Just posting from Radfem 2013 with the MN feminists - couple of interesting comments :-)

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I'm just posting because I'm at a conference with a few MN feminists. We've just been to a panel about feminist parenting, and the others are chatting with other feminist mums.

I've been listening in on the discussion mostly on account of not having any children - which is why I'm posting on MN instead of talking - but a couple of women mentioned the old stereotype of MN being full of anti-feminist middle-class white mothers who only talk about nappies. And a couple of FWR regulars were saying that we're actually quite nice. So, I am hoping maybe people who were at the conference will come to check out this section.

Or maybe they won't, but if they do - hello! :-)

I don't think that feminists sites discussing trans issues in the way that article does are either attempting to promote patriarchy or promote trans women's rights. It's trying to promote the rights of women whose lives aren't largely about children over those whose are. To me, the discussion of gender and trans rights in this way is just a way of promoting that. And there has always been a tension over that issue in feminism and it has always been hugely divisive. Julie Bindel wrote a very negative article about mothers recently.

There have always been people lining up to say that only if being a woman was less about getting pregnant, breast feeding, caring for and teaching children we wouldn't be in this predicament. It's the same old argument dressed up in a new ideology.

FF, and young, white middle class university educated women are in a different position to most other women is that they usually have a decade and a half of being an adult woman in which they have no caring responsibilities, so the issues they are experiencing are not those of most other women.

Most of the focus of having an identity based primarily on being a straight queer because you are into BDSM, ethical porn etc isn't really possible if you spend most of your time existing in a world that involves the whole of society including children. You have to be a segregated subculture that largely excludes children and the people who are busy looking after them.

Exactly Flora.

No-one else is going to fight for reproductive rights, if we don't. They can call this feminism if they want but it ain't liberation for women.

I would happily leave them to it and do my thing - campaign for the issues that feminists have traditionally been bothered about like male violence and reproductive rights and which are still there and haven't gone away. But they don't like me doing that. (And according to Marfina it's 'discriminatory'.)

NB it is the transactivists and their allies who try to prevent the radfems from meeting, never the other way round.

The analysis in that link makes no sense to me.

She honestly doesn't seem to see how the statement 'a woman is a person with a vagina who can make babies' is radically different from 'women are babymaking factories'. The difference between the two is the major thing feminism is about - it's the difference between women being able to do something and women being forced to do something.

But evidently that's not important.

Mooncup, I totally agree with your examples of which types of "labels" are problematic and which aren't.

(And also, OMG! Someone came onto this thread and agreed with me! faints )

I also see Tunip's point about how "Transwomen do X" doesn't necessarily mean "All transwomen". But I do think there's a crucial ambiguity in many of Brennan's statements as to whether she means "some" or "all", and I suspect the ambiguity is not something she is greatly bothered about.

To some extent I share Freya's skepticism about the word queer. I have heard the word used so extensively recently that it almost seems to have lost any real meaning. For example, I heard an academic talk suggesting that male authors who write fiction narrated in a woman's voice are therefore de facto queer (and this was clearly meant as a term of praise). I would never use the word queer in that way myself. A male author can create a fictional female narrator and manipulate that narrator in a way that is completely cliched and traditional and sexist; there doesn't have to be anything challenging or transgressive about it. Just playing around with literary voices does not on its own make you queer, dammit! But I digress. I do believe that for a lot of people who don't feel comfortable describing their gender or sexuality or both in terms of binary oppositions, the term queer has been very empowering.

As for playing the "which group is more oppressed" game, that's bullshit IMO. Not useful at all.

Finally, as an aside, there are not as many feminist medievalists on this thread as I thought. I didn't notice LRD's metamorphosis - I wondered where she had disappeared to after starting this whole discussion.

This post has taken me ages to type as DS2 is waking up every few minutes for absolutely no good reason.

Oh, sorry!

I thought I'd posted to say it, but turns out I'd posted on virtually all the other threads I'm on, but not this one. Daft namechanges don't really go with serious subjects.

I've got very much the same issues with 'queer' as you have. I recently came across this: www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2013/05/karls-kzoo2013-paper-feeding-dogs-queer.html

I've got to admit, I find this problematic on a number of levels (and that's the polite version of what I think).

