Mary Beard and "white feminism"

@yetanotherspartacus

I completely agree. Intersectionality is a very blunt tool which overlooks the circumstances of the individual. I think it is helpful to have its ideas in mind, but only up to a point.

I hate the “white feminism” narrative. I do agree there is a place for recognising that white middle class women do not face all of the issues which poor or BME women face, and that the latter often have less of a voice. It’s important to ensure that their concerns aren’t overlooked because of focus on women in boardrooms etc

There are also levels of complexity. Not all white skinned women are of the middle class. Not all middle-class women are white skinned.

mouth that is depressing but unsurprising.

DARVO is the tactic of the abuser that we should all be alert to.

1st rule of misogyny: Women are responsible for what men do.
The white feminism accusation is another silencing tactic men are using to divide and conquer women in solidarity. The women's march scared the bejeepers put of the predators so the 4chan and Russian bots are working overtime.

As an employee of an NGO who has been involved in working with men who prostitute women I can assure you that this activity is enthusiastically engaged in by local employees of the NGOs as well as the expats.

I disagreed with her tweet and it annoyed me. However, I hate these pile-ons. There are so many people on Twitter clamouring to destroy someone for speaking the merest bit out of turn. I don't think MB is a racist at all. She is privileged in many ways, but so are many of the other academics who are lambasting her. If you disagree with her, by all means write a blog post or even respond in the press, but to go all out and publicly vilify someone is not on and can cause untold damage.

I saw that one reply brought up MB's apparent support for TERFs. Dr Priya Gopal who is leading the onslaught replied with something along the lines of 'that doesn't surprise me'. Another twitter commenter likened MB's 'white feminist tears' to Rose McGowan 'abusing her power in B&N'. That's when I lost my sympathy. The whole point was that Rose McG has had her power stripped away from her and then she was publicly heckled by a pedophilic sex offender and expected to keep her composure. But obviously none of this matters because she is white and so is MB. But this totally ignores that so are the Oxfam workers in Haiti, and so is the disgusting pervert who heckled Rose. Yet again, women are expected to take the blame.

I do sympathise with Dr Gopal because Cambridge is an antiquated place steeped in ridiculous traditions and snobbery. It must be tough to work there if your 'face doesn't fit'. But this could have been done in a much more constructive fashion- maybe even a public debate or something. Not an all-out vicious attack on social media that MB will probably not read anyway.

MB gets more than her share of abuse because of misogynistic ideals of what a woman should be and look like. I disagree with her comment on this but from the pile on anyone would think she had sexually abused vulnerable females in Haiti.

I hate the “white feminism” narrative. I do agree there is a place for recognising that white middle class women do not face all of the issues which poor or BME women face, and that the latter often have less of a voice. It’s important to ensure that their concerns aren’t overlooked because of focus on women in boardrooms etc

But why is it either/or? Why can’t women support each other in their various struggles given that discrimination permeates all areas of society? ‘White feminism’ sniping minimises issues which many women face, case in point being Rose McGowan cant talk about her rape without criticism because she should be talking about what she is doing for eg transwomen

Yes, but this is a very 'permission-giving' belief, especially in a context where abusive men may be deliberately exploiting the extreme circumstances and their impact on survivors in order to abuse.

I guess that’s where clear rules and consequences come in - and strong leadership. Society and what is acceptable is forever changing - we can only hope that expectations on behaviour and what is (and what’s not) acceptable gets dicussed and hopefully put into practice.

But deep down you have to think did the good done by the likes of Oxfam - and the aid workers -outweigh the bad. If aid groups shut down because of this - will it be worth it.

It would be interesting to focus on the folk who do this work though - and their motivations.

Others have posted much better comments considering the more important issues of feminism and aid work and abuse.

But, I seem to remember, the trolls love to have a go at Mary Beard because she is brave enough to live on her terms. She is an educated person with a public persona and, as such, feels confident to address current topics. She has been subject to a wide range of vile abuse by cowardly commentators for years. So some of the responses may be coming solely from that angle.

taking folk far away from their home/culture to often extreme and harsh places and circumstances can shake up your normal moral norms

Yes, but this is a very 'permission-giving' belief, especially in a context where abusive men may be deliberately exploiting the extreme circumstances and their impact on survivors in order to abuse.

Having said that, I don't see what any of this has to do with Beard, who I think was wrong but only said what many were probably thinking. I also don't understand why anyone thinks it's appropriate to direct anger triggered by sexually abusive men at her.

It's a shame because social media has the opportunity to be a great place to learn.

I worry about the 'silencing' effect it has. If you're not naturally thick-skinned (and so many of us aren't) and genuinely care about the opinions and views you're seeking to learn more about and not confident (and I think I have probably now included an awful lot of us in this), it's terrifying.

Too flu-ridden to make much sense but liked this piece on another twitter pile-on on this week, on (female) nytimes journalist Bari Weiss:

In our identitarian age, the bar for offense has been lowered considerably, which makes democratic debate more difficult—citizens are more likely to withhold their true opinions if they fear being labeled as bigoted or insensitive.

moral posturing doesn’t usually change anyone’s mind, because people intuitively interpret it “as a form of jockeying for in-group status.” But it doesn’t need to change minds, nor is it necessarily supposed to. Its point is to transform politics into a question of purity. It’s not enough to have the right opinion or intent: The precise words used to convey the right opinion become just as important, as Weiss herself quickly found out.

www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/bari-weiss-immigrants/553550/

I thought she was more making the point that taking folk far away from their home/culture to often extreme and harsh places and circumstances can shake up your normal moral norms - a bit like soldiers away from home dealing with challenging conditions , hostile territory etc - and folk sitting at home on their couches in the UK watching Ant and Dec whilst scoffing their takeaway and 6 cans of lager - aren’t in the best place to smugly judge others and feel superior.

