A celebration of Feminism - as a female what has it meant for you?

[sojourner]

It's interesting that I never really noticed the lack of representation of women in entertainment etc when I was a kid

I did see it, and that even when we were represented, we were still 'lesser'. I remember being really pissed off cos the Bionic Woman had shit powers compared to the Bionic Man. Same with Superwoman. As for Wonderwoman That bloody outfit

It did get gradually better. I loved Xena when she came along, despite yet another revealing outfit, and watched it avidly with my daughter.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

I was a young teenager in the 70s and all the sitcoms on telly showed girls as being either dolly-bird types or frigid virgins. It confused me because I didn't want to be either of those.

 

[sojourner]

I was a young teenager in the 70s and all the sitcoms on telly showed girls as being either dolly-bird types or frigid virgins. It confused me because I didn't want to be either of those.

Yep. Thick as fuck 'dolly birds' or middle-aged harridans. Fuckable/not fuckable.

 

[JudithB]

Yep. Thick as fuck 'dolly birds' or middle-aged harridans. Fuckable/not fuckable.

Aint that the truth.

What role models did we have? Lots of Dr Who companions were cool if only the companion.

(perhaps I should have checked how people feel about the female Dr before posting this. Living dangerously Jude)

 

[Treacle Toes]

What role models did we have?

I had loads of real life ones. Women who were dynamic, strong, intelligent, kind, generous, community minded, got shit done. All working class and mostly fucking exhausted with having the shit kicked out of them by the patriarchy and societies insistance that they were still doing it wrong...

 

[JudithB]

Luckily so did I

And some things never change

 

[Cloo]

I'm not quite sure why, but I have to say any pressure to be pretty, be hot/sexy, have a certain kind of body was water off a duck's back to me. My daughter seems like being the same (clue in that, like me, she wanted her hair cropped short though it's not The Done Thing for girls). I sure as shit hope so, because I won't know how to cope if she starts telling me she thinks she's ugly/fat - things which I had the good, and apparently unusual, fortune never to feel. And trust me, it's not because I'm a stunna.

I think my mum was a hero and role model to me, for better or worse. My late aunt was also a big hero - a pioneering anti City corruption journalist who pissed off some very powerful men by investigating where you weren't supposed to - and I realised recently must have taken so much sexist shit as a young female journalist on a financial news team in the 70s and 80s.

 

[Manter]

Yep. Thick as fuck 'dolly birds' or middle-aged harridans. Fuckable/not fuckable.

I still remember whatching the Bond girl in A view to a kill running through a mine in white stilettos and cooing ‘ooh, James’ and thinking expectations for women sucked

 

[Edie]

I had loads of real life ones. Women who were dynamic, strong, intelligent, kind, generous, community minded, got shit done. All working class and mostly fucking exhausted with having the shit kicked out of them by the patriarchy and societies insistance that they were still doing it wrong...

My mum and my aunts were this for me. Church halls and community centres, tea urns, wotsits in huge bowls, battenburg, aprons, fags, whistling from the balcony when tea was ready , watching tv round each other’s houses when there was literally six adults and ten kids in a front room, getting told off by your Aunty, having your hair brushed dry, listening all the time. I learnt about being a woman from sitting at their feet.

 

[Treacle Toes]

I learnt about being a woman from sitting at their feet.

Yep. Exactly where I heard my first horror stories too..they were not made up though, they were true and happening to women around me.

 

[TopCat]

Theresa May’s positive legacy? She’s a feminist champion | Martha Gill

 

[Santino]

Theresa May’s positive legacy? She’s a feminist champion | Martha Gill

Did you mean to post this on the Guardian thread?

 

[purenarcotic]

Theresa May’s positive legacy? She’s a feminist champion | Martha Gill

I don’t know who Martha Gill is but she’s a complete fucking idiot.

 

[Pickman's model]

I don’t know who Martha Gill is but she’s a complete fucking idiot.

 

[purenarcotic]

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For someone who went to Oxford she seems pretty incapable of doing some cursory searching into the impact austerity has had on people (particularly in this context on women). Wtf do they teach them there.

