Radfem 2013 and the MRAs

[MooncupGoddess]

As many of you will remember, the Radfem 2012 conference in London was explicitly open only to born women and consequently attracted lots of condemnation and anger from people who saw this as transphobic. It was kicked out of its original venue at Conway Hall and went underground (very successfully in the end).

This year Radfem 2013 has not explicitly banned transwomen... but instead it's come under attack from Men's Rights Activists, who have staged a demo at the planned venue, the London Irish Centre, while making lots of unpleasant and ridiculous claims about how radical feminists want to murder small boys and the like. As a result the venue is threatening to cancel the booking.

www.mralondon.org/

bugbrennan.com/2013/04/20/statement-from-rad-fem-2013/

I have mixed feelings about the whole trans issue but have no hesitation in declaring the MRAs utter misogynist knobbers and am disappointed the London Irish Centre has seemingly caved into them.

Here is the official clarification by Off to Work as to their reasons for not wanting to host the conference (BTW the group of protesters they refer to are MRAs - and since Off to Work are not 'feminists' this suggests that misgivings about them are not simply feminists who "love to hate MRAs" clamping or "willfully misunderstand them" SigmundFraude, no MRAs clearly harass and bully people as you will see below):

The booking with Off to Work, based at London Irish Centre, was going ahead with the Radfem2013 organising committee, who are professionally organising a successful event for the Radical Feminist Community. The organisers were completely transparent about their conference and we have no criticisms to make of them and we have no opinion at all about their political analysis.

Allegations that some media sources and bloggers are putting forward about the reason for the decision having anything to do with their political analysis, opinions, "hate speech" or the conference being in breach of legislation are completely false. Our partner, The London Irish Centre, is in agreement with us that these allegations are not the reason for this suspension. The reason, as outlined to the organisers, are specifically around the safety of staff, the overall ability of the centre to logistically manage the booking, and the level of disruption that a small group of protesters have caused. We support the conference going ahead and we are working with the organising collective to find a way forward to ensure that this happens.

Interesting to see the update, thanks Bubbles.

Clamping and Sigmund don't seem to have read much more than the title. Too many big words?

'Too many big words?'

Nice. I always find it amusing when a so called 'feminist' takes time out to mock another woman's intellect. I see it fairly frequently, and it does somewhat buy into the 'bitchy women' stereotype.

Only if you're a misogyinist.

So you mock my intellect, yet I'm the misogynist?

And these MRAs of course are not wilfully misunderstanding feminism

Thank you for the update Bubbles.

Feminism advances the rights of women as a class. It's not about the validation and support of everything ever said by any woman anywhere about anything. That would be bizarre and sexist. And expecting women to be fluffy bunnies in everything they say to other women is also bizarre and sexist.

Maybe your misunderstanding of feminism explains your hostility towards it?

If any misunderstanding has arisen, it would be due in no small part to every feminists view of what constitutes a feminist being different!!!

You fall into feminist type 17, I will update my spreadsheet!

Feminists don't hate MRA's.

We pity them. And have contempt for them. But not hatred, they don't deserve the energy.

There are a number of schools of feminist thought. All concern the rights of women as a class. It is the basic definition of feminism.

YY Basil

'BubblesOfBliss Mon 29-Apr-13 10:05:10

And lets not forget trafficking and prostituting women to 'service' men in the army bases. I once had a chat about this with a pretty high-ranking bloke in the army. It was so weird the way he saw the provision of prostitutes for the 'boys' to be essential and non-negotiable- it was absolutely de facto and freaked me out. To him it was like my suggestion soldiers shouldn't prostitute women was like me saying 2+2=5.'

Which Army was he in and when?

Are people here actually saying Communism was 'great' for female liberation? Do you lot know anything about Communist Russia? Or are Gulags, ok, now because they locked men and women up equally?

The Red Terror is pretty specific as to what it was and the millions who died in famine.

Yeah, but women's rights bloomed (apparently).

When history is written by a ruling class, history as told the world over will always be different to "our" conception of history.

Do you know why your local newspapers filled with Russian and Eastern European marriage agencies after the fall of communism? Interesting read here: www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk/women/118-gender-inequality/186-women-the-russian-revolution-and-the-collpase-of-stalinism

www.bolshevik.org/1917/no7/no07wmru.html interesting read here, all of which I agree with.

"The Bolsheviks recognized that without qualitative economic development, the liberation of women was a utopian fantasy"

The fact is Marxists have always argued that capitalism is a necessary stage to the development of communism. Without the advances in technology and without raising the productive forces within society to an advanced degree, without having a "working class", without having a revolutionary "working class" struggle then we can not be at a reflexive point where we are ready to revolutionise. Russia didn't have a working class as such and hadn't even undergone an industrial revolution.

" In early 1924 a bureaucratic caste under Stalin came to dominate the Soviet Communist Party and state. Thus, the equality of women as envisioned by the Bolsheviks never fully came about. The Stalinist bureaucracy abandoned the fight for international revolution and so besmirched the great ideals of communism with bureaucratic distortions and lies that, in the end in 1991-92, the working class did not fight against the revolution?s undoing and the restoration of capitalism under Boris Yeltsin"

www.icl-fi.org/english/esp/59/emancipation.html

It's perfectly possible to loathe Stalinism and indeed disagree with Communism while at the same time appreciating that Lenin and his intellectual forebears had an unusually enlightened understanding of the structural nature of sexism and the oppression of women.

LazarussLozenge You seem to miss every point.

"Which Army was he in and when?"

