Has feminism forgotten about you? Probably

The Guardian and I are not pals at the best of times but sometimes they really do take the piss. If I’m correct, they published an article a few days ago about whether feminism has failed working class women. Today, I see this. Readers’ responses. If there’s one thing worse than handwringing, it’s getting other people to do your handwringing for you.

Anyway. I read it. “This might be interesting,” thought I. A few minutes later:

I…can’t..

Where to start with the tremendous wrongness seeping off the page?

Ok, so first things first. Yes, feminism has failed working class women. It has also failed trans* people and people of colour. And I can even go halfway to explaining why this might be… Because feminism in the western world is largely driven by cis women who are white and middle class. I’m not saying these feminists are *purposely* wrong but this is a little blind-spot known as privilege. Basically they have failed to create an intersectional feminism that works for *all* women regardless of class and race because they aren’t negatively affected by those things, so they don’t really know what the issues are, let alone how to begin tackling them. I’m white, middle class and cis, but I try to find out from other women who are not these things, how, by the very nature of not being the same as me, they are treated differently. How, by the nature of being trans*, they might be wary of using public toilets, or they might have to spend more effort on passing as cis. How, by the nature of having less money, they have less opportunities than perhaps I and my peers do.

I’m sure you get the point by now. I’m not arguing at all with the idea that feminism has failed certain women because it undoubtedly has.

Onto the comments, then.

Martin, from Portsmouth says:

What irks me is when feminists talk about seeking equality. When I see women queueing up for jobs down coalmines, I will believe they are serious about it.

Firstly I didn’t think there were jobs in coalmines in post-Thatcher Britain. Secondly, Martin, read your history. Lots of women wanted to do these kinds of jobs but were not allowed to because it was deemed unsafe for them. That’s the Patriarchy for you. We can’t really win. We want to do these things, but we can’t because it’s not safe, then when eventually we are allowed to do these things, we’re told we’re horrible job-stealing-harpies, and on top of this, our children will surely suffer because clearly women should be the ones staying at home to look after them.

Seb from somewhere I’ve forgotten says:

I am sick of the second-wave dinosaurs who are currently in power, lecturing me on my undeserved privilege, berating me as an oppressor, excluding me for being male – when by and large I am sympathetic with the majority of their goals. I just don’t like the way they have turned what should be the greatest civil rights movement in history into a single issue lobbying movement which furthers their unearned privilege as wealthy white western women, ignoring everyone else who has suffered from patriarchy (including working-class men).

Whoa whoa whoa, too much wrong here. Please do point out to me where second-wave feminists are in power because I can’t see it. Seb, you’re berated as an oppressor because as a man you are benefiting from your privilege day to day. No, it’s not something you chose. No, it’s not something you can help. But you should acknowledge it and own that fact. As an example from my own life… I’ve indirectly, through generations, benefited from slavery, I’m sure. In some way. I’m not a fan of slavery (well, I object to it more strongly than ‘not a fan’) and I think it’s abhorrent but facts are facts and I can’t get away from the fact that I have the lifestyle I have due to exploitation of others. Not directly. Not because I wanted to. But because of a little thing called colonialism. Because I happen to be white.

Men can’t get away from the fact that they actively benefit from ongoing sexism and oppression of women. Maybe, Seb, just maybe, instead of getting angry at THE INJUSTICE OF IT ALL you just need to look in the mirror and tell yourself “I will not take criticism of societal structures to heart. I will not be personally offended when confronted with truths.” It’s hard, I know. Trust me, I’ve done it and you need to swallow your pride but you’ll feel better once you’ve said sorry for being a total dick about it. Anyway, he goes on:

With my work, I saw working-class boys being treated as disposable war assets by the government, or as disposable criminal problems by the penal system. If eight times more women than men were in prison, it would be a feminist issue. If three times more women killed themselves every year, it would be a feminist issue. The lack of support in men’s mental health is terrible; my (male) doctor does not even know who to refer a male patient to for support. This impacts me personally, but these issues impact all female family members too. There is so much more we can achieve as a team.

Ah the old men were sent to war tripe. Seb, you do realise that, again, women did want to go to fight in the war but they weren’t allowed to the same extent that men were? You do realise that men were in charge of the country at that point, so it was men sending men to fight? How is this feminism’s problem? How is it my problem that men self-loathe? How do I even begin solving that one?

