In-fighting within the GC feminist movement

[GlitterToast]

I've been following/ participating in the GC feminist movement for about a year, which makes me a newbie compared to many of you.

One thing that stands out uncomfortably is the constant and prevalent in-fighting. This refers to both the men and women in the movement.

I know that none of us are doing this professionally, so we don't have to act professional. I also think that everyone is entitled to their personal opinions, and they can express themselves however they wish.

But for me, the in-fighting is really off-putting and upsetting. It makes me want to step away from the whole situation.

I won't name names/ organizations as I don't want this thread to become a "he said/ she said". I started this thread to see if anyone else had similar feelings and wanted to talk them through?

She’s allowed to be frustrated with discord for similar reasons.

Or any other reasons.

It doesn’t mean she’s gossiping

This.

There's a certain irony to posters publicly disapproving of the OP's criticism of others while telling her it's fine for feminists to publicity attack others in any way they want, don't you think?

There's a certain irony to posters publicly disapproving of the OP's criticism of others while telling her it's fine for feminists to publicity attack others in any way they want, don't you think?

Did I say it was fine? I said it was irrelevant to the cause. Two different things.

I am sick to the back teeth of disingenuous threads containing endless dark and disapproving hints about the behaviour of women being started in order to drag FWR into whatever personal Twatter spat broke out the day before. It's like fucking clockwork.

Nothing to do with feminism. Pointless. Time wasting. And at least as divisive, if not more so, than the original Twatter spat.

And that's sufficient of my time wasted on it now.

I don’t believe OP was being disingenuous, although I know why everyone is in high alert for the same, of course.

I haven’t ever experienced the alienating in-fighting you describe from other GC people. On the contrary, I’ve found GC people to have kindness and humanity, and sometimes great senses of humour.

Yet another post from someone who obviously has no idea what the OP is talking about but has decided to comment anyway.

The OP is not talking about GC people in general she's talking about public spats between specific women with very public profiles.

I can think of 10 of them off the top of my head. I'm not counting Linda Bellos and Cathy Brennan btw. That was ugly behaviour from Cathy Brennan and utterly nonsensical. But it was a disagreement about a political point not a personal and public spat of the kind the OP is referring to.

I hope you find the support you need

Did you mean this to be quite so patronising?

The way I look at it is this.
Each and every one of us is marketing an idea. That sex is real, it matters, and gender is made up and damaging.
When we tweet, or debate, or write articles; when we speak publicly, or lobby, or take on legal cases; when we distribute leaflets, booklets, stickers or memes, even when we just add +1 like to a post - we are making a difference. We are adding to the pull towards society recognising that sex is important, and it's recognition is under threat.

Sometimes, in those activities, attempts to pull things in the right direction has a complementary backlash effect. Two steps forward, one step back. C'est la vie. This is inevitable.

As long as the NET effect of efforts pulls things forward, I see individuals' contributions as worthwhile. As part of the bigger picture, as valuable. Because the big goal is sex > gender.
And the goal isn't to get the people we like agreeing with us.
It's to get the people we don't like.
Across the entire political spectrum.

This perspective helps me to ignore, mute, roll my eyes at people who I disagree with, often vehemently. If their net effect is positive, that's enough.

I might argue, in fact I do, with people I think are behaving obnoxiously. But it tends to be when I perceive they are doing more harm than good.

Nothing to do with feminism. Pointless. Time wasting. And at least as divisive, if not more so, than the original Twatter spat.

OK Yes, I'll give you that!

I did try to leave this thread last night, got sucked back in!

I think It's OK for the OP to let off steam about this though, It's frustrating and disappointing when you see women you otherwise admire acting in ways that work against our collective aim, because of no more than the airing of grievances or even, on occasion, unfounded personal attacks.

And they don't all do it. I can think of so many women who stick their head above the parapet to campaign on GC issues who don't do this, and/or don't rise to it when others attack them and I reserve my right to admire them for it!

I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion of social media. This is a huge part of the problem isn't it?

