Women policing women

The thread you mention also contained several attempts to police women for naming choices that other women have made that have harmed them as anti-feminist. Vanishingly little analysis of that, too...

It is women who are making it harder, yes. If all women were to eg adopt one title in the same way that Frau and Madame are used in some countries, there could be a neutral title available for me to use in a way that there isn't now. It's literally the choices of other women that are preventing me from having mine. In the same way that the choices of women like me would be preventing those who like to be called Mrs Husbandsname and have that be an unremarkable choice from having theirs, if enough of us did it. The fact that women make particular choices in the context of patriarchal oppression doesn't mean that those choices don't impact on me, maybe harm me. It means they weren't the source of course, but that's not the same thing.

The problem here is that you're not accepting that sometimes women use agency, when we have it which we often don't, to do things that can be harmful to other women. It's crucial we can name that as anti-feminist.

And yes, sometimes it does mean that in practice class analysis is lost. Like on the surname thread.

A woman experienced a man using feminism to dominate, shame and put her down. She came to feminism chat and was then shamed for her choice not being objectively feminist.

The man escaped criticism beyond ‘he’s a dick but I agree with his sentiment’

There was vanishingly little analysis of the power dynamic behind ‘not a good feminist’ coming from said man.

That’s a perfect example of positioning women and their individual choices as your enemy rather than the patriarchal system which is the source of the oppression of women IMO.

It’s not women who have made it hard for you to have the name you want is it?

Yes I can see that you'd very much like to get away from it offred, but so far the explanations why have not been at all persuasive.

Really, one always wonders whether someone trying to play down the political-ness of the personal is doing it because they don't like it being pointed out that some choices they have made are not feminist and may not have helped other women. Surname changes is a particularly common one for this, there's real resistance from some quarters to women speaking about the impact that other women's individual decisions have had on them. Whenever I point out on here that other women choosing to be Mrs Husbandsname makes it harder for me to have my choice of being Ms Myname and that actually be neutral like men get, I'm invariably met with howls of outrage and refusal to see the point. Personally I'm quite happy to state that I have made and may well make in the future choices that are objectively unfeminist, surname just isn't one of them.

None of this means we don't or can't place sufficient emphasis on class analysis or of the wider context or men's behaviour either. That's a strawman. The fact is that they all matter.

The personal is political does not mean ‘women can change things by making different choices’ that’s a liberal feminist interpretation of it that began during the second wave.

It does not work both ways. The personal is the concern of the political. I do not interpret it to mean either that the personal is a means for political change or that the political takes priority over personal material reality.

I used the word concerned quite deliberately BTW in the context of this thread about policing.

The difference is class analysis or scrutiny over individual choices.

Considering personal choices within the context of material conditions and the improvement of women’s status is not the same as women telling a woman the choice she has made is ‘anti feminist’.

My point is, I would very much like to get away from the idea that all those things are ‘feminist or not’ when it is being applied to women by other women.

I don’t think feminism is ever about what decisions an individual woman makes re her own clothes, make up, name, shoes, relationships, reproduction etc etc

Feminism is found in acts that improve the material conditions of all women IMO.

Because individual choices are not where feminism is concerned.

See there's where you're going wrong. Because as the personal is political, feminism has to consider individual choices: not just the context in which they are made but also the impact they have. We cannot do otherwise. We miss part of the picture otherwise. Your use of the term focus makes it sound like you think this must inevitably lead to less attention being paid to the bigger picture, but that is not the case at all. The picture can't be whole if it doesn't include the ability to have assessments of the decisions individual women make.

I agree about landgrabs barracker. I'd suggest that's a reason why at least some feminists have been supportive of trans activism: because of the people who don't like it.

There is this rigidity of mindset that I see:

If you say something I vehemently disagree with, I am duty bound to reject you, your thoughts, your tenets, your beliefs and everything about you, lest I be tarred with the brush of association.

All or nothing.
No room for dissent in any view.

Why the hell we can't say, "Crikey, I'm in full agreement with you on this, however disagree completely with your stance on that" I don't know.

But I do know that this "one strike and you're out" has led to terrifying totalitarianism. It's why labour supporters are able to turn a blind eye to the misogyny, because to reject one part of the culture is to be outcast.

And it leads the door wide open to allowing your opponents to make a landgrab for the truth, leaving you 'honour bound' to take the opposing position in everything.

This is how we've ended up with the right wing acknowledging biology, leaving the left wing feeling compelled to take the opposite stance.

I hate you, so I have to take the opposing view to you in all things.

We are letting our enemies have the monopoly on truth, for no reason other than they got there first, and they have a vested interest in manipulating us to take the opposite stance.

For the record, my opinion is that Greer has done some powerful and brilliant stuff, and some jawdroppingly stupid shit too.

We all have feet of clay.

Because individual choices are not where feminism is concerned.

It’s the structural inequality.

