Hear ye, hear ye! You're doing feminism wrong.

If there is such a thing as Western Society there is such a thing as Western feminism.

I am sure there are feminists who spend their time on a diverse range of issues, some of which are life threatening and some of which are not. I am sure there are feminists who deal only with less life threatening or otherwise tragic issues indepth and that is fine. Somebody has to do it. The complaint is against the efforts of feminism as a whole, not against individuals.

I am sure there are feminists (all of them hopefully) who spend lots of their time going to the cinema and playing computer games, but that is not feminism so is neither here nor there.

Spirited, pretty much your whole argument is a straw man as the writer never said that feminism should address only the most serious issues and ignore the others.

It is a very simple argument...

The purpose of feminism is to work towards women's liberation.
Feminists deal with a range of issues, including those that cause more or less suffering.
It is possible for feminists to spend more time on one set of issues than another.

Surely we all agree on that?

The next part of the argument is that the writer (and me) both believe that (Western) feminism has the balance wrong.

The vast majority of feminist discussion online is about the less serious issues, and when serious issues about what is happening to women globally are mentioned, many feminists commenting don't have even the most basic knowledge of it.

I consider that a problem.

But there is no discussion of that, and no discussion possible, because posters would prefer to argue against a range of points that were never made.

Apologies, posted too soon.

I can seem to spend a lot of time objecting to, what can seem to be relatively Minor issues around racism on a regular basis. Anything that groups people into a homogeneous whole is wrong. According to this guy I must be doing it wrong, as I am focussing on everyday racism I can challenge, as it is not serious enough! As if the only reason we deal with the milder prejudice is so we can ignore the hard part.

I would n

What an amazing and brave article, hope those evil radfems don't spend too long hoping he dies in a fire and all his kids get cancer .

An area of growth for me as a person was recognising my internalised racism. I believe all people are equal. But I have been subjected to the same stereotypes and negative messages about people of colour throughout my life. I am not saying that it makes it OK, or justifying it. Just that recognising it, no matter how 'benevolent' it is, is key to challenging racism both in my own head and in others.

Thanks for that post Spirited, it's helped to clarify things for me even more.

I don't think that challenging small instances of sexism trivialises feminism. Instead I think it meets people where there are, from what they see and experience and can change and helps raise awareness of the wider issue of sexism and oppression. It's not a zero sum game.

It is clear that sexism which risks the life and bodily integrity of women is urgent and important and worthy of concerted efforts to prevent. But that doesn't mean small ways in which women and girls are overlooked, diminished and undermined are undeserving of time and attention. It all adds to the culture we live in and I think it can help.

If small girls aren't called bossy when they are assertive, then maybe they will be leaders of the future who can have real power to change things. If a small boy isn't told that the worst thing in the world to be is 'like a girl' then maybe he won't grow up to consider women and girls beneath him. If our media stops telling people that 'woman' is a personality type, worthy of only one character or panellist in male dominated shows then maybe issues which affect women would be treated as important issues which can affect half of humanity, rather than a special interest specialism that can be largely ignored.

It all matters. It's a straw man to say that feminists aren't tackling the big important stuff. Saying that feminists should only concern themselves with the things which risk lives, safety and livelihood is holding them to a ridiculously high utilitarian moral standard that means you can only act to help those in the very greatest need. It isn't how most people operate.

We don't tell doctors to stop treating minor ailments just because they are not life threatening. We don't stop helping people in poverty in the UK just because they aren't as poor as the poorest people in Africa. We don't stop treating people with benign growths, just because other people have cancerous ones, and in turn stop treating adults with cancer because it diverts resources away from children with cancer.

There are loads of non-critical things we spend our time and resources on. Preserving old buildings of dubious historical importance. Playing computer games. Reading stuff on Mumsnet. Writing articles victim blaming women for still being oppressed. There's no reason why we can't spend a few minutes adding our name to a petition against some small instance of sexism, is there?

So we have:
The Straw Man fallacy - because feminists do work on the 'important stuff'
Two-value logic - Cause X is important. Cause Y is not Cause X.
Therefore, Cause Y must be unimportant.
A false dichotomy - because you don't have to choose between Cause X and Y
A fallacy or rhetorical device that I don't know the name of where you say you shouldn't do anything about A until B is solved, which you can't start work on until C is solved, etc.

All without saying that possessing a phallus is a fallacy in feminist debate.

Did you actually say that with a straight face Flora? That's chuffing hilarious.

Sorry, Lurcio, but I think that's exactly what's being said. Upthread it's argued (correctly in my view) that you may heckle a female politician's policies, but not the fact that she has a vagina - well, it's relatively clear here that the author's penis is central to the consternation being expressed.

Do I agree with him? No, not completely. But neither do I think that he's saying what you just accused him of. I took his argument to be that feminism is an urgent and serious business, but that he thought there was a patina of rather shallow thought that fashionable media-friendly feminism spread over the difficult issues that we should really be talking about. The example he chose to support this was the general 'yay for Julia Gillard!' sentiment which he saw as being at odds with much of what women's rights was all about because so many of Gillard's policies were anti-women. His view. This, to my mind, is a relatively feminist position to have taken.

