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.

I do agree with that point of view. Not all men are the enemy. Interestingly though when I think of the men I know, my dh is the "work in progress" - though recently he is heading up the the diversity committee for his employer, and learning A LOT. But I work with some genuinely lovely guys - very family orientated, non presenteesim types. Due to the industry I work in, it is not uncommon that I am the only female in the room, yet I have NEVER felt intimidated by this. I feel judged by my professional performance, not by my breasts.

That's extraordinary to see on this thread someone objecting to Julie Bindel saying the Burkha isn't liberating to women.

Women in Afghanistan and other places are imprisoned in the Burkha. It's a walking prison that they have to wear or face violence and other kinds of retaliation. It is a form of extreme oppression of women, and it's absolutely right that feminists speak out against it, and against the men who force women into it, either directly through violence or through their patriachal religious propaganda.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that this thread has turned into bunfight where people find as many different ways as possible to criticise radical feminism, but at the bottom of Julie Bindel's article is that we can't have a feminism that promotes harmful practices to women, practices and institutions that men have created in order to oppress women. It's the job of feminism to destroy them, not promote them.

Without radical feminism we wouldnt' have the feminist fight against male violence against women, we wouldn't have the feminist fight against male sexual exploitation of women.

Without sex positive feminism. Well someone tell me what we'd be missing.

But radical feminism does not judge women who work in the sex industry - nor does it engage in slut shaming. Quite the contrary.

So I'm kind of at a loss as to why sex positive feminists expend so much energy claiming the opposite.

I Don't Get It.

On this phrase from Bindel "if a man approves of a brand of feminism it's not working" - I think what she means is that true feminism asks men to relinquish male privilege. And that is never going to be easy. It doesn't mean that all men are the enemy - it means that all men benefit from male privilege, and by definition, for women to be equal/liberated, men will have to give up that privilege. And, of course, the sort of adjusting of the status quo that the above would entail is going to be uncomfortable for men (for historic, social and individual reasons). I think, within that context, it is a reasonable statement.

You're right Beachcomber. And it gets repeated so often, and it's such a lie.

Radical feminism does not see women in those terms, we never have and we never will.

I think it suits sex positive feminists to reduce our objections to the sex industry down to some kind of moral disapproval of women who have sex, because it means they can ignore the massive harms of the sex industry that radical feminism draws attention to and fights.

Sex positive feminism is not specifically designed to attack other feminists; slutshaming and restrictions on women's sexual freedom come from the patriarchy in far greater proportions, particularly in the US where reproductive rights are under attack (all the pro-abstinence crap, the stuff about a girl asking for contraception not to be charged for and being called a slut by a government official) and you have maniacs like that bloke who wants to change the legal wording for rape trials so that a victim cannot be referred to as a victim but must be described as an 'accuser'.

Slut shaming and restrictions on women's sexual freedom don't com from us at all.

We want to restrict or rather end male sexual harm and male sexual violence towards women.

I agree - radical feminists don't wish to restrict women's sexual activity nor shame women for being sexual.

SGB you appear to be mixing up rad fems with the moral right.

I constantly see the myth, that radical feminists are anti women's sexual freedom, spouted by sex positive feminists (even calling themselves sex positive suggests that they think other branches of feminism are sex negative).

Like I said I don't get it - either these people don't actually understand what radical feminism is about or they wish to attack and undermine it. And I find that very very odd.

Also the Slutwalk was considered to be extremely alienating to a lot of women. Lots of women neither want to reclaim the word slut, nor think it is possible (it cannot be reclaimed as it has always been a slur).

Many women of colour felt that they could not march in support of something which used the word 'slut'. I very much agree with this - these women put into words why I felt very uncomfortable with the Slutwalks.

Black women have worked tirelessly since the 19th century colored women?s clubs to rid society of the sexist/racist vernacular of slut, jezebel, hottentot, mammy, mule, sapphire; to build our sense of selves and redefine what women who look like us represent. Although we vehemently support a woman?s right to wear whatever she wants anytime, anywhere, within the context of a ?SlutWalk? we don?t have the privilege to walk through the streets of New York City, Detroit, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, L.A. etc., either half-naked or fully clothed self-identifying as ?sluts? and think that this will make women safer in our communities an hour later, a month later, or a year later. Moreover, we are careful not to set a precedent for our young girls by giving them the message that we can self-identify as ?sluts? when we?re still working to annihilate the word ?ho?, which deriving from the word ?hooker? or ?whore?, as in ?Jezebel whore? was meant to dehumanize. Lastly, we do not want to encourage our young men, our Black fathers, sons and brothers to reinforce Black women?s identities as ?sluts? by normalizing the term on t-shirts, buttons, flyers and pamphlets.