The lefties disputes and fallings out I remember the adults constantly having, from my childhood weren't played out on social media - I can't imagine the level if psychodrama if they had been able to!

Of course green infighting is played out on social media today (plenty of moaning about XR at the moment) but I don't see the same level of abuse towards individuals in public. Perhaps I'm not in the right circles to see it, but I wonder if the GC movement is more intense in this way as so much of the activism happens on social media.

Social media is hugely relevant to this movement- indeed I suspect without it, the whole thing probably wouldn't be such a problem in the first place as if there was no social media, GNC young people wouldn't be being groomed in such large numbers into thinking they're trans.

Unlike, say, the green movement, we're fighting something that's happening in large part, online. Perhaps that makes the online context all that more intense? I dunno...

Look, I'm really sorry if I've gone about this the wrong way. I'm honestly not looking for gossip. I really don't want anyone to name names or point out anyone specifically. Many of the people mentioned aren't here to defend themselves, and we should respect that. I wanted to discuss the issue of in-fighting more broadly, and perhaps somewhat hypothetically.

I apologize if some of my vocabulary/ observations were incorrect. I was just discussing the situation in the way that I see it.

GlitterToast I don't think you've gone about this in the wrong way. I find the response surprising.

I would also have liked a discussion on infighting more broadly and hypothetically.

This thread doesn't say a lot for our ability to be self critical! Women are allowed to behave badly too feels a lot like a cop out to me.

The problem is, GlitterToast, 'women falling out' is constantly leveraged by anti women activists to divide and conquer or undermine.

Frankly, I think people have become rather used to spats, because strong, determined or bolshy women often fall out with each other. Disregarding one's socialisation to be nice will result in, well, the opposite.

That's the reason you may find not much take up over this sort of discussion. It tends to be rather unproductive.

There are a lot of huge egos about and people wanting to tear each other down in ways which are unhelpful.

But when someone makes a blistering personal attack on you completely out of the blue, including saying stuff that is not only malicious but also demonstrably false, that could hurt your family and devastate your children, then I can understand why people furiously fight back. I’ve done it myself.

Bitter experience has demonstrated that the best way of handling is not to amplify it because to the casual observer like OP it’s unedifying and forces people to choose sides.

Sometimes hard though it is, the only solution is to ignore & vent privately. Especially when you are dealing with someone using you for supply.

These hideous obsessive personal attacks and streams of random accusations, blaming you for every woe that has befallen them because you are a puppet member of the evil lizard illuminati, speak for themselves.

Also. What Barracker said.

Human nature means that people will fall out, often publicly & nastily but you just have to keep your eyes on the prize and affix the blinkers.

Women are people; we’re going to argue and disagree and say rude things and slam doors. Holding women to a higher account than men is pretty much what this fight is all about; the expectation that women would continue to behave well and be polite and give up their spaces without argument.

DancelikeEmmaGoldman summarises very well. Plus there are plenty of women of every conceivable political stripe who agree with me that human beings can't change sex despite holding other views I find repellent.

It's been a long standing feature of feminism that it sometimes can be very unpleasant in terms of personal disagreements and tearing people down. I don't mean the kind of disagreement you see over important issues, or even disagreement over unimportant things that just remains a disagreement. It generally involves trying to get a some kind of social hierarchy to turn on the other people or faction, discredit them, or shut them down.

It reminds me a lot of being 14 in school. I'd say it's best to ignore it but it can be a real pain in the ass when the people doing it are running things, in a local group or on a message board or something like that. I think it's somewhat worse now than it used to be, it's somehow dovetailed with call out culture and the rest to become very toxic at times.

Sometimes it’s good to just get away from online stuff.

Get Offline thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3329362-Get-offline

Stickering latest:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a3698192-sticker-woman-strikes-again

OP don’t take any terse responses to heart, people are just wary of the screenshot hunters! Agree that getting offline can be a healthy step sometimes.

There's in-fighting within every feminist movement. Were that not the case, there wouldn't BE a feminist movement. Or any other 'ism', for that matter.

