Mary Beard on Radio 4 now with Point of View about Miss World 2011

[EleanorRathbone]

NOW!!!

But Mary, no-one is denying that some things have got better for women. It's a straw man (straw feminist?) if you try to imply that anyone here is doing that.

OK, so you meant the intellectual battle has been won. But what good is that to the majority of women if in actual real life they are under more pressure to look good than ever before?

And I'm sorry, but it is rubbish to say the arguments can't ever be ignored within (for example) public and policy discourse. They are ignored all the time. To give you one example, Miriam O'Reilly won her tribunal against the BBC on the ground of age discrimination but not sex discrimination. How is that not blatantly ignoring the issue of beauty and the politics of women's lives?
Sexism in the media, sexual bullying in schools, sex discrimination in the workplace regarding dress codes and hidden beauty qualifications - there are loads of areas of life where the policy in place does not offer effective protection to women and girls because it does not properly acknowledge those issues, and if these subjects do come up the discourse is more likely to be shaped by the evo-psych, dodgy brain science-underpinned sexist belief that it is all 'natural', than by the feminist arguments we thought we had won.

Arguments can be won, but they can also be forgotten.

Your point about tactics doesn't work. You say 'If I had to deploy the resources of protest....' It doesn't work like that - protest is not a thing where each political movement is allowed a fixed amount of protest each year and when they've used it up they're not allowed to do any more. On the contrary, it snowballs. People will demonstrate both - you will likely find that the vast majority of women who protested Miss World will also be taking part in the Fawcett Society's Day of Action on 19th November. (Are you doing anything for that? You could always blog about it )

I really can't work out if you are Mary or a wind up. It's like reading a list of basic feminist undermining tactics. It's better than it was, haven't you got more important things to protest about, you expect too much etc etc. Mind you I guess the thing itself did that with the ridiculous last comment on miss Venezuela.

elderberrySyrup... I think I am going back into my hole and not venturing a single comment on any cognate topic ever again...!! (Though I did blog about it as you asked! And I have just done a bit of a thing for the Mary Wollstonecraft statue in Islington...safely in the past, but a useful role model nonetheless, maybe).

The bottom line is = I am very happy to discuss all kinds of different priorities and standpoints and tactics, because there is so much we do actually share in terms of diagnosis of the problems and aspirations for change. That's why I find the 'fully frontal' a bit puzzling.. and the personal...

Take what chicklit wrote:
"she moans about how she is old and feel miserable about her aging body"

I dont think I did do that; in fact I think I said that I felt very comfortable with my body, though the signs of aging could be a bit alarming (like seeing your mum in the mirror!). But there are issues about the longue duree of women's lives that open up different perspectives within feminism, and I think deserve reasonable discussion. A friend in the US emailed me to say that no woman she knew there feminist or not would talk about their own thickening toenails, as the aging, post-reproductive female body remained a bit of a taboo. I don't know if that's true.. but it was the area I was trying to prod, and it is a bit of a confirmation of the need for that kind of talk to be told that I was moaning about my aging body....!! If you see what I mean.

whoops it was chickenlickn! ..sorry, but I've never been very good with these online sobriquets!

I'd really like you to address why you were undermining other feminints' actions, Mary.

You do realise that there is pretty much zero space in the media for actual feminist arguments, a small space for people who want to undermine or criticise feminists (whenever feminists look like they are getting out of hand and need to be brought back in line, in the way the Miss World protestors did), and a massive space for patriarchy as usual with all its degradation, objectification and undermining of women and girls.

You got into the small space that's allowed for women who criticise feminists. Politically it was a bad move. You didn't help anybody by saying "the X-factor is worse and I don't hate Miss Venezuala any more".

Just to make it clearer let's look at the audiences everybody was able to reach:

The Miss World Event itself, promoting sexist objectification of young women - worldwide TV audience unimpeded by any criticism or questioning of the event during its broadcast - also quite a lot of positive PR coverage in the press

Mary Beard criticising feminist protestors of the event and saying Miss World ain't so bad - Radio 4 audience, uninterrupted 10 minute platform

Miss World protestors - one YouTube video which was watched about one hundred times the last time I looked, article in the Daily Mail in which they were included as an afterthought after a puff piece about Miss World itself. Maybe some news coverage? No uninterrupted platforms like the ones Mary Beard and the Miss World organisers were given.

So why are the people with the least voice getting the most criticism from Mary about their actions?

Mary Beard's article on this is currently featured on the BBC news home page. The comments are closed but those that I looked at were everything I expected

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15692592

Miss World contestants offered a much better example to any young woman who might be watching, than all those impossibly thin, size-zero, anorexic fashion-models. They were a bit aggressively hour-glass in shape, it's true, but at least most of them appeared to be hovering around the size 10 - or even size 12 - mark.