Slutwalks, and indeed sex positive feminism is general, just feels to me like privileged women embracing patriarchal values of women as primarily having a sexual function. I see no political analysis and no analysis of the feminization of poverty by these women so I'm not too sure how they think they are going to make things better for women as a group. I don't think fucking your way to liberation when you are oppressed through your sex and your sexuality, in the context of a gender binary hierarchy, is a very good plan. Feels pretty doomed to failure.

Nyac, The Burkha wasn't created by men and it isn't necessary to religious observance. It is cultural and came about in the midlle east and north Africa in response to the sun and the hamazans. Once many muslim women realise this "walking cage" as you put it, serves no purpose, they can start to question why they wear it. In many areas in the world women are working towards liberation but are choosing to continue to wear it. It may be men (not moderates) who insist now that women wear it but there are women who choose to wear it. How we go about liberating one culture or race or religion must be sensitive and empathic to their culture. IF they choose to wear it, they have as much right to do so, as I have not to wear it.

Alienating muslim women from feminism entirely on grounds of dress code is in no way going to help their emancipation.

Maybe that is why radicals insist on strict adherence to their way or the high way, they wish to create a hierarchical feminism where one sort is better than another. Any movement which now very narrowly focuses on a "doctrine" is always going to alienate people. A strict doctrine in feminism would be little different than strict religious doctrine.

"Supporting the rights of sex workers not to be harassed and stigmatized"

All feminists do that. Radical feminists do that, while also critiquing the place of the sex industry within the patriarchy.

If that's all sex positive feminism does, then it doesn't do anything different to radical feminism.

However, what it also does which radical feminism refuses to, is legitimise the sex industry, porn and prostitution. It legitimises men's right to use their economic power to access the bodies of women who have less economic power than men as a class and if they didn't, might not make the choice to allow those men to access their bodies. It refuses to look at the economic and social context in which the transactions between men and women with regard to sex, take place.

In other words, sex positive feminism, has a closer relationship to post-modernism, than it does to feminism. Post modernism has been incredibly successful at infiltrating most radical and progressive political movements and changing the terms of the debate within those movements - it's done it to the socialist and anarchist movements as well. It is fundamentally a right-wing, reactionary way of looking at the world because it refuses to acknowledge the relationship everythign has to everything else and it enables right wing people to argue that something that is profoundly regressive, is actually progressive.

When normal people look at post-modern arguments, they can instantly see the lack of common-sense but are afraid to point it out because post-modernism annihilates common-sense with bullshit academic language which expresses ideas that don't come out of reality; they come out of theoretical bullshit unrooted in reality, unlike radical feminism which is absolutely rooted in women's experience and reality and therefore, like any ideology rooted in material reality, makes it difficult for post-modernism to gain a foothold. Sex positive feminism is just the wing of feminism that post-modernism has managed to colonise most successfully IMO.

'Nyac, The Burkha wasn't created by men and it isn't necessary to religious observance. It is cultural and came about in the midlle east and north Africa in response to the sun and the hamazans.'

Do you have a source for this, minimathsmouse? Certainly head coverings and loose garments are a response to the blazing sun, and are therefore worn by both genders. But the burkha covers a woman's face, and even her eyes - it dehumanises her, and prevents her from eating or drinking anything in public (thus non-coincidentally barring her from Middle East cafe culture). It is a horrible thing, and had nearly died out before the recent resurgence of radical/Salafist Islam with its accompanying woman-hating.

Minima my position on the burkah is to support the right of any woman who wants to wear it, while critiquing the patriarchal conditions in which wearing it makes sense.

Women make choices that are in their interests within a context which has been set up to ensure that any other choice made, are problematic. So of course it makes sense to wear a burkah in Afghanistan. I sometimes feel how pleasant it would be to wear a face veil and anonymous long robe to stop feeling so fucking invaded by men's impertinent assessing looks.

The rad fem approach however, would be to get men to look at us as human beings, rather than as a collection of different body parts, so that when they look at us, it is not with appraisal of our body parts, but rather as fellow humans. Then the need for a burkah or a veil, would be gone, except for practical purposes like protecting yourself from the sun or doing houseowrk in dusty environments.

