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Apparently, Feminism is dead!!!

http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfr...-equality-trap?cat=commentisfree&type=article

It was a small point of law, well-spotted by the lawyers, but it may have changed the landscape – the equivalent of the cloud no bigger than a man's hand that grows into a storm. On Wednesday, the supreme court ruled that some out-of-time equal pay claims could come before the civil courts. It could, at last, be the moment when local authorities abandon the hopeless cause of resisting equal pay claims.

It is a critical victory, but it is not the end of the war. The new battleground is the private sector, where those women who escape from lower-paid jobs are, according to TUC research, penalised by a gender pay gap twice as big as it is in the public sector.


Since the Equal Pay Act came in more than 40 years ago, it had seemed that the six-month cut-off point for unfair pay claims heard by employment tribunals was unbreachable. As a result, hundreds of thousands of women missed their chance of justice. The ruling that cases beyond the six-month limit could, after all, be heard in the civil court makes it possible to launch claims up to six years after leaving an employer. That delivers a deserved windfall to the low-paid cleaners, cooks and care assistants of Birmingham who retired or left before the council recognised their rights, and it also opens up the chance for thousands more women reluctant to challenge discriminatory employers while they still work for them, or in the same sector. Meanwhile, Birmingham, at a time of desperate cuts, is left with a huge bill for fighting and losing a battle it should have conceded years ago.


The Equal Pay Act was a grand gesture in the dying days of a failing Labour government. Designing legislation that would successfully change the way people behaved was a novelty and its passage was a stitch-up between patriarchal unions and patriarchal employers. A five-year gap before implementation was meant to allow employers to equalise pay. Instead it allowed thousands of jobs to be reassigned to women only, perpetuating the undervaluation of women's work. Fighting cases is tricky, because an individual rather than a trade union or the equalities commission has to bring the case. The process was made worse by job segregation, because it made it near impossible to find a comparator to prove men got more for doing similar work. Where attempts have been made to make the law work better, they've been piecemeal: amendment on amendment, overlaid by EU law to produce something so dense that it's incomprehensible to all but specialist lawyers.

Above all, the law is about providing a remedy when it has been broken, not about trying to shape the environment to encourage compliance. And when finally a serious attempt at reform was made, it again came at the end of a Labour government heading for defeat. The Equalities Act 2010 repeats its predecessor's mistakes. Its postdated proposals for pay transparency lie unimplemented and ignored by the coalition.


Yet, although the women who marched on parliament on Wednesdayunder the UK Feminista banner rightly protest at the distance still to travel before women are treated equally, the world is transformed since equal pay law was first introduced. Nearly as many women as men now work. The pay gap is better understood. It can be seen to be clearly linked to events in women's lives – motherhood, caring responsibilities, an interrupted work record (nearly half of all low-paid women earn even less when they return to work). And last year the pay gap for workers on median hourly pay was actually narrower than it has ever been.


Hold the cheers. It is true that women's pay has been rising faster than men's, but that's not as exciting as it sounds. Men's pay is static, and fathers' pay has actually fallen as more men work part-time. Families are faring worse than other groups. The parent penalty is falling more equally, but that just means more children are in poverty. Affordable childcare and higher-quality part-time work are at last issues for men as well as women. A new equality is emerging, but it's an equality of misery.
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Basically, children are the new women? Especially after all this shite about child benefit caps. It makes me livid. Second plus child is £13.40/ a week, it's not exactly a fortune.
 
And Magnati has written a piece for the Guardian today, essentially a plug for her new book, saying that she "tried to give a shit" about maternity pay and all that stuff, but just can't. She no longer calls herself a feminist, and she thinks that if you are having problems with things like time off or pay, you should just get a new job (just as, if you are having problems with 'your man' not doing the washing up, you should do the same). She also said she's sick and tired of all the endless tomes dissecting feminism these days. Which is clearly why she's just written her own. :rolleyes:
 
Vintage Paw said:
And Magnati has written a piece for the Guardian today, essentially a plug for her new book, saying that she "tried to give a shit" about maternity pay and all that stuff, but just can't. She no longer calls herself a feminist, and she thinks that if you are having problems with things like time off or pay, you should just get a new job (just as, if you are having problems with 'your man' not doing the washing up, you should do the same). She also said she's sick and tired of all the endless tomes dissecting feminism these days. Which is clearly why she's just written her own. :rolleyes:
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I have to correct myself. I was too quick to attribute bits and bobs erroneously. What I read was an article written at the end of last year, but it came to my attention today.

