Apparently, Feminism is dead!!!

[killer b]

i hope it is, otherwise i'll have to lower my opinion of a few people...

 

[revol68]

What i find offensive is the notion that women should have anymore a homogenous attitude towards feminism as men have had historically to humanisn. For me its tied to a notion that the other, be they women, black, gay, irish or whatever else have a inherent tie to some identity. A black person or women is treated as an example of blackness or womanhood in the way a white man isnt, there is an assumption of a kind of shirt circuit between a singular woman and woman as an abstract category.

 

[Vintage Paw]

That Molly Crabapple was having a right old tantrum about a piece that Kay <forgotten surname> had written, last week. I pointed out to MC that she'd missed the overarching point about the capitalisation and commodification of the sex industry in her rush to get angry about Kay not being entirely enamoured of porn.

I can't help but shudder at MC's name. Maybe that's just me being irrational though

The porn thing is a fucking mine field. So many people, when trying to debate it, fall stupidly into the trap of thinking it's a black&white issue. That it's either totes liberating for women to be allowed to admit they like sex and sometimes like it rough and that they like watching porn and that it means they're dead cool and edgy and awesome; or you're a prude who wants to deny women their right to enjoy sex and be independent sexual beings, etc. There's no middle ground, and there's absolutely no discussion of the bad that comes with the good, no realisation that it's a nuanced issue. But then, that's the case with every discussion like this. No conception of the fact that good can exist with bad. You're either with us or you're against us. No wonder everything tears itself apart.

 

[ViolentPanda]

It's something that came through in that netmums thing too. There was quite a bit of emphasis put on women finding it acceptable to vajazzle, get a boob job, and all the rest of it, and it seems like it's just an expression of being caught hook, line and sinker by the full acceptance of consumerism and individualism. We're the products. And we've got to package and market ourselves to be as desirable as possible (how we do that, of course, will depend on who we want to appear desirable to).

So, consumerism as individualism, too, effectively. Show your individuality by engaging in your own particular combination of consumption behaviours!

It's one thing to say, "I shouldn't feel ashamed about wanting to get my highlights done" but it's quite another to completely fail to make the link to the ways you're being positioned as the consumer of goods and a set of goods to be marketed yourself.

As with any acknowledgement of inconvenient truths, people will go quite a ways to avoid making such links.

 

[ViolentPanda]

That Molly Crabapple was having a right old tantrum about a piece that Kay <forgotten surname> had written, last week. I pointed out to MC that she'd missed the overarching point about the capitalisation and commodification of the sex industry in her rush to get angry about Kay not being entirely enamoured of porn.

Poor Maureen.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I can't help but shudder at MC's name. Maybe that's just me being irrational though

The porn thing is a fucking mine field. So many people, when trying to debate it, fall stupidly into the trap of thinking it's a black&white issue. That it's either totes liberating for women to be allowed to admit they like sex and sometimes like it rough and that they like watching porn and that it means they're dead cool and edgy and awesome; or you're a prude who wants to deny women their right to enjoy sex and be independent sexual beings, etc. There's no middle ground, and there's absolutely no discussion of the bad that comes with the good, no realisation that it's a nuanced issue. But then, that's the case with every discussion like this. No conception of the fact that good can exist with bad. You're either with us or you're against us. No wonder everything tears itself apart.

I sometimes get the feeling that we're becoming (have become?) a soundbite culture, increasingly dependent on pre-digested pundit-made bite-size opinions, to the detriment of subtlety and nuance. Commodification of the political, maybe?

 

[Delroy Booth]

Intersectionality is bullshit and I say that not as a way of dismissing experiences of sexism, racism, homophobia etc but rather because it treats these things as discreet things that kind of simply add on to each other. It also completely misunderstanfs class as another -ism, just another form of oppression and privilege rather than the structuring substance of society, through which sexism, racism and such are always already mediated through.

The fact that critiques of Intersectionality are often dismissed as little more than the expression of privilege makes it especially problematic. In short intersectionality multiplies identity politics rather than really cutting across them and dissolving them.

There's some good ones of these "Self-Important Anarchist" on meme-generator.

