clouding male patterned criminality disadvantages all of us
Dr Julia Long spoke about this & therefore the importance of naming men in 2017 WNTT speech following the assault of Maria Maclachlan by T Wolf at Speakers' Corner.
(transcribed by PencilsInSpace)
extract:
"So why then is it important to make this distinction between sex and gender and why is it important to name men as men? Naming men as man was such a vital part of the women's liberation movement and feminist scholarship back in those early days. There were lots of books that had 'silence' in the title or essays that had 'silence' in the title because it was about women breaking the silences of our own lives and naming who was doing what to whom, and then seeing that there were patterns of this and that is how feminist theory emerged. So it's really crucial to name men as men because that is how we develop an understanding and an analysis of patriarchy. That's how. If we can't name men as men then we can't name patterns of male violence, we can't name who is in control.
So naming men as men, then, enables us to answer these kinds of questions: Who controls economic, social, political and cultural systems and institutions? In whose hands does this kind of economic and social and political power lay? Well, if we can name men as men then we can see exactly where it lies. And it also helps us to answer the question, who's doing what to whom? And so again, over decades, feminists have answered that question in terms of looking at what we know women are subjected to under patriarchal power relations between women and men: femicide, female infanticide, sex-selective abortion, female genital mutilation, rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, poverty, economic disadvantage, prostitution, pornography, discrimination, objectification - I'm thinking here in addition to all the sex industry, but just the normalised objectification of high heels and make up and cosmetic surgery and all of this stuff - illiteracy - hugely more of the world's poor and illiterate are women rather than men - denial of reproductive rights, exploitation of reproductive and domestic labour ... I mean that was just a kind of quick list off the top of my head. Also, historically we can think about foot-binding, and I think we need to think about things like chest binding in relation to these factors, and also of course, witch-burning, and we've got a nice little example [referring to protesters outside chanting 'burn it down']... fortunately, touch wood, they haven't gone quite that far yet, but in terms of 'kill all TERFs' I think there is certainly echoes of former persecution of women, in terms of the current ... oh, it's gone a bit quiet there ... in terms of the current persecution by our friends outside." (continues)
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