There’s an article by Laura Bates in the Daily Mail today. In it she bewails the fact that when she goes to talk in schools, teenage boys are increasingly misogynistic and disbelieving. She puts this down to online radicalisation in terms of exposure to incels, MRAs, gaming, etc (which I agree with, as far as it goes).
What has left me so annoyed, though, is that she utterly fails to recognise that the TWAW mantra is part of this. Women, actual women, have been marginalised. We’re called uterus havers & people who menstruate. Our fears of male violence are belittled and sneered at. Our wish for the dignity & privacy of single sex spaces has been labelled ‘transphobic’. We’re shouted down when we try to discuss our concerns. This forum even is patrolled by people who want to stop us discussing women’s safety and dignity & privacy & the need for single sex spaces.
And as far as I know Everyday Sexism has been entirely on board with this roll back of rights! It has consistently supported the idea that biological males are women, in some mysterious unbiological way, and need the support of feminism. Which brings with it all the issues outlined above. Loss of privacy dignity & safety. Loss of our role as women. Loss of freedom to argue for our rights. Men in women’s prisons & sports. Inability to measure the sexual pay gap. Inability to measure male rates of sexual assault. Loss of feminism as a woman focused movement.
The TWAW mantra is part of exactly the rising misogyny Laura describes in her article. Not just a part- it’s a huge, integral part. A fundamental undermining of the concept of ‘woman’ on which so many of our rights depend. It’s both a symptom and a cause of misogyny and the MRA movement. And yet she’s utterly blind to it. She can’t see the misogyny, and the threat to women, in a movement she has supported. Why?