Should we apologise?

[orsinian]

When I left school, in the early 1980s, I worked for a while in West Germany, right at the height of the Cold War. At the time there were Europe-wide demos against Cruise and Pershing missiles. Whilst I worked in the country I came into contact with plenty of activists, and in due course (well actually quite a few years later) I started calling myself a feminist.

And in the course of the intervening years I've been pretty proud of the movement, with just a few exceptions (the SCUM manifesto for instance).

In the last few months though, particularly when talking to some new female students in Bradford, I'm finding the subject of one of the more embarrassing moments in history is coming up, more and more regularly, and it isn't referencing feminism in a positive fashion.

I'm writing about SRA - Satanic Ritual Abuse, from the late 1980s and 90s. It pretty much passed me by all that time ago, really 'cos I wasn't back in England until the mid-nineties.

But the subject won't go away, and I'm sick to death of hearing the accusation that feminism colluded with christian fundamentalism during the 'witch-hunt' years, and I'm really sick of hearing that idea from student historians and social scientists who are studying the subject in scary detail.

I don't want to start a thread about the existence or not of SRA-there's more than enough on the subject on the Web (try for instance 'feminists satanic ritual abuse' in Google).

No, what I want to ask is, how do we, a generation or two after the events of the 80s and 90s, get a line drawn under all of it? It had nothing to do with feminists of my age and those who followed.

In Germany, I remember that young Germans hated being associated with a generation who had made their mistakes 30-odd years ago previously. If mistakes were made during the SRA years, why should later feminists be expected to be associated with those errors?

I know its a distasteful subject, and I know it stirs emotions. If you think though it will remain just a background hum, then you will be sadly mistaken. The subject, judging by the stuff on the Web, isn't going to go away anytime soon.

I know absolutely nothing about this SRA, but google isn't really telling me much either. One feminist wrote something about an issue that turned out to be a load of hokum? Is that the sum of it?

FWIW in all the experiences I have of feminism/feminists being slagged off I have never hear this referred to.

And of course "we" shouldn't apologise. Should anti-racism campaigners colectively apologise for a wrong article written by one of their allies a long time ago?

Can you explain a bit more?

I vaguely remember the term, but it's not clear to me, even after reading the Wikipedia entry, whether the feminists of that day are being accused of having done the abuse, or of having falsely accused innocent people of having done it.

If someone brought this up now, you could say "That's ancient history, and a lot of people said a lot of foolish things, but here and now the issues are..."

I remember the satanic panic but I don't actually remember much feminist involvement at all (on either side) It was mostly publicity hounds, inexperienced social workers and rightwing bandwagon-jumpers causing all the problems.

No, dittany, the OP, didn't just liken feminists to Nazi's, unless, you are considering all Germans Nazis.

Eh?

This sounds like a case of history being re-written to me.

Feminists were not the main driving force behind the satanic abuse hysteria.

I simply don't understand the premise of the thread. Where is this idea coming from, that the satanic abuse hysteria was all the fault of feminists?

I expect feminists are responsible for Chernobyl as well.

I am still really confused - I need the OP to explain more.

I think I have once or twice seen the word 'feminist' associated with the Satanic ritual abuse panic (eg 'feminist social workers') but not in anything serious, just where people are using it as a stick to beat feminists with - you know, the kind of people that use the word 'feminazi'.
I daresay some of the social workers involved were feminists but I'm not sure what that proves. If people now are using it as a way to discredit feminism that seems to me to say more about the way people try to discredit feminism than about feminism itself.

so I want to know who these students are and whether they're getting all their info off dodgy sites on the internet. Or if there are social scientists out there doing serious peer-reviewed research into this issue and if so can the OP link please so we can have a look and see what the agenda is?

that seems to be quite a good analogy!
the difference being that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were merely a forgery AFAIK whereas the SCUM manifesto was a joke/parody.
I've just been looking at it and it is so obviously a parody (the Wiki article on the author manages to avoid mentioning that ; the one on the manifesto itself phrases it as if there is serious academic debate about it....)

Looking at the Wiki info re SRA, it doesn't say much re feminism. It says...
"Some feminist critics of the SRA diagnoses maintained that, in the course of attempting to purge society of evil, the panic of the 1980s and 1990s obscured real child abuse issues, a concern echoed by Gary Clapton.[56] In England the SRA panic diverted resources and attention from proven cases of abuse and resulted in a hierarchy of abuse in which SRA was the most serious form of abuse, with physical and sexual abuse being minimized, marginalized and "mere" physical abuse no longer worthy of intervention."

I don't really know what the OP's talking about - or what it's got to do with Germany.