 

[Pickman's model]

For someone who went to Oxford she seems pretty incapable of doing some cursory searching into the impact austerity has had on people (particularly in this context on women). Wtf do they teach them there.

bullshitting

 

[Gramsci]

Theresa May’s positive legacy? She’s a feminist champion | Martha Gill

May is good example of Liberal Feminism. I'm sure she really believes that part of her legacy is furthering the women's rights.

She as Home Secretary along with Amber Rudd presided over a racist immigration policy.

Rudd appeared to think that she was unaware of this.

This is the limitation of Liberal Feminism.

 

[Gramsci]

For someone who went to Oxford she seems pretty incapable of doing some cursory searching into the impact austerity has had on people (particularly in this context on women). Wtf do they teach them there.

The whole point of Oxford and Cambridge is to produce a ruling class. Preferably from public schools Plus a few charity cases.

Oxford and Cambridge aren't about producing people who criticise austerity.

 

[polly]

It's an old article but relevant here: You can be a feminist and still hate Theresa May

 

[Poot]

I've often felt that it's so much easier for right wing women to gain power. Thatcher for example told the men exactly what they wanted to hear: greed is good, you deserve your riches, you work hard etc. If she (or Theresa May) had been suggesting that the men in the cabinet paid more tax and gave minorities a fighting chance they'd never have got anywhere.

 

[campanula]

My mum was a feminist and a communist. She was an amazing woman. She was born with one arm and had severe health issues (she died at only 34). There was nothing she couldn't do - knitting, embroidery, wood carving. My nana had been told she (mum) would not live to be a teenager, not live to adulthood, never have children (she had 3). She was intensely political, a working mother (she had worked since she was 14). My dad was blacklisted all over the NW (Eric the Red!) so mum worked as a dinner lady (at my school)for years. A couple of times I had massive fights with boys who would laugh and smirk, calling her a one armed bandit. I beat the shit out of them. I miss her...intensely so when I had children of my own. Nan was also political. Her demented sweary rage, at the mention of certain historical figures, was a source of endless glee for my sister and I. ' Nan, nan, we did Oliver Cromwell today 'O, the filthy gobshite, a murdering, dog buggering sack of scrofulous arse.' Nan also worked (at the Bell Mill) and held the record for amount of money put in swear box in one day. They were fierce because life was hard.

 

[Edie]

What a pair campanula

Yeah my mums pretty fierce cos her life’s been pretty hard. She’s kind but of the pull yourself together school of kindness. She doesn’t stand for moping or self pity and if you’re ill or not coping you have to get your shit together sharpish. She told me to pull myself together and stop thinking of myself when I took the kids to hers after my husband left and I felt suicidal (it was nasty, there was DV involved, it was a bit destructive on my self esteem)

She’s seen both my brothers through schizophrenia (she sent one out to work in a warehouse when he was so unwell she literally had to explain to the other guys on the shop floor that when he was responding to voices to ignore him/chivvy him along). But saying that, neither of my brothers sunk into depression or apathy and both now work and have partners.

When I’ve been on my arse and struggling I both hate and need her brand of common sense. When life’s tough kick harder.

 

[JudithB]

I've often felt that it's so much easier for right wing women to gain power. Thatcher for example told the men exactly what they wanted to hear: greed is good, you deserve your riches, you work hard etc. If she (or Theresa May) had been suggesting that the men in the cabinet paid more tax and gave minorities a fighting chance they'd never have got anywhere.

Yes I agree. It's the same as it being easier to be right wing and a republican (anti monarchy). No one really wants to change the (patriarchal) ruling class, but a little push now and then keeps the status quo.

The left on the other hand are more misogynist and doff cap tug forelock on many occasions.

 

[eoin_k]

Yes I agree. It's the same as it being easier to be right wing and a republican (anti monarchy). No one really wants to change the (patriarchal) ruling class, but a little push now and then keeps the status quo.

The left on the other hand are more misogynist and doff cap tug forelock on many occasions.