The reason men suffer more with mental health problems is because masculinity and the pursuit of being seen as a ‘Real Man’ get in the way of actually going to a doctor and seeking help for their condition. Lots of feminists would agree with me here, but it is not a product of feminism, and nor is it in feminists’ interests to fight for that, when there are women in the world who are suffering in much worse ways. Asking women to fight battles for men is like me asking Bob Geldof why he didn’t give me some money raised from LiveAid. It’s not fair, because, like, some people have more money than me.

I am also not saying this is a pleasing by-product of Patriarchy; I think it’s awful, and I very much dislike the culture of masculinity that arises from a Patriarchal society. I think people should feel able to seek help when they need it. But the fact that some men don’t (because they are taught that to ask for help is to admit defeat and weakness) isn’t my fault, and neither is it the fault of women as a group. If anything, feminists are actively trying to change this because they don’t believe that gender socialisation is a good thing, and in looking for equality between genders (or eradication of gender overall), they are trying to fight for a society where it’s ok to cry, ok to admit defeat, ok to show weakness, ok to raise children – because ultimately we are all human and these are human feelings and actions.

These issues that Seb mentions are not feminist issues because, my god, we have enough to fight for without literally worrying about the menz. I don’t know who told these people that feminism is supposed to fight for men too, but they are grossly wrong. While it’s true that feminism is about equality and correcting inequality where seen, it pretty much is concerned – for the now – with ensuring that women have equality to men because largely the inequality is skewed that way. No feminist, I would think, would say that it’s good that some men are suffering. But it isn’t our fight: I would in fact go further and say it’s not even particularly to do with gender. This is why there are other organisations and activist groups that exist. I have no idea why one would assume that feminism can fix everything for men that they perceive to be wrong, when largely the issues most men are likely to face are to do with class, race or sexuality, and not gender.

Message from your friendly neighbourhood moderator

This post, the one about Misandry being a myth. I am done. Done watching hateful messages come into my inbox, hateful messages against the kind of people who – shock horror – I actually might be friends with and adore.

I have never moderated any comments before as I don’t want to be heavy-handed, but this had to stop somewhere and it’s fitting that it’s now.

The latest, for example, was a homohpobic rant about how abnormal homosexuals are because they can’t have children. You know what? Some of my best friends are gay or bisexual. I don’t judge people by their ability to procreate with their partner. I don’t judge people on who they sleep with. Really, if that is the most worrying thing in your life then you have it pretty easy. I only wish I could be so concerned about stuff that doesn’t affect me – lord knows I could use a break from my other genuine problems.

If you want to rant about how much you hate gay people or women, there are plenty of other fora for that and this is the wrong place for you. I am done trying to be fair. Every single comment should be gone, and it’s now closed. Feel free to inwardly scream impotently because nobody can hear you and we don’t give a fuck anyway.

More than just ‘fat acceptance’

For those not in the know, ‘fat acceptance‘ is a movement that tries to change society’s attitudes towards fat people. A lot of fat people embrace this, and personally, following on from my tweets about being fat and the struggle with that sort of thing, I’m not sure it’s the answer really.

I could be totally wrong here but to me, there are basically two schools of thought:

1) I accept that I am fat. It is ok to be fat. When others are fat I feel better because I’m not alone.
2) I hate myself for being fat. Being fat is not ok. If others are fat it means they are unhealthy.

I think we should have a new school of thought:

Being fat is not something that defines me as a person – it is incidental to my existence. It is neither ok, nor not ok. I do not place a value judgement on other people who might be overweight, nor am I dismissive or unsympathetic to their concerns about their weight. I support those who want to lose weight, I support those who want to gain weight, and I support those who are happy as they are – whether medically/socially deemed ‘overweight’ or ‘underweight’. I place emphasis on personality and happiness over weight or size.

Ok, a bit long, but this is a kind of mission statement of sorts, so you have to bear with me.

