Women policing women

[therealposieparker]

Why do women do this?

Why do women, particularly left wing women, police each other's language and actions so much worse than men?

Even Germaine Greer is being hailed as no feminist for a few comments, despite the incredible work she's done in the past.

Feminists are pretty awful at this call out culture, I think men on the left do it to women but not to each other. I have a feeling this is why women are more likely to be religiously observant too, but that may be a different conversation. However I instinctively think it all feeds from the same conditioning, women "to be seen to be" XXX in order to compete with other women.

As of late I've noticed more odious behaviour from supposed feminists and it's made friends of mine abandon that label.

I see two things going on.

There's the fairly sensible and justified need for caution and care about fragile feminist gains such as women's refuges with the sword of Damacles hanging over them, ready to lose funding. Better have someone speaking about that who isn't just performing an intellectual exercise but is mindful that one wrong word could lead to that refuge closing and women and kids possibly getting killed. Better distance yourself rather than be brought into disrepute

On the other hand there is misogyny pure and simple. Hating and hurting women feels as good for women as it does for men. Silencing and shunning women is a smug, satisfying power trip for people who dont have much other power in their lives. In other words- they are simply being cunts.

Some people in the second category are so up themselves they think they belong in the first. But actually they are just double cunts.

Princess - It doesn’t take much thought to understand that there are social and economic consequences re name choices relative to cultural expectations for women. I don’t think anybody else is denying that.

I don’t know re men and violence and disagreement.

I think it would probably depend on violence being seen as a ‘bad thing’ culturally by men.

Academics fearing violence? No, I think that is ridiculous TBH. Their economic and cultural class puts them outside the majority of male on male violence and they suffer from the same problems re dismaying at the way other groups of lower class men communicate (aggressively, without the language of the establishment).

For lower class men violence is not always about disagreement or disapproval, it’s often about communication, bonding and status.

Women are socialised to not be violent. No woman wants to be bottom of the pile because women as a group are already lower status than men and so there is more reason to push other women down.

Alright Offred no need to be so personal.

;-)

Princess. Apologies, I may have read too fast.

Indeed not offred, but then that's not quite what you were saying in the post I quoted. Now if you weren't referring to surnames at all on that specific point there then obviously this isn't pertinent, but if you were, the claim about material conditions is going to require some evidence.

No worries posie.

I think another point that's interesting and that hasn't fully been covered yet is that women, often whilst identifying and presenting as feminist, pro female empowerment etc, will sometimes counter any criticism of them or their attitudes by policing the responses for not being sufficiently pro-women. So we saw that from some of the Instamums when criticised recently, for example. They tried to police attempts to police them. We also sometimes see it in response to women talking about whether other women's actions are feminist, are causing detriment to other women. Saying that women are trying to police other women is in itself sometimes an attempt at policing.

None of this is to say the discussion isn't an important one btw, or that this is what you're doing here OP, just to point out that women identifying other women as policing can be policing in itself. This is all true of men on the left in general too, of course, but like others in this forum I am more interested in women.

Going back to this;

I have a feeling this is why women are more likely to be religiously observant too, but that may be a different conversation. However I instinctively think it all feeds from the same conditioning, women "to be seen to be" XXX in order to compete with other women.

I think men have to ‘be seen to be’ women actually have to use their lives to actually live things in a way men don’t.

All the ‘what happens in Vegas stays in vegas’ stuff etc etc.

I cannot count the number of men who live their lives on a ‘if no-one saw it didn’t happen’ or ‘what they don’t know won’t hurt them’ basis.

Women consistently have to prove themselves through the ways they actually live and are held to consistently higher standards and that is a tool of oppression which it is tempting to adopt because they are the rules women are playing by in public and in private.

Too many "policing"!!!

I'm trying to understand why men and women have vast differences in this regard. I've been on the receiving end of loads of this "female" behaviour my entire life and I've seen it happen to others a lot too.

women identifying other women as policing can be policing in itself.

Indeed. That's why I don't consider it 'calling out' to point out hypocrisy or whatever and to argue the toss. It's this permanent mark branded upon one for having 'once said or once done the "wrong" thing, therefore one is a terrible person who must be excommunicated', that is problematic.

Arguing is okay - but let people have right of reply ffs.

Girls are raised to have 'higher standards' though aren't they? Boys will be boys but girls will be a disgusting, unforgivable stain on humanity.

Double standards.

I think as well it's sort of linked to the fact that whenever women, and also members of most marginalised groups do something, we're not just doing it ourselves, we're also seen as doing it as representatives of the group. It obviously shouldn't be that way but it is. There's a sort of forced communal-ness, if you like? In a way that there isn't for men.

Yes true princess.

That's what makes it so hard to be the first woman to do anything. All eyes are on you as you make your first shaky steps and take your first undignified tumble. Men never have that kind of scrutiny.

Princess - I’m not sure what you are asking for evidence of TBH. If surname choices, which I was using as an example re the accountability of women’s personal choices to patriarchy/feminism because it has come up here a few times in different guises recently, do not result in social or economic consequences when women go against expectations then surely it undermines any idea that surname choices have anything to do with feminism at all?

There are a few threads where people talk about the consequences they have experienced. I could write a massive post about class differences and the importance of signalling belonging and how this changes depending on a variety of interactions between different types of class but what’s the point?

Presumably you understand that each individual women is not only going to be affected by the fact she is a woman?

It’s not about surnames is it. Surnames is one (recent) example of feminists on here employing the tactics, as I see it, of identity politics and patriarchy to shame women.

