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.

The Daily Mail doesn't believe in a 'father's right to do whatever he wants with his children'.

Have you got any links showing that Christian rightwingers believed in the Satanic panic? If they did, then they would have been conned by the majority of the media, who are nearly all left of centre. The Daily Mail never believed it and the Mail represents the majority of right-wing citizens. If you follow American politics, you will see that many right-wingers believe that these scares are deliberately created by left-wing forces.

Well, actually Rosie Waterhouse of The Independent was probably the leading journalist who exposed the events of those years. Fiona Barton of the Daily Mail did her bit too. A strange mix of left and right.

Some publications, particularly Marxism Today, didn't come out of the events of those years too well; in 1991 it went into receivership after publishing some pro-SRA articles, though it isn't certain if that hastened its failure.

The daycare satanic abuse myth in the US was indeed promoted initially by right-wing 'Religious Right' campaigners, concerned that the structure of the family unit was changing markedly (with women now regularly entering full-time work). It became even more perplexing that some feminists supported the 'moral panic' that transpired, when the daycare centers were doing the very thing that women with children had campaigned-for.

It took a few more years for the panic to reach UK shores, and it was much more concerned with allegations of witchcraft and satanism that had roots going back to the 17th century. Our version of SRA was pretty different to the US.

I guess for anyone born after 1973 all this is going to sound really weird! Born in 1973 you'd be 15 when it all started in the UK and probably starting to take a bit of interest in the news.

It's my understanding that the initial panic in the US was fuelled by rightwingers who wanted to scare women off using daycare ie get back in the home rather than having careers.

has anyone got any links about the US rightwingers who started the panic? I would like to see who they were, because they are not representative of the right.

Claig here

I'm a bit confused by all of this. I thought that the SRA scandal was laid at the door of the social services departments? That they all got overexcited and removed loads of children when they had no real evidence to... That the evidence they were using of "satanic abuse" ridiculous?

That's what I remember anyway, I have never heard anyone say it was down to feminists

What happened in the US - isn't that something different? Don't know anything about that.

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.

I'm not a feminist expert, but I know that feminists get lumped together with far-right Christians, because of their anti-porn stance. Could this have been the case here?

I think ISN'T is right. It was an excess by social services and social services aren't Christian rightwingers. They represent the state. There were a few prominent feminists who supported the social workers' actions. But that is not the majority of feminists. The feminist aspect is a red herring.

How is it that nobody's ever heard of this, and yet immediately after the thread is posted an in-house expert pops up

Found this from some academic called Jeffrey Victor, lifted from his book "Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend (1992)" which I have not got or read. It covers the subject of why the problems were perceived in the US and UK, but were apparently unheard-of in say France.

^A study of cross-national cultural diffusion between social movements by McAdam and Rucht (1993) offers useful theoretical principles for understanding the cultural diffusion of collective behavior. McAdam and Rucht's study is particularly important, because moral panics are spread by social movements, at least in part. In the case of SRA accusations, Christian fundamentalist and feminist social movements played a central role. McAdam and Rucht emphasize that the transmission of new ideas from one society to another is more likely, the more similar the culture, social organization and social roles in the recipient society. Particularly important for the transmission of new ideas between social movements are similarities in language, ideologies and the occupations of activists. Secondly, McAdam and Rucht suggest that there must exist social networks of contact and channels of communication between people playing similar institutional roles in the sending and recipient societies. More specifically, there must first be to be direct, interpersonal contacts. These direct contacts activate selective attention to indirect channels of communication, such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio, books, and professional journals.

A contrast with a culture where claims about satanic cult crime have not taken root is useful. In France, SRA accusations being made in American society and nearby England are regarded with ridicule, if they are known at all. Journalists and popular writers are often quite critical of the foibles of American culture and often resistant to what they consider to be cultural fads coming from America. In France, only 17% of the population believe in the existence of the Devil compared with 65% in the U.S., according to opinion polls (Gallup 1982:98). Fundamentalist Protestantism has no political significance. French feminism, which centers its demonology upon a critique of the capitalist elite and socioeconomic injustice, is ideologically quite different from Anglo-American feminism. It is likely that cross-national, personal contacts between people in the same occupations, such as medical doctors, psychotherapists and police, are relatively uncommon, due in part to language and cultural differences.^

NObody's ever heard of the feminist connection, I mean, and then suddenly helen is right there with all the facts about the feminnazism

Are you the OP Helen, because you sound exactly the same and your only three posts are to this thread.