I am trying to change how I feel about myself. I am trying to change these horrible feelings of ‘If I am fat, I do not deserve…’ ‘If I am fat I cannot do…’ ‘If I am fat no one will love…’ ‘If I am fat I will never be happy…’ I’m not even trying to change them into positives; I don’t think that’s going to work for me. I’m trying to make my weight and size something that is not an issue. Not a core part of who I am. I know it isn’t. It never has been! I am more than flesh, I am thoughts, feelings, ideas… I am more than a shape, I am a do-er, a giver… An active, constantly-evolving mind in a host of a collection of cells, and however large the sum of those cells is, the fundamentals underneath are never going to change so wholly as to warrant different treatment.

I’ve been working on it for a long while, it seems. For somebody who constantly thinks big (I don’t want to move out into London, but I would be fine with moving abroad, for example), for someone who is always looking for a big challenge and shunning the small ones, this is strange, to feel like on an issue that is so, so tiny, that I have made very little progress. The truth is that for me, it’s something that is going to take a long while. I have to undo the years of self-hatred that I’ve harboured. The years of feeling like I’ll never be good enough. How fucking long I spent telling myself that I couldn’t do things until I was thin. Time wasted, hating myself, wasted not appreciating how awesome I can be at any size. Wasted time that I could have spent actually doing everything I ever wanted to!

One thing I’ll always remember from the Fem11 Endangered Bodies seminar (my blog here) was that someone stood up and said that she obsessed over dieting and she told herself she would be able to do things when she was thin. She said she had promised herself ‘when she was thin’ that she would learn French, that she would travel, that she would become a whole new person who did things that she wanted to do, and who would be loved by everyone she met. This is how I have lived my life. Putting things off until the day that I step on the scales and I am the size that I am ‘supposed’ to be. The day that I look in the mirror at myself naked and say ‘I look pretty hot actually’. I told myself I had to wait because when I was thin, suddenly my life would undoubtedly become amazing, I would shed my shyness, I would become the Woman Everyone Wants To Love. This is no way to live a life, promising yourself the impossible. How are you ever going to be happy?

I made a promise to myself that I would endeavour to do these things that made me happy, whatever weight or size I was. I went to Dubai in May and for the first time in just under a decade, I went to a water park. Small steps, remember! I went swimming and god, I was so nervous. Everyone would stare at me, I thought, they would think ‘what a pig, taking up more space in the water’, ‘look how fat and ugly she is’. I actually spent the whole day talking to new people, laughing, playing around in the water by myself, enjoying the water slides, basking in the sunshine on top of the water, doing my own thing. I rocked that day, and I felt great afterwards, because I put on my swimsuit, I saw how fat I looked, and in spite of this, I took a deep breath and told myself: ‘Don’t care. Act like you own this place. You deserve to have fun too.’ I don’t walk around caring about what other people look like; why should anyone care about me?

I went indoor skydiving yesterday and that was similar, except I did feel bad. I couldn’t do as much as other people could – I instinctively attributed this to my weight and stature, not to, say, my lack of ability in the skydiving department! I didn’t even think that perhaps I had just been with a pretty talented bunch of people with a natural gift for skydiving! So, ok, I didn’t deal with it so well. I was upset, and I hated myself. Sometimes life doesn’t go your way – you envision it so strongly that the reality can not really match up.

I’m trying very hard to see past this, to give myself a break from all the self-hatred and guilt-tripping. Sometimes I need chocolate. Sometimes I am just being greedy. Does it matter? I’m not perfect, and yes, I need to lose weight. I’ve always maintained I’ll lose weight when I’m happy (I tend to sad-eat) and I honestly believe that. But if I can’t see a way to ignore my own weight for the time being, and enjoy myself in spite of it, then I’ll never find happiness. Which means I’ll never lose weight, and I’ll go on forever gaining weight and hating myself and then no one else will like me and then I’ll sad-eat myself to death. Umm, maybe even literally!

Fat acceptance isn’t my way forward, because I don’t believe that my being-thin-ness will fix much, and I don’t as such believe that simply accepting that I am ‘fat’ is key. But seeing myself as a real, 3D personality; as something more than just ‘fat’, and seeing ‘fat’ness as a genuine irrelevance to me as a person… That really is. Defining myself in different terms and consequently allowing myself the opportunity to be happy, the chance to love life and to be loved in life… That is going to make a huge difference to my life.

Pro-sex *and* pro-porn?