Btw, I actually feel uncomfortable on a personal level with 'queer' and it is because I don't feel comfortable with describing my sexuality in terms of binary oppositions. I get why others feel differently, I just feel there's really nothing un-binary about it. It's just expanding one group to the point of meaninglessness. I feel fairly uncomfortable identifying as bisexual because, for goodness' sake, I've got a husband and I don't date women - but I feel a heck of a lot more uncomfortable calling myself 'queer' as to me that's like saying there's no difference between me and someone who's never been attracted to anyone of a different gender.

MRD, thanks so much for that link. It's brilliant. BRILLIANT. I am wiping tears of laughter from my eyes. Maybe it's partly because it's too late at night and I'm tired, but it is the most hilarious academic article I have seen for a long time.

(I know the author did not intend it that way, but I am a bad, bad person.)

Excuse me while I retire now to give my cats some queer love.

Oh, I am equally bad. I have got to admit a bit of me is utterly delighted I get to share it on here with someone who will understand both the feminism and the medieval side of it.

That article is all upside down and back to front to me.

If the problem was a matter of femininity being devalued, women who perform femininity wouldn't be so consistently praised and rewarded, and women who don't conform to a feminine ideal wouldn't get punished.

I just don't understand how this really basic misunderstanding of gender is getting under everyone's radar. Sometimes when I read pieces like that I feel like I've fallen down Alice in Wonderland's rabbit hole - I think, 'Really? And when did everything that underpins my understanding of feminism just get erased? Did I dream it?'

It's very difficult to engage with something like that article. It's as if you think you're speaking the same language as someone - the words are all the same - but then you have this horrible realization that you are actually speaking totally different languages. While also swimming through treacle, in a fog. It's kind of a similar feeling to being gaslighted. That's how I experience it, anyway.

She says femininity is devalued, but then that people who fail to perform femininity are the hardest hit. I actually think that is true in a way - femininity is mocked ('don't be such a big girl'/'pink is for sissies') and women who're not feminine are punished for it.

I just don't see why she thinks that's to do with 'cisnormativitiy' when it's radical feminists who're arguing most strongly that we need to get rid of 'femininity' as a concept and to stop pretending gender is real.

No, that sentence (I see the worst of our gender hierarchy landing on the shoulders of folks who fail to meet the strict rules of the compulsory gender binary in a way that?s perceived as feminine) is ambiguous - I think she means the interpretation that when people violate gender norms by performing femininity they get punished - because the example that immediately follows is queer men and transwomen. Which is true - but it doesn't follow from that that the problem can be fixed by valuing femininity. Nor does this idea that femininity is perceived as bad explain why women who don't conform to a feminine gender role are not rewarded for it - quite the reverse is true.

I mean, I agree with you - I don't like that traditionally female occupations or crafts or pastimes etc get dismissed - but they are dismissed because they are associated with women, not because there's some inherent mystical feminineness about them.

Ah, d'you think so? That hadn't occurred to me but might well make more sense.

And I agree - there's no reason to think the best way to solve problematic gender norms would be with more gender.

I just don't follow the reproductive arguments at all.

In fact what she's actually saying is that queer men and transwomen suffer more from the gender binary than anyone else, because it's worse for a man to do femininity than it is for a woman not to. I suppose that always depends on multiple other factors though. But then it's the follow-through that breaks down.

But basically we should all shut up and reconfigure feminism so it's not selfishly about the people who give birth to babies anymore.

Jesus wept. I'm glad I came to feminism when it was a simple concept that male and female i.e. all persons are of equal worth and deserve equal opportunities to succeed in whatever course in life they choose to take and should not be bound by what they have in their knickers. That simple concept should be broad enough to cover homosexuals, transgender, intersex, queer or whatever. The rest to me is add-on bollocks that causes trouble when it needn't.

I never quite grasped the phrase "overthinking it" until I read this thread.

But I have no doubt I am in a minority of one here

I would like to say, with regards to reproductive rights, I think there is this tension (for want of a better word), where being pro choice seems to just be about abortion rights, rather than also having the right to have your baby and live in a world that accepts you as a mother and is structured to support you.

There is a very white, young middle class strand of feminism, where being Child Free is something to really fight for and motherhood is easy-peasy and societally approved, so no feminist activism is required in the realm of motherhood.

This is complete rubbish, but it's a very common viewpoint in a lot of "modern feminism", whether rad, liberal, Marxist etc.

YY. I think that is really important. I also think there is very common belief that abortion is dead easy and simple, and that if you don't agree it's always dead easy and simple, it must be because you are tending towards being pro-life, rather than because you think it's not particularly brilliant as a solution to unwanted pregnancy.