Sounds like it's a load of bollocks then :o

Well it's nice to get that cleared up. TBH that was my first reaction but was hesitant to jump in as ignorant of the whole issue.

To answer the OP, YES we should definitely apologise, in fact send flowers, to everyone else on planet earth.

I read Phillip Jenkins 'Intimate Enemies' years ago, but lent it out and never got it back. It's probably the authoritative text on the subject for the events in the UK.

Was it a major event? Yep. For a few years in the 1990's it dominated the press. I can remember Esther Rantzen getting a bit heated about it. I'm old enough to remember it, and I wasn't just out of school.

It pretty much finished with the Rochdale business in the early 90s, and there was a brief resurgence in Scotland in 2003. Bit embarrassing to mention, but the mad-loony branch of the David Icke lot still take it as read it exists.

Regrettably, particularly in the US, some feminists, notably Gloria Steinham, did briefly ally themselves to the far-right christian fundamentalist cause, such was the nature of the times I think. I reckon it was more a sign of the times rather than a deep-seated flaw in feminism.

Here in the UK, unfortunately one particular journalist who described herself as feminist (I don't think she does anymore), did very much the same. Although she got a lot of airplay and column inches, she didn't attract too many more to her bizarre claims.

But I don't think an apology is warranted; yes, feminism as a body should have perhaps challenged some of the enthusiasts for the false allegations, particularly those in the 'States who were anti-abortion and all for a return to witch-burning (such as the TV evangelist Bob Larson). It's not a natural association - fundamentalists and feminists, but for a while the same material was coming from both sides and it left a sour taste in the mouths of us at the time.

I think because of the Internet it would be harder for the same 'moral panic' to start-up again.

Does it get mentioned? Yep. Unfortunately it's a part of modern British history and there are lots of books and journal papers on the subject still around, such as Jenkins, and from Mary De Young. One particular feminist journalist, Debbie Nathan, helped kill off the obsessions. I've only read bits from her book Satan's Silence, but they were pretty disturbing (US-related). I was at a pub quiz last year and there was a bloody question on the subject!

The particular journalist in the UK who is most associated with it still writes for The Guardian, and comments on her online articles almost always include disparaging remarks about her involvement in the issues.

It doesn't help that some authorities on the subject keep on mentioning how the feminist community of earlier times, took part in the issues. It isn't hard to find material on the subject (the Wiki is pretty mild compared to some sites).

Ritual abuse, however, throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s ritual abuse was one of the few issues in which premillenial fundamentalist Christians could not only find common ground with feminists who were normally their mortal enemies, but also cooperate on a day to day basis. (Interrelated Moral Panics and Counter-panics: The Cult Brainwashing Panic and The False Memory/Ritual Abuse Moral Panic by Martin H. Katchen)

(but this was about the US, not the UK)

Not sure I liked the analogy with Germany, but that is accurate to a limited degree; why should previous generations have to atone for the blunders and errors of the past?

meant to say 'later generations have to atone for the...'

alliances with Christian fundamentalists are not as far-fetched as all that - they're on the same side as us re quite a lot of things if you think about it. (Even if they are drastically different on others.)
If feminists weren't prepared to ally with religious people against lap-dancing clubs and the proliferation of porn they'd be missing a trick, for instance.

did you purposefully not mention the name of the journalist?

Oh there are some feminists who are happy to hang out with the religious right in the interests of policing and condeming other people's sexual behaviour so there probably were a few feminists who did help the satanic panic along. Thing is, though, feminists don't all always agree with each other. Some feminists are fucking idiots. But that doesn;t mean other feminists are responsible for the idiots or have to support them despite their idiocy.

It was Bea Campbell.
I think it is not the fact that they were feminists that is important or sifgnificant, but the fact that they were Marxists. The majority of feminists would not have agreed with them.

www.saff.ukhq.co.uk/jjones.htm

www.saff.ukhq.co.uk/shieldfl.htm

The communists believe in the destruction of the family and of private property. Right-wing Christian groups believe in supporting the individual and the family against the state, and are often against a socialist state which interferes in family life. In America, for instance, they are against the increasing power of social workers. I can't remember what happened at the time, but usually Church organisations are on the side of the parents and against a state witch-hunt.

In fact the article states that it was the Daily Mail, alone among British newspapers, who were on the side of the parents. The right-wing is usually anti these type of moral panics.

I think the Mail was coming at it from the viewpoint of 'how dare anyone interfere with a father's right to do whatever he wants with his children' though. And a lot of Christian rightwingers believed in the Satanic Panic because they could blame it on porn, feminism, video nastys and heavy rock music.