Obviously I am going to keep this vague in order to avoid identifying factors.

"Are people here actually saying Communism was 'great' for female liberation? Do you lot know anything about Communist Russia?"

Where did people say that? We were discussing theory not implementation by the way- and we can all set up straw women like that, but most of us have better things to do.

Oh, just wanted to add that I think in view of the fact that the conditions need to be right on the ground before anything else can come out of capitalism, is that the work of feminists in advancing women's rights under capitalism also point the way to creating those conditions.

Thanks for the links Mini

"Are people here actually saying Communism was 'great' for female liberation? Do you lot know anything about Communist Russia?"

I know a bit, not as much as I would like with limited time! I loathe Stalin and everything he stood for. I am in favour of communism.

One of the difficulties is in reclaiming the term. Because of Stalin it is quite a task.

What do people think are the main characteristics of capitalism? What do people think are the main characteristics of communism? because a lot of what is fed to us in our daily diet through education, media and from our peers is simply misleading. Just as we are socialised into gender roles, we are socialised and educated to accept a specific hegemonic concept of politics, economics and philosophy which supports the functioning of capitalism.

Also in the conversation between Lenin & Zetkin massively quoted on this thread, this (Lenin) sounds pretty progressive to me:

"?The Government of the proletarian dictatorship, together with the Communist Party and trade unions, is of course leaving no stone unturned in the effort to overcome the backward ideas of men and women, to destroy the old un-communist psychology. In law there is naturally complete equality of rights for men and women. And everywhere there is evidence of a sincere wish to put this equality into practice. We are bringing the women into the social economy, into legislation and government. All educational institutions are open to them, so that they can increase their professional and social capacities. We are establishing communal kitchens and public eating-houses, laundries and repairing shops, nurseries, kindergartens, children?s homes, educational institutes of all kinds. In short, we are seriously carrying out the demand in our programme for the transference of the economic and educational functions of the separate household to society. That will mean freedom for the woman from the old household drudgery and dependence on man. That enables her to exercise to the full her talents and her inclinations. The children are brought up under more favourable conditions than at home. We have the most advanced protective laws for women workers in the world, and the officials of the organised workers carry them out. We are establishing maternity hospitals, homes for mothers and children, mothercraft clinics, organising lecture courses on child care, exhibitions teaching mothers how to look after themselves and their children, and similar things. We are making the most serious efforts to maintain women who are unemployed and unprovided for.

?We realise clearly that that is not very much, in comparison with the needs of the working women, that it is far from being all that is required for their real freedom. But still it is tremendous progress, as against conditions in tsarist-capitalist Russia. It is even a great deal compared with conditions in countries where capitalism still has a free hand. It is a good beginning in the right direction, and we shall develop it further. With all our energy, you may believe that. For every day of the existence of the Soviet State proves more clearly that we cannot go forward without the women.?

Added to which, I would say that women are the revolutionary class. Women went out of the street, they demanded bread, the men put down tools in the factories and joined them, that was the start of the revolution.

The same in Paris, women rioted for bread. French revolution.

In the Paris commune women fought alongside men, they organised and they had full participation in the democratic processes. www.workersliberty.org/story/2011/03/23/women-paris-commune

I resolved not to be the first to challenge this Marxist stuff here, and I'm not going to get into an extended argument if there turns out to be one.

But really, in the present day Marxism is just an opiate for a different bunch of masses, something for people to believe in when they have a chronic desire to be discontented. Well-fed people who can look forward to a life expectancy of over 80, and who have free instantaneous worldwide communication at their fingertips, so they can tell everyone how awful it all is!

Oh TeiTetua don't you think we can aspire to having more than a life expectancy of 80?

Is that really the zenith of human achievement?

Hester Eisenstein, Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women?s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World,

Poverty is created by capitalism, with women being 2/3rds the world workforce and 2/3rds the worlds poor. Wealth is being concentrated in fewer hands and this wealth is being built on the exploitation of women.

"The book is a return to this question and gives a fairly definitive answer: yes, but that means the ideas of feminism have to return to some of their roots, and have especially to integrate class and race if they are going to mean something more than a number of middle and upper class (mainly western) women gaining access to ?power? on the same basis as men" www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/book-reviews/6230-hester-eisenstein-feminism-seduced-how-global-elites-use-womens-labor-and-ideas-to-exploit-the-world

I won't be offended if you disagree with me TeiTetua but I can't take seriously opinion based on little more than prejudice.

Mini For me, globalisation is a practical reason I believe sex-class should be considered above social class. As you say "Wealth is being concentrated in fewer hands and this wealth is being built on the exploitation of women.", and I believe that in the same way that separate classes in a particular location are established by a series of male-violent raids of the population (then regrouping back at camp to share plunder- eventually becoming formalised into separate classes related by 'taxation'), 'nation-classes' are established in a similar way, so that in a sense any woman in the UK - even working class women -buying cheap goods in the UK built on the exploited labour of foreign women, has a relationship with those exploited women of being of the 'upper nation class' benefiting from their exploitation.

BubblesOfBliss Wed 01-May-13 21:05:54

LazarussLozenge You seem to miss every point.

"Which Army was he in and when?"

Obviously I am going to keep this vague in order to avoid identifying factors.

I don't believe even the British Army is small enough that by stating 'X Army, 2 years ago' would pin point this high ranking officers that seems to think shipping in prostitutes for the 'boys' is ok.

So I'll ask again in more focused terms.

This high-ranking bloke in THE army who seems to think prostituting women is essential, in order to 'service' men which Army was he in?