I was busy writing about traveling when I suddenly found (don’t ask how) this piece on Make Love Not Porn, a project by Cindy Gallop which aims to put the romance/love back into porn and make it reflect real sex.

I read it with interest… I suppose I come from the school of thought that while porn as is is quite damaging for young people, banning things outright/censorship of ideas and products is not really the way to go… I’m perhaps more liberal than radical on this (and I had so enjoyed my swift move into radicalism without the cissexism) and I realise that isn’t likely to win me many fans.

Apparently Cindy describes herself thusly:

“Pro-porn, pro-sex, pro-knowing-the-difference”

I can’t help but feel that that’s probably the most god damn sensible thing I’ve heard a woman say about porn in… Well, quite a long time.

So Cindy’s solution is Make Love Not Porn – she encourages people to upload videos of themselves having sex and enjoying it… The idea is that by mainstreaming ‘true’ sex, people will be more exposed to the truthfulness of sex, even the really embarrassing parts, or the awkward moment when you have to put a condom on and you get bored of waiting. Or when you fall on to the floor. Or dent the wall with the bed. Mistakes and things going wrong are what makes sex real, and what makes sex enjoyable. I suppose the idea is to show what sex really means and how you can enjoy it – ie there is no particular way, not least that porn hardly represents the sexual experiences of many. Things like having a hairy body, being fat, or being blonde, or being a mother… These things are not a ‘fetish’, they are a fact of life – the beauty of sex is that we are all different, surely?

The really really big problem that we have in the UK with sexuality and porn and young people is a complex narrowing of clashing cultural and moral guidelines, but boils down to : 1) woeful sex education; 2) prominence and mainstreaming of porn; 3) particularly, mainstreaming of violent porn/images of women being degraded; 4) slow-burning low-level sexism.

I kind of like this idea actually, but its success relies on actually taking off and becoming mainstream or becoming a competitor to currently existing porn sites; such that it’s easy to find or is publicised enough to expose younger people to real sex and not pornified versions of it. It’s a new approach to an old way of thinking: let’s teach kids about sex! But they don’t get sex education from school – they get it from their peers. Younger generations access and approach the internet/life in a different way to older generations – they don’t need to experience sex to feel like they know it.. Broadly speaking, they navigate their world through likes and shares and retweets and constant engagement online. Her focus on the social aspect is something that I think could actually make a difference and I’m intrigued about how it develops in the future.

Mooncup adventures

Menfolk and ladies of a delicate nature – look away now, this post is not for you.

Down to brass tacks then – I decided after a whole load of umming and aahing to purchase a moon cup about, oooh *looks through emails* Yup…Four months ago. I’d read a few things about it – most notably in another feminist’s blog (‘Me and my menstrual cup‘) – and the women in my feminist facebook group totally raved about it. In excitement, when I got it, I ripped it open straight away. I tried to fit it in. For about ten minutes. I stopped fiddling around, pulled it up and stared at it. It stared back at me nonchalantly. “How the hell is THIS supposed to go in THERE?” I thought to myself (and later tweeted, natch). This was actually reminiscent of when I first tried a tampon. I was away from home, on my own, having never been told what I’m supposed to do, and I tried and tried until I was exhausted and I cried and then I decided that frankly if it was that much hassle to go swimming when one is a woman, then I just won’t bloody well bother, and the whole world can go to hell. In short, I tried it and I gave up and it has been sat in my room ever since, because I was basically traumatised by the whole experience. I don’t know what I could compare it to. Maybe it’s like trying to get a crayon into your ear. It bloody hurts and it feels wrong and you wonder why you don’t just keep it as a decorative ornament and pretend it was designed for that.

Hey – it even comes in a pretty little bag! You can put this on your mantelpiece and no one will ever know what it is!

I tried it again the other day, having reasoned that there’s really no point in purchasing some fantastic money-saving object if I am just going to simply not use it. It was weird, I guess – it’s bigger than a tampon, for sure, and much more difficult than using an applicator tampon. Where once that seemed difficult, it now is like second nature to me. I can do it in mere seconds. Rip package, pull plastic bit back, insert, push plastic bit in, sorted. But I have always felt a bit weird about the fact that the routine way to deal with being a woman and naturally bleeding every month is to stuff a bit of a bleached cotton up your vagina, as if I am a faulty pipeline. This obsession with hiding menses away and pretending it doesn’t exist is a bit shit and I think it’s symptomatic of a male-dominated society. We don’t want to talk about the fact that every single woman in the world – more than half the population of the planet in fact – bleeds on a monthly basis, and that this is actually crucial to our ongoing survival. It’s all a bit, ‘really it’s women’s problems so um just go over there and plug yourself up, there’s a nice girl’.

