Melanie Phillips feminist bashing.

[Mouthtrousersafrocknowandthen]

Feminists are set on making us all victims

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/feminists-are-set-on-making-us-all-victims-5vn9tkvvv?shareToken=cf3b56f7a0563270dde4027874c0c7d5

I missed this event sadly, it would have been interesting. Why do people always call views women hold that they don't like feminism?

Fascinating comments.

Thanks for the share token - you're right; I'd love to know what debate that was and if it was recorded.
I don't agree with Melanie Phillips on a lot, but I think she is right here to single out the hypocrisy of a certain feminist approach, especially on the left, whereby any opinion that doesn't 100 per cent follow the party line is rejected as 'heresy'. No wonder people like Jennifer James have been pushed out. The reference to “she may be a woman, but she isn’t a sister.” is very telling. If you're not a feminist of the all-inclusive, tick all the boxes variety, then your not a 'real' feminist (say loads of lefty dude bros).

MeToo protests on behalf of free and privileged women, ignoring those who are truly powerless
This from a woman who has column inches in a national newspaper is ridiculous. It is a Dawkins style Dear Muslima executed with equally poor judgment.

That article is awful.
Melanie Phillips can write, sure, but the whole article shows woeful understanding of power dynamics and is full of victim blaming and hyperbole ("So many men have been falsely accused of rape"...o rly?)
The comments are just from a load of misogynists who have been given the go ahead to be sexist.
What a load of tripe. Shame on the times.

www.howtoacademy.com/conferences/metoo-movement-gone-too-far-debate
I found the debate, hopefully they may post a video at some point.
I disagree. No wonder so many women reject feminism if they are told that their ideas are the 'wrong' kind. There are plenty of the right sort' of feminist whose silence on issues referred to here such as Telford/Cologne, let alone self-ID, leave me cold. If someone like Diane Abbott says all the right things about #metoo, yet in the same breath says trans women are women, then maybe I'm just not a feminist then.
As I said, I don't agree with Melanie Phillips on much, but I dislike group-think and knee-jerk 'they're misogynists' responses to anyone who doesn't toe a party line as much as I resent being called transphobic for being gender-critical.

The whole thing including the comments is just pure "what about the men?".

No wonder so many women reject feminism if they are told that their ideas are the 'wrong' kind.
Women who support movements that are damaging to women as a class are not feminists. Spouting on about how #metoo damages men and how men are "falsely accused", and suggesting individual feminists "Should" prioritise particular things is not feminist behaviour.

I've seen lots of feminists talking about grooming rings/cologne. But for some reason it's seen as wrong when feminists try to analyse it as a sex oppression issue rather than a race/culture issue. Leaves a nasty taste in my mouth about the kinds of women telling us we are doing it wrong by putting sex front and centre.

This kind of thing damages feminism by spreading misinformation and dividing us.

I accept your view, but personally, I reject being told what is and isn't "feminist behaviour" and who is and isn't a feminist. I hope we are free to analyse the abuse inTelford/Rochdale and the Cologne incident as both an issue of sex-based oppression and a cultural issue without doing it wrong as you say. I think labelling one approach as good and the other bad is more divisive.

That article is straight out of the MRA handbook.

'['In Britain, so many men have now been falsely accused of rape that the Crown Prosecution Service has opened an inquiry into every case of rape or serious sexual assault to find out how many more men it has wrongly put on trial. The MeToo crowd make no mention of this. They complain instead of the injustice done to women by a rape conviction rate that’s too low.''

Melanie, those are 2 separate issues. You do know women don't bring the prosecutions?

To me, "Feminist behaviour" is not synonymous with "anything a woman who identifies herself as a feminist does"
Feminist behaviour is things that improve the lot of women, or at the very least doesn't actively undermine women and the progress they have made.

Melanie Phillips is not exhibiting feminist behaviour in that article.

I used to feel like Rebecca West suggested in this quote:

I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

Once I understood that Feminism is the political movement for the liberation of women I was better able to recognize what was going on with the backlash against Feminism. Which is possibly best symbolized by a cigarette ad declaring "You've come a long way, baby."

@LittleLebowski
You cheered up a pendant there, despite my never ending typos I do get a bit OCD when people talk about towing the party line instead of toeing it.

"Toe the line" is an idiomatic expression meaning either to conform to a rule or standard, or to stand poised at the starting line in a footrace. Other phrases which were once used in the early 1800s and have the same meaning were toe the mark and toe the plank.

Poor Melanie obviously felt a bit shafted when Germaine did her fabulous thing and came at it from a different angle, leaving Mel the only one (in her words) in the room being "me too" critical.

It gives the chaps a chance to air their woman grievances big style, I especially enjoyed (?) the Weinstein apologist who shared the gem of Una Thuman managing to dodge a molestation indicating it was all a load of tosh.

Melanie Philips makes many column inches from wilfully misrepresenting what feminists are and what they do. I was struck by her accusations of feminists being silent on various issues affecting women other than white middle-classes .... no, feminists aren't silent, but their concerns on such matters don't manage to go viral on Twitter or get picked up by the media.

This is an excellent example of commercial feminism paraphrasing the rules of misogyny. Particularly the 3rd: Women speaking for themselves are exclusionary and selfish.

Commercial feminism, now there is a concept worth a debate.

Lets lobby Stonewall for an F at the end of the LBG...........and get some real money behind us.

I'm going to change my name to cheerful pendant.

And learn to touch type.

toe the line Ha! How do you know it wasn't a typo?
No, I've seen the toe/tow the line pointed out in Guardian comments before; maybe that was you too?
So the "Has the #metoo movenent gone too far?" debate mentioned (Sophie Walker/Helena Kennedy/Melanie Philipps/Germaine Greer) is on YouTube. . If anyone watches, I'd be interested to know what people thought.