Mary Beard on Radio 4 now with Point of View about Miss World 2011

Lordy. Have you heard yourselves? Non-issue aggression? Personal undermining.? Wild deliberate misinterpretation. It reads like a feeding frenzy on another woman as if she had poo-ed on your best-drawn picture at primary school. One or two of you really need to grow up.

And I realise you didn't say it as strongly as that, but that was the tone and the direction of your arguments.

This isn't hardcore at all. We've simply disagreed with some arguments you made on the radio Mary.

Also this is one tiny thread in the Mumsnet feminist section, which will have a much smaller audience than the original radio broadcast did.

I'm still glad to be defending the Miss World protest here and wondering why someone who calls themselves a feminist would be saying that it shouldn't have happened and there are more important things to worry about (now where have we heard that one before?).

But even through knowing our names, you do not know us...

Even with our real names, there would be a marked disequilibrium.

Prolesworth.. I dont give a fuck for deference.
The only way I can engage in this discussion is as me.. but it is very weird talking to these nicknames.

No that's not what make me uncomfortable.. it is the disequilibrium. You know exactly who I am , I dont know who you are (except ES). That make our apparently equal conversation strange...I am well used to taking what anyone says seriously; that's my job. My point was that pseudonyms allow and encourage a particular sort of aggressive (and I would say unhelpful) rhetoric... which you do not find (so much) in authored comments

Good point, Prolesworth. :)

As a well respected public intellectual and the author of the piece under discussion, Mary has something to gain by using her real name here (i.e. an expectation of deference, perhaps).

Whereas the rest of us don't stand to gain anything by using our real names here.

People who have continued to ask you why you cast Miss V as the enemy know full well you weren't talking about 'Miss V the individual'. What is not clear to me is what 'whole' she is standing for. All beauty pageant contestants? All women? All young, attractive women? It's not clear.

And really, I can't see that any of the comments here have been 'hardcore' when you consider that women voicing feminist opinions on the internet are regularly bombarded with rape threats and worse (see the recent debate in the Guardian about this). Another good reason for the anonymity here.

Elderberry, a name holds no information about who a person is. An age, a title or a career allows someone to draw stereotypes about that person.

People do not change under a pseunodym,, if people know personal stuff about the person behind that pseunodym. For example,some people may know that, behind the name FrothyDragon, I'm a 38 year old married mother of six kids, (ok, I'm not, but I don't want to give true facts, here...) and address me differently to how they'd address me as an 18 year old single mother of one child. People will make assumptions, based on what they know about someone, not their name. And I suspect that's what makes Mary Beard uncomfortable. :)

If people 'got' the metonymy of 'Miss Venezuela', then why have they gone on and on about whether she is, or is not, the enemy? I suspect that the metonymical point has not been widely taken.

I see what you are saying about the freedom of anonymity. But from my point of view. well, I am tough (long feminist training on that), but if I want the tone of some of these comments (especially the early ones) would have been quite bruising.

Perhaps you should know that women who have not commented but read these comments have asked me whether I could manage this.. answer, yes I can. And you probably know that .. I mean: do a radio prog, and take what comes. But it does come over rather more hard core than you may realise.

The Miss World protestors were very clear that they weren't judging the beauty queens but the men behind the contest, the men enabling it (bouncers, journalists) and the man fronting it, Bob Hope (or Blob Hope as Mary Daly called him).

The thing is Mary, you might have been using the claim that Miss Venezuala wasn't your enemy as a rhetorical device, but in doing so you also restated the sexist belief that women are each other's enemies who compete with each other for male attention and rewards. Of course in that situation a beautiful woman is going to be another woman's enemy. It's how in fact sexist men want women to view beauty pageant contestants - their existence is supposed to make us feel insecure and doubt ourselves and believe we don't measure up. Only one woman is allowed to be Miss World after all.

By using her to represent the Miss World contest, you hid every single male-created patriarchal structure responsible for the contest and instead reduced the protests down to being against one woman. As a rhetorical device it failed, at least on feminist terms.

