Why "fun feminism" should be consigned to the rubbish bin

[Nyac]

article by Julie Bindel in the New Statesman.

www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/08/fun-feminism-women-feminist

Quote:

"We need to bring back the radical edge to feminism, and do away with any notion that slutwalking, lap dancing, sex working or Burkha-wearing is liberation for women. If men like a particular brand of feminism, it means it is not working. "Fun feminism" should be consigned to the rubbish bin along with the Lib Dem party."

Agree with Julie, that it's extremely irritating to see a bunch of interlopers attempting to elbow their way in and co-opt feminism, redefining it to suit patriarchy's needs. I've even seen people who support patriarchal institutions like marriage, BDSM or the sex industry calling themselves radical feminists. There is so much misunderstanding and misinformation about feminism out there that people feel like they can grab what they like without making an actual political commitment or any kind of challenge to the patriarchy.

Really liberal feminism (the old kind, not the sex industry supporting kind) and radical feminism are the only kinds of feminism that have ever effected any kind of positive change for women. They need to be reclaimed and supported, not erased by third wave non-feminist feminism.

She's right about the lib dems too. :D Or maybe they are in the same boat and need some classic liberals to reclaim their party from the Tory party's whipping boys.

anti sex

anti sex industry

why do people persist in throwing those two terms together, like they are interchangeable ?

a lazy argument, and one that anybody who has spent any time on the FWR board has no business to be making

Elec, I am sorry, if my post wasn't clear. I am in no way advocating no choice or narrow choices or subverting someone's freedoms. My point is that the institutions around us are inherently patriarchal, the messages that women are bombarded with influences them and it shapes their thinking. Young women are subject to these influences, it would be unreasonable to expect that it didn't colour their thinking and influence their behaviour.

Why do you think women buy lipstick or dye their hair, same reasons, we are subject to the influences around us that shape our thinking, our behaviour and also largely what we look like. Have you not been following recent news about teenage relationships, sadly a lot of these young women think violence is normal within relationships, that includes sexual violence and rape.

I agree there is a problem with young girls thinking rape is acceptable. But buying lipstick or dying hair is not always to make yourself more attractive to men or other people. Sometimes, it's because you fancy a change, like a colour. You cant say that everthing women do is controlled by patriarchy. I just feel its a massive overestimation.

Who largely gains through making women feel insecure. There is a whole industry here and other supporting institutions at work that perpetuate the idea that we must behave in a certain prescribed way. Be that buying lipstick or pole dancing. Women are subject to influences that both commodify them and make them consumers to profit from financially. We have already established that men usually have more economic power. Men and institutions that profit men make women commodities and some women, be it through choice or lack of other influences or knowledge, perhaps lack of reading feminist literature like Daly or Dworkin have been co-opted into this. They are complicit, not through choice because real choice is about having the knowledge not just of the pervasive culture we live in but from the other side of the coin, those that challenge it.

And it's not about oppressing women by banning lap dancing or whatever...it's about educating them about their choices, in the same way men should be educated about their choices.

It all seems very over complicated to me. Everyone should learn to respect everyone else. It's not difficult, you don't need religion or extreme ideology in order the teach it to your children, you just have to lead by example.

No you don't need extremism women need freedom but that includes freedom from economic disadvantage and we need to listen to what our mothers say! Dworkin and Daly are the same age now as my mother and very wise women they were.

We need to re-engage with that literature and see what it says about our present situation and how we can move to a place where real freedoms are not just about to fuck or not, who with and whether it should be for money to put on the gas meter. If feminism can not reconcile some of the strange unintended consequences it creates and there are no guiding principles on which it rests other than personal freedoms.

Everyone tries to manipulate situations to some extent for their own gain. It's human nature IMO. You can't stop people having influence over other people ever. It will always happen. All you can do is teach children to think critically and have the confidence to stand up for what they believe is right or wrong.

You can't protect everyone who is vulnerable to the slightest influence, you have to teach them to protect themselves. The people who really need help are those in extremist regimes of oppression, like genital mutilation,
Killing your child because it's not a boy, forced marriage, rape. All the big things, lumping these things in with makeup and hair dye is coming full circle and advocating oppression yourself.

"If feminism can not reconcile some of the strange unintended consequences it creates and there are no guiding principles on which it rests other than personal freedoms".

Please can you expand, not sure I fully understand this paragraph.

But in order for people to be able to stand up for what they think is right or wrong, they need good reasons.
Buying a lipstick as a single action is not a problem but when you look at the wider picture, the context in which that lipstick is bought I.e a patriarchal capitalist system in which women are used as commodoties/consumers, then it does matter.
When people market their products, for the most part they are not looking to enhance the consumers life, they are looking to make a profit at whatever the cost to the consumer may be.

Honestly SGB, you have no business describing anyone else as dishonest, if you refer to feminists as "anti sex".

I literally don't know anyone who is anti-sex as a principle. (Apart from my mother and she's not a feminist.) The only political grouping I can thnk of, are actually Saint Augustus et al and mediaeval catholics. Even modern catholic priests are not anti sex as a principle, just anti-sex for themselves (except with children in some cases). You are too well-informed to be ignorant about the distinction between sex and the sex industry. I think your blind-spot about this, is really striking because it is is causing you to use terms and arguments that are either profoundly dishonest or just muddle headed and neither of those things are like you.

