The Art of Badassery with Jenn Cassetta: Mindset, Motivation and Empowerment for Women

54 | Feminist Firestarters: Igniting Change with Lina AbiRafeh

• Jenn Cassetta • Season 1 • Episode 54

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What does it really take to stand up for women’s rights—no matter where you live?


In this episode of the Art of Badassery podcast, host Jenn Cassetta sits down with Lina AbiRafeh, a globally recognized women’s rights activist and author, to explore her lifelong mission to advance gender equality.

Together, they dive into Lina’s experiences working in more than 20 countries, her unexpected path into activism, and the deeply human stories behind her work in conflict zones. Lina shares why small, consistent acts of resistance matter, the transformative power of economic empowerment, and how each of us—regardless of our careers or backgrounds—can meaningfully contribute to feminist movements.


Tune in for Lina’s powerful insights, a preview of her upcoming projects, and practical ways to show up as your own feminist firestarter in everyday life.

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SPEAKER_00

So in every place that I thought was hopeless, it wasn't at all. Even in a place like Central African Republic, a place that most people can't even find on a map. There too, there were people that were speaking out and trying to make change, even in the face of ongoing conflict, even as armed men were marching into cities and killing people right and left. Still, people would find ways to fight, find ways to stand up, find ways to rebuild. And I always left those places very humbled and inspired. So for me, there was no, this was the absolute worst. There was always the extremes of how people can survive against any imaginable condition.

SPEAKER_01

Hi there, I'm Den Cassetta, your chief badass three officer. If you're feeling drained, hesitant, stuck in self-doubt, or you just have a case of the vlogs, the Art of Badasserie podcast is here to help you unleash your mojo once and for all. We'll provide you with tips, techniques, and real-life examples of how you can kick ass in all areas of your life. You'll learn how to flex your mental muscles, rise above fears, and turn setbacks into superpowers. So let's enter the dojo and let's get to work. Welcome to the Art of Badassery Podcast. I'm Jen Cassetta, your chief badassery officer, and today I have a very special guest for you all. But before I introduce her, I just want to let you know that this is the last episode of 2025. So if you're listening to this still around December, mid-December, I want to wish you all a lovely holiday season and let you know that it's my favorite time of year. Yes, the holidays are great, but what I love even more is that start of the year, the fresh fleet, making things new and creating your life, plan, your destiny, your future. Every single year for the last four years, I have taught my very favorite workshop, which has gotten a rebrand this year. We are launching the Destiny Dojo. So the Destiny Dojo is happening on January 6th at 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern. We're gonna gather together on Zoom for two hours. I'm gonna walk you through my three-year vision planning. It's this lovely visualization writing exercise where you're truly going to create the most exciting vision for yourself for the next three years. And then we actually create your digital vision board. This is all happening on Canva. You're gonna get your vision board. Uh we're gonna paste it on your laptop, your phone. This is something that has truly changed my life over the last four years of doing this for myself and then for others. So this if you work with me at all, if you do anything with me, I promise you this is the thing. Sign up. I make it super affordable, set aside the time, light the good candles, join us because it can truly change your life. We'll talk about the science behind manifesting, the woo energy behind manifesting, all of it. At the end, you get to share with everyone on the call what you are declaring for the year ahead. So if you want to start your year off with mojo and momentum, join us. Go to my website, jennifercasetta.com slash destiny gojo. You can sign up there, or just send me a DM on Instagram at Jen Cassetta or wherever you want, and I will get you the link to sign up. Ready to introdu introduce this fabulous woman who I met at the 92nd Street Y in October when I was speaking there at the Women in Power Summit. She came right up to me and just started telling me about her life. I was just like, tell me more. I need to meet this woman. So we set up a call. Right now she's calling in from Lebanon. Her name is Lena, Lena Abirafa. And what I loved most about her branding was she calls herself a feminarium.

SPEAKER_00

Among many names, a feminist fire starter, so many things. We're gonna break it all down.

SPEAKER_01

And here's just a little bit about Lena before we officially start speaking. Lena is a global women's rights activist, author, and speaker with three decades of experience worldwide. Lena is also the founder and chief changemaker of Better for Women, a boutique advisory firm creating impactful real-world solutions to global women's rights challenges. Lena's work has taken her to Afghanistan, Haiti, the Central African Republic, Papua New Guinea, and over 20 countries worldwide wide. As an academic, Lena spent nearly a decade as the executive director of the Arab Institute for Women at the Lebanese American University. Lena is a global and TEDx speaker, medium voice, and author of three books. Lena, welcome to the podcast. And please name your three books for us all.

