Emma Watson talks to Paris Lees about feminism

[HandsOffMyRights]

'This Christmas, Watson is back on the big screen as Margaret “Meg” March in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

The project couldn’t be a better fit for Emma, combining, as it does, many of her loves: literature, film and exploring the female experience. “With Meg’s character, her way of being a feminist is making the choice – because that’s really, for me anyway, what feminism is about,”

Interesting that "female choice" is what Emma deems feminism to be, as reported by Lees.

www.vogue.co.uk/news/article/emma-watson-on-fame-activism-little-women

Emma showing her brand of feminism here

metro.co.uk/2018/10/18/emma-watson-praised-for-being-lgbtq-ally-by-wearing-trans-rights-are-human-rights-t-shirt-8051491/

Feminism is chatting to Paris Lees in that bastion of women’s liberation, Vogue.

maybe I should join in the spirit of this thread and make lots of comments about why Emma Watson is shallow, privileged, entitled

All of those things are objective facts, though. Why do you think we should not point them out? When someone is taking up disproportionate political space, by virtue of their celebrity status, claiming to be a feminist while supporting some of the most pernicious aspects of patriarchy, this causes problems for all of us, particularly the most vulnerable women.

Also, you have no idea what women on here do in real life in terms of supporting other women or feminist activity, so your digs are misguided.

It parodies itself - no additional work is necessary.

I'm also becoming increasingly tired of seeing the word "identify" everywhere. I don't "identify" as a feminist - I am one.

I read "identify" as "but in reality am not".

@Datun, I have a feeling that whatever I say feminism is to me will be criticised on this thread because it’s whole premise is to criticise a woman who gives her perspective on feminism. Of course no person owns a definition of feminism so I can only relay my view of it and by no means am I dictating this to others.

To me, feminism is about addressing the structural inequality that permeates our society completely, which is evidenced to greater and lesser extents in different countries, and across different class systems. The structural inequality can be racial, as women in certain minorities may suffer more than others, and it can be class related, as women lacking money and education often face even more structural inequality than others who are financially independent. This inequality manifests itself in unequal pay, second class healthcare for women, sexual harassment, rape and assault, lack of political power, many forms of abuse, and continuing marginalisation. I’m sure there are other examples.

To me, feminism is about identifying these injustices and finding ways to rebalance our society. It is complicated- both the causes and don’t think the solutions are always simple. As I grow older my view of feminism has changed and I now believe sexism is far more deeply entrenched in our society and worldview than I appreciated in my 20s. Back then I probably sounded a lot like Emma Watson.

I say all of this as a privileged white woman. For me personally, my feminist struggle is related to sexism at work and at home. Many women have it much, much worse. However my privilege does not exclude me from feminism and I can still have a voice.

Thank you for asking the question- I enjoyed thinking about this.

Thank you for asking the question- I enjoyed thinking about this.

You're welcome. And I don't disagree with anything you said.

The problem with someone like Emma Watson is she has a huge platform and she talks about feminism. But the feminism she talks about is damaging to women. Getting your tits out in vogue upholds the patriarchy, it doesn't address it.

Paris Lees has often been discussed on here. Lees upholds the concept that women are a collection of stereotypes, but in Lees' case, incredibly damaging stereotypes. Far worse than the short skirts and wigs that we often see in the ideology. (Often, not always, HQ).

Paris Lees writes in Vice about their sexual exploits. Picking up men in taxis, having five strange men penetrate their every orifice, how empowering it is to cry when you're being fucked, being treated like a piece of meat is hot.

And then claims that they speak on behalf of women. Taking Lees seriously as a mouthpiece for any woman, is seriously damaging. Talking to them about Feminism is risible.

There are a lot of women who quite like transwomen representing women. It's internalised misogyny. A male born woman has more credibility than a biological woman.

And that's why people challenge Emma Watson. It's not because they want to bring her down, they want to bring her up short.

No mention of misogyny there Tulips. A glaring omission when you're chiding other women about how they do feminism.

If Emma Watson wants to do something useful, given that she has a worldwide platform, she could start speaking out about the missing millions of girls and women in India and China, which patriarchy deemed not worthy of having lives. At the moment her so-called feminism is packaged and corporatised through the US and Vogue and doesn't address the oppression that women and girls face.

Emma used the #supporttrans kids

She has championed Stonewall and Mermaids.

Stonewall is actively campaigning to remove the rights of women.

Mermaids supports the transitioning of children through medication and surgery.

I'm not being 'nasty'. The way to protect children is not through life-changing surgery and sterilisation, or by lying to them that humans can change sex or that surgery will make everything OK.

Feminism to me starts with being able to define what a woman is. Without that, how can we support and help women?

While Emma is a cheerleader for organisations that seek to take away our hard won rights or organisations that are entrenched in regressive and harmful stereotypes (who are alarmed when boys play with dolls) then she does harm to women.

She could use her voice to call out this bullshit, so could Helen Mirren or Emma Thompson, just like I do in everyday life.

Feminism is also about giving girls the confidence to be who they want to be.

Not aligning yourself with organisations who tell young girls that they must be boys because they don't like 'girls' things', by taking away their sporting opportunities, by prioritising males in their spaces, by sending out a message that male rights trump female rights.