But, it has since sparked a big old journo twitter war between her and Helen Lewis.

....while Rome burns.
 
W of W said:
I used to be scared of ouspoken feminists (back in the eighties there was sometimes good reason for that actually!)
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cesare said:
Were you as scared of outspoken feminists as you were of outspoken men?
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Come to think of it I doubt there was a major difference, couldn't say much of a boo to either goose or gander when I was a student.

But that was back in the eighties I was talking of. The 'good reason' I mentioned up there was as much, maybe more, about my own failings as about those of SOME of the the outspoken (then) to tell much apparant difference between wellmeaning/non arsehole blokes, and blokes who really were unreconstructed back then. There were plenty of those around of course, still are. But there were also blokes who could/can potentially be allies.
 
Vintage Paw said:
And Magnati has written a piece for the Guardian today, essentially a plug for her new book, saying that she "tried to give a shit" about maternity pay and all that stuff, but just can't. She no longer calls herself a feminist, and she thinks that if you are having problems with things like time off or pay, you should just get a new job (just as, if you are having problems with 'your man' not doing the washing up, you should do the same). She also said she's sick and tired of all the endless tomes dissecting feminism these days. Which is clearly why she's just written her own. :rolleyes:
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this is an old article and brooke has tweeted this about it:

Should also like to point out this piece: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/10/brooke-magnanti-belle-de-jour … was made up by a journo who never met me. Yes, I have complained. Many times.
 
Feminist protest.

jj121062.jpg



This is the lobby inside Parliament:

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This is Sylvia Pankhurst's great-granddaughter at the lobby inside

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What that Caitlin smug-face Moran wrote in her book about sex workers letting the sisterhood down was well offensive. She can do one. What added insult to injury was that I then wrote her an impassioned fucking response (a long one, I gave it a lot of thought) and posted it on her shite message board AND IT GOT DELETED. She literally silenced me :mad: (how DARE she lol). I aint got no time her at all. Or any other 'leading feminist' (or kabbes :hmm:) who tells women they shouldn't work their sex appeal. It's like partially disarming us in the bloody fight.
 
Edie said:
What that Caitlin smug-face Moran wrote in her book about sex workers letting the sisterhood down was well offensive. She can do one. What added insult to injury was that I then wrote her an impassioned fucking response (a long one, I gave it a lot of thought) and posted it on her shite message board AND IT GOT DELETED. She literally silenced me :mad: (how DARE she lol). I aint got no time her at all. Or any other 'leading feminist' (or kabbes :hmm:) who tells women they shouldn't work their sex appeal. It's like partially disarming us in the bloody fight.
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Any halfway-decent strategist will tell you that you fight a war with the weapons you have to hand, so any feminist (or follower of any other ism for that matter) who suggests not using what you have to best advantage has got no strategic sense at all.
 
Moran's "Lap dancing bad/burlesque great" dichotomy is just plain weird. And actually quite annoying. No matter what she says about burlesque being more expressive of individual female sensuality, seems to me it's only more culturally acceptable because it's middle class. Not that I have seen much burlesque, but from what I've seen bar one very creative act, it's just slightly 60s/tongue and cheek stripping.

And the issue of using sex appeal and the "sisterhood", it's complicated. Whilst my stance is as VP outlines above, I will also admit it is sad, frustrating and a little frightening that our culture seems to be statically staying, even perhaps slipping more towards "women primarily as sex objects". And that both those who play the sex appeal game and those who reject it ultimately risk being fucked over. :( And so I guess a struggle for moderate feminists who are focused on these complexities and all the shades of grey (pun really not intended) is how to hold the two together.

I think it's a mistake to see it as us/them conflict though. I would definitely put myself on the side of "I do not want to rely on my sexuality to get ahead as a woman", yet that's certainly not to say that I haven't internalised ideas of what I should look like to be acceptable, and that I won 't sometimes purposefully enhance that. And I also imagine that many women in the most visual professions still sometimes get frustrated at not being considered beyond that, or are annoyed that they have to do it. I guess it's not always "either/or", and people are full of contradictions.

Which probably explains why, on a drunken night out recently, feminist that I am I swung myself upside down on a lamppost, pole dancer style, and then even had it as my Facebook profile picture for a while (though in my defence it was because I found it fucking hilarious!)

