Quaker Community Day is a day when Friends students get to learn new things about our community. Its a time where we know we will not be able to fix every problem in the world. But we hope to contribute to making a change.

I spent QCD 2023 today with Feminism Club heads Olivia Pritchett and Morgan Thomasson-Small, and other peers, watching the movie “Women Talking.” Upper School 125 was a room full of people eager to learn about how fear kept women silent for years – and talking brought them together.  

Before we began, Olivia and Morgan let us know that the movie would be heavy. They had a description of it on the board.

“The women from this movie have been through horrifying events and they are left with three options. Do nothing, stay and fight, or leave,” it read.  The session leaders asked us to keep that description in mind while they wrote questions on the board.

• Did you like the ending?
• Did you agree with their decision? Why or why not?
• Can you relate this situation to anything happening today?
• Can you understand why some of the women wanted to say?

Initially, the room was full of people on phones. But as the lights dimmed and the movie began, the energy changed. The film started with traumatic events, and left the room shocked. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the screen to see what would happen next, only 5 minutes and 48 seconds in!

Throughout the movie, audience members experienced a roller coaster of emotions. Based on a 2018 novel by Miriam Toews, the plot was inspired by a real-life series of rapes in an isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia. When the movie was over, you could feel the heaviness. If you’d dropped a pin in the room, you would have heard it.

There were many layers to the movie to uncover and discuss. First, the group took a 15-minute break to process what we had watched. When we reconvened, people started by expressing how surprised they were that the real-life events the film was based on happened as recently as 2010. Then they went deeper, talking about different scenes.

Everyone had so much to say that the conversation flowed. It was a open space where people expressed personal experiences, and educated each other about history, how women have been silenced for years, and how this is an ongoing issue.

The movie opened a space where students could be comfortable with being uncomfortable, learning about things that aren’t often talked about. Everyone was respectful and walked out the room with a new piece of knowledge, or a new way of viewing the world.

Quaker Community Day gives Friends students the opportunity to better ourselves and become a better community. With the knowledge we gain, and the conversations we have, we can all contribute to making the world a better place.