Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Older women should step aside says Laura Hudson

106 replies

IrkThePurist · 18/01/2018 22:56

Laura Hudson says;

''Take comfort in knowing this not a new development: feminism has evolved over the years from concerns about suffrage, to concerns about reproductive rights, to concerns about including ALL women in its mandate''

''I have great respect for the contributions that many older women made to the feminist movement, at times when it was harder than I have ever experienced. It is also time for them to listen, to learn, to step aside''
twitter.com/laura_hudson/status/953707342951981056

Laura hasn't actually set an age limit for stepping aside (Or the 'Logans Run' mandate as some Twitter users are calling it)
Laura seems blissfully unaware of The Equality Act, its become irrelevant now all the lesser battles have been won. Ageism doesn't concern her at all.
She's said we can rejoin feminism when we catch up.

OP posts:
SophoclesTheFox · 19/01/2018 08:25

rich, white and TERF

I might get this on a t shirt Grin

ChattyLion · 19/01/2018 08:29

Sorry who is this person?

Rufustherenegadereindeer1 · 19/01/2018 08:37

Well i am white

I really dont want to put that on a t shirt though

Having said that her definition of old seems flexible...maybe her definition of rich is as well

MadamMinacious · 19/01/2018 08:49

Older women are the reason I know so much about feminism.

I'm an older woman now but those women who came before me, are my heroines - so many brave, interesting, intelligent women. I thank them and I still listen to them.

AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth · 19/01/2018 09:02

Who the fuck IS Laura Hudson?

The unbelievable arrogance to think she can make demands of women in this way.

And I bet these young women are the funfems who believe in porn, prostitution and penises in our changing rooms

I will step aside when I fall down dead

ReanimatedSGB · 19/01/2018 09:07

Something that strikes me about this particular type of feminism is that it's harking back to the idea of "put yourself last." Which is what women have always been supposed to do. So it starts with 'rich white women shut up' then it's old women shut up' then it's 'never mind if you're disabled, you need to prioritize race'/'never mind if you want to talk about racism, you need to prioritize class/disabililty/fat-shaming'
So whatever matters to you, you need to get over/wait for/shut up about, because you don't matter and you need to be humiliated and crushed...

geekaMaxima · 19/01/2018 09:10

^^ This.

Well put, Reanimated.

Deadlylampshade · 19/01/2018 09:22

Oh god I know reanimated I’ve told this story before but I was a member of an intersectional feminist vegan Facebook page and it was the weirdest place I’ve ever been. It was almost like the women were getting off on the humiliation. Nobody expressed an opinion that wasn’t already considered ‘safe’ and every time they spoke they would put ten caveats to every sentence. The woman who ran the group asked for a way to describe a cow that was milked other than female because they didn’t want to equate reproductive capabilities to sex (I mean because if those cows didn’t want to be milked they should just say they’re a bull amiright?).
The absolute nail in the coffin was when a woman posted in the group saying that she’d been enjoying a series on Netflix but before she posted on Facebook that she liked it could people please tell her if there was something problematic in it that she had missed.
I mean really. Get a fucking spine.

EamonnWright · 19/01/2018 09:28

This is the natural outworkings of intersectional identity politics.

BlindYeo · 19/01/2018 09:39

Ageism. There's a lot of it about in our society.

There was a horrid streak of ageism after the EU Referendum as I recall, along the lines of older people with far less life left ruining things for the young ones by voting Leave in greater numbers. There were even people suggesting the right to vote should be removed from people after a certain age.

irretating · 19/01/2018 09:51

It is quite galling to be told you have nothing to worry from job losses from people who have been retired this past decade. Wink

LardyMardy · 19/01/2018 10:14

I'm an older woman now but those women who came before me, are my heroines - so many brave, interesting, intelligent women. I thank them and I still listen to them.

Yes, yes yes! @MadamMinacious

TheCountessofFitzdotterel · 19/01/2018 10:15

I wonder if she thinks older men should step aside from their movements too, or if it's just older women who are so uniquely valueless.

HemlockSpartacus · 19/01/2018 10:17

Technically she's older than me, do you think she'd take well to me telling her to step aside?

McTufty · 19/01/2018 10:20

I’m in my early thirties and she can fuck off.

Plus, as someone pointed out on Twitter, ageing, and the way older women are cast aside once no longer conforming to the young is beautiful ideal, is a feminist issue.

SaskiaRembrandtWasFramed · 19/01/2018 10:42

Another one who wants to know who Laura Hudson is - and why I should care what she thinks? Is she like some really inciteful oracle, or appointed by the gods to impart wisdom?

EamonnWright · 19/01/2018 10:46

I wonder if she thinks older men should step aside from their movements too, or if it's just older women who are so uniquely valueless

She is a feminist talking about Feminism. It's got nothing to do with men or mens 'movement's'.

