Feminism and socialism

[KayHarker]

One of the sites I used to frequent, the odious Ladies Against Feminism, is always keen to draw a negative connotation between feminism and socialism.

Personally I have no negative axe to grind about socialism, but I'm wondering if it's a true connection - I suppose I'm asking, can one be a feminist and a conservative, or does feminism lend itself much more readily to socialism?

I expect Edwina Curry considers herself a feminist. Can't speak from personal experience though, I'm firmly in the feminist socialist bracket.

Well they're both Equality based movements, so there seems to be a natural affinity.
However I'm sure there's an argument on the right re equality of opportunity rather than outcome. However I can't even attempt to articulate that argument.

There's also the feminization of poverty that's well documented, a socialist would hopefully have a lot to say about that.

Certainly a lot of the feminists on here are left leaning. However there are some notable exceptions

As many have pointed out, feminists fall into line with right wing / religious / traditional leaning views when it comes to things like page 3, strip clubs and so on.

Depends a bit whether you mean Conservative or conservative. Conservatism contains the idea of keeping things as they are, or as they were, or more often as people like to imagine they were. So as such is not progressive. And I see being progressive as essential to feminism. But then not all Conservatives necessarily buy into that much of conservatism so then you get the whole neoliberal/new right stuff. Which for me doesn't work as it is too capitalist and individualistic which doesn't work with feminism for me either. But then I think the latter is where the intersection of feminism and socialism lies.

Personally I don't get how being right wing and feminist works. I can believe it might make sense for others. To me feminism and the left wing (not necessarily socialism though) make more sense together. Conservatism and feminism though I struggle to reconcile.

Is that Laydeez site American? They use socialist basically just to mean 'bad' a lot of the time as it has a whole different bunch of connotations there.

Feminism goes with socialism because both are the correct, enlightened positions to take

Yes, socialism is a much more catch-all pejorative in the US among the right-wing, but they do generally mean anything left-wing when they use the term. It's one baby step away from the big bad communism apparently

LAF is American, yes.

This thread has the makings of a real ding dong.
Can we add religion into the mix? It'll have it all then

See how I look at it.

Women are second class to the men in their sphere, no matter what class they are born into, how much money they have.

All women suffer street harrassment, sexual assault and so on, being one "type" or another does not shield you.

Most women will look at the position of women around the world and see that a lot of them have the shitty end of the stick.

Many women in the UK will have been on the receiving end of sexism at work, or encountered it at school, and so on.

All women therefore can see the light (as it were) and be feminists, irrespective of their political leanings.

I already started a religious thread wukter, didn't want to be seen as a theology bore

I am a feminist but don't consider myself a socialist and have had far too many negative experiences with sexist leftwing men to have much faith in the 'joint enterprise' idea.
Some leftwing men can be extremely antifeminist.

So can right wing men though, SGB. I don't know does their 'wing' have much to do with it.

Personally I kind of think both left and right wing can have shades of paternalism at the extreme edges

I agree with SGB that there are a lot of anti-feminist left wing men.

I would say that left wing feminism also has a lot in common with anarchism, and they have often been linked. Germaine Greer considers herself to be an anarchist and a feminist.

Some of the ideas being put forward on the SAHM thread in this section about work and rewards for work I would consider to fall in line with anarchist thought rather than socialist thought.

I have been lurking with interest on the other thread.

For me, my feminism is very connected to my socialism. I tend to think that collective activity for the common good, with higher taxes and cheaper or free public services, and with measures aiming to reduce inequalities due to gender, sexualilty, class, wealth, race etc, is a better way of organising society than the alternatives. That's my understanding of socialism, and my feminism fits right in there.

But that doesn't mean I don't think you can be a right wing feminist, and there are some on mumsnet.

Mm. 'My enemy's enemy is my friend' is something you can only take so far, really.

I recently followed an exchange of letters in the Weekly Worker, following an article about the 8 year old who had been raped and tbh I was shocked by the rape myths they were promoting. And more recently than that, another letter was published which just repeated the tired old "sadly, some women lie about rape" line as if it were the most important fact about rape everyone needs to know.

It made me realise that under socialism, women comrades will still be making the tea while the male comrades will be getting on with the important work of revolution. Because these male dominated lefty parties, are no more interested in our half of humanity, than bog standard tories are. And when you challenge them on their male privilege, they refuse to recognise it, preferring to accuse you of being a bourgeois feminist because then they can dismiss all discussion of specifically female problems, as bourgeois deviations.

The wankers.

I agree with you superior.

Watching a union bash on the telly the other day - it was the RMT and they showed various (white male) speakers including bob crowe - I said to DH "do these look like men with a keen interest in the problems faced by women?" and the answer was quite obviously "no".

I agree with the points made about sexism on the left (cf Tommy Sheridan, Assange ). In that Women documentary that was on last year Robin Morgan spoke about how the second wave was borne out of women's experiences of sexism in left wing activism in the late 60s/early 70s (although I don't think she was claiming that that was the only stimulus, but certainly an important one).

But going back to the OP, I agree with AliceWorld that feminism and conservatism-with-a-small-c are inherently incompatible. I remain unconvinced though that focusing on class will bring about gender equality (as revolutionary marxists seem to think). Feminism has as much - maybe more? - of an affinity with liberalism as it does with socialism, I would have thought.

Anyway I don't have anything new to contribute but am lurking with interest

People being sexist within a movement doesn't mean that the politics behind it are incompatible though. I'm sure there are misogynists in all movements. (except feminism, that wouldn't work.)

I seem more commonality with socialism and feminism due to collectivity. Less with Marxism due to the focus on class as the only structure, but then post-Marxism moves away from this. Liberalism would depend on the breed for me, but its individualism is problematic for me. Anarchism and feminism I get, but then that would be the versions that lead to collectivism, where there is commonality with socialism.

In theory, feminism is more compatible with socialism than conservatism.

In practice, socialism fails to deliver enough for women.