I think she was just acknowledging a reality - doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be challenged and criticised.

Well I certainly don't think that the allied forces thing is a fair comparison-they we're fighting a war notcreating a cycle of dependency by interfering with the economy of developing nations. If they genuinely wanted to eradicate poverty and they would be addressing the causes of poor economic development such as poor politics, lack of education both in developing nations and developed nations, lack of rule of law, lack of international frameworks for supporting development and facilitating international trade and investment etc. Instead oxfam and similar charities are building pointless wells that fall into disrepair or funding small business that can never thrive because the legal systems in those countries are inadequate as an excuse to take money from the public to pay for huge overheads. In that context yes, they should just stop. Not only are they not doing any real good, they are doing harm.

When working with the vulnerable in the UK we have a raft of measures for their protection, including professional practice guidelines with associated regulatory bodies to investigate possible abuses of power, DBS checks, and legally mandated safeguarding procedures.

It's an interesting point that we don't accord the vulnerable overseas the same level of protection.

I think it's tough because in an ideal world we'd all be able to have constructive arguments with well thought out, researched and balanced arguments.

However, in this case - whether her opinion is construed as right or wrong is irrelevant- MB is just being shouted down by the hordes. I truly believe that even if she had said something that I could agree with she would still have gotten shouted at.

It's all very well us talking about how we would want women in the public eye to be treated, or how we can successfully say the complex things that are difficult to narrow down into a narrative... the reality is that a lot of people just don't fucking care what we have to say and will get pillaged for it regardless.

But why is it tough?

I have studied the classics and I'm white and female and I don't always agree with what Mary Beard says. The same goes for other white female historians. I care little if they are feminists or not.

This from Troll sums it up for me

We are all constantly learning, show me a woman who can speak for the entire female experience and I would be surprised.

Yes. I do think there has to be a way that we can cut women - who are prepared to do some thinking, do some talking, about difficult issues - some slack.

There has to be a way - to acknowledge that sometimes our thinking is developing, imperfect, perhaps inhibited by our own experience (and that includes experience of privilege and occupancy of position of privilege), a way of acknowledging that there is more to be thought/said and directing people to sources of that thinking - that isn't destructive of women - particularly well-intentioned women.

It is a truth that being an outspoken woman, particularly on feminist issues, is actually quite a scary thing to be. It's different to being an outspoken man, it;s different to being a mouthpiece for the status quo. Something about that difficulty needs to acknowledged when we think about our responses, I think.

And in a way that doesn't mean shutting down/silencing criticism/critique.

I don't know. It's tough.

See I read the "provides a space" comment as recognising that those situations inherently provide opportunities that can be exploited by predators. And that under stress "normal" people turn a blind eye, as she described at the end about resistance fighters.

I do agree with everything you said cat btw. MB just approached it with a historical rather than feminist analysis which isn't surprising. I wish people would cut her a bit of slack.

Thecatfromjapan excellent post. Couldn’t agree more.

I really agree with that, Troll.

I agree about the infrastrutural breakdown BUT I would say that it draws perilously close to avoiding problematising male behaviour. It doesn't offer enough in the way of tools to analyse male behaviour in this situation.

Why is it that men respond in this way? - Remember, it was a woman who whistle-blew - that was a woman's response.

Could it be that certain types of men are drawn to these locations because it is easier to abuse? What can be done to safeguard against that?

What causes the 'infrastuctural breakdown'? Are NGOs the best response to that? Are there other, better, responses?

And, going back to the idea of men in situations of 'infrastructural breakdown', I would say we don't have to look far for similar situations. I'd suggest that care homes, and the societal position of working class girls in Rotherham are also examples of 'infrastructural breakdown'. I'd suggest that one thing we need to learn is how to protect the vulnerable, from men, in these situations.

And how to avoid creating organisations in which men's abusive responses are normalised and rendered invisible.

You see, I think that was what was so troubling - for me - about MB's thinking on this. It seemed to reproduce some of the thinking that enabled mens' abusive responses to be normalised, excused and rendered invisible. After all, this story arises from a woman calling this behviour out, naming it as unacceptable and abusive - and meeting with an organisational response that excused it.

So, in a way, MB repeated the organisation's response to the woman who whistleblew.

And, of course, MB reproduced a whole discourse about geographical locations - which are economically oppressed by the developed world and 'othered' - which has been extensively porblematised and interrogated, by experts, many of whom are women. That work has tended to receive little coverage - and, in fact, becoming a specialist in that area can offer hamper your job prospects! Becoming an outspoken feminist, who delivers bad news about international charity organisations, aid and NGOs is not a position that positions you as the 'fluffy' face of feminism. I'd guess that experts in this particular niche field tend to earn less, are employed more insecurely, and enjoy less coverage than women bringing 'good news'.

I don't intend any of that as an attack on MB. I really do think the focus in this needs to be on analysing how men have been enabled to do this. How they, frankly, have created the conditions to enable this. And part of that is the politics of race and the inequalities of global wealth distribution - something that I, as a white, first-world woman, gain privilege from.

I think it's actually impossible to talk about this without some analysis of the inequalities of privilege conferred by race and global geography. That is part of the dynamics of how this happened/continues to happen. And it will be a necessary part of any solution.

White M/C feminist shouldn't be an insult.

We are all constantly learning, show me a woman who can speak for the entire female experience and I would be surprised.