SPEAKER_00

So my first one is called Gender and International Aid in Afghanistan. The second one is Freedom on the Front Lines, which is the part two, if you will, the unexpected part two, as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban once again. The third one is called Yella Feminists. It is what I call my love letter to the Arab region and the young activists that are on the front lines taking charge. So those are the first three. Next year, expect two more. One is called Feminist Firestarter, named after my newsletter or my brand. And that's like a starter guide to feminist activism. And the other is a personal story. And who knows what else is in the pipeline.

SPEAKER_01

So by the end of next year, your vision board is gonna have five books on there. Actually, if you want to go three years into the future, like we do in the workshop, maybe there's more. Maybe there's more. But seriously, kudos to you. You are truly a black belt in badassy, which everybody here knows. It's someone who has gone through difficult, challenging times, and now helps other people rise up through the ranks as well. And truly you do this for women, and not just here in the States, but globally. I watched your TED Talk, I've read some of your work. Lena, how does somebody like you start? Like, where does this all come from? Can you take us way back to your origin story?

SPEAKER_00

The origin story is as a fetus. I think this is baked into our DNA. As soon as we are out in the world, and even well before that, we come to realize through our different experiences at some point in another that the world sees us as unequal, as less than just being born a female in the world, no matter where you are, there are conditions, constraints, restrictions. Yes, they manifest differently in different cultures and contexts and time periods, but they exist absolutely everywhere. And I think for me, I came to that realization maybe sooner than others and asked a lot of questions and had a keen sense of injustice and a desire to the wrongs, even though I didn't know what I was seeing, I didn't know how to put a vocabulary to it, and I certainly had no idea what to do, but I knew that I was mad. But I took that anger and started to learn and pay attention and read and think about things for myself. And when I saw in my research and read, and I'm talking like I'm 13, 14 years old. This is not college or anything beyond that. This is very early in my life where I started to understand what was going on. I realized this wasn't just a me problem, it's a we problem. It's all of us and everywhere and all the time. And the overwhelming magnitude of that, that's what got me going. It woke me up and I said, I don't know what to do, but I'm going to do something. And I cannot stop until I feel like I've done something meaningful. I've done enough, whatever that means. So that's how I started. I'm also Lebanese and Palestinian. So crisis as well is baked into my DNA. So there's a lot of questions, a lot of challenges, a lot of negotiating that I have to do, still have to do with my identity as a woman, as an Arab in America, as a Palestinian now, as a Lebanese, it's constant questioning. Like it teaches you to take nothing for granted. And with that, you have to really think about who you are and what you believe in and what you will stand up for. And so that was little me.

SPEAKER_01

Wow. So in the blog post that you sent me, that's going into your new book. I actually, while you were just speaking, had a lipel moment when you're talking about being born into a woman's body. It's just different. It's a different experience. And as a self-defense instructor, I know this, right? But you talk about that first time when we realize that we're in a woman's body and maybe not so safe in the world, which is really weird. That just last night I had a friend over for dinner and she was talking about that experience of growing up with a brother, being really close with him, thinking they're the same, until all of a sudden she said, these are her words, I started to get boobs and people started to treat me different, and I wasn't being treated the same as my brother anymore. And that was the fire starter in her, where she started to get like almost angry about it. And can you share about the moment? I know it's difficult to think about and talk about, but I think what you described in your post also made me think about mine. So please.