And yes btw this Intersectionality and Privilige Theory stuff is the road to ruin. Eurocommunism for anarchists. This way lies dogma of the worst kind. It's something that has existed on the US Anarcho-left for a while, and is probably one of the contributing factors why the US anarcho-left is so fucking awful, but it's increasingly coming over here too. And for the record I'll happily accept that at least theoretically there's worthwhile idea's behind it, however practically every time I've ever seen in in action it's just a pretext to arbitrarily dismiss criticism or bully people based on their gender, skin colour and sexuality. You could if you were feeling charitable say that this is an abuse of an otherwise decent worthwhile theory, but I'm not charitable.

Anyway this meme made me laugh. Might as well put it here rather than start a new thread.

 

[sihhi]

So who, if any, would you say are decent modern feminist writers, Sihhi?

I was hoping yourself or other female posters would be able to point me in the right direction.

My perhaps wrong impression makes me think it's mostly in the Third World that feminism as a collective movement is most alive, so the probably the best writing comes from there.

Stuff that's relevant to Britain? Rosalind Gill about the structural failure of the education sector.
Sheila Jeffreys is cutting and very analytical about the failure of the sexual revolution. Anna Davin is strong on social history. Joanna Burke's feminist analyses of 20th century wars are good, although sometimes quite 'academic' when it comes to conclusions. No Pretence the anarcho-feminist group who invaded the stage at an anarchist conference a while ago denouncing the ongoing discrimination in roles in the radical movement threatened to openly expose the problems in the movement, but then didn't. The London Pro-Feminist Men's Group was alive for a while but then just died off.

http://londonprofeministmensgroup.blogspot.co.uk/

There's other groups the London Feminist Network and Object, but they too seem to operate on a charity model.
There's hundreds other groups that do stuff but sort of on the basis of being a charity, not explicitly not rocking the boat. Like there are about 4 womens' charities locally - all run by women and catering to women - mostly for different ethnic groups - a Bengali one, a Turkish+Turkish Cypriot one, a Somali one and a general one. All of them were cut but none of them really put up more than a token of resistance because they feared they would be cut more otherwise. (I'm not blaming them. I blame Labour and their female-headed council) Some larger ones are explicitly very 'capitalist' or 'legalist' with lots of training sessions on how to get to the top of these organisations.

"07-Nov :Understanding the Effects of Domestic Violence and BME Women: Level 2 (and 8th)
: ImkaanLondon
21-Nov :Breaking the cycle: using civil and criminal remedies to protect women from violence
: ROWLondon
22-Nov : 09:30Social enterprise: understanding the basics : WRC"

As an outsider, it seems like a general charity model applied to women in need - either brutalised by men or left out of the economy.

The Selma James-is-our idol crew keep on going for 'wages for housework' seeking money to administer the atomised family, but thereby driving a wedge between some women who don't want to look after kids versus those who do. (Or is that unfair?)

It's very different to something like the Indian feminist lists that describe groups of balaclaved women punching up male gropers, womens' strikes that last up to a year, lone hunger strikes by single women who have been cut out of work, ruining the cars of drug dealers, womens' defence organisations providing self-defence lessons for women.

Men don't really care if there's no childcare somewhere- it's just not an issue on 80% of unions at the local level in my estimation, and it's totally absent from negotiation demands. 'There's always the assumption well women aren't gonna let their kids die are they, they'll find a way' The last major struggle in the childcare sector was in the 2004 'Scottish nursery nurses' strike but it's being further privatised and eroded in an extensive fashion. So that childcare is often further class-segregated so some (very few) hospitals that have creches will only accept children of doctors or senior nurses not lower nurses, HCAs, cleaners or domestics, in the same way that doctors will only get hospital accommodation.

 

[cesare]

What i find offensive is the notion that women should have anymore a homogenous attitude towards feminism as men have had historically to humanisn. For me its tied to a notion that the other, be they women, black, gay, irish or whatever else have a inherent tie to some identity. A black person or women is treated as an example of blackness or womanhood in the way a white man isnt, there is an assumption of a kind of shirt circuit between a singular woman and woman as an abstract category.