Side note, but reading the last few pages it stands out: the terms such as 'women falling out' and 'spats'.

Do you often hear in every day reporting and conversation descriptions of men disagreeing with each other referred to in that way? We live in a time of a heavily male dominated parliament that's been unable to agree on anything on a daily basis for about three years now, and it's not described in those terms.

Odd how terms are chosen for women that make them disagreeing sound childish, petty, tedious.

Even though it was I who use the word spat, I was just coming on to say the same, Michelleoftheresistance.

Promoted by this:

It's been a long standing feature of feminism that it sometimes can be very unpleasant in terms of personal disagreements and tearing people down.

It hasn't been a long-standing feature of feminism - 🤣. It's been a long-standing feature of humanity.

It's only when you stand back, that you truly see the double standards. Men in parliament tear reach other's heads off on a regular basis, even in the same party. Even in the same family.

Women doing it is deemed far more shocking and worthy of criticism. Sexism in action.

*Prompted

I thought that this may be picked up. That’s why I specified in my op that I was referring to both men and women in the GC movement.

From my knowledge, most of the GC men have been in “spats”, so I really wasn’t saying that this is a woman’s issue.

I'm here to discuss issues and ideas that matter to me.

I'm not here to discuss other people or their movements. (Sneaky nursey snarf at movements, ooh er).

It hasn't been a long-standing feature of feminism - 🤣. It's been a long-standing feature of humanity.

I suspected someone might say this.

It's true to some extent of course but I think it's ignoring that women dominated groups and men dominated groups tend to behave a little differently in terms of interpersonal relations, asserting power, and even just organisation. There's a reason I said it makes me feel 14 when it happens, and it's because 14 year old girl society doesn't behave the way 14 year old boy society does, or even 17 year old boy society if you want to account for the maturity lag.

I don't know what accounts for it, maybe as someone suggested earlier it's a way to deal with power struggles because women have often been shut out from power, or maybe it's about being more language oriented, or maybe it's because we are less inclined to resort to direct physical confrontations. But it's held true in different male and female dominated organisations I've been in and I know plenty of women who have found the same thing, and not because they are some sort of terrible sexists.
I think it's similar to the way that gay male sex scene is so very masculine in its operation. It's not because all gay males want that kind of environment, but with a group, even a small overall tendency tends to skew in that direction compared to a more balanced situation.

I think it is really unhelpful not to try and understand the impact of what seems like very personal and spiteful attacks in response to someone stating a political opinion.

For instance in response to a recent article of the principles on which some one says they work gets comments that says: "You wrote it because you're a gutter snipe, an unemployed trade unionist, a housewife chained to the left and hopeless, and you have no understanding of what this case is about." And "She wouldn't know a 'principled women's movement' if one came and bit her on the Kristina Jayne Harrison." from other GC feminists it is not just the impact of a personal attack out of the blue, but the impact on women with less confidence who are trying to get involved, take a stand. Why put yourself forward if other women so disrespect you that dont even engage with what you are trying to say but just slag you off.

It would be nice to think that mumsent was politically aware enough to have a discussion and not attempt this suffocating of voices some dont want to hear.

And the arguement that it can be used against anyone us just doesn't wash. Not for instance when there is a thread that Pink News then decides to tell everybody shows how mumsnetters are happy to work with white nationalists. Obvioulsy I am not saying we should moderate what we say because of Pink News or whoever will misinterpret it, but it is important to know that we will be listened to.

I never understand why some threads seem to get a few women's backs up and then they just become relentless in trying to misdirect the discussion. If you think the thread is stupid or irrelevant just dont respond.

It would be nice to think that mumsent was politically aware enough to have a discussion and not attempt this suffocating of voices some dont want to hear

I don't understand. Is Mumsnet a person? Suffocating voices?

I never understand why some threads seem to get a few women's backs up and then they just become relentless in trying to misdirect the discussion. If you think the thread is stupid or irrelevant just dont respond.

Yup.