'You can't tell who's in their 20's, to explain their argument away as a lack of "life experience", or who's in their 60's, so you can argue their point away as them being "too old to understand modern day struggles". '

is this where the asymmetry comes in, then, that's making Mary uncomfortable? It's not really about names, it's about what the people on both sides of a discussion know about each other? It matters in feminist discussion more than other subjects because it's so personal? Because like someone said earlier, they could tell her their name. But it wouldn't make any difference.

anyway this is interesting but I have really got to go to bed, goodnight everyone.

Yes I don't think people have just been aggressive. We just want to get to the bottom of the reason for your nonchalance towards MW and learn something of the difference between 2nd wave feminism and current feminism.

The comment about Miss V being the enemy is so interesting because today feminism is notable for NOT seeing other women as the enemy but for focusing on changing the system and so that comment really jars with me. I'd love to know if 2nd wave feminists were quick to judge other women for their choices (as ES refers to upthread). I suppose in a way it would have been natural to do so because 2nd wave feminists were operating within the "divide and conquer" framework of the patriarchy and feminists were so desperate to get out of the roles assigned to them.

It is a common argument bandied about by anti-feminists that feminists are too judgmental of women who choose "traditionally feminine" pursuits and I have always seen this as a strawman argument, without any real truth. But if MB's comment re. MV is representative of the attitude of 2nd wave feminists then I've been wrong.

MB, could you look past the weirdness of the nicknames and tell us something about that?

I'm confused.... I thought the patriarchy was the enemy. Have I been doing feminism wrong, too?

I prefer the anonymity of the internet. Through not knowing who you're speaking to, you have to treat everyone as an equal. You don't know who the academics or professionals are. You can't tell who's in their 20's, to explain their argument away as a lack of "life experience", or who's in their 60's, so you can argue their point away as them being "too old to understand modern day struggles".

When we do not know who we are addressing, we have to address them as equals to ourself.

The 'daring to say stuff online you wouldn't dare say in real life' has a good side too, though, especially for people who are shy or likely to be intimidated by the famous or highly educated.
If people won't speak otherwise because they're scared of looking stupid, and anonymity allows them to do that, then a bit of rudeness might be a price worth paying.

But the women in high heels and make up being the enemy? Is that how you felt as a non-make-up wearing angry young feminist?

I think we all got the metonymy.

(though we probably should get a private detective onto Miss Venezuela, just in case she is the one pulling the strings behind this whole patriarchy thing.)

I think that I have it as an old fashioned pledge to myself that I will always avow my opinions as my own.. that's one of the reasons I feel anxious about the pseudonyms. There are others.

1. Miss Venezuela = metonym (part for whole).. In a short broadcast (whose subject I chose myself), I used the old rhetorical trope.. I dont think much hangs on it, but most people I think would have got the metonymical/ring composition usage here. Of course I didnt mean Miss V herself. I have no cluse whteher she is the enemy or not.. she might be, but I doubt it.

2)I feel that I have engaged pretty consistently: the fact that you dont agree, or that I havent responded as you would like, doesnt mean I havent engaged.

3. To ES.. I dont know about the enemy thing. Bad to have enemies.. but in some ways bad not to, I did feel that my interests with other women split when I had kids,,, and when my own decision to keep working outside the home full time became quite loaded. It was no secret to me that many of my friends and colleagues who had taken a different decision were quite eager to see my kids go to the bad (as it were)... in my life experience, that is where the big split in practical (rather than theoretical) feminism comes.

It's great. Once you're under a pseudonym, you automatically get a personality transplant, and become aggressive and unreasonable...

Marybeard, we use nicknames on this site. Always have done.

I don't think there's been any aggression towards you. Anger and/or confusion and/or questioning statements =/= Agression

Yes I'd like to know about that too. It's been there since the very first posts.

But what did you mean about Miss Venezuela no longer being the enemy?

And why undermine the feminists who still object to Miss World and feel it needs protesting?