If the burkah was a practical garment then men in those countries would be wearing it too.

Oops, they aren't.

Of course it was created by men. It's a cloth prison for women, that they force women into. Women are attacked and even killed in places like Afghanistan if they refuse to wear it.

Also I said walking prison not walking cage. A prison implies a jailer. They certainly exist.

Sorry am I missing the point or is everyone else. The OP is about Bindels statement. People wondered why it would go in the new statesman? Well probably because the sweeping statement made by Bindel will drive the average woman away from feminism. Not every man is good or bad but there seems to be a massive brush tarring them all. And I can see the patriarchy approving of Bindel as she alienates many women with statements.

Think of it this way 512 messages and we are still not on common ground. Now take the average woman reading the start of this thread. How will they see what Bindel wrote? Certainly any muslim woman is likely to react negatively, those women like myself with a good husband/partner that has an equal relationship is going to question why every man seems to be the target. To get the message across to more women we do NOT want to be radicalising the movement or we just find that even amongst our own sex feminism is frowned upon.

I do understand that generalisation need to be used but if the people using them do not caveat them we can expect the division of feminism being caused by feminist (on both sides). So long as we point fingers at each others arguments we get nowhere. I am prepared to re-examine some issues but Bindel needs to get off her high horse and remember the masses as we are what will empower the movement long term.

Nyac sorry if you see it as a prison. How many women in the UK do not see it that way? I have a few friends who are Muslim and putting Bindel's statement to them they were horrified. I am sure you will say they are programmed to react that way from birth but many women at the present time would not want to change. When feminism mixes with religion you are really going to polarise people.

All movements are driven by the radicals within those movements.

The ideas filter down and get adjusted, tweaked and watered down for the mainstream.

But without the radicals, there are no ideas.

Having actually read a few radical and separatist feminist texts, I do think that accusations of man-hating and sex-hating are not entirely made up by evil patriarchalists, though I can appreciate that there are divisions even within radical feminism. According to some of these, you can't be a 'real' feminist if you are the mother of a son, unless you abandon him. One book I read seemed to boil down to 'all other feminists are untrustworthy misguided Tools of thd Patriarchy apart from me and my three mates and one of them once smiled at a man so I'm not sure about her either.' It's such comedy gold that I almost wonder if it was actually written by an MRA to discredit feminism.

So I have no ideas to advance feminism because I am not a radical. Wow just wow. Going to leave this thread for a bit after that because I am not a radical I obviously don't have a brain and cannot therefore think for myself!

"it dehumanises her" is actually the sort of rhetoric which is so discriminatory. Clothing alone does not strip people of their humanity. In the same way that women wearing mini skirts shouldn't. A women in lipstick is no less human than one without.

I have read a great deal about the middle east and as a socialist I am primarily concerned with class, as someone from Jewish ancestors I have spent years trying to understand the material conditions of Muslim people, in particular the conditions under which the palestinians are forced to live.

The Arab spring is broadly speaking a socialist movement and within that there are many women, some who choose to observe both religious and cultural practices and others who are desperate for women a to be free not to wear the Burkha, both camps wish to see democracy and both want to be free to study and work just as men are. However in supporting all women we have to be empathic and sympathetic to their culture. Otherwise we become little better than their oppressors.

what is the current craze with rewriting posts to absurd effect?

'radicals drive ideas' becomes 'you can't think for yourself'

But without the radicals, there are no ideas.

To me says I don't have the ability to think as I am not a radical. How else am I suppose to read that?

how else are you supposed to read it?

like an adult? it's a very general statement that you can agree or disagree with, no need for the teenage outbursts really

Sorry, I strongly disagree sausage, what you're arguing is going back to the idea that because a few women "choose" it it makes a patriarchal institution OK.

Women in Afghanistan do not choose to wear burkhas, they are forced into them. And women in this country who do have the freedom to choose are insulting and making light of their oppression by claiming the burkha is simply a choice women make.

Women should be standing in solidarity with each other against male oppression instead of banging on about their individual choice, which just comes across as highly narcissistic.

A burkha does literally dehumanise a woman, it's not possible to see who she is or her individuality. She becomes one of an amorphous interchangeable group, which the men who force women into burkhas view her as.

Meanwhile for example, men in Afghanistan retain their individuality. Their faces, which are one of the main ways human beings distinguish ourselves and interact with each other, remain visible.