Feminist Choice

Thanks for the last night TheDoctrine! Better have at this time of day though...

I too see what you are saying FloraFox. I basically agree with you - and it is up to each of us to find our position on this sort of thing. I think I find it very hard to be critical of women who have been in prostitution. Although I totally agree with you about the young girls going into prostituion thing - that was, as you say, beyond the pale, and I did judge her when I read that statement. I was pretty shocked by that.

I see what you're saying Beach et al. I get the analysis vs judgement part and I agree with your analysis. I think I am comfortable going a bit further into either judgement or critique. Dadwashere I don't agree with your view either re agency in feminism or radfem and TBH I'm not interested in joining up with men to tear down a woman.

Although I agree that BM is given her voice and platform by patriarchal media which are entranced by the happy hooker myth, I believe that women who are not desperate and who do have choices have a responsibility either to advance the class of women or at least not to hold them back. I chose BM purposely rather someone who I don't agree with but who seems to at least be making an effort for women (like Laurie Penny) because I don't want to spend time and effort attacking other women who are feminists, even of a different hue. I also hate the "call out" culture which is so prevalent in social media. However BM's statement that she can live with the fact that young girls might go into prostitution because of her writing as a price she is willing to pay for making a living as a writer / commenter on prostitution puts her beyond the pale for me. I do judge her for this.

Going back to the Choice Feminism paper, I think there is a problem with stepping back and saying "these are my values but I won't hold anyone else to them". There is a line that needs to be drawn between that and tearing down everyone who is not exactly on point with every detail of your beliefs but I think we need to be careful of personalising the political.

Yeah, I think rad fems can easily critique the happy hooker myth; agency is not in question and in any case is only introduced by the liberal agenda (should I mention the twat thing here again?). The critique is aimed at the choices available to women as a class in relation to men as a class, not the individuals choices made by one woman. In my view, BM' s choices are simply a symptom of a grievously misogynistic culture in the case that (a) she made them;(b) they were available to her; and (c) they are fetishised by the media. You could only make a choice like that in a patriarchal and capitalist culture and they could similarly only be realised in one. That they media choose to focus on this very marginal account of prostitution rather than the more common and desperate narratives of abuse, poverty and trafficking is one glorious example of the patriarchy in operation.

to some in rad fem where men must always be seen to hold as much power as possible because that provides a good reason to forgive women for having the limited personal agency rad fem projects on them

Which brings me back to this. Which I was trying to ignore.

DadWasHere, perhaps you are not very informed on radical feminism, hence your rather odd statement here.

My experience of the radical feminist movement is that careful attention is paid to women's agency and that it is the very last thing we would want to steal from ourselves. Have you ever read much Dworkin or watched any of her speeches on youtube? Same goes for MacKinnon or Daly or any of the many other radical feminists whose work has been fundamental to forming the radical movement.

You have no idea what it is to be a woman in a man's world. And it reads to me that it is you who is projecting. Projecting your world view onto radical feminism.

Just as you have done WRT Ms Magnanti on this thread.

Is this a genuine misunderstanding or a failure to listen?

I wonder.

I think my analysis is pretty simple. A woman who glamorises prostitution and who writes misogynistic books and blogs is exercising agency unless someone is forcing or coercing her to do these things. AFAIA, nobody is doing this to Ms Magnanti - therefore it appears to me that she is exercising agency.

If society was not misogynistic, her views would be considered marginal, misogynistic and potentially harmful to women and they would not be publicized and made into hideous television programmes and books.

As society is misogynistic, her views are embraced, publicized , held up as highly valid, given air time, discussed in serious newspapers, used to justify the instituion of prostitution, used to get women with less patriarchial pleasing opinions to STFU, etc and therefore are able to cause damage to women.

Yes, TheDoctrine. I shan't hold my breath.

When Billie Piper stars in a dramatised version of "Paid For", we might be getting somewhere, Beach.

Do you think Ms Magnanti would be as well known as she is, if she didn't glamourise prostitution/misogyny DadWasHere?

Of course she is being used.

I don't think she is a puppet however and she certainly appears to me to be exercising agency.

