Women policing women

Going back to this;

I have a feeling this is why women are more likely to be religiously observant too, but that may be a different conversation. However I instinctively think it all feeds from the same conditioning, women "to be seen to be" XXX in order to compete with other women.

I think men have to ‘be seen to be’ women actually have to use their lives to actually live things in a way men don’t.

All the ‘what happens in Vegas stays in vegas’ stuff etc etc.

I cannot count the number of men who live their lives on a ‘if no-one saw it didn’t happen’ or ‘what they don’t know won’t hurt them’ basis.

Women consistently have to prove themselves through the ways they actually live and are held to consistently higher standards and that is a tool of oppression which it is tempting to adopt because they are the rules women are playing by in public and in private.

Indeed not offred, but then that's not quite what you were saying in the post I quoted. Now if you weren't referring to surnames at all on that specific point there then obviously this isn't pertinent, but if you were, the claim about material conditions is going to require some evidence.

No worries posie.

I think another point that's interesting and that hasn't fully been covered yet is that women, often whilst identifying and presenting as feminist, pro female empowerment etc, will sometimes counter any criticism of them or their attitudes by policing the responses for not being sufficiently pro-women. So we saw that from some of the Instamums when criticised recently, for example. They tried to police attempts to police them. We also sometimes see it in response to women talking about whether other women's actions are feminist, are causing detriment to other women. Saying that women are trying to police other women is in itself sometimes an attempt at policing.

None of this is to say the discussion isn't an important one btw, or that this is what you're doing here OP, just to point out that women identifying other women as policing can be policing in itself. This is all true of men on the left in general too, of course, but like others in this forum I am more interested in women.

I don’t know re men and violence and disagreement.

I think it would probably depend on violence being seen as a ‘bad thing’ culturally by men.

Academics fearing violence? No, I think that is ridiculous TBH. Their economic and cultural class puts them outside the majority of male on male violence and they suffer from the same problems re dismaying at the way other groups of lower class men communicate (aggressively, without the language of the establishment).

For lower class men violence is not always about disagreement or disapproval, it’s often about communication, bonding and status.

Women are socialised to not be violent. No woman wants to be bottom of the pile because women as a group are already lower status than men and so there is more reason to push other women down.

Princess - It doesn’t take much thought to understand that there are social and economic consequences re name choices relative to cultural expectations for women. I don’t think anybody else is denying that.

I see two things going on.

There's the fairly sensible and justified need for caution and care about fragile feminist gains such as women's refuges with the sword of Damacles hanging over them, ready to lose funding. Better have someone speaking about that who isn't just performing an intellectual exercise but is mindful that one wrong word could lead to that refuge closing and women and kids possibly getting killed. Better distance yourself rather than be brought into disrepute

On the other hand there is misogyny pure and simple. Hating and hurting women feels as good for women as it does for men. Silencing and shunning women is a smug, satisfying power trip for people who dont have much other power in their lives. In other words- they are simply being cunts.

Some people in the second category are so up themselves they think they belong in the first. But actually they are just double cunts.

She's the one that mentioned surnames posie, and you'll note that I specifically addressed the words she wrote here on this thread.

I'm sure it's discussed in the programme on the BBC Offred As I recall, GG doesn't see herself as particularly feminist.

Larry’s post is exactly why I strongly feel any move by feminists to hold women to account for their personal and private lives is unhelpful.

It’s buying into ‘live your beliefs or they can’t be that important’ that directly undermines feminism by imagining women are free to do that in the first place.

Even if it is not intended to do that. That is the context in which it is happening and it enables and empowers men to dismiss feminism in a variety of ways.

People want to claim that somehow their choices are more feminist than other choices when in reality all that is going on is that their material conditions are better than other women’s or their ideology is different.

You appear to be talking about the surname discussion here Offred, as you made that point a number of times on the recent threads. For the part about material conditions to be true, women who keep their names on marriage would have to enjoy better material conditions than women who don't. That's quite a claim. Do you have any evidence at all for this? Given that women from some communities with very high marriage and poverty rates such as the Somali and Bangladeshi communities typically keep their own names, one wonders.

And the fact that there's often different ideology going on here is kind of the point!

I think the idea that you can divorce your private life from your views is just saying ‘it is ok to be a hypocrite’.

Clearly no one can live a perfect life all the time but a feminist posting here all day because her husband is earning big bucks, a champagne socialist or, best of all, a Question Time panel extolling comprehensive schools whilst almost to a man/woman choosing private for their own children are hypocrites. It is a good old fashioned word which still bites.

If you don’t live by your views they are clearly not strong views.

GG is an individualist libertarian. This is why she has become a feminist icon and why she has been so useful.

Precisely because patriarchy oppresses women through authoritarianism and by making them responsible and accountable in every aspect of their lives.

I don’t even know whether GG would call herself ‘a feminist’ TBH. Has she ever called herself a feminist?

Yes, and I sometimes sense with GG that she's taken aback when others get so angry with her because they disagree. She's coming from intellectual background where (most) people learn how to argue and disagree about ideas without it becoming personal and recriminatory.

They plough through the hard soil of habitual thought, turning it over, oxygenating it. Hopefully creating the right conditions for some new ideas.

This is an excellent way of putting it.

I also think we are in a febrile environment at the moment and I think we all need to beware of throwing sisters - even the sisters we can't stand or whose opinions we despise - under a bus that is currently made up of doxxing, punching, terrifying men with political power.

The why and the how is the only important part IMO.

@therealposieparker

really good question.

I have also been wondering whether Greer's libertarian background helped her stay free of this.

I think men do do it to men as well within organisations that have a higher purpose such as churches, the Labour movement and charities. There is a very different flavour to their disputes.

I like meaty conversations. I don't care if you completely disagree I just like to know why and how.... I probably come across as argumentative.

I think GG likes them too. I get the sense that opinionated people in the public domain like GG are not saying ' this is the final word' more that 'this assumption needs to be questioned'. They plough through the hard soil of habitual thought, turning it over, oxygenating it. Hopefully creating the right conditions for some new ideas.

"she's quite the misandrist."

Define, please.

Where have you seen this happening?

The semi-regular libfem versus radfems threads are particularly vicious, though nothing quite matches the brutal gang-up on poor Laurie Penny. I actually felt sorry for her, and she's quite the misandrist. Now my number one go-to link when people talk about polite debate amongst feminists.

"The petty point scoring that goes on to try to prove that one form of female lifestyle is more feminist (and therefore has the moral high ground over everything) than another is appalling"

Where have you seen this happening?

Every single time a woman uses status as ‘a feminist’ to apply standards re what is feminist or what isn’t to another woman’s choices regarding her private life this is happening and it is not the same as critiquing the context in which the choices are made. It actually makes the choices personal in a way that divorces of them of context.

Whether it is intended or not.

It is a level of personalisation that is profoundly unhelpful IMO.

Make your own negotiations re what is important to you and what your material conditions allow you to do or not but don’t apply standards to other women as though there can be any ‘objectively feminist’ choice about a personal life when every choice still involves negotiation with patriarchy to some degree.

The problem is not that more women don’t choose whatever name or more women don’t choose to be political lesbians or more women don’t choose cohabiting rather than marriage or more women don’t choose not to have DC.

The problem is that all women’s choices regarding their personal lives are public in a way men’s are not and they all involve negotiations with patriarchy and therefore choice is indicative of relative privilege, cultural capital or ideology.

All women can do without having their personal lives held up as accountable to standards of feminism by feminists themselves. That’s one of the ways the patriarchy works.