SPEAKER_00

It's interesting because the story that I tell in the post that I shared and that is also in the book, is something that happened to me when I was seven. So I was very young, but I had forgotten it entirely and only unearthed it when I was in my 30s in a conversation with a friend, and we were talking about her young daughter and concerns that she had about her daughter. And she said to me that she's had this conversation with her daughter about no one can touch you and no secrets and your body is your own and say no and all the messaging that I think parents as a non-parent, I imagine parents reinforce much more now than they did when we were kids. I feel like parents are much more clear on those kinds of boundaries and instilling those boundaries in kids. I believe that. So what happened was she and I were having this conversation, and she said, Do you remember the first time that someone touched you and you didn't want it or you knew that it was wrong or you felt uncomfortable? And I thought back to stories as a teenager, being groped here and there. And then this memory just came flooding back, as they do, because we suppress these kinds of things when we're younger, and we don't understand that those things are wrong, or we don't feel comfortable, especially as little girls speaking out and fighting back. And there's so many of the elemental things that you teach that idea of pushing back and not being afraid and being loud. And at seven, I had no idea. The story is just to give the listeners some context. I was sitting in a hairdresser's chair, getting a haircut, probably the most benign activity as a kid. And this guy was a total creep and was just rubbing himself up on my hand and didn't really want me to move my hand because he was clearly benefiting from something that was making me fundamentally uncomfortable and he knew it and didn't stop. I didn't say anything except for try and slide out of the chair practically onto the floor. But I was told sit still. And my mom was close by and I didn't say anything and I didn't do anything, and I was frozen, I was paralyzed, I was terrified. Yeah. And I knew that wrong and it just it felt gross, it felt violating. I just pushed it out of my mind and kept going. But the funny thing was, I always was so conscious of where my hands go. You've got these hairdresser chairs with these armrests. And anytime after that, I always crossed my arms when I put, I'm sitting there with the with the cape, and I've got my arms under the cape, like I'm making a big tent out of my body. And it was so interesting to me to understand where that position of protection came from. Here I am with this friend, we're talking about our daughter. All of a sudden I think, oh my God. And this story just came flooding back like it was yesterday. And it was unbelievable how those things worked, the trauma that we suppress in these kinds of cases, you know, and the ways that we cope, the ways that we learn to deal with these things and explain them in our little minds and then move on. And that's exactly what I did. Yeah. And it was fascinating for me to observe myself rediscovering that moment.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And thank you for sharing that. I have a similar similar different story. Me and my mom went to adopt my dog. And when we left the animal shelter, the dog threw up all over me. So we pull up to a gas station, and my mom says, Go in and get paper towels. I remember asking the guy who worked there for paper towels. Obviously, there's like dog puke on me. And instead of giving me the paper towels, he started rubbing my thighs, taking the paper towels and rubbing it off me. And he didn't stop. And I was like, oh my God. Like it's that moment where you're like, I know this, like you said, I know this is wrong. This feels very weird. I I gotta get out of here and frozen. And I finally just grabbed the paper towels and ran. But also didn't tell my mom because I didn't want her getting upset. I knew that she would be upset, and then there'd be a whole thing. And then I don't know, I probably told her like years later. But also that memory was stuffed down and didn't come back until uh adulthood at some point of unearthing all the trouble.

SPEAKER_00

Whatever, and the way that we cope with it by second guessing ourselves as well, as a sort of trauma response. This idea of, oh, it probably wasn't what I thought and it wasn't bad, and he didn't mean it, and he was just trying to be friendly or whatever kind of crap that we just that's how we cope, and that's how that's a survival skill. Even as an adult, like that story probably triggered, definitely triggered many other stories. I wish I could say this was an isolated incident that I experienced and it never happened again. And I wish I could say it was unique, but it these are the most ordinary stories in the world that every single woman I know has had some kind of experience. And even as an adult in the working world, getting groped and propositioned by the office creep, which has got to be the most ordinary story in the world, really. Everybody knows what that's like. And still being told, oh, Lena, it wasn't that serious and you didn't mean it, and me thinking, gosh, maybe maybe I misread it. Like the ways that we do that to ourselves constantly as women, I think is exhausting and tragic. Having said that, I think the hope, because there is always a silver lining in all this, is that I see younger women so much more clear in their boundaries, so much stronger, much more firm with their nose and more clear with their own bodies and bodily autonomy and integrity and the knowledge when that boundary is crossed, even slightly, and how quickly their radar goes up and they push back. And I just I look at them and I think, I love that strength. I admire it so much, and I wish I'd had it at that age. So maybe things are changing.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. And I see that, but again, like what we see on social media, maybe not represent all kids out there and especially in the world. So, to my listeners, you might remember an awesome interview I had with Josie Cox. She wrote Women, Money, Power would be another episode if you like this episode to go back and listen to if you haven't listened to it. She talks mostly about feminism, but from American history of it. But you have such a global perspective. So can you take go back again? And so at 14, you're like, okay, I'm gonna start studying this. How do you actually start making a career of this?