Tampons. A relic of the past.

What’s different about the moon cup is that I think it’s designed by women. It really, really tells. Instead of stuffing something up there to plug it like a horrifying DIY fix which in the process dries out the vagina and basically causes discomfort, and instead of making a mess with sanitary towels/pads, it simply collects the blood and you clean it out every so often.

It surprised me how clean it is, actually. It is really, really clean. Because of the size and shape of the cup (you can get different sizes, by the way) it sticks right to the inside of the vaginal wall, creating a seal which means that nothing gets out- or in. I’ve used it at night, and because of the whole seal/vacuum business, it’s an absolute dream – I can’t be the only one who had to live with The Fear of waking up to find that I’d stained yet another sheet because the stupid tampon doesn’t do its job well enough. I dreaded going round friend’s houses when I was on but felt I couldn’t say anything, and just prayed that I wouldn’t wake up drenched in blood. It’s little things like that that can really ruin a girl’s life, you know? Now I won’t worry anymore because I can take this anywhere with me and I don’t have to worry about counting out how many tampons I need for a trip away, I can just use the moon cup (as long as I can guarantee that there’s some way of cleaning it, which is the tricky part). The other thing about the cleanliness – absolutely no sign when you go to the loo that you’re on your period, because it’s ‘collected’ separately and there shouldn’t be a leak. I always hated seeing blood in my urine – partly because it obscures a very good signifier of illness or wellness, and partly because…ew. Now? Nope.

Now to the process of taking it out… Very difficult – the first time I yanked it out using pure force (how I didn’t vacuum-suck half of my insides out, I don’t know) and ended up throwing it down the toilet bowl. Rookie mistake. But then the next time I pulled till I got it to the edge (you kind of get to a point where you can ‘feel’ when it’s almost there), and then squeezed it a bit, at which point the seal broke, and then I could remove it quite carefully, avoiding any spill. I sort of imagined it to be quite a horrifying experience staring into the cup, but actually I find myself fascinated with the contents once it’s used. How much you bleed, the colour of the blood – these are things that didn’t really occur to me to be important before. I just kind of bled and ignored the specifities, but it’s interesting to finally be face-to-face with something you are systematically removed from as much as possible. And something that is very much an incredibly important part of you and a very good indicator of healthiness! I had actually thought I had really heavy, ‘bad’ periods, but it would appear I don’t! I think it’s really surprising how little you bleed – when you have something so small (a tampon) absorbing it, of course it’s going to leak and get full… the Mooncup doesn’t. In my experience.

I’ve heard the moon cup actually helps reduce the length of periods, and from one period I can say I totally see this being correct. It doesn’t cause dryness because it’s silicone as well. I think the pros are that *generally*, when it’s in, it’s in, and I don’t have to worry about it – though rinsing it out in public toilets is problematic. Cons? Well, it’s difficult to put in (and in my very limited experience, though I hope it’s not like this for everyone, it actually hurts sometimes if I don’t get it in smoothly, and continues to irritate me for a while afterwards) and difficult to get out. There is a certain knack to it. Plus the issue that is currently bugging me is, emptying it while out and about/using public toilets is irksome – I want to rinse it but where sinks and toilets are separate this is difficult…

One thing I would say to anyone trying it is do not instinctively cut the stem. I still have the whole stem, because for some reason (and this will be different for everyone!) mine gets really comfy and goes upwards, making it difficult to retrieve. When I first struggled to remove it, I had visions of going to A&E and explaining to a doctor that I had a mooncup stuck up my vagina because I was too overenthusiastic. Some women find that the stem is uncomfortable. Try it a few times and see what’s right for you, just don’t for heaven’s sake cut the stem before you’ve given it a good go and you’re sure of the length you need it.

