhinestoning her vintage porch goose.
Co-Facilitator of: After We Burn It Down: Building Feminist Spaces People Can Actually Enter
Dismantling is only part of feminist work. Building the on-ramp is feminist work, too. We ask people to leave patriarchal churches and harmful families or relationships, to reject rigid gender roles, to unlearn racism and misogyny, and dismantle other oppressive beliefs and behaviors, but to do so often means leaving communities that offer important supports and resources.
While there’s power in “burning it down,” people can also lose community, identity, relationships, childcare, financial security, certainty, purpose, ritual, belonging, and more when they do. Those losses represent barriers to learning and rebuilding.
We’ll use examples ranging from religious deconstruction to exiting the manosphere and the tradwife life to ask:
If someone takes the off-ramp from a harmful system, have we built an on-ramp into something better
Together, we’ll examine our organizations, communities, and movements for potential pitfalls and barriers, including material barriers, participation barriers, and barriers of belonging. We will also examine the intersections of safety, accountability, and inclusion and ask who carries the load when someone is learning?
Participants will leave with a framework for examining a space they influence and one concrete change they can make to reduce an unnecessary barrier, redistribute a load, or strengthen accountability.
If we’re serious about asking people to leave oppressive systems, we should be equally serious about what we’re inviting them into.
Get in, friend. We’re going to fuck the patriarchy.