SPEAKER_00

The first, so at 14, you know, what catalyzed it all for me and what gave me the vocabulary to arm me, because unless you know what you're doing and saying, it's very hard to do anything at all. So I was flailing around angry initially. I was and then in high school, so I was 14, and I took this course called Comparative Women's History. And what it was actually was not our rich and beautiful history, but the history of violence against women. And that blew my mind. And I was like, my goodness, I can everything from the stuff that happens or that used to happen with breaking our ribs to fit into corsets back when, to female genital mutilation, to bridal burning, to domestic violence, to excessive sort of body augmentations and destruction, even in the way that we're doing now, with like breast augmentation or I don't know, Brazilian butts, or whatever it is that we do, we destroy our bodies as a form of violence, really, pandering to the patriarchy and on and on, just about everything. And so this class just tore my world apart. And I said, okay, that's it. So in high school, what I did after that moment was every time I had to write a paper on anything at all, world history, an English class, I would write on women and women's history and women's religions or violence here or the impact of, I don't know, World War II on women, all of it. So everything was through the lens of women who's cups completely obsessed. There was a one-trick pony. Um I did the same thing in college, and then I started volunteering in places, volunteered at the National Organization for Women, volunteered at all of these of would go to Planned Parenthood protests on weekends, standing outside, helping protect women who wanted access to the health care that those organizations provide so they can make choices about their own bodies and lives. Because damn it, how are we still even fighting for that? Talk about a battle that I was sure we had won and that was like signed and sealed. I remember being a teenager at my first Planned Parenthood protest, again, probably 15. Yeah. Thinking, wow, and this is common sense, our own bodies. So I'm sure we'll solve this problem and it'll just be a matter of time, and then we can move on to another issue. I was, in my young mind, certain that this was what was fair before I realized how fundamentally unfair the world is. I thought this makes sense and this is fair and this is what everybody deserves, right? To decide what to do their own bodies. I'm sure we'll solve it, and then on to the next thing. Right. Little did I know.

SPEAKER_01

I think what I not love, but gives me a smirk is watching these like gray hair women out with their signs. We're still fighting. We're still fighting.

SPEAKER_00

And they did it already. And I find like I look at women my age, like now I've crossed over into 50, so I'm in that decade, and women in their 60s as well, thinking, wait a minute, didn't we solve this? Like, why are we moving backwards? This is catastrophic. I thought we were gonna leave a better world for our kids or the next generation. How can we have to start this all over again? That frustration and anger, and also that sense of overwhelm and paralysis. That's in part why I wrote that book, Feminist Firestarter, because I wanted to arm people with ideas to be able to do something without succumbing to this. There is a lot of reversal of our rights, a backlash against our freedoms, the resurgence of the patriarchy, right wing movements, and that's everywhere in every single country. It is so overwhelming, it's unreal. So this feeling of I'm just gonna shrug my shoulders and think I can't do anything about this. This is too, this has gotten so bad and it is too much. Better to just add nowhere to start. But the for me, my biggest concern with all of us, and I tell myself this all the time, is that our enemy really is not the opposition, it's our own apathy. It's our risk that we say we can't keep fighting this, can't do anything about it, and too tired, it's too big, it's bigger than me. What can I do? All those kinds of feelings, I want to ban those. And I do it just like your work. I found so many similarities in the work that you do in the progression of badassery because it is a pro constant process and you're always going back and doing it again and doing it again and doing it again. And it's the same with emergencies. My work in humanitarian emergencies that was very much part of oh yes.

SPEAKER_01

How did you get into working in wars in humanitarian disasters? How does that happen?

SPEAKER_00

It happened because I I wanted to do the that kind of I wanted to work on women's rights and specifically violence against women, actually, internationally. So I was combining international relations and women's rights, work volunteering domestically until I could get my first experience internationally. Because no one's gonna throw you into countries if you've not done anything at all. And so it's a little bit of a a catch 22. And I was awarded a fellowship when I was 21, I think, to go and work in Morocco for six months. No, Bangladesh was my first one. Sorry, we're lined. Bangladesh was the first, and there I was 21. And that for me was extremely eye-opening because it was the first time I was putting my learning and my conviction to the test. And I thought, okay, here I am. I don't know what to do, I don't know how to do this. What can I reasonably do? How can I help? And I spent three months there, absolutely loved it, followed that up with Morocco, and then followed that up with Afghanistan. After many years also of working in the States, I worked in international organizations, and so I was always making. Maintaining a foot in both worlds. And I think you can the hard part really with getting that first experience, like I said, is well, how are you good? How will you get it? Are you willing to put yourself at some to risk to be, you might have to volunteer? It might be a little bit sketchy. You might be a little bit lost. You might not add a lot of value, but you have to try. You have to throw yourself into these situations and say, all right, this is what I want. I need to see what this is like and then really decide. For a lot of people, they don't need to do this. They don't need to go far to do good, as I keep saying, nor do they need to go big to do good. But that's the life that I chose. And once I started working in conflict specifically, there was really no going back from that. And it just got more and more serious with each experience.