If the rest of my experiment goes well then I honestly think this is something that should be a) advertised to young girls as an alternative, or; b) freely available/given away to young girls at school. It’s tricky to get the hang of, but so far, so good, and I’m going to try and see if I can convince friends to try it out too! It’s less likely to cause you problems like TSS, it’s environmentally friendly, saves loads of money (I’d calculate it but it’s late and i can’t be bothered to figure out how expensive it is to be a woman), and is more comfortable to use in the long-run.

*Super impressed feminist face* LONG LIVE THE MOON CUP AND MENSTRUAL FREEDOM.

A few home truths

And you’re not going to like them.

- If you are a journalist, you should never become the story.

- If your organisation cannot survive and continue functioning as normal without one of your members of staff, then there is something very wrong with your organisation. Has anybody seen any leaks from WL of late? I haven’t.

- Most rape cases are not pursued as heavily as this, and this is to the detriment of all women everywhere, especially survivors.

- Women have lied about rape in the past. And probably will do in the future. But it is not in the interests of a civilised and equal society to assume that all women lie about rape or must have some ulterior motive. Innocent until proven guilty also applies to victims.

- On the other hand we should be dilligent when we suspect people are being pursued for ulterior political motives. Again, it is not in the interests of a civilised and equal society to suppress free speech and transparency.

- It is possible to believe that rape victims are not liars and simultaneously believe that using something like rape to pursue a political goal is a bad thing to do and very dangerous for activists everywhere.

- Ultimately, this combination of facts falls down to needing to find a balance: If, hypothetically, someone has raped a woman, yet they have also irritated several governments by leaking less-than-pleasant information about them, then how far do we go to protect one principle over the other?

- If we pursue the line that they are absolutely a rapist, then there is the risk that they might come to harm as a result of governments wanting revenge.

- If we pursue the line that actually, freedom of speech matters, then we are essentially setting a worrying pattern in place (not even a precedent – this has happened before), that says that women who claim they have been raped are automatically liars, and not to be trusted.

It would make the world very ugly indeed – and very dangerous for women particularly – and I think for a case so high-profile, this would set women’s liberation back several decades. Like I need yet another reason to worry about my safety, simply because I am a woman.

Given what has been said so far, there is very little room for doubt in my mind as to his actions amounting to rape. I have read that his lawyer, on his behalf, gave his side of the story, which was that he slept with a woman while she was sleeping. It is not possible to consent to sexual intercourse when you are asleep, as consent can only be given when one is awake, conscious, sober, and compos mentis. It is rape. But people keep arguing about this as if one, while asleep, could actively give the go-ahead for a fuck. So really, what we are left with is simply arguing technicalities over what constitutes rape (seriously? Again? Why don’t you go and read the law on what consent is?) and deciding how much we agree with one principle over the other.

It is terribly sad that there is of course a huge amount interest in this case because of who he is – this is a testament to how utterly shit it is for the thousands – millions perhaps – of women who are raped around the world and do not live to see justice served. Because rape victims essentially do not matter and are seen as collateral damage in a patriarchal society. We can ignore it if we single out men who are rapists as ‘insane’ or somehow not normal, for example. That way, we don’t need to bother to actually address the fact that a lot of the messages we see and hear in our society – yes, right here, in the western world – are actually supporting and encouraging violence against women. Or at the very least, not decrying it for the horror that it is.

Food for thought on gender equality

They say you find things happening more often once you’re aware of them. Great recent examples: I’ve noticed Emirates a lot more since I’ve been to Dubai; I’ve seen a couple of travel features on former-Yugoslavia since reading Veronika Decides To Die; and since purchasing Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel has somehow wriggled her way into my life. I hadn’t even heard of her before!

Another thing that keeps cropping up time and time again is something that I started thinking about a while ago. As far back as January, when I started gathering ideas and writing what I would call an e-book – about something that had been bugging me for a while in feminist circles. There is very little discussion of inequality with regards to men. I don’t agree with MRAs at all, but I think there is some truth – requiring acknowledgement and warranting discussion – in the stats thrown around. Men are more likely to commit suicide, men die at a younger age, etc.

There’s an interesting article on the Guardian today about a new book coming out, called The Second Sex – it argues men are actually now the victims of prejudice. And Laurie Penny just last month wrote about listening to men on certain issues. Not to say I agree with either. But I think they are looking at things we should be discussing.

