Statue to honour Wollstonecraft

Lol at that dailydot article - "it offers a nude, seemingly cisgender woman"

did you ASK the statue how she/they identifies? How can one fathom the inner feels and soul of a minute aluminium Barbie doll?

You do realise that everyone responsible for this is female?

Why does that matter? So is Ghislaine Maxwell. Women can be awful, be sexist too, make bad decisions and be wrong.

Being a woman doesn't mean you automatically put the best interests of all women and little girls first. The assumption that it does may well have been partly where this went wrong. I am truly astounded no-one (male or female) saw the mock ups of this statue and didn't realise how offensive it was.

[quote Gingernaut]Now it's a trans rights issue.

Hold on to your blood pressure.

www.dailydot.com/irl/mary-wollstonecraft-terf-statue/?fbclid=IwAR16idP-7e_Pz0d_9a4fpMqegNYALTiZFQJa9jQ2I2R-M7ozitjRwWKf8eQ[/quote]
The absolute irony of white men talking about 'white women's anger'. Undermining and gaslighting women for their anger and hysteria is what men have always done. You've got to give them some credit for the sheer brass neck it takes to turn women into the oppressors.

This is now being discussed on Woman's Hour. I don't think they're going to be kind.

For years people asked when I was going to have a baby and then once I had them I was discriminated against

Yes, this is my experience too. I suffered infertility too Lionel for many, many years (my sympathies as I know how shit it is) and at the time I felt that I was a non-person because I couldn't do the one thing women were supposed to be able to do.

I thought once I was a mother things would improve but no. I realised how little that mothering is valued and how you are reduced to 'only' that. Just like mumsnet is derided and dismissed because it's 'only' a load of mums.

Basically, misogyny lives and women are still seen as barely human by many. Reduced either entirely to one biological function, or dismissed as the clothes and make-up we're supposed to wear. So much discomfort if we can't be neatly labelled and put in a box.

Which is why the Wollstonecraft statue is so awful. In so many spheres women are reduced to something without depth, without inner lives, without minds of their own, without complexity. And this statue kind of sums that attitude up really. How about actually reflecting the extensive writings of Wollstonecraft - their depth breath and influence? Celebrating the utterly radical, independent free thinker she was - how unique in her time? Nah, a young nude body that isn't even that female really but is somehow supposed to be 'everywoman'.

My response to that is - FUCK OFF. An insult to women everywhere but especially Wollstonecraft herself.

Isn’t everything though?

Now it's a trans rights issue.

Hold on to your blood pressure.

www.dailydot.com/irl/mary-wollstonecraft-terf-statue/?fbclid=IwAR16idP-7e_Pz0d_9a4fpMqegNYALTiZFQJa9jQ2I2R-M7ozitjRwWKf8eQ

What makes me even sadder is the idea of little girls seeing this "statue to a feminist icon". What message will they take from this? Once again women are reduced to their bodies and their bodies are public property, for anyone's consumption

You do realise that everyone responsible for this is female?

Is there a petition to get rid of the monstrosity yet?

It is often actively denigrated and discriminated against by employers or others who want women to be active economic producers all their lives so as to be active consumers in society all their lives

It's comments like that which produce negative responses to feminism. Employers don't like employees getting pregnant because it's extremely inconvenient and costs money.

Of course it has to be dealt with and will be dealt and enhanced maternity pay will be paid and jobs will be kept open until the employee eventually decides they aren't coming back at all or they will be coming back but only part-time, on days that suit them. All of which is also inconvenient but there really isn't the great , big, evil plotting you seem to imagine.

"the graphic modelling of her pubic hair resembles half a cabbage"

that's made my day. I feel ready to settle down to work now.

I've reactivated my MN account just to talk about this statue. I know it's trivial in the grand scheme of things but for some reason it's really got to me. The idea of men standing around a naked, silver Barbie (with perfect tits and a big bush) "in honour of Wollstonecraft" makes me feel so sad. Every time I see a man on Twitter say "well actually I quite like it" I feel enraged. Of course you like it! I look and it and I feel objectified and dehumanised.

