Why "fun feminism" should be consigned to the rubbish bin

Basil: What I don't intend to do is regard all feminists as the same when they are clearly not. Feminists differ in their priorities WRT feminism itself (ie some are mostly concerned with economic inequality, others prioritise the battle for reproductive rights, others still focus on ways of making feminism more (or less) inclusive...) One of many restrictions on women's freedom is the idea that women are some kind of homogenous mass and whatever an individual woman does affects all women, therefore a woman must always put her own needs way behind those of everyone else (a cornerstone of patriarchal thinking is the idea that women exist for other people's benefit, not their own), which is something that the anti-sex strand of feminism is very big on. And there is an anti-sex strand to feminism, a line of thought which regards PIV, sex with men and any form of sexual display or recreational sex as wrong, let alone sex work.

And the insistence that a woman choosing sex work is Harming Other Women is slut-shaming judgemental bullshit. Choosing to become a robber is harming other people, choosing to enforce your viewpoint by assault and criminal damage against others is harmful, it could be argued that taking a job collecting from defaulters at a payday loan company is hard to square with a good conscience, but choosing sex work is not harmful to other people in any demonstrable way unless you cling to the patriarchal myth that any one woman represents all the negativity in every woman.

Actually, feminism is profoundly extreme.

It is absolutely an extremist postion in a male superemacist society, in the context of thousands of years of male rule, to assert that women are fully human and we have the right to organise society for our benefit as well as that of men.

It really is extreme. It doesn't sound it, but it is.

Honestly SGB, you have no business describing anyone else as dishonest, if you refer to feminists as "anti sex".

I literally don't know anyone who is anti-sex as a principle. (Apart from my mother and she's not a feminist.) The only political grouping I can thnk of, are actually Saint Augustus et al and mediaeval catholics. Even modern catholic priests are not anti sex as a principle, just anti-sex for themselves (except with children in some cases). You are too well-informed to be ignorant about the distinction between sex and the sex industry. I think your blind-spot about this, is really striking because it is is causing you to use terms and arguments that are either profoundly dishonest or just muddle headed and neither of those things are like you.

But in order for people to be able to stand up for what they think is right or wrong, they need good reasons.
Buying a lipstick as a single action is not a problem but when you look at the wider picture, the context in which that lipstick is bought I.e a patriarchal capitalist system in which women are used as commodoties/consumers, then it does matter.
When people market their products, for the most part they are not looking to enhance the consumers life, they are looking to make a profit at whatever the cost to the consumer may be.

"If feminism can not reconcile some of the strange unintended consequences it creates and there are no guiding principles on which it rests other than personal freedoms".

Please can you expand, not sure I fully understand this paragraph.

Everyone tries to manipulate situations to some extent for their own gain. It's human nature IMO. You can't stop people having influence over other people ever. It will always happen. All you can do is teach children to think critically and have the confidence to stand up for what they believe is right or wrong.

You can't protect everyone who is vulnerable to the slightest influence, you have to teach them to protect themselves. The people who really need help are those in extremist regimes of oppression, like genital mutilation,
Killing your child because it's not a boy, forced marriage, rape. All the big things, lumping these things in with makeup and hair dye is coming full circle and advocating oppression yourself.

No you don't need extremism women need freedom but that includes freedom from economic disadvantage and we need to listen to what our mothers say! Dworkin and Daly are the same age now as my mother and very wise women they were.

We need to re-engage with that literature and see what it says about our present situation and how we can move to a place where real freedoms are not just about to fuck or not, who with and whether it should be for money to put on the gas meter. If feminism can not reconcile some of the strange unintended consequences it creates and there are no guiding principles on which it rests other than personal freedoms.

And it's not about oppressing women by banning lap dancing or whatever...it's about educating them about their choices, in the same way men should be educated about their choices.

It all seems very over complicated to me. Everyone should learn to respect everyone else. It's not difficult, you don't need religion or extreme ideology in order the teach it to your children, you just have to lead by example.