Yes. Which ties with this notion of being able to appoint an <other> to speak on behalf of <group of others with same defining characteristic>. It doesn't bear much examination "how the fuck can she speak on my behalf, or even think she can" etc.

 

[sihhi]

I like Nina Power, she writes with a nice withering contempt, also has her feminists writings grounded in proper theory.

On a general level so do I, but she was really against students trying to reign in the U.L.U.'s (London university's student's union) capitalist excesses and money-wasting. Someone I know and respect told me they hated her so I dunno.

 

[Random]

I haven't read the book, but from that passage, I don't really see that she's talking about class in any meaningful way there. It sounds empty, vacuous, and really quite weird. I can't suss her tone about all this 'hot' thing. I really can't work out what she's going for there.

I'm not basing my assessment on that passage; it's been posted up as an example of something someone doe not like. Take a look at the book, read the first few pages and decide whether you like it based on that. I found it very funny and fairly thought-provoking. If nothing else, it makes feminism a recognisable context out in the mass media, and sitting there on the bestseller lists might prompt some people to look for more thorough analyses of power; she namechecks Germain Greer a lot. Moran herself is a mainstream journalist, who describes herself as a radical liberal. But for all that I find her book useful in parts and readable.

 

[toggle]

The one things socialist middle-class males can not do is examine why their own organisations are so middle class.

Attacking feminism wherever and whenever possible

'Women in history and what men have done to them' by Dale Spender examines a little how the Suffrage movement is treated by male historians.

Centrist male historians trumpet achievements of male national or economic figures (Churchills, Brunels, look admiringly at national enemies like Napoleon) and don't dwell on their class background. But these same historians make a special point of mentioning the class background of the Pankhursts and others, mocking them for their pretension to speak for all women.
Implicitly, until the war, "Asquith spoke for 'the nation' the Suffrage movement just for a slither of rich women".

Revisionist history of Irish nationalism, instead of examining women's contribution to it, and examining how it was weakened by its sexism, concentrates on painting it as an anti-Protestant self-indulgent quasi-racist movement.

and when suffrgism is exmined, it is done so in a terrible way. a freind did her research on force feeding of the suffragttes and found papers suggesting they enjoyed this.

thanks for the book recomendation.

eta; i can recall discussing how some of the revisionist histories describing parts of the early nationalist movement as sectarian were discredited.

 

[Random]

On a general level so do I, but she was really against students trying to reign in the U.L.U.'s (London university's student's union) capitalist excesses and money-wasting. Someone I know and respect told me they hated her so I dunno.

We're not going to find a writer that no one hates. All we can do is find writers who we can learn something from, without falling into the trap of thinking we need to wholly accept or wholly reject their work or their political activity.

 

[love detective]

No one hates Ellen Meiskins Woods

 

[Random]

No one hates Ellen Meiskins Woods

A quick google shows that she not only took a prize named after trotsky-zionist Isaac Deutscher, but also became a member of the imperialist monarchist-lickspittle Royal Society of Canada. Hate her!

 

[sihhi]

We're not going to find a writer that no one hates. All we can do is find writers who we can learn something from, without falling into the trap of thinking we need to wholly accept or wholly reject their work or their political activity.

That's a good point and on that basis only here is Caitlin Moran's book in text form

http://www.sendspace.com/file/76p046

 

[Random]

That's a good point and on that basis only here is Caitlin Moran's book in text form

http://www.sendspace.com/file/76p046

Like I said, I thought it was funny, and I liked how her own experience growing up on an estate in Wolverhampton was brought into the analysis, rather than staying with a liberal-feminist view of meritocratic opportunities. Regarding being "hot" a lot of her argument is that women waste too much time on their appearance and shouldn't have to do any more work on themselves than the average man.

 

[sihhi]

And yes btw this Intersectionality and Privilige Theory stuff is the road to ruin. Eurocommunism for anarchists. This way lies dogma of the worst kind. It's something that has existed on the US Anarcho-left for a while, and is probably one of the contributing factors why the US anarcho-left is so fucking awful, but it's increasingly coming over here too. And for the record I'll happily accept that at least theoretically there's worthwhile idea's behind it, however practically every time I've ever seen in in action it's just a pretext to arbitrarily dismiss criticism or bully people based on their gender, skin colour and sexuality. You could if you were feeling charitable say that this is an abuse of an otherwise decent worthwhile theory, but I'm not charitable.

