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.

bloody hell Orsinian, for an academic you're not very good at communicating clearly. I still don't understand what you're on about.

'After posting I saw the first questions about SRA and deliberately ignored them. I wasn't going to giving-out links to subscribers on the subject and then start debating its existence or not." So I dropped off. Big mistake. '

I don't understand this. Who do you mean by 'subscribers'? What was your objection to explaining yourself more clearly?

How could feminism have collectively intervened when feminism is not a collective? I get the impression it is actually you who are blaming feminism for something.

You never answered my question about where students were getting their ideas from - dodgy sites on the internet or peer-reviewed research.

Your posting style is awfully patronising - groan @ ' If you think though it will remain just a background hum, then you will be sadly mistaken.' Can't you see this, or are you just going to invoke your mobbing expertise to explain the way the thread went?

'As it is I went away for the weekend, sure that a lively debate would take place, and I would see a consensus reached one way or the other when I returned.'

Why ever did you expect that? You seem to completely misunderstand the nature of discussion fora. We're not a clockwork toy that you can leave running and expect it to do what you want it to do. We are real people with questions and opinions that may differ from your own, we have a right to take the discussion in the direction we want, and complaining and threatening deletion because we haven't given you the outcome you want seems a bit silly and selfish - if other people want to discuss this (though they may not) why not leave it?

Op's original question was: "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."

How can we be expected to answer this if we don't understand what the "events" and the supposed feminist input into them actually were?

Would appreciate a reply to this and my earlier post please.

Also I was unaware that there is a large contingent of Christian fundamentalists in social services.

Would it be fair to expect folk to suddenly learn of a subject they know nothing, and then crack on with a debate over an apology.

The comment "feminism is not a collective" is valid. But where was any debate? Yes it was before the Internet, but we still have papers, journals and books from the 1990s. I'd like to be proven wrong, but I've not found any evidence of a debate, then and since. Feminism is a broad (wrong word) church, with a huge range of strands and debates. But...but...not one of those strands made itself heard all those years ago.

Some cases, particularly in the States, still leave people flumuxed. Kelly Michaels had fantastic allegations made against her, with her sexuality being a key driver. She managed to be freed, but only after being incarcerated for offenses that seemingly required a belief in both magic and time-travel to be possible. In Texas there are still four women-prosecuted it seems principally for their sexuality, still incarcerated for 'satanic' crimes (www.fourliveslost.com/Mainpage.htm). How did these things happen, where were the protests?

I don't want to be some 'expert' source on the subject (I've read about what happened with Helen). In the UK (apparently, as I didn't know at the time) went through some of the weirdest twists imaginable, and yet I am unable to find any trace of any opposition from the then-feminist lobby at the time. Was that right, was it merited? Was it all bugger-all to do with feminists? I don't mind even if I'm told its bugger-all to do with me (or Helen, or me or...well you get the idea).

For the children, now grown up, particularly from the Langworthy Estate in Rochdale, was it right that they had their lives ruined (try this BBC interview with one of them: news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news_web/video/9012da680032970/bb/09012da680032b27_16x9_bb.asx) without so much as a whimper coming from 'feminists' Would we all do the same now?

I left the thread. It could have gone in any direction, as has been said. I wouldn't have minded whatever the consensus was if one had been reached.

But the direction it has gone in is the one I least expected.

Orsinian, don't get the thread deleted. The fact that it is the number one google search now when you google "feminists satanic ritual abuse" is important because the propagandists and feminist-haters shouldn't get it all their own way.

That's fine. It had to be a consensus, which is why I waited.

Hopefully the thread will go off on a useful tangent.

Can you explain why you think it happened?

Orsinian - why not direct the thread at "experts on SRA/feminism issue" then. Foolishly I assumed that you might want opinions from feminists who are not old enough/local enough/news-watching enough to have heard all the details as and when they emerged.