Who largely gains through making women feel insecure. There is a whole industry here and other supporting institutions at work that perpetuate the idea that we must behave in a certain prescribed way. Be that buying lipstick or pole dancing. Women are subject to influences that both commodify them and make them consumers to profit from financially. We have already established that men usually have more economic power. Men and institutions that profit men make women commodities and some women, be it through choice or lack of other influences or knowledge, perhaps lack of reading feminist literature like Daly or Dworkin have been co-opted into this. They are complicit, not through choice because real choice is about having the knowledge not just of the pervasive culture we live in but from the other side of the coin, those that challenge it.

I agree there is a problem with young girls thinking rape is acceptable. But buying lipstick or dying hair is not always to make yourself more attractive to men or other people. Sometimes, it's because you fancy a change, like a colour. You cant say that everthing women do is controlled by patriarchy. I just feel its a massive overestimation.

Elec, I am sorry, if my post wasn't clear. I am in no way advocating no choice or narrow choices or subverting someone's freedoms. My point is that the institutions around us are inherently patriarchal, the messages that women are bombarded with influences them and it shapes their thinking. Young women are subject to these influences, it would be unreasonable to expect that it didn't colour their thinking and influence their behaviour.

Why do you think women buy lipstick or dye their hair, same reasons, we are subject to the influences around us that shape our thinking, our behaviour and also largely what we look like. Have you not been following recent news about teenage relationships, sadly a lot of these young women think violence is normal within relationships, that includes sexual violence and rape.

anti sex

anti sex industry

why do people persist in throwing those two terms together, like they are interchangeable ?

a lazy argument, and one that anybody who has spent any time on the FWR board has no business to be making

Is fun-fem being used as a euphemism for liberal feminists?

As liberal-feminism isn't being mentioned much.

One of the reasons I consider the anti-sex, anti-sex-industry strand of feminism to be both dishonest and self-righteous (and driven by a fondness for self-righteous bullying rather than an interest in women's freedom) is the insistence that BDSM is 'all about' men inflicting pain on women when probably the overall majority of people into BDSM who like to be the 'sub' or 'bottom' are male.

The type of laws called for by anti-sex feminists are claimed to be about helping women in the sex trade, but in practice they make it more difficult and dangerous to work in this industry and offer no help at all unless the woman accepts the abolitionists' agenda: it's not about making sex workers safer, it's about making it impossible for them to do the job safely.

LRD, I could have put it a lot better if I weren't trying to keep my posting time down

I wanted to think, not so much about the gender imbalance in education & opportunities, etc, as about why the sex trades exist as employment for less-privileged women.

I said patriarchal economics deem it acceptable for men to rent sex but not the other way around. I deliberately didn't say "rent women for sex" because men also rent men for sex. As you say, we're talking about women here so that's the focus.

While typing, I was thinking about all the complexities of economic oppression and how it has been enacted almost systematically to make the bodies of the poor available to the rich. With men's bodies, that historically includes doing unsafe jobs and going to be killed in war as well as zillions of other abuses against the oppressed. Wherever there is an oppressed class, the women of that class get it worst and often with more fiendishly imaginative abuses. My thoughts were also reaching into the realms of women's economic dependence on men and to what extent a traditional marriage may be viewed as a style of prostitution.

But I can't put everything I'm thinking about in one post!

So, you would like to see the freedoms afforded to women reduced as you don't believe some women are capable of using their freedom wisely. So you want to oppress all women. What a strange logic and not one I have come accross before in terms of equality thinking.

No, not a Freudian slip. I actually think that radical feminism is the way forward (I'm Marxist that won't appeal to the rest of you, that's fine) but women have been subverted by the media, by politics by institutions that support and renew the patriarchal influences around us. I fear some younger women, esp teenage girls are being sold the idea that freedom is all, freedom to sell out to the people that will exploit you. It's become a sort of inverse pervasive and damaging message that something like pole dancing or porn, or fashion or plastic surgery is liberating young women. Its a lie and that lie is put there by the influences that are controlled by the patriarchy (i believe to make money) Nyac believes so that men can continue their domination over us.

"Do you know it's more women friendly in politics than in feminism these day. Should that not mean something to us. Will women ever achieve that which they claim is their prize when they spend more time attacking each other than the patriarchy "

This has to be the quote of the day :). Interpretation: Feminism is more oppressive to women than the profession of politics.