So it’s a fairly zeitgeist thing, this thinking about men and how to achieve genuine equality for all in terms of gender. I spent a long while deliberating over this and at last I’ve written something on the topic. I’m quite proud of it as a piece of writing, though unfortunately it’s not going to be published here, and I’m not sure when it will be published. I don’t want to say much more about it because that would ruin it – but when it’s up, I’ll put a link to it here.

On the gender war, ‘post-feminism’ and masculism

Too often it feels like I am engaged in some kind of gender battle whereby I’m fighting for the wimminz and having normal relations with men feels like sleeping with the enemy. Literally. It feels like I’m constantly fighting to try and stay true to my what I genuinely believe (you know, the whole Patriarchy thing and actually taking a hard line on The Issues), but also not be a raving sexist. Is this even possible?!

I had been thinking that perhaps post-feminism or a post-feminist view of the world might help allay this battleground feeling, and I wondered the benefits of straight egalitarianism as opposed to feminism. I’m not convinced that egalitarianism, or indeed a ‘post-feminist’ outlook, helps at all.

The risk with anything ‘post’ is that it seems to suggest that we are somehow ‘over it’ – ‘post-racism’ means we’re beyond racism being an issue and implies institutionalised or systemic racism is no longer a thing. We’re beyond it and everything is cool. Except, we’re not. We aren’t beyond needing feminism – if anything, we need it now more than ever: People working at UK Feminista counted and “found the number of grassroots feminist groups has doubled in the past two years… It shows what a resurgence there’s been in feminism and how people across the UK are fighting back against the attacks on women’s equality.”

While on the one hand it would be great for me to not frame the issues into very specific and narrow contexts, it’s extremely difficult to talk about them without any context at all, without acknowledging gender as an issue, or without attempting to separate the two genders. Because gender is inherently an issue – without referring to official statistics, I know off the top of my head that men are broadly more violent and aggressive than women, for example. Is this biological, a result of hormone differences? Perhaps. (Cis)women (and transmen) are the only ones who can physically give birth. Should I ignore this very simple and straightforward, undeniable biological fact? Or should I try to pick apart the which traits/behaviours are biological and factually unchangeable, how much is socialised and internalised, and how much cannot in fact be accurately applied to half the world’s population and is simply a different personality/view?

All this talk of egalitarianism and being fair to all genders brings me to a really important point that I think has needed saying for some time: We need to make a space to discuss men’s issues – exclusively. Feminists talk of derailing tactics when they discuss issues – “What about the menz?” – and this is a valid and frustrating thing that comes about time and time again. But at the same time, when is it appropriate to talk about how the Patriarchy shafts men too? Where are the spaces for all genders to discuss scenarios where men really are worse off?

Some will think in response to that, that I am calling for masculism or that MRAs perfectly plug this gap. They don’t. Most MRA boards, blogposts or websites that I have come across are nothing more than a thinly veiled, highly misogynistic and vicious attack against women. Many men in those spaces call for the rape and aggressive oppression and domination of women and this is clearly not on. There is rarely any critique of the Patriarchy as it screws men, and far more bitching and whining about how the be-breasted of society don’t have sex with them enough. Or something. I’m not really sure.

I have yet to see a discussion about men’s issues that I am concerned about in those spaces – the issue of genuine reproductive/parental rights and protection, for example. Do men have real control over reproduction? They can father children and not know for years, if ever. Is it fair that, should they genuinely not wish to have children, they can be ‘forced’ to – and then end up paying for the child they didn’t want? Of course it isn’t. How the state could possibly protect against unwillingly becoming a father, I don’t know, but this is just one of the things I think needs to be looked at and seriously considered.

Masculism for me isn’t an ideal response because it seems to ignore what I feel is the real issue. The Patriarchy. Too often I hear “men go to war to fight for women” but I find this to be a disingenuous connection – rarely in history do we find that women have been the leaders in war scenarios. Men kill men. What we are skirting around is the fact that this is symptomatic of a Patriarchal society, not one in which women lead or have any means of systematic control. Ultimately, egalitarianism is the goal here, and I’d like to think that can be achieved through feminism – I seriously doubt much can be achieved through masculism as is – and I think that while a post-feminist outlook is great on an individual basis (so you don’t judge people on gender! Wonderful!) it’s not at all useful for critiquing the society we currently live in. And this is necessary for progress.