Somehow we are meant to believe that judging other women’s choices against standards of feminism, even when it has a caveat of ‘it’s ok not to do feminism in everything’, is the work of feminism?

How does focusing in on individual women’s choices and informing them the choice they made is not a feminist one help to move society away from judging individual women to be responsible for the collective?

I have noticed this recently on Twitter. You’re only allowed to be a feminist if you’re perfect. Unfortunately no one is so there will be no feminists left.

This is my point re ‘objectively feminist’. How can a negotiation of an experience of oppression be considered ‘objectively feminist’ or not? Why would this even be a consideration re someone’s personal life?

Because this forced communality, if you like, makes the personal political. But how exactly would this make choices that, for example, perpetrate chattel customs and also make it more likely that women who don't perpetrate those customs will draw negative attention to themselves, not be able to be considered objectively feminist or not?

So yes it's basically impossible to be a woman in our society and not make some compromises with patriarchy. We've all done it. But it seems rather a leap to say that because of this, it isn't possible for certain actions to be objectively feminist or not. There's a bridging piece of that argument missing. One can certainly be a feminist and still have made non feminist choices, of course, but that is different.

Yes exactly permission. So if a woman is the first woman to head a particular department or whatever and fucks up, whether we like it or not other women are going to be associated with her failure in some eyes. In a way that being a white middle class man who fucked up wouldn't be: there'd be nobody seriously suggesting that his failure means it would be a good idea not to hire people like him in the future. A man who fucked up who was black, perhaps, or disabled, or other particular characteristics might experience the same... but it would be because of being black, not because of being a male. A woman with another of those characteristics would experience both. You're not the person who fucked up, you're the woman, or the disabled bloke, or the foreign one.

Or to take another completely different example, there now appear to be people in the mainstream media giving some credence to the idea that it's to be expected that if lots of women refuse to consider a particular man for sex, that man might end up going and shooting some unconnected women because of the women who turned him down.

Basically we all get thrown in together a lot whether we like this or not. Where all else is equal it's harder for a woman to disassociate herself from the actions of another woman than it is for a man to, I think. And I reckon a lot of us know that.

As a little girl I found girls really difficult in this regard and played mostly with boys. A more straight forward thing. I found girls dishonest with the bitching behind your back , boys didn't do it.... they would relentlessly take the piss to your face. I thought the was I felt about women would disappear but then it continued throughout my early working life and into motherhood. But I really have found it the absolute worst in feminist groups. They also practice calling out and silencing.... the attacks are really vicious.

I found it fascinating to learn that GG was brought up by a mother she now views as Autistic. The spectrum is so broad it did make me wonder if GG along with many women who struggle with the female social rules you describe above, are also autistic.

I think as well it's sort of linked to the fact that whenever women, and also members of most marginalised groups do something, we're not just doing it ourselves, we're also seen as doing it as representatives of the group. It obviously shouldn't be that way but it is. There's a sort of forced communal-ness, if you like? In a way that there isn't for men.

This is my point re ‘objectively feminist’. How can a negotiation of an experience of oppression be considered ‘objectively feminist’ or not? Why would this even be a consideration re someone’s personal life?

(But point taken - black men, working class men etc, would know the feeling).

Princess - I’m not sure what you are asking for evidence of TBH. If surname choices, which I was using as an example re the accountability of women’s personal choices to patriarchy/feminism because it has come up here a few times in different guises recently, do not result in social or economic consequences when women go against expectations then surely it undermines any idea that surname choices have anything to do with feminism at all?

There are a few threads where people talk about the consequences they have experienced. I could write a massive post about class differences and the importance of signalling belonging and how this changes depending on a variety of interactions between different types of class but what’s the point?

Presumably you understand that each individual women is not only going to be affected by the fact she is a woman?

It’s not about surnames is it. Surnames is one (recent) example of feminists on here employing the tactics, as I see it, of identity politics and patriarchy to shame women.

Yes true princess.

That's what makes it so hard to be the first woman to do anything. All eyes are on you as you make your first shaky steps and take your first undignified tumble. Men never have that kind of scrutiny.

I think as well it's sort of linked to the fact that whenever women, and also members of most marginalised groups do something, we're not just doing it ourselves, we're also seen as doing it as representatives of the group. It obviously shouldn't be that way but it is. There's a sort of forced communal-ness, if you like? In a way that there isn't for men.

Girls are raised to have 'higher standards' though aren't they? Boys will be boys but girls will be a disgusting, unforgivable stain on humanity.

Double standards.

women identifying other women as policing can be policing in itself.

Indeed. That's why I don't consider it 'calling out' to point out hypocrisy or whatever and to argue the toss. It's this permanent mark branded upon one for having 'once said or once done the "wrong" thing, therefore one is a terrible person who must be excommunicated', that is problematic.

Arguing is okay - but let people have right of reply ffs.