(But point taken - black men, working class men etc, would know the feeling).

I think as well it's sort of linked to the fact that whenever women, and also members of most marginalised groups do something, we're not just doing it ourselves, we're also seen as doing it as representatives of the group. It obviously shouldn't be that way but it is. There's a sort of forced communal-ness, if you like? In a way that there isn't for men.

This is my point re ‘objectively feminist’. How can a negotiation of an experience of oppression be considered ‘objectively feminist’ or not? Why would this even be a consideration re someone’s personal life?

As a little girl I found girls really difficult in this regard and played mostly with boys. A more straight forward thing. I found girls dishonest with the bitching behind your back , boys didn't do it.... they would relentlessly take the piss to your face. I thought the was I felt about women would disappear but then it continued throughout my early working life and into motherhood. But I really have found it the absolute worst in feminist groups. They also practice calling out and silencing.... the attacks are really vicious.

I found it fascinating to learn that GG was brought up by a mother she now views as Autistic. The spectrum is so broad it did make me wonder if GG along with many women who struggle with the female social rules you describe above, are also autistic.

Yes exactly permission. So if a woman is the first woman to head a particular department or whatever and fucks up, whether we like it or not other women are going to be associated with her failure in some eyes. In a way that being a white middle class man who fucked up wouldn't be: there'd be nobody seriously suggesting that his failure means it would be a good idea not to hire people like him in the future. A man who fucked up who was black, perhaps, or disabled, or other particular characteristics might experience the same... but it would be because of being black, not because of being a male. A woman with another of those characteristics would experience both. You're not the person who fucked up, you're the woman, or the disabled bloke, or the foreign one.

Or to take another completely different example, there now appear to be people in the mainstream media giving some credence to the idea that it's to be expected that if lots of women refuse to consider a particular man for sex, that man might end up going and shooting some unconnected women because of the women who turned him down.

Basically we all get thrown in together a lot whether we like this or not. Where all else is equal it's harder for a woman to disassociate herself from the actions of another woman than it is for a man to, I think. And I reckon a lot of us know that.

This is my point re ‘objectively feminist’. How can a negotiation of an experience of oppression be considered ‘objectively feminist’ or not? Why would this even be a consideration re someone’s personal life?

Because this forced communality, if you like, makes the personal political. But how exactly would this make choices that, for example, perpetrate chattel customs and also make it more likely that women who don't perpetrate those customs will draw negative attention to themselves, not be able to be considered objectively feminist or not?

So yes it's basically impossible to be a woman in our society and not make some compromises with patriarchy. We've all done it. But it seems rather a leap to say that because of this, it isn't possible for certain actions to be objectively feminist or not. There's a bridging piece of that argument missing. One can certainly be a feminist and still have made non feminist choices, of course, but that is different.

I have noticed this recently on Twitter. You’re only allowed to be a feminist if you’re perfect. Unfortunately no one is so there will be no feminists left.

Because individual choices are not where feminism is concerned.

It’s the structural inequality.

Somehow we are meant to believe that judging other women’s choices against standards of feminism, even when it has a caveat of ‘it’s ok not to do feminism in everything’, is the work of feminism?

How does focusing in on individual women’s choices and informing them the choice they made is not a feminist one help to move society away from judging individual women to be responsible for the collective?

There is this rigidity of mindset that I see:

If you say something I vehemently disagree with, I am duty bound to reject you, your thoughts, your tenets, your beliefs and everything about you, lest I be tarred with the brush of association.

All or nothing.
No room for dissent in any view.

Why the hell we can't say, "Crikey, I'm in full agreement with you on this, however disagree completely with your stance on that" I don't know.

But I do know that this "one strike and you're out" has led to terrifying totalitarianism. It's why labour supporters are able to turn a blind eye to the misogyny, because to reject one part of the culture is to be outcast.

And it leads the door wide open to allowing your opponents to make a landgrab for the truth, leaving you 'honour bound' to take the opposing position in everything.

This is how we've ended up with the right wing acknowledging biology, leaving the left wing feeling compelled to take the opposite stance.

I hate you, so I have to take the opposing view to you in all things.

We are letting our enemies have the monopoly on truth, for no reason other than they got there first, and they have a vested interest in manipulating us to take the opposite stance.

For the record, my opinion is that Greer has done some powerful and brilliant stuff, and some jawdroppingly stupid shit too.

We all have feet of clay.

I wear make up, all the time.... never leave home without it, I recognise this is not a feminist act! I'm quite happy for make up to be criticised and still wear it.

Because individual choices are not where feminism is concerned.

See there's where you're going wrong. Because as the personal is political, feminism has to consider individual choices: not just the context in which they are made but also the impact they have. We cannot do otherwise. We miss part of the picture otherwise. Your use of the term focus makes it sound like you think this must inevitably lead to less attention being paid to the bigger picture, but that is not the case at all. The picture can't be whole if it doesn't include the ability to have assessments of the decisions individual women make.

I agree about landgrabs barracker. I'd suggest that's a reason why at least some feminists have been supportive of trans activism: because of the people who don't like it.

My point is, I would very much like to get away from the idea that all those things are ‘feminist or not’ when it is being applied to women by other women.

I don’t think feminism is ever about what decisions an individual woman makes re her own clothes, make up, name, shoes, relationships, reproduction etc etc

Feminism is found in acts that improve the material conditions of all women IMO.

Considering personal choices within the context of material conditions and the improvement of women’s status is not the same as women telling a woman the choice she has made is ‘anti feminist’.