I really did find it telling that this conference was so brilliant in many ways but the issues around reproduction/motherhood just felt far less nuanced than anything else.

Motherhood didn't come up much. The session on feminist parenting didn't really go very far, compared with the discussions we have on here.

I don't agree that radical feminism overstates the abortion side of reproductive rights as much as other strands of feminism, though. I have always found radical feminists far better at thinking this stuff through, probably because they seem to be much older on average and more likely to have experienced it. People rarely talk about the way that mainstream and queer feminism are skewed towards youth but at the moment I think they are, and it's damaging.

I think it might have been more the case for radical feminism in the past, though. Wasn't Shulamith Firestone a radfem?

I don't think radical feminism overstates the abortion side as much as other strands of feminism either. I do think all strands of feminism have aways to go, but that's true of so many things. That's not me criticizing feminism, that's me feeling that feminism is constantly under siege from the people who would like us to shut up and be grateful for everything instead of continuing to discuss what is still not ok for women.

'I also think there is very common belief that abortion is dead easy and simple, and that if you don't agree it's always dead easy and simple, it must be because you are tending towards being pro-life,'

Yes, definitely agree.

Yes, I am of the 'it should be safe, legal and rare' school of belief re abortion, and think it would be useful to put more emphasis on how to reduce the need for abortion - whether that's improving contraceptive services, helping teenage girls to feel comfortable in refusing to have PIV or insisting on condoms, supporting pregnant women who don't want to have abortions but have significant practical barriers to motherhood, etc.

Of course feminists do all of these things (unlike the pro-lifers...), but discussion round abortion sometimes gets reduced to 'it's all about choice', whereas feminist discussion of prostitution tends to be much more nuanced and understand the fact that although women may have chosen to be prostitutes, we should improve society so that they didn't feel like that was their only choice.

I'm not so sure that early termination isn't easy and simple for most women.

I know I was pressured into believing that I was somehow thwarting my natural instincts, that I was less motherly, that I was less womanly if I found it straightforward. There was a huge amount of pressure to feel anguish over something that just wasn't traumatic for me. That I was somehow less of a woman by not suffering PTSD from it.

It's not ok to say that I wasn't scarred by it. But then it's also not ok to say that motherhood isn't, for some women, the be all and end all. How much of the concept of motherhood is driven by patriarchial beliefs ? It's still taboo to question it - I don't know whether this is because women are questioning the natural order, going against patriarchial values or whatever but it still isn't ok to say that I as a woman am not defined by motherhood or that I find it difficult.

I can't help but feel that women are given a role that suits men - and are told that it's their destiny, that it's their purpose. I simply don't accept that motherhood involves anything other than raising children in a manner that is lovine and compassionate but nowadays to be a good mother, women seem to be expected to lose their identity and be entirely self sacrificing to their children and are vilified for doing otherwise.

I don't believe that historically motherhood was anything other than a part of women's lives, it wasn't their lives full stop. That's not to denigrate motherhood in anyway, of course it's full of meaning and purpose but it's not the only meaning and purpose to my life otherwise why bother educating me or expect me to have a career.

I agree there is that pressure, to feel as if you 'should' feel bad about an abortion.

But, I didn't actually say early termination isn't easy and simple for most women. I said there's pressure to assume it is always easy and simple. Patently (I would bloody hope) we all know that a termination at 24 weeks is not going to be either easy or simple. But lots of people honestly don't know that. On another thread on MN, someone asked in perfectly good faith why people were saying that you can't have an abortion without giving a reason - she thought abortion was entirely on-demand, which of course, it is not. And it some areas of the country it's actually very difficult to access an early termination.

I think the problem I have with the way this debate is often framed, is that it's often contrasted with the benefits or drawbacks of motherhood/having a baby you didn't want.

The ideal alternative to abortion is not motherhood (it's the pro-life argument that it is).

The ideal alternative to unwanted motherhood is not abortion (it's often put across as pro-choice to think so).

The ideal, IMO, is women not ending up in the situation where they have to choose in the first place.

Sorry, I dunno if that is just far too simplistic.

I agree LRD but the problem is that to avoid abortion entirely in current society, you have to avoid PIV sex entirely. I agree that women need to stop being judged and punished by their choice to reproduce or otherwise and supported regardless.

Sadly, I think we as a society are not as far away from the madonna/whore view of women as we think we are. The concept of what constitutes one or the other may have broadened but I think that the issue of women, sex and motherhood are still affected by the often subconcious view that we're one or the other.