"How did these things happen, where were the protests?" - Is this the substance of the claims against feminism, that no/not enough feminists protested at the time, or that feminists didn't manage to stop this witch-hunt (if that is what it was)? If so, that's massively cheeky of whoever is counting this against feminism. We don't actually have a moral duty to hunt down every happening anywhere in the world and protest outside it, nor can we. As for the idea that it's the job of feminists to correct every incidence of sexist discrimination - well it's certainly feminism that gives us the tools to try and do this, but to blame feminism for not succeeding rather than the people responsible for acting that way in the first place? Very very odd.

May I ask if it's feminists who are blaming older generations for their behaviour at the time? Or if not, then which groups are?

it's not sisterly, i grant you, but orsinian you strike me as a right snooty cah.

orsinian, do you think today's feminists should apologise for things that feminists may or may not have done 20 years ago? Please give your reasons, one way or the other.

Most Germans who struggle with the moral dilemma of deciding whether or not to apologise for the Nazi time have the advantage of being very aware of what they are expected to apologise for. The facts have been clearly laid out in front of them. It's probably just your bad luck that most posters on this thread were not already aware of any link between feminism and SRA. As a specialist, it can often be surprising to discover how little people know of one's specialist subject. That's not the fault of the general public because they all have their own areas of expertise to focus on.

Should today's feminists apologise?. My answer is no because they have done nothing wrong, but any living feminists who did bad things 20 years ago should apologise.

I'd ask the accusers of feminism to establish whether or not an apology by any guilty feminists has already been made. They'll only have to read 117,000 web pages.

Germans apologising for the Nazi era:

• know what the atrocities were
• know that they were ordered by (what started as) an elected leader of their country
• know that the atrocities were ordered/condoned by the government and were part of a nationwide/continentwide planned assault
• know that their grandparents were in many cases involved in horrendous acts, whether out of belief or 'just following orders'

By contrast feminists:

• clearly are (mostly) in ignorance of the entire issue
• are facing an issue involving a few people who subscribe to (some of) the same beliefs as them, NOT people that they or others had elected as spokespeople/leaders
• are facing an issue that was caused by individuals across several countries rather than an organised (let alone feminist) group
• have no personal knowledge or relationship with those involved in the issue.

let alone all the other differences

I do think the Cats Protection League have to answer for this.
Was it right that the children in Rochdale had their lives ruined without a whimper coming from the 'cat-lovers'?

Honestly, OP, I still don't understand your argument as to why feminists should apologise.
I saw the documentary a couple of years back about the Rochdale children and was absolutely appalled by it but I simply cannot see how guilt could reasonably be laid at the door of feminism.
If as you say many people are blaming feminists for it now, I would seriously like to know who these people are and what their sources are or agenda is, information you have so far failed to give.

Hell, I don't even think social workers as a whole should apologise, or sociologists, which sounds a bit like social workers. The social workers in question should, as should anyone directly involved or anyone responsible for supervising them who failed to keep an eye on what was going on, but this was a specific failure by a relatively small number of people.

So we shouldn't be apologising for something we didn't do? Is that right?

orsinian does leave us all in suspense. Who done it? Why should feminists apologise?

and why has the OP not noticed that the SCUM Manifesto was a joke?

never heard of mobbing before.

"The word mobbing is preferred to bullying in continental Europe and in those situations where a target is selected and bullied (mobbed) by a group of people rather than by one individual. However, every group has a ringleader."

Who was the ringleader?

Was it a bible thumper? I very much doubt it. They have hardly any power in social services. It must have been someone else.

"But where was any debate? Yes it was before the Internet, but we still have papers, journals and books from the 1990s. I'd like to be proven wrong, but I've not found any evidence of a debate, then and since. Feminism is a broad (wrong word) church, with a huge range of strands and debates. But...but...not one of those strands made itself heard all those years ago."

Are you seriously blaming feminism for not making itself heard?

Because if only we asked the Daily Mail, they'd allow our voices to be heard?

Do you actually think that we control the meejah?