EsmesRedPetticoat · 19/01/2018 11:06

As always when I read a thread here, everyone else has said what I wanted to say but much more eloquently so I’ll just go with a very ineloquent “fuck off Laura”. I must be allowed an opinion because I’m about the same age as her. Right Laura?

Nuffaluff · 19/01/2018 11:27

She is too dim to realise, but she’s not a feminist.
Telling other women they shouldn’t express their opinions is the very definition of anti-feminism.
So she’s pushing 40? I am 40. Neither of us are young women! (I feel young but technically I am middle aged - menopause is on the horizon).

UpABitLate · 19/01/2018 12:05

Erm thinking older women have nothing of value to contribute is not a great look from someone claiming to be feminist Confused

I don't know who she is but she sounds a bit thick.

user1495451339 · 19/01/2018 12:21

Sounds like she is trying to get attention but her twitter page responses are just making her look thick tbh. How dare a 'feminist' tell a whole section of women they should step aside!!! Who does she think she is, a man?

FirstShinyRobe · 19/01/2018 12:33

Heh. If you can't square your feminism with that of people who centre women within theirs, then the problem is not with the other folk.

thecatfromjapan · 19/01/2018 12:47

My favourite twitter comment on this was: "I guess intersectionality doesn't apply to mothers."

I'm not anti intersectionality. One of my favourite writers is Anne Marie Smith, who was writing before intersectionality emerged but definitely engaged in developing foundational thinking. Importantly, her writing was developed as a critique of the way existing discourses, and their notions of the political subject, acted to silence certain politics/people.

And that, I think, is where intersectionality is powerful - when it is a critique or a tool against silencing. Where it is incredibly destructive, is where it becomes a means of silencing itself - usually because it's been caught up in the destructive dreaming of trying to find the most 'politically pure' position from which a political subject/person can speak, imposing a fantasy of a hierarchy of oppressions, and allocating 'truth' to someone who (in fantasy) occupies this 'politically pure' position. It never works. It almost always just reintroduces pre-existing hierarchies and acts to shut a lot of women up - and shut a lot of women out. Sad

Anyway, that aside, I'm finding this quite amusing/annoying. Ageism is incredibly powerful and destructive, isn't it?

In fact, she's not actually trying to shut older women up, per se, is she? She's not, technically, that young herself. What she's doing is trying to shut up/shut out a political opinion - and she's resolved that the best way to do that is to synonymise it with older women.

How fucked up is that? And how effective is that? It implicitly recognises that, while we have something we can call patriarchy, older women are considered, and treated, as something less than full political subjects. And their voices/actions/presence can be dismissed - without argument.

That is why she is aiming at silencing a political position by tying it to older women. It's easier to call for the silencing of older women than it is to call for the silencing of a particular political opinion.

It reminds me, powerfully, of an incident I encountered as a young woman. I worked on a feminist fanzine called Shocking Pink. We had a cut-off age of the production collective was 25 (the aim of the fanzine was to empower young women to produce magazines - so there was a justification to it) - although we welcomed contributions from women of all ages.

At one point, we were reviewed in The New Statesman, as part of an article/review of feminist magazines generally.

The review was fascinating: the reviewer simply didn't believe we were 'young women' at all. The general trend, at that time, was towards what was then dubbed 'post-feminism'. Apparently, 'young feminists' now spearheaded a feminism that was make-up friendly, 'sex-positive', 'porn-positive', and all about crashing through that glass ceiling ...

(Sounds familiar, yes?)

Well, we weren't. We were, as a collective, somewhat critical of all that.

However, instead of letting a small fact - like our actual age - get in the way of a prevailing discourse about what 'young feminists' espoused, and 'what this told us' about the present and future trajectory of feminism, the reviewer simply dismissed us as 'older women'. Really. The review said something like 'I think it is clear that we can see the hand of much older women guiding the views and writing in Shocking Pink.' This, of course, was utter bollocks. But how effective.

It's depressing. I'll say it again and again and again - if you don't espouse a popular opinion, you will find it bloody hard to get heard, whether you are old or young.

There is still an enormous amount of discrimination against women and ageism acts to add weight to that: when you are younger, you tend to have fewer contacts, funds, even experience. You tend to get dismissed on those grounds as a woman. When you get older, and perhaps have more experience, contacts, even expertise and research behind you, an anti-women ageism kicks in.

In both cases, the sole purpose of ageism is to strip you of the assets you may have, and your access to a voice - and power.

It is ridiculously anti-women to call on the tools of ageism to argue a political point against other women.

HemlockSpartacus · 19/01/2018 12:50

thecatfromjapan I think you are spot on.

SchrodingersFrilledLizard · 19/01/2018 12:52

It is also time for them to listen, to learn, to step aside''

The hell with that nonsense.