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.

Hi Sakura, I agree with lots of your posts too. We only differ on who is behind it all and what their real objectives are. I'm not even particularly Christian, but I think I know what the objective is for painting them as the bad guys every time. The state thing is crucial because it is about freedom and what the real objectives are of those who who want Big State or Big Brother.

Exactly, so even though a BIg sister state would be a GOod Thing for women, the reality is it's never going to be a big sister, is it? IT's going to be patriarchal. Meanwhile the loony left get to control everything.

Since reading your posts, I feel more sympathy for moderate Christians, having now realised they're demonized by the liberal media in the same way that feminists are

Exactly right. You are right, it will always be Big Brother and never Big Sister, very good point, never thought about Big Sister, that is excellent and very significant. It will always be a small band of men controlling it. The loony left are being used by this small band of men. The band aren't loony left at all, but they use the loony left, who are dupes for the band, in order to achieve their real goals. Once the loony left have achieved what was intended, then the small band of men reveal their hand and their real objectives become apparent. It is patriarchal and against the interests of the majority of the population, both men and women, whose freedoms are steadily removed and who are subjected to the media frenzies that the small band cook up and which are supported by their knowing and unknowing dupes in the media.

Yes, Christians are demonised and feminists are demonised. They are both used as fall guys as and when needed by the small band.

HOw do we crack that central core of patriarchy? I've said before that the OECD, the IMF, the U.S UN- they're the puppeteerss. It's going to take nothing less than a revolution isn't it.

Yes all those organisations are puppets themselves of the super powerful. Globalisation is in the interests of the super powerful. Global organisations are how they can easily extend their power over the nations of the earth in one easy centralised way. They don't want nations to have sovereignty, they are like Gordon Brown, they want a globalised world with global institutions who tell countries what to do.

It is all about power, and they are supremely rich and powerful. Many of the so-called revolutionaries are nothing of the sort and are just tools of the powerful. I'm not sure that anything will ever change because they are so powerful. The only hope is that people slowly wake up and see what is behind the looking glass, that they are not fooled by the media frenzies and understand how they are being manipulated.

shit...

So the supremely powerful exist in all countries, or just the main countries: U.S, China, India, Russia...?
And they head the corporations, or are they politicians supported by coroporations?
And these coroporations are powerful off the backs of the little people (women, usually) ?

I think they exist in the main countries as you say and they make deals and agree with each other, just like Mafiosi. The here today, gone tomorrow politicians are puppets and even the CEOs, here today and gone tomorrow, are puppets too. The best book ever is George Orwell's 1984. He explains it, how they all work together. How they create a phony war of Oceania versus Eurasia and Eastasia, where they all swap sides. It is a perpetual war, to keep the little people down. As Orwell says

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

Will order it, thank you.
IT's all smokes and mirrors, isn't it, the media. None of it makes sense.
What fascinates me, as a linguist, is speaking to people around the world who have been fed diametrically opposed facts and world-views by the propaganda in their countries.
Iranians don't believe the Jews were massacred. THe Americans haven't even gone to Nagasaki to apologize for dropping two atomic bombs and wiping out cities full of children. Japan doesn't believe it committed any atrocities in China. And what the fuck is Al-Quaeda?

You're right, it is all smoke and mirrors. What is truth? Orwell again
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
You will love the book. It is so similar to what is going on that it is uncanny. It's almost as if it is being used as the script. The villain, Goldstein, who actually worked for Big Brother all along, has many parallels with Bin Laden.

The media treat us like mushrooms, they feed us bullshit and keep us in the dark.

The powerful use divide and rule, they create racism and sexism and then set people against each other. That's why different countries are fed different stories, to make sure they are always at each other's throats.

My God, I don't know who I am!

I'm sat in my office, with my certificates, I'm not even a Brit, and all that time spent going through university...all wasted.

I'm someone else, in Lancashire of all things. Now I know why I sometimes broke out into a funny accent, just like the woman in Frasier, and why I keep wanting to buy a whippet! Was I satanically abused? Was it the CIA? 12'-high lizards? Mind control by the CIA, guided by reptiles? Aye that's what is. I need therapy. Lots of expensive therapy. For years.

Hum, probably not.

Did we just skip this bit in the OP's post?

If mistakes were made during the SRA years, why should later feminists be expected to be associated with those errors

At what point did the OP say she expected feminists to make an apology?

There's surely enough on the Web on the subject to warrant a discussion. Why the need to fall off a cliff with it?

Some of the postings have been really good, and I've been introduced to some things I didn't know (and apparently I was determined, or rather my Lancashire 'altar' - see I'm picking-up the vocabulary already - to be an 'expert' on the subject).

But putting in as suggested 'feminists SRA' and reading some of the somewhat copious results suggests that however poor the OP's original posting was, the subject was a valid one.

Feminism has been tarnished with a smelly brush. The accusation that seems to have gained some currency on the web and in a number of history books is that in the 1980's, particularly in the States, feminist concerns with pornography and incest, got mixed-up with religious fundamentalist concerns that satanists were in every neighborhood.

