Being "empowered" by Emma Watson

If she gave a shit about women and feminism she’d be using her profile to do something like stand outside Leeds Civic Hall, shouting about the managed zone of paid rape with impunity.

Are we really going to accept any lesson in feminism from someone who comes out with this unfettered tripe?

“If you want to run for Prime Minister, you can.”

Is that in flip flops or heels 🤔 and would it help if I was AMAB?

I often think how wonderful it is that I don't want to run for Prime Minister. As that's not really how it works in the UK system, I'd be facing so much disappointment.

I do feel very powerful in my footwear and hair removal choices, though. I mostly wear brogues and only shave my toes when the hair on them starts snagging when I run.

She's a dimwit. She has no idea about the lives of normal women. Her whole life has been a bubble of privilege, celebrity and unearned status (why does the UN make these know-nothings ambassadors?), all facilitated by a woman whom she now reviles and bullies via social media. Because of her status, she can afford to throw away rights that normal women need (and which she probably never will) and elevate the needs of men. She is a disgusting human being.

So tame. Who cares about shoes???!!

She wants to empower us to 'run for prime minister'? She'll need to put a different electoral system in place first, then, won't she?

Lifted from some US document and tweaked, if I'm not mistaken. Fallen at the first hurdle.

I don't have much time for EW and her comment was fairly shallow.

I think Bindel is being unfair though and maybe deliberately so. I don't think Watson means anything like "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". I think her intent is to support policies that would, for example, give more choices to a woman stuck in an 11th floor flat with her three kids. Be it free education, social assistance, daycare, whatever.

Without something more specific than "empower women" it's not that useful a statement, and there are lots of questions about any policy approach. The stuff about armpits is naive, as if people just aren't affected by social norms. The idea of freedom being about choice can be challenged on a basic level, too.

But Bindel is leaping to an interpretation which I don't think she would if someone else said it was important to empower women.

She should stick to acting. Badly.

And that's lib feminism summed up nicely. Let's not examine the environment where these "choices" are made.