SPEAKER_01

At some point, you've you literally said, My job was to end sexual violence against women and girls. And that's an impossible job.

SPEAKER_00

It's an impossible. Then it would be safe to say that I failed at my job in every single country I've ever been in. That was the job. The job was to do something, you know, to try to do something. But I realized after decades of it that I had to revise the metrics for myself as well. Because doing this kind of job is hard. It comes with very little rewards, comes with swift reversal of gains, as we are seeing all over the world. So, how do you maintain that sense of hope? How do you keep going? How do you recognize that things might be better, even if slightly better, because of you than they would have been without you? How do you come to terms with all that stuff? And for me, after three decades of doing this work, I have a collection of anecdotes, really, not grandiose accomplishments of liberation and freedom, which is what we imagine and what we deserve, but little stories that might just be the scenes that are going to lead to that freedom down the line. And those are the stories actually that I capture in the memoir that's coming out next year.

SPEAKER_01

Amazing. And is there one short story you can share with us now? Just something that makes you smile, give you more hope, and know that the work that you did was super impactful.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, sure. The one I told in my TED talk was one of my favorites. It's a story of an Afghan woman who I met who came into my office. I worked in Afghanistan for four years, and she came into my office and she said, I need a job, I'm starving, husband dead, kids, whatever. The whole my life is I have absolutely nothing, and you have to help me. And many women actually came into my office like that, as destitute as that. I said, All right, we've got this program that will give you a little bit of cash in hand every month. It'll also give you training to learn a new skill. It'll also give you some basic health education, literacy, whatever. All the like I was offering her this full menu of stuff. She said, Look, I really I don't care. I just want the money. And I said, but you also have to learn this skill so you can then make money on your own and that money will grow and so on. And so she agreed to that. And I said, Do you want to take a literacy class? Knowing very well that at that time, 97% of women in Afghanistan were illiterate. So I said, Do you want to take a literacy class? And she just shot back at me, like, no, why? I don't have time to learn to read. You know, this to what she was saying to me was that was a luxury, an indulgence, something she didn't have time for. She's starving. She said, I can't even eat, don't have the time to find food, to feed myself and my children. What am I gonna do? What does reading serve? And so she left my office. She started in the program. And six months later, she came back to me and she said, I think I'm ready to take a literacy class now. And I thought, oh my God, okay, so why did you decide to do that? And she said, Well, I've been in this program six months. I've got this little bit of money, I've invested in this little business, I'm making jam at home, I'm selling the jam, I'm putting food on the table. I don't think day to day, I think week to week now. So we've got a cushion, we've got some food in stock. We feel like we're on solid ground, much better than before. And I realized, she said to me, that I've never once written my own name and I want to do it. I remember that moment, like it was yesterday and it was 20 years ago. And I said, All right, let's do it now. So we went to a classroom and there was an instructor there and a whiteboard, and they put a marker in their hand, and the instructors were traced the letters of her name, and she traced over them. And I was in a corner just sobbing because for me it was amazing. And everyone was clapping for her because that feeling that I saw in her, that power, that conviction, that sense of seeing her own name in writing, that feeling that she was doing something for herself and she was owning her future in that moment. For me, it was just so powerful and overwhelming. I couldn't believe it. And stories like that, where you think, how do you measure that? How do you put that in a donor report? How do you fundraise for that? You really can't when people are expecting big things in the face of catastrophes. But those stories for me are the ones that showed me what hope really looks like in the hardest circumstances. And so that's one of the stories that I tell because it's never ever left me. Wow. This work took you all around the world.

SPEAKER_01

Where would you say was the most dire of circumstances? What was the worst of the worst that you saw?

