Hear ye, hear ye! You're doing feminism wrong.

[FloraFox]

Says this man:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/28/feminism-lite-is-letting-down-the-women-who-need-it-the-most

Why the fuck didn't he just write about issues concerning feminism.

And he makes a very valid point. I find even the word "feminist" gives off the wrong messages. It doesn't speak gender equality in any way.
I am very much in favour of total gender equality across the board, but the hypocritical values on both sides of the coin need to be eradicated first

He's missed the point that all kinds of women - smug, selfish, good, bad, fat, thin etc etc need to have a fair chance of power as men who are equally smug, selfish etc. So Hillary Clinton is pro war? Well, that simply means in the current political climate, pro war politicians are rising and that one of them is female.

FFS.

I love how the "gender equality" people want us to start right now and pretend that everything is "equal" already.

I'll sign up to gender equality the day that women are fairly represented in positions of influence, own half the world's wealth, and are no longer at significant risk of death or harm from male violence.

Until then, I'm a feminist.

I don't see anything wrong with what he's saying here,

"we need to focus on the issues that truly need our help the most urgently: benefits taken away from single mums; sexual violence which affects all women, but especially already vulnerable ones; endemic racism which leads to parents of colour scared to have their child shot by police forces; lack of unionising or legislation which leaves women without working rights worldwide; the right not subject to rape threats and abuse, online and offline; equal pay for equal work."

Glad someone else has started this thread - I read the article and it gave me the rage. Yet another man come to tell women they're doing feminism wrong. But we're supposed to like him better because it's taken him a long time to get to this point and is only doing it reluctantly.

First off, where are his examples of women doing "feminism lite"? The feminists I know do work on/ support campaigns against domestic violence, sexual violence and the like. They campaign for single mothers. (Actually, I am both a feminist and a single mother... funny that possibility seems to have escaped him).

Second, where did he get the idea that feminism is synonymous with pacifism? It may be that there's a case to be made that quite a lot of wars result from patriarchal dick swinging (and it's certainly a prime example of the way patriarchy hurts men as well as women: typically the "canon fodder" in wars is provided by disadvantaged young men from impoverished backgrounds who are fed a line about hypermasculinity as giving them worth when social inequality has systematically stripped them of any other means of feeling self-worth). But to say that a woman can't engage in debates about "just wars" or fight in wars without ceasing to be a feminist is just dumb (and I'd love to see him advance that argument face-to-face to the Kurdish women Peshmurga fighting against ISIS).

Can someone post a "lo, a man come to share his manly insight" meme, please? This plonker really needs it.

Cross post - Scarlet, it's not that he's wrong about this stuff being important, it's his assumption that feminists are not doing this stuff and need to be told to by a man that's pissing me off.

The problem is that he said that after coming in to save women with his man's "tough love".

What an absolute bollocks.

Everythingsrunningaway - thank you, that's it in a soundbite. I'm going to use that a lot in the future.

This one Lurcio?

Why is he only berating HRC and JG for not doing equality right and not Obama, Cameron etc?

Apparently feminists shouldn't support women in positions of power unless they meet his ideals on all matters, feminist or not. He on the other hand supports Julian Assange. So women must be rejected unless they are perfect but not men.

It's not like there are legions of women as likely as HRC to get the Democrat nomination but those NORTY feminist liters are picking HRC cos she's pro war...

It's not like there's masses of female alternatives vying for the democrat nominations.

Oops!

He's also forgotten female leaders represent their party - I'm sure a male conservative leader would've tried to break the mires' strike too.

I also love how he invokes the authority of Laurie Penny against feminism lite.

That's the meme, Flora. You're also right about him only wanting to support women who share his political views. I think his argument can be summarised as "Gillard is right of centre. I am left (and correct about all things). Gillard self-identifies as a feminist. Therefore all feminists are wrong." Which is of course a logically fallacious argument.

The Laura Penny think had not escaped my notice either!

This is a perfect example of the stupid lefty infighting that cripples most progressive/radical movements.

If idiots like this had wasted everyone's time 'calling out' Emmeline Pankhurst and the other sufragettes for being posh, perhaps we still wouldn't have the vote. Because that would be a great achievement in the fight for equality

Yup Asteria, nothing unequal here, you're quite right. And feminists eh? Nothing but hairy angry wimminz. I get ya. All that wimminz liberation malarkey, pfft, they need to be sorting out men's problems too.

Some of the content of the article itself isn't too bad. He does mention subjects which no one could argue are serious and which need to be sorted. I think he even came at it from what he believes is a helpful and thoughtful angle, but.... If he honestly thinks that feminists haven't been working on those things for years, then he needs to go and give his head a wobble. However, in his defence, if he's been reading Laurie Penny and seeing her as some kind of misunderstood and unheard radical feminist, then it's not surprising he thinks women haven't thought of those things properly!

And, he's right, Gillard's government didn't do much to help women, however, that STILL doesn't mean she should have just put up and shut up with the level of abuse she got.

I agree with a lot of what he says. It isn't about if a woman calls herself a feminist or not, it is about feminist actions. A woman who goes to Syria to lead a unit that will round up other women to take them to brothels to be raped is not carrying out a feminist act simply by being in a position of power. A woman who cuts benefits for mothers and sides with warlords who destroy human rights with women as specific targets is not acting in a feminist way.

Some of this is genocide aimed at women. To give women equal opportunities to support genocide that targets women is not feminism anymore than Nazis putting trusted Jews in positions of responsibility in concentration camps makes the Holocaust less antisemitic.

A lot of the current popular feminism is doing it wrong, including Penny. Feminism should be about finding solutions and power structures that collectively empower women. It is not feminism to support or advocate for anti feminist women to be in positions of authority.

The Pankhursts were called out for being white, posh and British. Sylvia Pankhurst was repeatedly called a white devil. She experienced a lot of guilt about this and it made her committed to working for the poor and colonised.

There was massive infighting between Emmeline and Sylvia. Emmeline got a lot of stuff wrong.

That article is not criticising people for being posh or middle class. It is criticising members of those groups for acting in their own interests.

i don't disagree with all of what he says

but he seems to be saying that until feminism presents him with the perfect feminist (by his standards) he's going to criticise the movement and not turn his attention to helping fight all those things he thinks are important (and which i don't disagree with as a list)

a feminist act on his part would be to give his platform over to some of those under-represented women

Yy PG.

he seems to be saying that until feminism presents him with the perfect feminist (by his standards) he's going to criticise the movement

Apparently feminism will be held to the same impossible standards as women.

By men.

There is an unbelievable arrogance (as well as complete lack of sensitivity) in a man who thinks it is his place to dispense "tough love" to a women's movement.

Has he no sense of irony?

Most women are no strangers to "tough love", some of it tough to the point of death, from men.

If men could keep their "tough love" to themselves, women as a group would be a lot better off. And a lot more of us would be alive.

If he wants to help, then fine.

But until he can keep his bossy sense that he has a thing or two to teach women how to be feminists, he can fuck off as far as I'm concerned.