Do you think "secret dairy of a call girl" would have made it onto mainstream television in Iceland? Or Sweden?

In terms of Magnanti I agree with FloraFox

Its all very interesting but I dont think its about analysis Vs judgement at all, because rationalising 'She is being used.' is 100% judgement. Its just one that conveniently minimises her own agency and therefore extends sympathy, because who would judge a puppet used by puppeteers, especially powerful male ones in a culture of patriarchy where its, ipso facto, on them that judgement should fall?

Beach, interesting distinction between judgement and analysis, thanks.

2. Feminism denies women agency. This is really starting to fuck me off. How, exactly, does feminism do this? Do people who try and use this argument to shame feminists into shutting up actually understand what cultural and social norms are and how they work? I suspect that either they don't or they are misrepresenting them deliberately in order to win a debate. Yes, DWH I am looking at you, but I don't think you're the only one who does this.

I never said that feminism denies women agency, its not my view at all. My view is that feminism has a big chip on its shoulder over agency. Sections of feminism polarise agency and both extremes are unhealthy and marginalise the movement to future generations of women. From some in sex positive feminism so obsessed with agency they would hand out awards to actresses in S&M porn films simply because they personally enjoy the association between pain and arousal to some in rad fem where men must always be seen to hold as much power as possible because that provides a good reason to forgive women for having the limited personal agency rad fem projects on them. IMO one glorifies choice and the other denies every choice but its own

I see what you mean about disengagement FloraFox, but I'm still uncomfortable with judgement.

Maybe it comes down to the meanings individuals apply to words, but having struggled with this for a while, I know I am happy with 'analysis' rather than judgement. It takes the sense of judging an individual person out of things.

If I take your example of Brooke Magnanti - I agree with you, I too find her views and work pernicious and harmful to women. I have no desire to judge her though - rather to analyse her actions and why she has done what she has. It cannot be coincidence for example that her father used prostituted women and introduced her to them. Perhaps her actions are selfish, perhaps they are self-preservation - or both. Who knows.

And I say that as someone who finds her opinions abhorrent. However, it isn't Ms Magnanti herself who does the real harm to women - it is misognyistic media, publishers, society etc that do the damage by holding her up as the happy hooker to end all happy hookers and as an example of why feminists should STFU. She is being used. They don't give a shit whether she is healthy or happy - they just want to hold her up in the limelight whilst she continues to spout misogyny and internalised sexism. If she did an about turn and voiced horror and distress about prostitution, as so many (unheard, unknown) exited women do, they would drop her sharpish and probably start attacking her.

I think neoliberals usually seem to be more interested in the quantity of choices than the quality of choices.

Unfortunately, for many people, some apparently free choices are actually dilemmas in which a person must choose between something they don't want and another thing they don't want e.g. a choice between prostitution or poverty. I think it is significant that we often hear neoliberals praising the "free choice" of prostitution while they condemn the "free choice" of poverty.

I think there are different levels of judgement at work. I agree with those who are uncomfortable with the promotion of women judging women and it reminds me of lemon-sucking aunties and mean girls at school. But in the paper (and this is borne out by my experience) the author talks about young people looking only inwardly

As my colleagues confirm, it is in our classrooms, where students profess strong views on controversial feminist issues, yet refuse to apply them to others, saying, “but that’s just my personal opinion.”

Taken too far, non-judgement can lead to disengagement with politics and society and bringing everything back to an individual level. This can create a vacuum where damaging voices are given free reign to promote harmful policies for women because of a fear of being perceived as judgemental. Brooke Magnanti springs to mind here. I find her views and "work" pernicious, selfish and harmful to women. Women being silent about this and refusing to judge her amplifies her voice and the harm she causes.

I think as well as being neoliberal, choice is also the darling of consumerism and an ideology that says we are all individual participants in a "market" of life. We use the same word "choice" for buying jam or shampoo that we use for having children, stepping back from work because your DH is not pulling his weight, staying with an abusive DH, being drawn into prostitution, as if we each have a buffet of all the options in front of us. As well as looking at societal structure and expectations, we need to look at options to critically analyse the meaning of choice.

