I do not expect feminists to do things perfectly.
I think this is an important point, weriseup.
Heroism and adulation of heroes is a very male trait. The idea that somebody could embody perfection is a nonsense.
We are all human. Women surely must recognise that humans, no matter their ideals, are fallible. We all lose our temper, tell fibs, behave less than honourably, have feeble moments and get swept up in social media outrage. And a million other failings inherent to being human.
Someone can be brave, brilliant and amazing and also be rude, selfish and impatient. Someone can be strong, innovative and creative, while also being unreliable, thoughtless and paranoid.
Instead of expecting the world of the women we admire, and feeling betrayed when they reveal their flawed humanity, we should admire the good stuff, recognise the not-so-good stuff and understand that everyone has feet of clay.
Every women who, at the end of their tether, yelled at a child or bitched about a partner or snapped at a sales clerk recognises that sometimes good people are bad. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t call them out when necessary, but that shouldn’t happen just because they have exposed their failings and we’re outraged at their fall from grace.
Would we even be having these conversations if the people we are talking about were male? I don’t think so - we’d excuse their bad behaviour because of their achievements.
The whole point of female socialisation is to force us to focus inwards on our appearance and our behaviour. And it sets up other women as the arbiters, which is why women can be so vicious to each other - it’s built into the system. FGM is performed on women, by women, at the behest of the patriarchy.
It’s hard to read the label from inside the bottle, but we really need to resist our socialisation. It stops us being properly angry and makes us turn on each other.