Eh? There are plenty of examples of women getting sold down the river by organised labour and of sexism across the left, but this is a complete distortion of reality. Who are these right-wing republicans in Britain? Among MPs, say, republicans are only likely to be found on the far left of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Meanwhile, Tom Mann supported the match women's strike when the right-wing of the TUC had no interest in organising women workers, or unskilled men for that matter. (The less said about their most visible female supporter Annie Besant's trajectory through Theosophy and the Malthusian League the better.) The Communist Party backed the demand for equal pay by the 1940s at the very latest, while right winger Bevin kept a lid on things. Three of the first four female cabinet ministers were Labour MPs, which is all the more remarkable given how infrequently the party had been in power by the time the fourth of them Barbara Castle became First Minister in Labour's second majority government. Her record on selling out the most politically significant strike by women workers to date indicated that women from the centre left (a former Bevanite even!) can gain and abuse political power, too. Likewise, the International Marxist Group might have got some feminists' backs up with the role they played in the National Abortion Campaign, but they were highly involved in it, unlike say the Monday Club and the NF.

Class politics needs to come under critique from a feminist perspective, but a feminist politics without a class perspective is no better.

 

[eoin_k]

I've often felt that it's so much easier for right wing women to gain power. Thatcher for example told the men exactly what they wanted to hear: greed is good, you deserve your riches, you work hard etc. If she (or Theresa May) had been suggesting that the men in the cabinet paid more tax and gave minorities a fighting chance they'd never have got anywhere.

Over 45% of Labour MPs are women including half the senior shadow cabinet, while women still only make up a third of the overall membership of the House of Commons. So the left of the political spectrum seems to have moved towards parity much more effectively than the right despite the odd female Tory Prime Minister. Women were also consistently more likely than men to vote for Thatcher, as has generally tended to be the case for the Conservative Party. So, she didn't just get into power by telling men in general what they wanted to hear. None of this is to say that she didn't have to appeal to powerful male dominated constituencies, such as Tory MPs and party donors, in order to get into power, but describing Thatcherism as 'what men want to hear' isn't the full picture either. In some ways she was more likely to appeal to some of those women who were less exposed to workplace cultures of solidarity, or who already experienced more atomised lives in the domestic sphere, than to your average working-class man.

 

[TopCat]

Don't expect logic or reasoned thought from JudyB. She is too busy roaring.

 

[campanula]

JudyB.

Quite apart from your post having no relevance apart from personal antipathy, I definitely recall some recent anger at messing with people's user names. While JudyB is not significantly different to JudithB, I think it is only fair if the same rules apply across the board.

 

[Poot]

Over 45% of Labour MPs are women including half the senior shadow cabinet, while women still only make up a third of the overall membership of the House of Commons. So the left of the political spectrum seems to have moved towards parity much more effectively than the right despite the odd female Tory Prime Minister. Women were also consistently more likely than men to vote for Thatcher, as has generally tended to be the case for the Conservative Party. So, she didn't just get into power by telling men in general what they wanted to hear. None of this is to say that she didn't have to appeal to powerful male dominated constituencies, such as Tory MPs and party donors, in order to get into power, but describing Thatcherism as 'what men want to hear' isn't the full picture either. In some ways she was more likely to appeal to some of those women who were less exposed to workplace cultures of solidarity, or who already experienced more atomised lives in the domestic sphere, than to your average working-class man.

My point was more that women, although under-represented within the Conservative party, are more likely to have outliers like Thatcher who rise to power by the means that I described. Women are more equal amongst the ranks of the Labour party (fwiw these days ) I obviously wasn't describing Thatcherism as 'what men want to hear' - that's very simplistic. I was simply pointing out that had she been on the left she wouldn't have progressed the same way because of the climate at the time. If Blair had been female, for example, I would be surprised if Blair had become Prime Minister. (Yeah, yeah, I know he's not Left but I actually can't think of a good example right now).

And yes, I agree with what you write about the Conservative female vote and women vs working class men. I think that has been a problem in the past. But I get heartily sick of not being able to have a feminist discussion without 'but you're middle class!' being thrown back at me. We are all on (more or less) the same side. Even if some people really don't like it.

 

[campanula]

I get heartily sick of not being able to have a feminist discussion without 'but you're middle class!' being thrown back at me. We are all on (more or less) the same side. Even if some people really don't like it.

Ah, but as a working class woman, I started to feel very left out of current feminist theory...which seemed overwhelmingly middle class.
We need to get our ducks in a row sisters!

 

[Poot]

Ah, but as a working class woman, I started to feel very left out of current feminist theory...which seemed overwhelmingly middle class.
We need to get our ducks in a row sisters!

I'm terribly ignorant about feminist theory. Which is probably why I'm so annoyingly positive about everything. I need to read something, I know.