Germaine Greer on the failures of the new feminisn

[Scarletohello]

I found this article very thought provoking so thought I would share it to see what others thought...

www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/05/germaine-greer-failures-new-feminism

www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/05/germaine-greer-failures-new-feminism

A pretty unkind article, and I disagreed with most of it.

The media just loves to turn feminism into a cat fight. It's funny how well older and younger feminists get on in RL considering how the media paints them as being at each other's throats....

I don't really get that. Surely lots of 70s feminism wasn't an academic discipline or a media phenomenon? And I don't think lots of ours is either of those things.

It is an unkind article though. I take her point that the Vagenda book seems a bit odd, and that the authors seem a bit ignorant about biology - but then she comes out with a statement like 'The human breast, like the bovine udder, will not squirt unless compressed'.

How is it, I have no children, and even I know that is bollocks. Mainly because I've seen a baby get an earful when he pulled away unexpectedly, but, y'know, I understand it does happen, right?

I don't really understand her point.

GG is an odd sock, really, isn't she? I think the problem begins with the title of the "article" - which essentially turns a book review into a mini-thesis - and in doing so sets up a whole series of parts-for-wholes, which always ends badly:

Germaine Greer (iconoclastic academic and activist with feminist leanings - an individual type of feminism amongst a whole load of other lefty-ish leanings) standing in for some kind of representative of 70s feminism.

2 books and their authors standing in for "new" feminism.

GG is a very funny choice for a representative of 70s feminism. I've read critiques of the dissemination of feminisms, and of who gets chosen to speak, where, and how they are listened to (and by whom): and those critiques often examine the figure/trope of "Germaine Greer" in the discussions.

Until there is a utopic access to the means of production (and the reproduction of power), the disadvantaged are always going to be misrepresented in some way.

GG is also writing in her usual iconoclastic style. Lots of scatter-gun ideas; very attention-grabbing; not inhibited by having to follow through to a logical conclusion with any of them.

I did like the fact she discussed what happens when you have the access to representation and voice on the internet versus old-style representation and ownership. I think that could be very valuably pursued.

I also think it is high time there was a serious revaluation of feminisms history - particularly examining the question of representation.

Yes, an unkind article. But grabs attention.

It's a rather ungenerous article, for the reasons others have pointed out.

The bit where she claims that gay men are more often the targets of male violence and workplace harassment than women is also strange and not substantiated by the evidence as far as I know.

I do think she makes some important points about the efficacy of the new feminism in the last paragraphs, notably the fact that it seems to be focused on online consciousness-raising as the end goal rather than a spur to action to transform women's material conditions.

Unpacking your heart with bitter words to an anonymous blog is no substitute for action.

One thing that made second-wave feminism so effective was their commitment to re-imagining social and legal structures so they could be reconstituted in women's interests. Grassroots organising like establishing women's shelters and other women-only space provided the ground for much of this. I don't see this ambition in the new feminism - it seems mostly focused on pleas for men to be nicer.

I like these practical suggestions she makes, although I'm rolling my eyes at the 'bitching and whingeing' part:

What we need is a women’s press that interprets the “malestream” information for its female readers – that explains how Cameron’s gift to working spouses leaves unsupported mothers at a crushing disadvantage, how Amanda Hutton came to let her four-year-old child die, why so many women are given custodial sentences for minor offences, why there is never sufficient funding for care homes or for carers whether for children, the infirm or the aged, or why a woman is six times more likely to die in childbirth in Britain than she is in Estonia or why it took so long to stop Shipman. Bitching and whingeing have their place but without the truth we never shall be free. We need a genuine women’s press. Now that it can exist online, we could afford to run it without having to pimp for the glamour industry.

I'm also intrigued by her suggestion that rape should be classed as common assault, although I have no idea how this would actually work. She suggests it would make it easier to secure a conviction - but would it?

Yes, I liked that bit and it was very coherent.

How would we re-evaluate feminism's history? Sorry, I'm probably being a bit slow this morning but I would really like to know what you're thinking of.

I suppose Greer has had a slightly rough ride - I remember a very charitable article she wrote (or was interviewed for?) on Moran's 'How to be a Woman' where she pointed out gently that Moran is presenting some ideas as very new, and they did actually have a history, and, er, were kinda her published work ...

I'm reading Everyday Sexism at the moment and actually finding it very useful, but I don't think it goes together well with Vagenda, which seems a rather different kind of book.

Cross post.