And these fundamentalists weren't 'Conservative Christians' - nope, they were something else altogether and once again, not hard to find their stuff on the Web and be able to compare it with Conservative Christianity. No one at the time seems to have been able to step back and say 'hang on'. And so the 'moral panic' ran its course, with madder and madder accusations until it seems the David Icke/Alex Jones lot have picked it up (hence the lizards).

At some point, in the late 80's the whole mess was exported to England and resulted in a series of well-publicized and oft-written about false accusations. Once again these moments of madness ran their course.

And so it all passed. In the US it is recognized as a major event in contemporary history, in the UK not quite so, but still enough for the subject to be written about it seems on a routine basis.

An apology though? Nope, I've written about that before. But if not an apology, then at least some means to address what seems to be endless speculation, not helped with the actual written words that were produced at the time.

Which comes back to the OP's other point; why should later generations be associated with the activities of those in the past? Once again that bit appears to have been skipped.

Obviously many, not being aware of the subject, certainly didn't feel associated, as how they be?

So, first, rather than rake over old ground, is there a perception that feminism allied itself to some ideas and groups that perhaps was unwise, in the past? If the answer is 'yes' then are there any issues that should be addressed? If so, how? If the answer is 'no', then nothing to discuss, nothing to see here.

Me (not sure that is valid now) I reckon there are outstanding issues to be top-and-tailed, not through an 'apology' but maybe through alternate means - say web sites that directly challenged some of the assertions that are visible on the web, perhaps the occasional discussion of the issues at events.

Because at the moment the silence is leaving a void, and that void is being filled by people with their own agendas, and there is no-one, absolutely no-one who is making a challenge to those views. Feminism is a bit (taking a phrase from the West Wing) 'soft' on this subject, and although most folk it appears have never heard of the subject, I have, and not in a positive fashion.

The OP's specific question was;

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?

Great fun though I'm sure it was to have my identity questioned, how about actually addressing that question?

I think it's pretty obvious. There was no "madness", that is a convenient story. Some feminists, like Bea Campbell, went along with it. But this was not feminism as a whole, it was just some Marxist individuals. The "mad Christians" and the feminists involved are just fall guys, they were used, conveniently tarred with the dirty brush. The big wigs never listen to Christian fundamentalists or feminists, and they didn't listen to them in this case either. Feminists have nothing to apologise for, because they were not involved.

hmmm-have people in Lancashire got funny accents then?
im still confused by this thread but i find it interesting that the webb has been mentioned a few times.dont believe everything you read on the webb-its full of cranks.

what i do find interesting though is-
its being said that some things are gaining currency on the webb-
and ive noticed thats lately there seems to be a interest in feminism[and it looks like to me that there is more feminist groups being set up]
is there a connection maybe?
eg-someone dont like whats going on[with the interest in feminism]
so are doing a bit of stirring?

yes, they seem to be threatened. I take it as a good sign, Sparky

Who cares, Helen? It all happened before I was born

People who did nothing to stop satanic abuse allegations: miners, horse-whisperers, strippers, banana-growers, professional tap-dancers, members of White's club, Billy Dainty, my mother-in-law, the late Morcambe and Wise, Victoria Wood, pigeon-fanciers, supermarket check-out workers, ship-builders. I shall, of course, be rounding them all up (disinterring, if necessary) and demanding personal apologies from them all. You know it makes sense.

Sakura
[i take it as a good sign]
hmmm-do you-i dont know Sakura-when i see things like this i wonder what is up peoples sleeves.

actually-i think we should have a uprising-
but it wont happen as too many people are brainwashed.

heheheh at the academic wankery on this thread. shouldn't you both be at a conference in Leeds discussing this? stop bothering people on the internet with this pile of nothing.

lol at ccf and billy dainty. i would like to demand an apology for Charlie Drake.

and big lol at 'who cares?'

And what about Benny Hill? Eh? He just stood by and watched it happen. The bastard. That's patriarchy for you.

for the record, though, i don't believe that victoria wood did anything wrong. well, apart from the shiny zoot suits and the mullet. but it was a different time...

but if any of those people did come out and apologise, everyone would start to think they must actually have been responsible after all.

Let's make sure we don't go and apologise for the London bombings (which I note feminists did nothing to prevent) or any other acts of terrorism, or we will start to attract the attention of the police and MI5.

Ye I must admit I am mostly boggled by why this is being dredged up by a couple of (by the sound of it) socially and online-discussion-wise inept 'academics'.
Is someone about to bring out a new book on the subject?

and if there were already bizarre allegations floating round the web that you were responsible for something, when you weren't, actually apologising for the thing you didn't do would seem to be a very bad strategic move as a way to stop the allegations

Oh, and if the OP seriously wants an answer to her question (which she obviously doesn't): '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?'

then the people involved in the issue and who know about it, academics for instance, should point out the errors as and when they arise.

Preferably in a clear, explicit and well-evidenced way