That does look interesting scallops, although like you, I'm not happy with the judgements bit. She seems to have done what a lot of people do which is misinterpret what Hanisch meant when she coined the phrase 'the personal is political'.

It doesn't mean judging women's choices to see if they meet some feminist standard and that if everyone gets with the programme and stands up to oppression we'll have this patriarchy thing licked in no time.

Rather it means what you have articulated MooncupGoddess - These decisions are made within the framework of a patriarchal society

mindthegapuk.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/the-personal-is-political/

First, it’s important to note that the phrase ‘the personal is political’ manifestly does not mean that everything a woman does is political or that all her personal choices are political choices. In feminist terms, the ‘personal is political’ refers to the theory that personal problems are political problems, which basically means that many of the personal problems women experience in their lives are not their fault, but are the result of systematic oppression. In this respect, Hanisch is drawing heavily upon Marxism – the focus is off individual struggle and onto group struggle.

The theory that women are not to blame for their bad situations is crucial here because women have always been told that they are unhappy or faring badly in life because they are stupid, weak, mad, hysterical, having a period, pregnant, frigid, over-sexed, asking for it etc. The personal is political proposes that women are in bad situations because they experience gendered oppression and massive structural inequalities.

I'm not sure I understand the concept of a feminist choice when it comes to one's personal life. As the posters above have demonstrated, there are lots of factors that influence decisions like whether to change one's name on marriage, some political and some personal.

For instance, I would describe a woman deciding to be a SAHM while her children are little as making neither a feminist or an anti-feminist choice... and the same with a woman working full time while her children are little. People make these sort of choices in the perceived best interests of themselves and their families rather than with political aims at the forefront of their minds, surely? These decisions are made within the framework of a patriarchal society and I don't see the use of picking them apart individually.

If someone proclaimed herself to be a radical feminist while removing all body hair it's fair enough to query the discrepancy - but generally speaking I don't see the point of judging choices one way or another. It just distracts from analysis of society as a whole.

Would be interested to know what other posters thought on this.

One thing I've noticed a lot is men saying they don't mind what choice a woman makes. And while men 'don't mind', individual women will make anti-feminist choices to fit in with society because they feel they should. I think that until men actively sway women towards feminist choices, the status quo will prevail.

Name is a tricky one because women are brought up with the expectation that they'll change their name upon marriage (who here didn't write 'Mrs X' in the margins of their school books??) and so 'not minding' is ingrained from a young age.

'Blistory, if taking your husbands name is not a feminist act what of the reverse? Are women who keep their surname performing a feminist act?'

I kept my name because it was my name and I liked it. OH reacted like DadWasHere, saw it as my choice. At the time, in the mid-80s, it was seen as a feminist thing to do.
A truly Feminist act would be to throw of the shackles of being owned by your father, refuse the tyranny of being owned by your spouse and give yourself a new name altogether. One you had chosen for yourself.

If you have a couple of hours spare Choice Feminism and the Fear of Politics looks like a good read. Needless to say I haven't read it all...yet, but from the abstract:

^"Choice feminism is motivated by a fear of politics. It arises in response to three common criticisms of feminism: that feminism is too radical, too exclusionary, and too judgmental. In response, choice feminism offers a worldview that does not challenge the status quo, that
promises to include all women regardless of their choices, and that abstains from judgment altogether. Moreover, it enables feminists to sidestep the difficulties of making the personal political: making judgments and demanding change of friends, family, and lovers. Yet
judgment, exclusion, and calls for change are unavoidable parts of politics."^

Not sure if I agree with all of that - especially about judgements. I try not to judge women who make choices within a limited (and often misogynistic) framework. I am, on the other hand quite happy to judge men who make choices that further women's oppression.

^"In 2005, Linda Hirshman coined the phrase “choice feminism” to name the widespread belief in the U.S. that the women’s movement has liberated women to make whatever choices they want. As she describes this view, “A woman could work, stay home, have 10 children or one,
marry or stay single. It all counted as ‘feminist’ as long as she chose it.”3 For Hirshman, this insipid celebration of any and all choices a woman might make undermines feminists’ capacity to engage in political critique."^ Interesting. I wonder whether this is where the rise for choice feminism arose?