See, donkey, that just suggests to me she's out of touch. Yes, a woman's press would be lovely (for those of us who can afford to buy books). But what's wrong with what we do right here? I'm being serious. I go off MN into other contexts and I realize most of us are ridiculously well informed about basic legal rights (eg., in marriage, in the workplace) and about concepts. There are totally non-feminist posters who will take down the 'men don't see dirt' attitude.

I thought it was bitty to the point of being had to follow. also though the criticisms of the Everyday Sexism blog were unkind. And in certain respects, incoherent.

GG said: "Though gay men are far more likely to be viciously harassed, bullied and assaulted in the workplace than women, they were not invited to contribute to the Everyday Sexism project. Gay-bashing is regarded in many communities as a rite of passage and the perpetrators are unlikely to be viewed as criminals even when the facts of the case are known. That is true normalising."

I don't think there is anything wrong in having a blog focused on the experiences of women and not featuring the experiences of gay men, even if GG is right about what happens to them. GG immediately followed the paragraph above with one saying:

"Sexism should mean discrimination against any individual on the grounds of sex. Women haven’t abused men solely because of their sex since the legendary Amazons bit the dust; nowhere in the real world are women in a position of sufficient power to enable them to persecute men just for being men. Only women suffer discrimination on the grounds of their sex (as distinct from their sexual orientation) and not only from members of the opposite sex."

which seemed to me to undermine the criticism expressed in the first quotation.

But I am not surprised. My perception of GG is someone always very ready to leap in and sarcastically explain why Other Women Are Doing It All Wrong.

LRD: I just mean we should be looking at what 70s feminism was with a very strong analysis of representation + historical representation.

Quote from the Germaine Greer article : "Though gay men are far more likely to be viciously harassed, bullied and assaulted in the workplace than women, they were not invited to contribute to the Everyday Sexism project."

I'd like to see statistics relating to Gemaine Greer's assertion.

Is doing bad things to gay men now regarded as sexism? If so, why?

Wouldn't including gay men's issues in the Everyday Sexism website detract from the focus on problems faced by homosexual people provided by initiatives such as the DailyHomophobia Twitter Feed? Even one of their hash tags is similar: #everydayhomophobia.

I suppose Everyday Sexism could re-brand itself to Everyday Harassment to accommodate men's voices, but the focus on sexism would be lost.

Oh, ok, got you cat. Sorry!

Off-topic-ish ...

Where would I go to find an easy guide to feminist spaces on the internet?

Is a lot of contemporary feminism on-line?

I know I sound massively out of touch - but I am (massively out of touch) - but I am really interested and want to get a bit more in touch.

I only really use here, twitter, blog feeds and facebook. But my sense is that most of it is either happening online, or linked to online. There may be big offline stuff I'm missing, though.

I usually like Germaine Greer a lot, but I didn't find this overall made any sense and I didn't relate to it.

I think the point she was making about the everyday sexism project is that it should be called the everyday misogyny project:

'Sexism is here a misleading name for misogyny.'

If sexism means discrimination both genders experience based on their gender, then gay men should be included in the everyday sexism project.

But if sexism means the discrimination women alone experience because we are claiming that sexism always means systemic sexism (which men don't experience), then the everyday sexism project, which is largely about direct harassment and physical attack (not some passive form of sexism like every person named in a child's science test being a boy), then it should be called the everyday misogyny project.

I think she is contrasting how many people define sexism (the former ) with how she defines direct, violent, criminal kinds of sexism (the latter) as misogyny.

I do agree with her on that. The everyday sexism project is about women being attacked, beaten, groped, yelled at, raped etc. If that isn't an appropriate set of experiences to label as misogyny, then what is?

I have made that even more confusing than she did.

Option 1: Sexism is discrimination against anyone based on gender.

Option 2: Sexism is systemic discrimination against women. It is made up of things like a. passive sexism (all pictures of firefighters are boys in a book) and b. misogyny (rape, assault, other criminal attacks etc).

If the everyday sexism project is not about people accounting either a. attacks on men as well as women or b. issues like Fireman Sam is a boy, then it is actually the everyday misogyny project, and calling it just sexism is trivialising the level of violence and criminality involved.

I agree with her on that. The rest of the article I didn't relate to really.

The Everyday Sexism project isn't just the harassment and violence though - they also retweet things like day-to-day assumptions made in the workplace about the role of women.

Mmm. I get where she's coming from on 'everyday misogyny'. But I think rhetorically, it would have failed. 'Everyday sexism' works because people think it's 'small stuff' but realize it's got huge impact. I suspect whether you like the book comes down to whether you prefer a structured argument, or whether you're happy to see the evidence mount up without a lot of directed 'and here's my agenda' bits.