I don't like it at all, because I think the concept of 'privilege' itself is rightist and opens the gate to wholesale deny immigrant rights. If immigrants are under-privileged here (as they by and large are), then "the door is open for them to go back home" when they will become by comparison with Britain fairly privileged. It's a road to doing rightists' work for them.

My point remains: most in Britain are not homeless, do we call them habitation-privileged compared to the homeless? It's not a meaningful analysis and it will inevitable chip away at the poor male looking at the rich female boss (which rightists are eager to point out when it suits their agenda) or a white stay-at-home father looking at an Asian male business owner.

 

[trashpony]

The Equality Illusion by Kat Banyard is quite interesting. It's like a 21st century take on Faludi's Backlash

 

[cesare]

The Equality Illusion by Kat Banyard is quite interesting. It's like a 21st century take on Faludi's Backlash

Kat Banyard, that's her! The one Molly was getting so angry about.

 

[trashpony]

Kat Banyard, that's her! The one Molly was getting so angry about.

Ah yes.

I think the row in feminism about porn is quite similar to the one between feminists and women-who-proudly-declare-they-are-not-feminists.

 

[revol68]

I don't like it at all, because I think the concept of 'privilege' itself is rightist and opens the gate to wholesale deny immigrant rights. If immigrants are under-privileged here (as they by and large are), then "the door is open for them to go back home" when they will become by comparison with Britain fairly privileged. It's a road to doing rightists' work for them.

My point remains: most in Britain are not homeless, do we call them habitation-privileged compared to the homeless? It's not a meaningful analysis and it will inevitable chip away at the poor male looking at the rich female boss (which rightists are eager to point out when it suits their agenda) or a white stay-at-home father looking at an Asian male business owner.

Yeah its essentially a zero sum game where identities are pitted against each other in competition for worthiness, you can see it in northern ireland where one atricity or injustice is set against another to be cancelled out or ranked. In the states it plays out in crazy shit like the OJ Simpson trial were it became a battle between race and sex, with all the fucked up entrenchment that led to.

 

[revol68]

Anyway sisters thats the last youll probably hear from me tonight, im off to flex my male privilege on Fifa 13, like a heteronormative cis fuck.

 

[sihhi]

The Equality Illusion by Kat Banyard is quite interesting. It's like a 21st century take on Faludi's Backlash

In case anyone doesn't know she is the founder of UK Feminista, that is bringing along Tory MPs to its rallies as part of the pro-women strategy.

 

[trashpony]

In case anyone doesn't know she is the founder of UK Feminista, that is bringing along Tory MPs to its rallies as part of the pro-women strategy.

I don't agree with her there but I think she's trying to broaden the appeal of feminism and make it relevant to everyone. And it is relevant to all women.

Perils of activism I'd say

 

[cesare]

In case anyone doesn't know she is the founder of UK Feminista, that is bringing along Tory MPs to its rallies as part of the pro-women strategy.

I had a quick snoop about her (because I'd never heard of her) when the MC rage broke out; it was very quick but the two things I remember are some kind of involvement with the Fawcett Society and that she's a "full time feminist" which implies it's a career.

 

[trashpony]

I had a quick snoop about her (because I'd never heard of her) when the MC rage broke out; it was very quick but the two things I remember are some kind of involvement with the Fawcett Society and that she's a "full time feminist" which implies it's a career.

 

[trashpony]

I don't think her book is particularly well written and she's no academic but there is an absolute dearth of recent books out there afaik

 

[cesare]

Here's the offending article, btw: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/oct/14/kat-banyard-feminist-pornography-equality

 

[equationgirl]

What does being a full-time feminist involve I wonder? And how does one go about applying? I've never seen that position advertised in 'Professional Engineering' or 'The Engineer' and you'd think those would be some of the target audiences.

ffs