Leaving liberal feminism

[SandorClegane]

liberationcollective.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/leaving-liberal-feminism/

Has anyone else read this? I loved it. I really identify with the authors experience.

Your link isn't working on my phone. I assume this is what you are referring to.

liberationcollective.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/leaving-liberal-feminism/

Yeah I don't know why the link didn't work they usually do?

Oh good lord, I'm going to need a middle a way. I am such a Liberal Democrat that I can't even pick one of the two wings of feminism.

I'm not totally sure the article rejects any kind of intersectional analysis as having no value, more that it has been hijacked by misogynist trans activists? i actually wonder if the whole trans/terf/swerf thing is pushing people towards identifying with radical feminism? That's certainly been the outcome for me.

I think autonomy, agency and choice are massively important, and also that they are probably illusory, at least to a certain extent. Although that may be an ontological position rather than a feminist one...

I think choice needs to be considered in the context of systemic oppression and also that our choices impact on others because we're all connected? It sometimes seems like liberal 'choice' feminism imagines that the choices people make exist in some kind of vacuum of individuality rather than within a patriarchal context.

I now have no clue what to call myself.

I thought of myself as more on the on the liberal end but that description is not one I recognise very well.

The most I identify with are a more sex positive view of life (sex industry is vile and exploitative. So is the garment industry. And the jewellery industry. I guess I have conflicted feelings on this but it's like my view on narcotics - regulation over prohibition) and the varying levels of privilege. This I can see in day to day life - in most situations, I would be deferred to, believed over, listened to and treated better and quicker than a poor, scruffy teenaged black boy. Race, age and class also matter, there's a reason the board of my financial services firm is made up of old white men. Each of those descriptors is important.

But the rest that liberal stuff is flimflam.

Sex is a function of biology. Gender is not innate - to be feminine is not the same thing across societies and cultures so it must be externally imposed.

Women as a class are exploited economically, abused socially and are somehow not just not quite people despite being 50% of the population. This an historic, entrenched problem.

I just realised I'm off on a rant so I'll stop.

Great link - thanks

I agree with that Sandor. I also think intersectionality has been co-opted somewhat by people who use it to stop feminists doing things rather than as a mechanism to say "I am / you are affected by these other things as well as sexism". It seems more like "You can't do X for feminism unless / until you also do Y for racism and Z for transwomen". IMO that can have a stultifying effect on feminist activism.

Thinking about what you say said about intersectionality and then that thread about woc and feminism...

I don't know how true it is but the feminism I 'see' most often in action, feels white and of a privileged background. The voices are all a bit same-y

For true change to happen don't we need to hear everyone's voices? I'm worried I sound a bit like a whiney 'let's all stop cis oppressesing ourselves' person here but I grew up dirt poor and now I am far better off I have a much different viewpoint to issues (or perhaps consider different things to be issues) than you'd assume from my current social class. We are maybe missing this right now? The internet/media is not a democracy, a lot of people are simply busy trying to live.

I think I'm making a hash of this

Yeah I've been radicalised by Mumsnet!

Intersectionality is a great tool for figuring out how to support change in groups, I've found. So, frex, it means that if I'm asked to speak about Muslimahs and feminism, I want to always be examining why I (white and atheist) was asked to speak and who is therefore not being asked, and what I can do about that - can I refer them to The Women's Room, can I nominate a woman to that list myself? If I can't do that, can I point out the situation during the talk? Can I examine how the conversation is changed by the presence or absence of the subject (white conversation about Islam is mainly an external analysis, literally so in the case of the burka!). Can I contact feminist groups like www.wluml.org/ and ask them what support they are looking for. Basically how can I actually support my stated cause instead of exploiting it to support me.

The weird online version where you use it to attack everyone is not productive, but, like all liberal bullshit, I don't think it's supposed to be.

On R4 a while back they had a programme about whether working class people are discouraged from university by structures like tuition fees. Four middle class university graduates discussed this issue. A basic check using these principles would stop such bloody stupid programmes happening.

I am merely an amateur feminist anyway. LadyRainicorn, I'd go with hearing everyone's voices (outside my own head of course ). We all have a different piece of a jigsaw. I just need reminding of that now and then...

Well the reality is, if you use these tools you will speak less, definitionally. And the people that will have the highest profile will NOT use these tools. Witness Owen Jones! But I don't know how else we can move the project forwards for everyone, really.

Otherwise you end up like the Labour Party. Kier Hardie is spinning in his grave.

Well, you won't like my answer, which is that I organise without the establishment and those seeking to join it. The establishment requires the existence of the disestablished. Masculinity requires femininity. Whiteness requires blackness. The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

Sorry!

No I guess the thing is it does lead to more speech? Which is the goal. Just not always more speech by me. Sometimes I am the right person!

I've been writing actual speeches for a different project lately that absolutely is about communicating with the establishment. Speechwriting is a tremendous challenge to the ego because you're really focusing on expressing the ideas and goals of someone else. And you might think you have better ideas sometimes, or it's very tempting to tweak the focus towards your own preoccupations, but to do the work well is an exercise in imaginative identification with another, like a good literary translation, I suppose. The reason I am writing the speech is that I can speak the language of the audience and am there to build a bridge between them and the speaker, but the speaker must not be reformed out of recognition. They must be heard, or I have failed.

I talked to someone from the Labour Party a couple months ago about this exact thing, about the alarming homogeneity of the PLP. You're so right, he said. We need people like you. Which, no: he doesn't need people like me. He's got people like me. That's the problem. He doesn't have the people I write speeches with.

I feel like I have been kicked out of liberal feminism by others.

I am naturally a very liberal and 'live and let live' person with trans friends. I worked (unpaid for much of the time) on a huge media related forum years ago that fought hard to keep users respectful in the way they spoke to and of trans people both in the public eye and on other users.

But I am a scientist, I believe in the reality of biological sex being almost entirely binary and that the physical concerns of a female body are important in feminism, it seem like that means I'm not allowed to be liberal any more.

for you, Buffy.

I hear you on the re-presentation. It's beyond frustrating. I am coming generally to the conclusion that an idea or movement being 'mainstreamed' doesn't actually solve or change anything, as only those parts already acceptable to the mainstream are accepted. There's a brutal efficiency to it.