Are Feminists Too Nice to Anti-Feminist Women?

[CKDexterHaven]

This post has been inspired by reading some of the non-FWR threads on Mumsnet and by the responses of women to even the mildest hint of feminism on them.

Sometimes, even in feminist spaces, it feels that if you criticise some women and their actions you will be accused of victim-blaming, lacking understanding or divisiveness. But why do we have to be so non-judgemental of women whose choices negatively impact the lives of other women?

I'm not talking here about women who truly have no options but about those women who use the limited options and powers women have in patriarchal society to always prioritise pleasing men over bettering the lives of women. I know all the arguments about women being the victims of socialisation and adopting survival strategies for living under patriarchy but any fight for human rights comes at a personal cost and, I have to say, sometimes I see women who put their own popularity with the power-wielders above fellow women as cowardly and dishonourable.

If we see men as an occupying power and women as an enslaved population, there are some women who compete with other women to become the master's favourite slave and other women who are working to end the slavery. The group of collaborators have decided to make the occupation work for them and will betray, attack and subjugate the resistance group in order to please the masters at any opportunity. If feminists really were a resistance group maybe we would see that in order to free all women we would have to cut some loose along the way.

The type of comments I am tired of seeing are -

1 - Feminists are as bad as men when it comes to telling other women what to do.
Well, feminism is a political ideology and political ideologies tend to have an opinion on how people live their lives. So, yeah, we have an opinion.

2 - Feminists judge me for my choices and are really shaming and mean.
Well, sometimes we are just analysing your choices and why you made them, but if you do make choices that sell out other women then why shouldn't we judge you?

3 - Men are 100% responsible for the patriarchy. Blaming women is victim-blaming and focusing attention away from the real villains.
Men are responsible for the patriarchy but women cheerleading for it are helping to prop it up. Either you want the patriarchy to end or you don't.

4 - In-fighting and criticising other women is divisive and unproductive and we have to work together to further the cause.
Well, constantly having to accommodate the views of women that are antithetical to your aims is also unproductive and unhelpful.

5 - I need feminists when I hit the glass ceiling at work or can't find reasonable childcare but how dare you bitches suggest my husband is a misogynist for watching porn! How dare you make me challenge things in my life!
Make the connections, dear.

Do you think feminism might move faster if we stopped trying to win over anti-feminist women and convince them feminism is necessary or do we need to swell our numbers?

Sorry Buffy was perhaps a bit touchy. Having read back I wasn't as clear as I intended.

Going back to the OP, I see people who claim to be anti-feminist and I see women who reject the feminist label without claiming to be 'anti' as separate groups. I think trying to engage with the latter group is very much worthwhile.

here's an example - pam ayres comments on rape

Oh fuck. Pan Ayres as well?

I think it's really unhelpful for feminists to propagate the false consciousness meme w/r/t to anti-feminist or non-feminist women (and I agree that there is a vast difference between those two groups).

And I don't see what attacking other women, even those with whom we disagree politically, will achieve. Of course we must challenge bad political thought and anti-feminist ideas when they are disseminated by women. But women who prop up the patriarchy are doing it out of a survival instinct; they are not actually gaining meaningful power from it as men do (although they do often get a limited and conditional power).

I mean, obviously, many women collaborate and sell other women out. I think it's important to name this for what it is without attributing the primary blame to them.

Andrea Dworkin has a brilliant analysis of female anti-feminism in Right-Wing Women, in which she alleges that, far from suffering from false consciousness, conservative, anti-feminist women are acting in what they perceive as their best interests when they align with conservative men over women:

right-wing women look at feminists and they see women: inside the same boundary, victims of the same crimes, women who are pornography. Their response to what they see is not a sense of sisterhood or solidarity—it is a self-protective sense of repulsion.

The powerless are not quick to put their faith in the powerless. The powerless need the powerful, especially in sex oppression because it is inescapable, everywhere: there are no free zones, free countries, underground railways away from it. Because feminism is a movement for liberation of the powerless by the powerless in a closed system based on their powerlessness, right-wing women judge it a futile movement.

Frequently they also judge it a malicious movement in that it jeopardizes the bargains with power that they can make; feminism calls into question for the men confronted by it the sincerity of women who conform without political resistance.