Sorry, don't know the OP. But I have been lurking for a while.

If you have an issue with me posting, have the moderator check membership details and I think even incoming IP address ranges can be checked (I very much doubt the OP will come from the same country as little I).

Are there any other posters you would prefer didn't post, whilst on the subject? Best to say now rather than have things drag along.

Helen are you the OP? If you are but you don't want the connection between the names to be generally known you can message us directly to say so, and explain why you have namechanged in the middle of the thread.
Otherwise we're going to be a bit suspicious of your motives and if you would like us to engage with your posts at face-value, you can make it easier for us by being honest.

" French feminism, which centers its demonology upon a critique of the capitalist elite and socioeconomic injustice, is ideologically quite different from Anglo-American feminism."

Could you elaborate on the demonology of french feminism?

ok, x-posted with your answer

what I don't understand, helen, is how you knew this thread was about SRA

I don't rightly remember or recollect employing or even hinting at the term;

I mean, and then suddenly helen is right there with all the facts about the feminnazism

And now I have to say I am confused. What's going on here? I'm not going to go paranoid with no good reason, but why the effort to give me a good reason?

My Inbox remains empty. If you have a concern about my subscription, my posting, or the fear that I am a 'troll' (I believe that is the term used on the Web) which I most certainly know I'm not (but which you might regard otherwise) then take it up with a) the moderators.

Others have contributed data for this debate and that is precisely what is taking place, though looking at the OP's post suggests that was never being sought.

If the consensus is to stop debating the issue, then fine. A structured retort argument is always appreciated and I have no axe to grind either way. I'm just confused by the recent postings.

helen, how did you know this thread was about SRA? Nobody else on here knows anything about it, you are clearly an expert on the topic.
HOw did you know this thread was about your field of interest?

^"If you have an issue with me posting, have the moderator check membership details and I think even incoming IP address ranges can be checked (I very much doubt the OP will come from the same country as little I)."

IP anonymisation. Well done.^

Jeepers. This is Mumnet, not an episode of NCIS.

Am I going to accused of teleportation next?

I mean, why hold back, go for the whole hog?

Politics is very complicated and nothing is what it seems. I have had a brief look at SolidGoldBrass's link about the Christian rightwingers behind the start of the scare in the US. SolidGoldBrass's link is mainly about the Clinton Body Count rather than the Satanic panic. But it mentions three main figures as experts who stoked up the panic.
One of them was Mike Warnke who was a charlatan fantasist and yet was given prime time exposure on US media in ABC's respected 20/20 programme in an episode called "The Devil Worshippers". Another one of them was Laurel Rose Willson, who was also discredited. She even falsely claimed that she was a holocaust survivor. It was the media who gave oxygen to these "expertes" and it was the media who introduced their claims to the population of the United States, who previously were unaware of teh Satanic panic. What is very significant is that it was a small Christian magazine called Cornerstone that exposed these experts after investigating them. Why didn't the big media organisations with all of their resources not unmask them and why did they allow them to spread their message?

Of course there will be many naive Christians who are fooled by the media and believe what they are being told, in a similar way to how Guardian readers believe some of what they are told. But the media give these claims oxygen and the state prosecuted the parents. The naive Christians are not in power.

Often right-wingers find out that their leaders later turn out to conveniently have satanic pasts, which serve to discredit the right wing cause. There is huge news at the moment about the darling of the right, Christine O'Donnell of the Tea Party in teh United States, turning out to have dabbled in satanism when young. Yet again right-wing Christians are in danger of being set up.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1313266/Tea-Partys-Christine-ODonnell-dabbled-witchcraft.html

Okay, but I asked you a serious question:

Could you elaborate on the demonology of french feminism?

which you ignored