The strange relationship between the Mail and women

The Mail Online is one of those really annoying news outlets that you can hate more than anything else, and still have a bit of admiration for. I admire the MO, because it knows what its readers want, and it delivers time and time again, without fail. It is a tremendously  ridiculous, runaway success story, and one that other newspapers look at with a mixture of envy and annoyance: How do they do it? It is vile – and badly written. More curiously, why is it so popular with women?

Here is something of a shocker for you: The answer is the patriarchy. You see, from a young age, women are implicitly relayed information through culture, MSM, other people that tells them roughly the following:
- You are not skinny/fat/loud/quiet/smiley/dour/round/hour-glass-shaped/bubbly/housewifey/etc enough.
- Everyone else is. Look at the front pages of magazines! These are what real women look like. Get a grip on yourself, girl.
- In order to be less inadequate you need to invest. Invest everything. Invest in make up, invest in skincare products, invest in bodycare products, invest in shoes. Bags. Plastic surgery. A little black dress. Suitable-for-work skirts – not too long, not too short either. Buy a cute dog. Even the dog has to look good – get it groomed every 6 weeks. Cut your hair every six weeks. Dye your hair the second it starts going grey – it’s unsightly and makes you look old and no one wants to put up with that in their face every day. In short, look good, but not too good because otherwise men may not be able to control themselves and may accidentally rape you.

The Mail Online does this whole patriarchy thing so well. Where else would you find horrified articles about the size of someone’s arm/leg/part of their body, alongside a certain Liz Jones bemoaning her latest facial doesn’t actually make her look ten years younger – or an outraged piece about how young girls are wearing less clothes and it’s disgusting (complete with several gratuitous photos, of course) next to, I don’t know, some article about a burns victim saying that no one talks to her anymore and she gets stared at in the street.

It’s just a smorgasbord of bizarre put-downs and lift-ups, really. On the one hand, some bits are inspiring – on the other, we all know deep down inside that we are worthless and we quite like being reminded of that. (Remember: you are brought up taking certain ‘facts’ for granted, that are actually fictitious, and it takes a long while to re-wire your brain to realise that things are in reality very different!)

I imagine the people that read the Mail Online and take it very, very seriously, look like this:

Not worthy!

Women, history and development

At Fem11 last year, Sandi Toksvig said something that has stayed with me and rattled around my brain for a while. She said, isn’t it funny how, before the invention of the written word, women were treated equally, or at least not with the contempt they are treated with even now. Isn’t it funny how men have rewritten history: Florence Nightingale is the passive “lady with the lamp” – whereas she was known in her time as the “lady with the hammer”, because she broke into cabinets for medical supplies etc.

According to Toksvig, before the written word and the development of language, history and traditions were passed down orally – usually through women, to their children. The role of the woman in this society was highly valued – they were integral to the ongoing survival of the tribe/society. They gave birth to children, they taught them about their cultural roots and where they came from. They taught them how to survive.

Not much of this, in actuality, has changed. Women still give birth. Women still pass down information, skills and education to their children – albeit much less so. They tend to be primary caregivers still, too.

What has happened now, I think, is that we are now valuing synthetic successes above evolutionary needs (for obvious reasons). That is, we care more about man-made money, man-made success – short-term goals, as opposed to evolutionary or long-term ones. We are not really too concerned about the future in terms of the future of mankind as a species, and we are not really too concerned about our pasts or where we came from. The future has been neglected worldwide – children are devalued on a constant basis, alienated from their own society, and made to feel like their opinions are worthless. Point me in the direction of a young person who feels truly valued by Western society. Point me to any facts and figures that say we are succeeding at diverting very real and imminent environmental crises. And in terms of our past, we keep seemingly forgetting where we came from, and the mistakes we’ve made before. We must do, because we keep making them.

Thus the role of the woman has not in itself changed, but the meaning society gives to the role, has. It has been taken for granted that women will want to procreate with men, that women will be primary caregivers, that women will allow themselves to be subjugated in every different way.

Is this ‘present hedonism’ an altogether male phenomenon – is it cocksuredness and arrogance? Or just a symptom of modern life and a nasty side-effect of technological development?