SPEAKER_00

It's amazing because all of them are terrible and wonderful at the same time. In every single country, I would think to myself, oh my God, what am I gonna do? What can I possibly do to help here? And feel so overwhelmed. But there was always magic and beauty and momentum and some strong feminist who was standing up and fighting even when there was hardly anywhere to stand. In Haiti after the earthquake, for instance, Haiti was absolutely flattened and destroyed. I met a young woman who whose home, whose life, whose university, whose livelihood, everything was destroyed, absolutely nothing. And she was like, I'm gonna be a journalist and I don't care. I'm just gonna start reporting with absolutely nothing. She had nowhere to sleep, she had nowhere to go. She was just so committed. So in every place that I thought was hopeless, it wasn't at all. Even in a place like Central African Republic, a place that most people can't even find on a map. There too, there were people that were speaking out and trying to make change, even in the face of ongoing conflict, even as armed men were marching into cities and killing people right and left. Still, people would find ways to fight, find ways to stand up, find ways to rebuild. And I always left those places very humbled and inspired. So for me, there was no, this was the absolute worst. There was always the extremes of how people can survive against any imaginable condition. And that for me was absolutely remarkable. Even here in Beirut, following the blast that happened, the explosion that happened in 2020 that destroyed half the city, people came out with brooms and just started sweeping the glass and just got up and did it. And people started opening up their kitchens or whatever was left of them to feed other people, scraping together bits of fabric to form bandages, anything, everything. The way people care for themselves and for each other, the way people survive. I don't want us to have to be put to the test constantly. On the one hand, you think, well, the beauty of the resilience of the human spirit. Like, we don't need to have to keep doing that. I don't want that kind of world where we get to be banged around like the waves that keep whipping us just to prove that we can stand up again. That's not the world I want. In fact, we deserve a much better world than what we've got, all of us. But still, you see it time and again, and it is troubling. And I truly believe that more women in power would equal a better world.

SPEAKER_01

I'm not saying everything would be perfect, but a better world.

SPEAKER_00

Women do it differently in those circumstances. Absolutely. Yes. Because they are the social safety net, right? They know who is in trouble, how to reach them, what they need, what to they just ought it's it is a part of our it's a part of our lives. It's a part of our DNA too, that we just know how to do things and what to do. And naturally we just get up and do them.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. Can we get into the feminist fire starter a bit? Will you just give us a couple of tips? What do you talk about in there to help us be better feminists?

SPEAKER_00

So basically, that book is organized along the five phases of an emergency response, which is quite literally the drumbeat of my life. The five phases are prevent, prepare, respond, recover, and rebuild. These are the phases that we cycle through in an emergency response and in any kind of conflict or crisis, whether it's the tiniest thing at home or the biggest global catastrophe, from the pandemic to things that happen in our own household. This is the way that we deal with things and we keep cycling through these five phases. The idea being that first of all, it is on us to be informed, to understand. The very first thing we have to do is listen and learn. We're not going to be able to do anything or be effective unless we know what's going on. There is no way that we can be galvanized into action without first knowing that there is a problem. And then once you see those kinds of things and you never unsee them, and that's where the momentum starts. And that's a beautiful moment, right? The learning and the preparing and the building of your skills and the decision that you make somehow, consciously or not, that you are going to stand up and do something, even if that something is a tiny thing. In fact, let it be a tiny thing, because I think that is where we're most effective in our homes and our lives and our schools and our workplace and the places that we occupy where we have the most influence and control. And I said, if we just all took responsibility for the small spaces that we occupied, that's a kind of behavior that is contagious. And that's what we all need to do.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Rather than meddling in each other's stuff, just work on what's around you and change that for the better. And that for me, that's remarkable. Start in your community, essentially. Exactly. That was the message. Start where you stand. And the reason that message came up is that was graffiti that I saw that was spray painted on a wall in Nepal following the earthquake that happened there in 2015. Beautiful. Oh, yeah. Five o'clock in the morning. Yes, absolutely. But so strong. 5 a.m. walking to the office to start my day. And there was this spray painted wall, and it said start where you stand. And I thought, if there ever was a message from my life, let it be this. Wow. So that's so that would be the first thing, you know, is be okay.

SPEAKER_01

Let's start in our community. What's going on in our community? How can we help? Baby steps, little steps. Maybe it's volunteering for there's a particular charity that I always do around the holiday time here in Los Angeles called the Giving Spirit. So that's my call to action. I'm gonna make sure I get out there next weekend and help.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely, especially if you're a parent. That is a huge responsibility with your own children, with your children's friends, with modeling equitable gender relationships, with having conversations that are uncomfortable but important, like the ones we talked about, bodily autonomy, consent, those kinds of things. So critical. You're raising young people, bringing people into the world who will then understand that they can respond without violence. They are emotionally intelligent and know how to deal with conflict because that's inevitable in life. They know how to respect the boundaries of others, they know how to protect themselves, all those things. That's beautiful. Even things that are simple, like amplifying the voices of women who are on the front lines of the causes or the countries or the conflicts that we care about.