Actually, feminism is profoundly extreme.

It is absolutely an extremist postion in a male superemacist society, in the context of thousands of years of male rule, to assert that women are fully human and we have the right to organise society for our benefit as well as that of men.

It really is extreme. It doesn't sound it, but it is.

Basil: What I don't intend to do is regard all feminists as the same when they are clearly not. Feminists differ in their priorities WRT feminism itself (ie some are mostly concerned with economic inequality, others prioritise the battle for reproductive rights, others still focus on ways of making feminism more (or less) inclusive...) One of many restrictions on women's freedom is the idea that women are some kind of homogenous mass and whatever an individual woman does affects all women, therefore a woman must always put her own needs way behind those of everyone else (a cornerstone of patriarchal thinking is the idea that women exist for other people's benefit, not their own), which is something that the anti-sex strand of feminism is very big on. And there is an anti-sex strand to feminism, a line of thought which regards PIV, sex with men and any form of sexual display or recreational sex as wrong, let alone sex work.

And the insistence that a woman choosing sex work is Harming Other Women is slut-shaming judgemental bullshit. Choosing to become a robber is harming other people, choosing to enforce your viewpoint by assault and criminal damage against others is harmful, it could be argued that taking a job collecting from defaulters at a payday loan company is hard to square with a good conscience, but choosing sex work is not harmful to other people in any demonstrable way unless you cling to the patriarchal myth that any one woman represents all the negativity in every woman.

We're not criticising women who choose to work in the sex industry. Each woman has to make her own decisions about how best to survive under male supremacy (although for a lot of women in the industry, they don't choose it, it chooses them).

This article is about a specific brand of feminism - sex positive feminism - that actually promotes working in the sex industry and other woman-harming activities like BDSM as feminist. Sex positive feminists are a problem and they do need to stop getting in the way of feminists who are challenging male harm to women.

Do people understand the differences between politics and someone simply doing something in their lives? Because they are different.

Thank you FridaKahlo you have put that far more succinctly & clearly than I could.

I think one of the unintended consequences of the hard won freedoms in regard to sexual liberation has been the fact that so many younger women now engage in situations and relationships where they have little or sometimes no power. Feminism isn't about and up to very recently has never been about glorifying, normalising or ignoring the abuse of other women in the name of personal liberation. My freedom should never have the knock on effect of denying you yours.

a cornerstone of patriarchal thinking is the idea that women exist for other people's benefit, not their own

A cornerstone of patriarchal thinking is the idea that women exist for men's benefit not their own. Unless there is a third sex.

I have never met a woman who chose sex industry
yes I do think sex industry choses them is a good summation
I know await someone repackaging the happy hooker as the bright as a button law student turning tricks to pay way through uni

"What is feminism? A political movement to overthrow male supremacy, according to us radicals. These days, however, young women (and men) are increasingly fed the line from "fun feminists" that it is about individual power, rather than a collective movement"

From the first paragraph in the article. So SGB and other sex positives or fun feminists, are individual freedoms more important than the emancipation of ALL women?

OK I get what you're saying about potential slut-shaming SGB, but I have never heard radical feminists express it in those terms.

Believing that doing sex work is a harmful choice, a choice that harms women, is not condemning the woman who makes that "choice" (except in a tiny minority of cases, it's not a real choice). It's making a political analysis of that choice. It's not condemning a woman any more than it condemns a woman for wearing lipstick; it's just not pretending that it's somethign women do in a cultural, social and economic vacuum.

I believe that this so called "fun feminism" is some crap spun by people who want women to behave in a particular way, but realise that women know they have self-determination and would only do if they wanted to. So they have somehow managed to convince some women that they are in a position of power if they choose to pole-dance or become a sex worker. Jeeseus only knows how they achieved it, but the end result is still the same as when women felt they had to be people-pleasers- girls who feel the need to appeal to men to get along in life. You only have to ask yourself who benefits from women playing along with this? It's a marketing coup.

Fifty Shades of Grey. That book is really bugging me at the moment because it is bringing into wider mainstream culture the idea of submission as a lifestyle.
And that is one thing that bugs me about the BDSM scene is the idea that because you enjoy something sexually, you should define your whole life around that aspect of yourself, which correct me if I am wrong, is a concept that is hugely fought against within feminism and is likely to have a larger impact on the person in the submissive role both within and outside of the scene.

It's the marketing coup of the century duchesse. Clever how women's liberation now rests on how pleasing they are to the patriarchy. How palatable the message is and whether there is something in it for the guys.

minimathsmouse, can you clear something up for me please."A political movement to overthrow male supremacy".So do feminists want to have control over men?

For myself I want equality and co-operation between men and women and for people not to be pre-judged because of their gender.

For me I want equality based on class as well.

amillionyears, it's the opening paragraph of the Bindel piece linked by OP.

For me it seems clear that feminism is about the overthrow of supremacy not women gaining supremacy over men. Anyway what use would power over men be? what might we become if we had it? "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"

"A political movement to overthrow male supremacy".So do feminists want to have control over men?

Why would you make that jump? Overthrowing male supremacy, means stopping men having control over women, not inverting their horrible patriarchal system.