I have to say I don't agree but I do think you have a point. Radical feminism might well be more oppressive to women than something like the professional political arena.

What that a Freudian slip, I wonder.

Who said all men did?

You are naive if you think men never get into prostitution etc. They do. We just happen to be talking about women.

If you recognize this is gendered exploitation, why insist on pointing out men don't always have access to education? That is also a gendered issue.

not ALL women have access to education/higher education, better wages ... make an argument in favour of women choosing lap dancing as a job.

Can we cut this back to basics please? Not all men have those privileges either. For economically oppressed men, the option of lapdancing isn't available. That's because of patriarchal economics, which deem it acceptable for men to rent sex but not the other way around.

I'm not postulating that women should buy sex or men's bodies (and am aware some do). I'm pointing out that this form of exploitation is gendered and patriarchal. Also fundamental to the whole problem, imo.

I always thought feminism was about both, action and philosophy, silly me, it's about choices, rights and liberties even if those go against or defy all logic, all sense and even in some respects might harm others. For every action there is an intended consequence and an unintended consequence. Its what makes all of our relationships to each other and nature so anarchic.

Do you know it's more women friendly in politics than in feminism these day. Should that not mean something to us. Will women ever achieve that which they claim is their prize when they spend more time attacking each other than the patriarchy

Who drove the wedge in there? I think you'll find it's the thing you claim to by fighting against, it alludes us because we fail to see how clever and how powerful the influences are around us in shaping how we feel and think.

Thanks for sharing Dworkin Nyac, powerful stuff.

Wow, just caught up on this from last night.... lots of different povs.

Without personally attacking anybody, my rule of thumb is that I don't trust anybody who completely toes a party line. For example, I would class my political views as left leaning, but that doesn't mean I don't take a more conservative view towards certain issues like crime and punishment. Life is not black and white and people who seem to spout doctrine rather than actually talking like a real human being are hard to relate to.
My views towards the sex industry are probably ambiguous. If my son had a porn mag or watched a porn film when he was in his teens, I wouldn't feel I'd failed as a mother or that he hated women. I don't necessarily see that as the evil influence that others do.
My views on prostitution are different though, I used to walk to my nice all girls school, and had to pass a pretty notorious road - basically at the edge of the red light district. The women would be out on the street in the mornings and afternoons looking like hell. Pale, skinny, dirty looking and aggressive. The contrast between my friends and I was shocking but probably some of them were not much older than us. Even at that young age it would make me want to cry as it was so obviously wrong that a woman could end up in this state. When I found out that prostitutes are often controlled by horrible vicious men it made the whole thing worse and I will never agree with anybody who thinks prostitution can be a good thing. maybe it's a simplistic view but I form my opinions according to the world around me. I don't see all, or indeed most, men as abusers and exploiters of women because I have far too many amazing men in my life, not to mention a beautiful son.
NYAC Can I ask a genuine question of you? How does your radical feminism inform your daily life? (Hope this doesn't seem facetious just that you have stood out on the thread as having strong views and being very well informed). Do you have like minded friends and family or do you clash with them re feminism?

mini - true. And something that I find very uncomfortable is when women like Brooke Magnanti, who have been highly privileged in terms of education and choice, act as role models and make out there's a similarity between them and other women who do not have the same privilege and choice.

garlicbutty

"I've often been told here that I'm not a feminist. I have a long history of making real, measurable improvements to women's freedoms at international, national and personal levels. Therefore, I believe, I'm a real feminist and my feminism is valuable. It doesn't matter that some other feminists dislike what I say or the way I say it. I hope you'll do the same, in your own way."

This is exactly what my next post was to be about. Surely, the extent to which you are a feminist is defined by how successful you are at it, i.e. making measurable differences at all levels.

That's a difficult thing to define obviously, but I think it's much more significant than saying I'm a feminist because I've done some reading on the subject and I agree with all the arguments put forward by such and such, irrespective of the actual value those arguments create in the real world when helping women in oppressive situations.