(edited to clear up an accidental "not")
 
Agent Sparrow said:
Moran's "Lap dancing bad/burlesque great" dichotomy is just plain weird. And actually quite annoying. No matter what she says about burlesque being more expressive of individual female sensuality, seems to me it's only more culturally acceptable because it's middle class. Not that I have seen much burlesque, but from what I've seen bar one very creative act, it's just slightly 60s/tongue and cheek stripping.

And the issue of using sex appeal and the "sisterhood", it's complicated. Whilst my stance is as VP outlines above, I will also admit it is sad, frustrating and a little frightening that our culture seems to be statically staying, even perhaps slipping more towards "women primarily as sex objects". And that both those who play the sex appeal game and those who reject it ultimately risk being fucked over. :( And so I guess a struggle for moderate feminists who are focused on these complexities and all the shades of grey (pun really not intended) is how to hold the two together.

I think it's a mistake to see it as us/them conflict though. I would definitely put myself on the side of "I do not want to rely on my sexuality to get ahead as a woman", yet that's certainly not to say that I haven't internalised ideas of what I should look like to be acceptable, and that I won 't sometimes purposefully enhance that. And I also imagine that many women in the most visual professions still sometimes might not get frustrated at not being considered beyond that, or are annoyed that they have to do it. I guess it's not always "either/or", and people are full of contradictions.

Which probably explains why, on a drunken night out recently, feminist that I am I swung myself upside down on a lamppost, pole dancer style, and then even had it as my Facebook profile picture for a while (though in my defence it was because I found it fucking hilarious!)
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Good post Sparrow, tidy iPhone typing skills too :D

The feminists on this site are much fuckin cooler than Moran :cool:


Moran watching burlesque, thinking she's all cool n that:
images


Moran on seeing strippers:
images


Fucking hypocrite.
 
I guess Edie that those books that sell, at least those in the mainstream, are going to be more popularist, exciting and controversial than "there are many different opinIons on this, let's all consider them in fairness over a cup of tea".

And as what was argued against me when I was criticising the ideas of Oliver James in Afluenza a few years ago, popularist books are going to be, by their nature, biased and even quite intellectually dishonest. At least with Moran she seems to be quite explicit that it's her opinions rather than a sociological treatise, and that it's as much as a personal memoire as a feminist text.
 
Agent Sparrow said:
I guess Edie that those books that sell, at least those in the mainstream, are going to be more popularist, exciting and controversial than "there are many different opinIons on this, let's all consider them in fairness over a cup of tea"<snip>
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Unless you take a carefully picked assortment of writers etc with differing opinions and experiences and give each of them one chapter.
 
Greebo said:
Unless you take a carefully picked assortment of writers etc with differing opinions and experiences and give each of them have one chapter.
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I think that would be an excellent idea, although I've usually only seen this done in academic texts. I do think it would make an interesting mainstream feminist book, which would probably be particularly helpful for younger girls who know less about the various different ideas. But you'd have to make sure you had a genuinely fair minded editor, otherwise it could be very easy to produce a "fair" biased account that could be more damaging.
 
Agent Sparrow said:
I guess Edie that those books that sell, at least those in the mainstream, are going to be more popularist, exciting and controversial than "there are many different opinIons on this, let's all consider them in fairness over a cup of tea".

And as what was argued against me when I was criticising the ideas of Oliver James in Afluenza a few years ago, popularist books are going to be, by their nature, biased and even quite intellectually dishonest. At least with Moran she seems to be quite explicit that it's her opinions rather than a sociological treatise, and that it's as much as a personal memoire as a feminist text.
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Yes, this is true. But it seems to be a core principle of the new UK feminism. I read this article about Kat Banyard (dubbed Britains leading young feminist by the Guardian) where she was asked if she ever thought there could ever be an ok sex industry, she answers:

"No. There can't. You can't commodify consent. The inherent harm at the heart of this transaction we see evidenced in the astronomical rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, which is a result of having repeated unwanted sex because you need the money. It's often argued that it's just like stacking shelves. That it is ordinary work, just like any other work. But if you're stacking shelves, is it a bit different if your manager says: 'Right, before you go at the end of your shift can you give me a blowjob?' Would you feel uncomfortable about that? It's the inherent harm of having repeated unwanted sex which lies at the heart of the problem."
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And her group UK Feminista actively campaign against dancing clubs. Now cos I've had this argument to death on urban, I cba to argue it further. But it can't just be dismissed as Moran's individual viewpoint.
 
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