Meet the Author: Clementine Ford
I Don’t
Tuesday 7 November 2023, 6:00–7:30pm
Cinema, Kambri Cultural Centre,
Australian National University
153 University Avenue
Canberra ACT 2600
Incendiary feminist and bestselling author Clementine Ford will be in conversation with Amy Remeikis on her new book I Don't, which presents the inarguable case against marriage for the modern woman.
Clementine Ford writes "I want this book to end marriages. But more importantly, I want it to prevent marriages. Women are allowed to aspire to more than what we've been told we should want in order to be happy. Let yourself have a bigger dream than becoming the supporting role in someone else's story. Why, when there is so much evidence of the detrimental, suffocating impact marriage has on women's lives, does the myth of marital bliss still prevail? If the feminist project has been so successful, why do so many women still believe that our value is intrinsically tied to being chosen by a man?"
Clementine Ford exposes the lies used to sell marriage to women to keep them in service to men and male power. From the roots of marriage as a form of property transaction to the wedding industrial complex, Ford explains how capitalist patriarchal structures need women to believe in marriage in order to maintain control over women's agency, ambitions and freedom.
Clementine Ford shows us what a different kind of world could look like for women if women were allowed to be truly free in a provocative, controversial, and above all, compellingly and persuasively argued book.
'A liberating alternative perspective on the happily-ever-after take we are sold our whole lives. I often had to rest the book on my chest, close my eyes and whisper "I knew it!"' -Chrissie Swan
Clementine Ford is a writer, broadcaster and feminist community builder. She is the bestselling author of the feminist manifestos Fight Like A Girl and Boys Will Be Boys, which have also been published to great acclaim in the UK and the US, and her memoir How We Love. In 2017, she won the Matt Richell Award for Best New Writer of the Year at the ABIAs.
Amy Remeikis is the political reporter for The Guardian. She writes on the major political issues in Australia, crime, the courts and the environment and is a regular panellist on the ABC's Insiders program
Virginia Haussegger AM, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra, is an award winning journalist, broadcaster & former ABC News anchor in Canberra.
This event is in association with Harry Hartog Bookshop. Books will be available for purchase on the evening in the Cultural Centre foyer. Pre-event book signings will be available from 5.30pm and again after the event.