SPEAKER_01

Right. These are little things that we can all be doing.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. Donating, people always think, oh, I don't want to keep donating money. There are ways to donate money that are safe and effective and impactful. There are also ways to donate time. If you are a lawyer, let's say, you can easily find a community organization, an NGO, whatever, that might need help with drafting bylaws. That is a great thing you can do taking your own skills because you might not have skills in community development and women in, say, Peru. That doesn't need to be your skill set, but take the skill set you have and use it for those who need it. That's and that's the kind of thinking that I would love for us all to have. The idea that people think, what can I do? I work in real estate or what can I do? I work in X or Y industry. But in every single industry, there is a way to make a difference. And it doesn't have to be for other organizations that are in other countries over there. It can be in your own space, in your own office, in whatever ways that you are able with whatever means you have. And I think that culture, once you adopt that sort of frame with your life, it starts to seep into everything that you do. For me, for instance, I just pay attention to what people ask of me. I'm a career activist, a lifelong activist and feminist. That is my work, that is my calling. I get up every day for that. I'll do it with my very last breath. But I get a lot of young women who call or ask for phone calls, ask for my time, ask for my advice. Could I guide them through this and that? How should they get started? Here's a difficult situation. What should they do? Just the other day, I had a woman write to me saying she didn't know how to find a job that allowed her to retain her values and principles while all she thought like all of these organizations were just selling out. And they she went into this or wanted to go into this line of work because of the values that drove her to it. And she couldn't find an organization that aligned. And what could she do? And I said, let me think on this. And so I wrote a blog that outlined the other things that she can do, how to find organizations that align, how her principles should not be for sale, and how wonderful it was that she had approached me with that question. That a lot of young people who were starting in this career probably also have. All of that to say that you'd be surprised, the ways you can help and what you can do and the impact that might have on even one person. And so in the book, I also profile a lot of ordinary people, people who were not driven to activism from the fetus, who actually just landed accidentally into activism because they saw something that needed to be done and they got up and they did it. And they didn't think about it, they didn't even know how to label it, like they don't call themselves activists or feminists or any of those things, but they are very much those things. So part of the book, also, and I think this is important, is definitions, right? What is a feminist? What is an activist? Why is that not an exclusive and alienating and complicated term? It isn't, it isn't everybody, everything, all of us. Give us your definition of a feminist. It is absolutely anybody who cares about equality and who sees the historic inequality. And you have to know the history to understand that there is a reason why we are arguing for these things. And there are a lot of women now, young women, social media influencers and whatever who say, I'm not a feminist, we have all the rights we need. I say, first of all, you have to thack a feminist for the rights you currently have, even something as simple as wearing pants, right, for having your own credit card, an ID, a passport, the ability to travel, the ability to be educated, to drive, to not get married, to buy property. Please, I can list a hundred things. So thank a feminist for that and recognize that feminism is the shoulders on which you stand right now and the freedoms you enjoy have been brought to you by feminism. But also recognize that those inequalities persist. And if they do not persist for you, I would argue you're probably not looking hard enough, but it persists for others in ways that are all of our responsibility. I'm not free until we're all free. I take my cue from Audrey Lorde so much. She's the guiding light in times of darkness with her words and her wisdom. And there's so many feminists and so many activists and so many wonderful people, men and women both, who tell us how to do it and who show us how it's done and who shine a light for us when we feel like we're sitting in the dark. So in the end, those kinds of things are easy and they're accessible. You just have to open your eyes and see them.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. So another call to action I just got from you is thank a feminist. I think I'm missed for sure. As we're heading into the holiday season, this is perfect timing for your message. So reach out, do something. And we often think of volunteering, like you said, as money, but it can be your time, your energy, your resources, anything that you've learned that you want to teach, that you want to pass on, anything that helps other, in this case, women rise. A big theme in your work is making sure women have money, economic power in this world is so important. And when women have more money, they can be more safe. Because I noticed you also said in one of your blogs is the most unsafe place that women are is in their own homes. That's right. So crazy to think about, even here in the United States.