What makes me even sadder is the idea of little girls seeing this "statue to a feminist icon". What message will they take from this? Once again women are reduced to their bodies and their bodies are public property, for anyone's consumption.

I'm trying to find some sort of positive in all this. My hope is that maybe this can become a talking point about why this absolutely is not feminism and why we still have a long way to go. Also major kudos to the woman who knitted the vest and made the sign, that really made me smile.

[quote littlbrowndog]Another article in the mail

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8940193/A-new-statue-celebrating-Mary-Wollstonecraft-evokes-NONE-brilliance-rages-BEL-MOONEY.html[/quote]
Well, at least there's some good informative writing about MW coming out of this debacle.

Just seen your response too @ChattyLion thank you too for being kind, I expected some shitty responses. I see what you’re saying and understand.

Hambling's quote "She told the Evening Standard: 'She's everywoman and clothes would have restricted her. Statues in historic costume look like they belong to history because of their clothes. It's crucial that she is 'now'

Clothes maketh the man but restrictith the woman, apparently.

Thank you @HecatesCats I understand what you’re saying. I guess damned if you don’t damned if you do.

So how does this work evoke a complicated, contradictory woman who defied convention yet suffered the ordinary longing and pain of other women?
The answer is — it does not. It is that fact that bothers me as much as the nakedness of the statue.

Yes Bel Mooney. Thanks Littl

As if our value is to be a mother, but mothers aren't valued. If that makes sense?

Yes, I feel that. For years people asked when I was going to have a baby and then once I had them I was discriminated against.

Another article in the mail

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8940193/A-new-statue-celebrating-Mary-Wollstonecraft-evokes-NONE-brilliance-rages-BEL-MOONEY.html

Hecate said it all, but to you Lionel.
My take is the same- female fertility is valued and so it is public property for enquiry which is horrible. And also true that the actual day to day doing of mothering, regardless of how you made your family, is grossly undervalued as a contribution to society. It is often actively denigrated and discriminated against by employers or others who want women to be active economic producers all their lives so as to be active consumers in society all their lives. We’re also expected to be nubile and sexually available and useful to men in other ways while mothering and some people see kids and mothering as a serious block to all of that so they want to make things difficult for mothers on principle as a kind of wierd punishment. Not very cheery but it is true in my experience.

As if our value is to be a mother, but mothers aren't valued. If that makes sense?

I experienced the same Lionel and I understand. I'm sorry about your struggles . I would say both are true. In that women feel societal pressure to have kids, but once they've had them they experience indifference to their needs in terms of provision and, in my case, sometimes hostility in the work place. Take breastfeeding, I experienced some downright hostility to do that in public, in work my value as an employee was viewed differently, provision to support continued working is expensive and patchy at best. There are many other things I could highlight just wanted to briefly respond. There are also many wonderful things about motherhood that deserve to be celebrated and aren't and I find there's a tendency to lump 'mums' together in a pejorative sense, you see it with reactions to Mumsnet on social.

Being a mother is not something we really seem to value in our culture

Really? I feel that is all our culture values about women. Since I was 14 I’ve been asked about children. It’s assumed women want and will have children and still frowned upon if you don’t or can’t. As a woman in my 30s who is having fertility struggles I feel this every day, that my value is whether I have children or not and everything else I achieve in my life is secondary.

TRAs are claiming Wollstonecroft believed transwomen were women because of a passage in her 'Vindication of the Rights of Women' in which she included Madame d'Eon, a man who presented as a woman in the later part of his life, in her list of exceptional women.

In fact it's very unlikely that Wollstonecroft knew he was a man. If she had known his history - that he'd been given male education and socialisation, and had presented as male until well into middle age - it would have undermined her argument that some girls transcend female socialisation to become powerful women.