I think the problem here is that this is an argument within feminism, but is viewed as an external criticism. ie, it's a position taken by women that not only see feminism as essentially a men vs women dynamic, but regard all men as being responsible and complicit for women's subjugation. Once you have that assumption, it's impossible for a man to talk within feminism and also keeps theoretical feminism as a single set of interdependent ideas, rather than a vast over-lapping and sometimes contradictory realm in which people of both sexes attempt to figure out how to make the world more equal.

Thanks for posting the Glosswitch blog, she just nails it.

Damisilli - no one's saying "men can't have an opinion on feminism." However they are saying that when a man comes along and lists a whole list of things that men typically do to women (DV, opression of women in fundamentalist theocracies, etc.) and says "why aren't feminists saying anything about it?" when in fact feminists are, very loudly, then the man says "why aren't feminists doing something about it?" when actually, the people able to change things are the men who're doing the stuff in the first place, then says "women, be grateful I'm here to tell you how to sort out the issues that I deem important to you," well, then quite a few women are going to get pissed off. You might not be pissed off by it (I have to admit, I wonder why not), but I certainly am.

I've been trying to frame a response to what I hope is your argument, Almond.

Of course I think the systematic oppression and murder of women in Afghanistan because they are women is horrific.

I also think that the silencing of women by threats of sexual violence is horrific.

Now, it's fairly self evident that the first is more immediately horrific - the actual rape and killing of women as opposed to the threat thereof. But I'm not convinced that the world divides up as neatly as all that. Because unless people of goodwill are free and able to speak up against actual murder and oppression, then there can be no political will to change things. So silencing matters, not just in its own right, but because of the knock on consequences. So silencing - wherever it lies on the spectrum between belittling women for their age/appearance, right through to threats of rape and muder - does matter very much. Because without the right to speech, we can't even be heard saying "2 women a week are killed by their partner", "there's over 100,000 victims of FGM in the UK alone", "women are being stoned to death in Afghanistan".

Now one can accept that a single police officer who has a straight choice between responding to a call out to a DV victim in imminent danger of being murdered by her ex partner, versus responding to a call out about a woman who's being stalked on line, should respond to the DV victim first. But that doesn't mean the second isn't important. Nor does it mean that, if it later transpires that woman no. 2 said some pretty hideous things on line (supported a convicted rapist over his victim, perhaps) that that vitiates her right to be protected against online stalking.

And what is interesting about the abuse Gillard is subject to is that it demonstrates all too clearly that you don't have to be a rad fem to bring this sort of silencing technique down on your head, you don't even have to be a nice liberal feminist (though personally I would like to see liberals fight their corner better - for instance, by going back to Mill's conception of positive and negative liberties and using it as a framework to attack "anything goes cool girl pseudo feminism"). You can actually be doing the patriarchy's dirty work for it and you will still get abuse because you have a vagina. And that, surely, has got to be a feminist issue.

I think the writer has made a few mistakes many men make when writing and/or talking about feminism. First, he hasn't listened, or if he has he's only heard the parts he wanted to hear. Second, he castigated women for something men are responsible for, VAWG, without offering a solution. The solution is obvious: tougher penalties for those convicted of such crimes and a default setting of "we believe her". Third, he rolled out Laurie Penny. Don't get me wrong, I like Laurie, I'd just prefer to see her become more radical.

Going after Julia Gillard is almost de rigueur nowadays isn't it? Her takedown of that vile piece of work made me almost cry laughing. She's one of the few right wing politicians I have any respect for, that respect comes not from her policies but for her bravery in standing up to be counted as a female in a hugely misogynistic environment.

Glosswitch's reply was necessarily brutal and cut his arguments into ribbons. He deserved it. He's not being brave writing about feminism, he's telling women they're doing it wrong.

If it's all right with you I'll continue to lurk and learn.

Men will opine whether women think it's their place to or not

We're back to 'can a man be a feminist' again. I think many posts here rather prove his point that it's almost impossible for a man to voice an opinion on feminism - and how can one be something if one isn't permitted to have an opinion on it?

Bizarrely, I find myself feeling a rare moment of sympathy for David 'Don't use the F-Word' Cameron.

Flora, that is one long strawman argument.

The issue, in the article, is why are some issues being given so much time and attention over others.

You are determined to misrepresent me. I never suggested what you are attributing to me. And the article writer did not say it either.

I am genuinely concerned about the issue of feminism's priorities in time and attention. I have no axe to grind against you.

Sorry Buffy, to clarify, I am not suggesting you are conflating them.

That goes for the thread in general. Many people end up on MN FWR because they are uncomfortable with what is happening on other feminist boards. I can see why people don't like the way he has said it, but not the issue with the general point.