SPEAKER_00

That's the silent pandemic. It's violence against women. And where is it happening? With those we love. I mean, for me, there's so many ways that we need to exert our rights that where we don't have them in terms of education, healthcare, certainly, politics, the economy, leadership, decision making, all of that. But until we are free and safe in our own bodies, until we end violence against women, you can offer us quotas for political participation or loans to start our own businesses, or you can open up a hundred schools for girls. But if it's not safe for us to get there, if the village is not safe, if our home is not safe, our community, our culture is not safe, then it doesn't matter. All those opportunities are for nothing. So that has to be the starting point. And that's not the finish line. That is the bare minimum. What are we asking for? Safety and freedom from violence. Like the fact that Revamp asked is for me shocking because that is what everybody should want and what every single human deserves. Every single living creature deserves. And we don't want that for all women. It is about respect for life. Yes, it is so to me so simple. And that's why sometimes it's just it's mind-blowing to find us where we are, because some of these things are just very clear to me, painfully clear.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I know. The rise of the trad wife, all this stuff. It's like a backlash almost. But anyway, we're not gonna we're not gonna end on that because we're ending on hope. We're ending on action, we're ending on helping other people rise. And that's exactly what you do, Lena. Thank you so much for the work that you do. I hope I would imagine that you can just take all that in and know that you're making such a big difference in this world. So I just want to thank you on behalf of everyone you help. Probably a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00

It's you're just about caring for other people. It's so incredibly simple.

SPEAKER_01

You're amazing. So I always have these four rapid fire questions that I ask to guests. Are you ready? Absolutely. So quick answer first thing. Ready? What was your favorite food as a kid?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, chocolate, always. Cookies.

SPEAKER_01

Still cookies. If you could have a drink with anyone, alive or dead, who would it be and what's in your cup?

SPEAKER_00

My grandmother, my Palestinian grandmother, who was long dead, unfortunately, and who was a real feminist fire star. She probably wouldn't have wine, but I would. I like dry white, nice and crisp, minimally.

SPEAKER_01

And then your favorite self-help book. So anything in that genre?

SPEAKER_00

Not necessarily self-help, but insightful about humans is The Ten Types of Human by Dexter Diaz. Blew me away. Totally incredible, insightful, magical lyrical storytelling. Really about us.

SPEAKER_01

And then what's your favorite hype song, your Firestarter song? What's what keeps you going?

SPEAKER_00

Oh my god, that's the hardest question. I have so many. It I don't know. I have so many. And that's an impossible choice because actually, whenever I'm working in a country, it's usually some obscure song from that country that I've picked up off the radio. Can you think of one? Doesn't have to be your favorite. Oh my god. But you know what is not a hype song, but is a song that I've been singing in my head a lot. Is Don't Be So Hard on Yourself. I don't know. That song, it's oh my God, is it by Mona? Let me think about who sings it. I'm gonna send it, I'm gonna send it to you. If you have a playlist, I think that's a good reminder, especially for me, as I close out this year and do a lot of reflection around what this year has been for me and what my last third years have been for me, is to recognize that we shouldn't be hard on ourselves. And we've probably done a lot more than we think.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, I love that. And that is definitely being added to the playlist. Thank you, Lena. Oh my goodness. Okay, everyone, please make sure you follow Lena on Instagram. Where are you? What's your handle?

SPEAKER_00

It's Lena Aberrafi. If you can spell mine in, you can find me, but we'll I'll send you all the links. And my website is Better4Women. Better for with number four women. I have loads of things in there, resources, an ebook on women in the workplace, tons of things in there. Sign up for my feminist fire starter newsletter. So please reach me.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you, Lena. Thank you so much for again coming on here and sharing your wisdom. I know I got my fire restarted from this conversation because I know I need to do more with my self-defense and volunteer my time and teach these skills to more women here in the States, around the world, anywhere I can. So thank you for that. Everyone listening, please make sure you subscribe to this podcast because just hope that you will take this and do something with it. Right. So whatever you got today, let that start a fire under you to go out in the world and help one other person because that's the way we do this, right? I love you. Have a beautiful holiday season. I'll see you in the Destiny Dojo on January 6th. Make sure you send me a DM at Jen Cassetta or go to my website at jennifercasetta.com slash destiny dojo. Love you all and see you on the next Art and Bidaserie podcast.