The "size-zero" controversy was based on US sizes. I'll eat my hat if any of the contestants were a UK size 12, nevermind a US size 12.

Mary Don't go and hide! Your point on aging is interesting and one that is relevant for me, because I'm of 'a certain age' myself, but I would argue the issue of post-reproductive women being seen as, basically, useless is very closely related to the objectification of women's sexuality and beauty that we see in the Miss World contest. Youth and fertility are fetishised in our society in ways which alienate women from our own bodies. That being our main value, once we get over the hill, we are expendable. Who's losing their public sector pension rights? Middle aged women, usually. Who's back pay under Equal Value agreements hasn't been settled? Middle aged women. Meanwhile, the same union has managed to find the energy and resources to set up a 'sex-workers' branch. How old are the members? And their 'clients'? Issues of age and gender are closely related.

Mary Sorry I referred to you as 'she' earlier ^, I didn't read the whole thing, just waded in with my immediate reaction.

I think you are reading this in a very odd way, to be honest... almost as odd as the people on the BBC website who accused me of being a ranting ugly feminist who wanted to ruin their fun. (The main difference is that I persist in thinking (despite your slightly scary hostility) that we are actually on the same side, and differ in tactics and priorities and micro analysis rather than the big picture!)
I wasnt 'criticising' the feminist protestors.. I was saying that I no longer felt THAT angry about Miss World (I didn't say that I thought that the competition was great... but that it was not something that I would turn up and protest about... though I suspect that my slightly tongue in cheek irony about the whole occasion may, in the end, be a more effective means of ensuring its demise; I bet they didn't much like being called a 'scantily clad Uni Challenge'.. but we shall see).
In my view there are a whole lot of things wrong in the world (many, but not all, connected to gender), and I want to focus on different targets from you... which in the great scheme of things seems not so bad. We surely need people to be cross about different things; there are plenty of targets out there.

I feel a bit sad that you are SO angry with me... I had actually felt that saying on the radio, as a straightforward 50-something year old woman, that feminism had changed my life, and my view of myself and my body, forever.. and that it had given me confidence through middle age .. was quite an important thing to get over (and it certainly annoyed a number of people on the BBC HYS website!). I also thought it was important to say that I felt as strongly feminist as I had ever done.. but, yes, I also wanted to raise the issue that there is a life cycle in one's engagement with feminism (almost inevitably) -- and particularly to raise the impact of getting physically older right down to the little toes, what difference it makes etc ...which does tend to get neglected in debates.

@julia scurr.. thanks, that's a really interesting point. One thing that got missed out of the broadcast (it's under 10 mins as I keep banging on about) was the low key terror I used to feel of getting older.. feminist as I was, I still secretly saw myself on the scrap heap post -menopause. In fact I used to rail against the male female inequity here.. the 50 something man trading in the long suffering wife for a newer model (you must know how that argument went) . Now I feel slightly smug when I see those 50 something year old men picking up the toddlers from nursery.. and I bless every day I don't have to think about sanpro.

Julia Scurr - "Meanwhile, the same union has managed to find the energy and resources to set up a 'sex-workers' branch. How old are the members?"

Are you referring to the GMB ? Catherine Stephens must be around the 50 age bracket.

Yes, that is the vanguard of the proletariat I meant. I think it's safe to say the commercial value of the female body generally declines with age in the sex industry.

I'm not angry with you MB.

Just disappointed that you said what the boys in charge wanted you to say.

I don't for one moment question your right to focus on other battles than Miss World.

I do question why you would publicly undermine the feminists who did focus on this (and they focus on loads of other stuff too, as you know).

Because that is waht you did, whether you recognise it or not. You lined up with people who think there is nothing wrong with objectifying women, against women and fellow-feminists, who think there is. That's what it comes down to in the end. I'm not saying you did it deliberately, but that is the effect of it. And I'm sad that you did that and that you don't recognise it.

damn -- I think my last reply disappeared into cyber space! If this is a repeat, I apologise.

Thank you Eleanor Rathbone for replying in those terms, I really appreciate it. Thank you , thank you.

My position is fairly clear... I really feel quite OK with what I said. And I actually think that it was a very long time since some 50-something woman said on prime time radio that she owed her view of her self, her confidence and her sense of her body to feminism. I can see that you think I let you down.. I think that I stood up for a really important cause at a time and a place where people dont usually expect it!

Most listeners, so far as they have got in touch with me, heard the 'I owe what I am to feminism' line. Phew.

I think there are all kinds of things on which we might disagree, but I think we share more than you imagine. I still dont think that Miss World is the enemy -- but I reckon we share a lot more than at first sight appears to you.

You're not really addressing what anybody said mary. You're just reiterating your own position.

If you'd just said that you owe what you are to feminism, nobody would have a problem with this, but undermining other feminists actions is pretty shoddy really. Like eleanor says, it's disappointing.

And no-one said that Miss World is the enemy, but male objectification of women and men who objectify women certainly are and the Miss World contest represents that. If the battles had actually been won Miss World wouldn't even exist.

@thunderboltsandlightning

I didnt say that objectification wasnt no central .. but is it really best fought re Miss World. I doubt it...

and indeed, my point was about the age structure of feminism.. I have been told is that I have been whinging about having an aging body.. well err?

I also think, as I was more than hinting, that there is a point about rhetoric here.. when DID you last hear someone say on radio 4 at 8.50 in the morning that they owed it all to feminism? Sure, we might disagree about how, and why, and what, and where to go.. and that is right.. but dont just lump me with the enemy. In some ways, saying that was a mini victory.

Maybe, as I said, a bit of ironic derision is the way to finish Miss World off; anger isnt the only mode of opposition.

(Can I add that these nicknames are a bit weird... I relish discussing with Julia Scurr, Eleanor Rathbone (assuming they are real!).. otherwise you call me "Mary" (as I am happy to be) and I end up talking to Chickenwhatever and ElderberrySyrup (whom I am sure I used to teach!))

Mary, if you're not bothered about the Miss World contest, why didn't you suggest the names of some feminists who are concerned about it to the producer? Was it so important to make public your lack of botheredness?

@Ayebelieve// I was asked to do FOUR Points of View.. I chose Miss World for the second broadcast largely because I wanted to speak about aging and feminism. It wasn't a question of being asked to do that particular subject and hogging it for myself, or having the opportunity of offering the gig around.. honest. This was one of four. Did you listen to the first in the series (about Gadaffi) -- it is still available on line

@marybeard I dont know why you seem to have taken such offence here. I for one was encouraging you.

I also think, as I was more than hinting, that there is a point about rhetoric here.. when DID you last hear someone encouraging you so strongly? "come on mary!"
I think you would achieve a lot more if only you just focused your energies on the positives.

And yes, what is it about nicknames here. While I do not judge a poster by their nickname, are you saying that older women would have beards?

(Also, are you catherine tate?)

@ChickenLickn. I didnt 'take offence' .. but it did seem to me that you got the whole tone of what I said significantly wrong .. I certainly wasn't moaning! (nor was I dumping on feminism for that matter...)

But there IS something odd about these nicknames. I think they probably encourage people to say things they wouldn't say if they met face to face, and in a style that they wouldn't use face to face. An awful lot of message boards or 'HYS"s attract very aggressive comments.. I think it is something to do with the partial anonymity.

You said you owed it all to feminism in passing.

Your main point was that Miss World ain't so bad because other things are worse and therefore the feminists protesting it were wrong.

You keep talking about enemies - Miss Venezuala isn't the enemy, you're not the enemy. Nobody said you were the enemy, we're simply asking why you used a spot on the radio to undermine other feminist action when there are so many positive things you can do.

I also don't really understand why you'd argue that protesting Miss World was the wrong way to protest the objectification of women. It's an incredibly famous event, that is broadcast worldwide that reduces women to how pretty they are and how good they look in a bikini. It has always been a symbol of female objectification which is why it gets so much media coverage and why feminists have been protesting it since the 70s.

You say the battles have been won, well obviously they haven't and the fact that Miss World still exists is a good illustration of this.

Mary, the majority of people on here said your stuff on feminism and the aging body was interesting. It's disingenuous to say we said you were 'whinging'. That part of it was what woke me up and made me listen to the radio, that bit was refreshing, that bit would be worth exploring. So why obscure it with stuff about Miss World which undermines what other feminists are doing? If the voice and issues of older women gets less interest (which I can see), then surely linking them to some discussion of young women in swimsuits is not going to resolve that.

And I can also totally see why protesting about Miss World might not be your bag. That's no issue. There's all sorts of stuff that isn't my bag, but I do not undermine them as they are important to other feminists who I generally support.

I'd also appreciate it if you would stop suggesting that the Miss World protest is all that is happening and that feminists should focus on something more important. I'm sure you researched thoroughly before writing your piece, but just in case you're not aware the protest was organised by (I think) Object, the London Feminist Network and UK feminista (and possibly Million Women Rise). If you have a look at their websites you will see all the other ways they are tackling objectification, and other issues, including the changes in law they have been instrumental in achieving.

But of course all that gets minimal press coverage.