She could use her voice to call out this bullshit, so could Helen Mirren

Helen Mirren is a joke. She's been banging on about legalising brothels , pro- prostitution for a long time . It's very wearing along with her tedious" ooh look at me, I'm an older woman and I'm still a goer" schtick

@Driechdrizzle I knew some one on here would find fault of my post about what feminism means to me! Yes, misogyny is at the core of inequality, absolutely. I missed out the word but I agree it’s core

I think Emma Watson's is a strange kind of privileged that very few people experience. She has been very famous since before she hit puberty. She hasn't experienced a 'normal' life in any sense. She will of course have experienced sexual harassment and probably discrimination but she is very much more in control of her destiny than most women.

She seems to have shown more empathy with people who think they are women but are male than the millions of women and girls who are hugely disadvantaged around the world because of their sex. She should be using her platform to focus on the real issues, given she has an international profile that could make an impact, rather than going for the woke point easy wins.

Yup, Helen believes "we’re all somewhere in the middle in a wonderful mix of male and female."

And

"If being a TRF [trans-exclusionary radical feminist] is not accepting that trans women are women then I’m not a TRF,’"

Tulips the definition of what feminism means to you is one I agree with. However, I don't see Emma Watson - with the privilege of her position and her platform - addressing those things in any meaningful way. Her 'activism' consists of empty soundbites. She is a decorative feminist, and the message she gives to other young white women is that feminism is wearing slogan t-shirts, talking about choice, and 'being inclusive'. It's damagingly reductive, especially when presented with A-lister arrogance, and shouldn't go unchallenged.

It also appears, to me, that certain women encourage transwomen because it's flattering. You want to be like me? Wow! And ask me how to do your hair, make up? It's soothing.

Conforming to the patriarchy is something that we're brought up to do, and deciding not to is hard, it's brittle. You encounter opposition. There are no cookies.

Emma Watson's entire life has been spent around people who affirm her. She will never choose to abandon that.

I think women like Emma, in the public eye, a massive brand making a lot of people a lot of money, are very controlled. They are coached on how to present themselves, what to say, what jobs to take, what interviews to do, what causes to support. And they worry about losing audiences and fans so they often take a bland uncontroversial popular route.

The problem for women isn't "inequality" Tulips, it's oppression. Probably Emma's feminism does chime more with you than it does the women here, if you're using analysis like that.

No matter how you define feminism it surely can't include allowing women to say things that are wrong and/or damaging to women and just let them at it because ... well they're women? Feminism has never meant uncritical of anything and everything women do or say.

If Emma Watson (or any other privileged high profile woman) can use her position to highlight problems and help to resolve them, what's not to like? But if she uses her position to promote damaging ideologies then there's nothing in that to like. She is a shero to young girls who admire her as the Hermione Grainger character and then are vaguely aware that she is doing good pro-girls and women work and they run the risk of taking her word as gospel on all issues (believe me I have an 11 year old who is right there).

My anger at Watson in terms of scale

Powerfull Men - FloraJO QC et al.
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All other men
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Rheasilvia Mons Gap
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All women who will not call themselves Feminist
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Mont Blanc Gap
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All not famous women who call themselves Feminist but do f**k all irl
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Watford Gap
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All Famous Women who are willing to call themselves Feminist - even if not being pure 100% of their public time.

I find this such a shame. I used to think she was a brilliant role model for young girls until I saw her in that T-shirt. She had the opportunity to actually stand up for women’s rights but instead did that.

I was nauseated by the ‘why aren’t you following me on Instagram?’ at the outset. It made the rest of the interview seem like an obsequious grovel. There was an odd power dynamic and EW was desperate to be so inclusive - it was performance feminism of a type that includes everyone and everything - meaningless. PL sat there trying to do this ‘girls together’ act. When she straight out asked EW if she would be scared to share a toilet with her I thought EW was going to throw herself at PL’s feet. And then PL started on about how she’d felt ugly growing up and I started to wonder who was interviewing who? I know this was Vogue but I just thought I would far prefer to have seen EW interviewed by someone like Kathy Burke. But it’s evident it was set up to be some sort of ‘celebrity activist’ mutual back slapping session. And there’s another word that’s become bloody meaningless - ‘activism’. Pah!

I think it's reasonable to hold Emma Watson's body of work up for debate. This interview with PL is part of that. Nobody's making personal remarks about EW's appearance.

I agree that this type of bland, carefully packaged feminism does more harm than good. And I totally agree with PP about the "women have choice" comment. Imagine what your "choices" would be if you lived in a culture where women choose to flatten their own breasts and woke up one day and declared yourself a feminist and would no longer be mutilating your own body.

Excellent post from MaeWest.

I now know what Rheasilvia is!

I've learnt many things on this board.

I do think there can be a fine line between talking about the nature of someone's activisim or their public speech on important issues, and being nasty about their personal lives. There is a lot someone might say about the content of EW's political views, and even point out that it may come from a lack of real world experience, or why it might appeal to women in her age group, etc, but it's easy enough when having that kind of discussion to get into a mode of being mean for the sake of it.

I'm not sure it's really fair to be personally critical of her. The fact is our culture is dominated by the idea of choice as the means to freedom (whatever that is) and self-actualisation. It's not something even radical feminism is always as careful about as it ought to be IMO - I think the fundamental assumptions behind that are simply mistaken. But a youngish woman with a somewhat narrow set of experiences, about average intelligence, with an education that was probably focused on cementing that perspective - how could she be expected to come to some other conclusion? Where would she even get the idea to try and think about it differently?

In that light, I don't think it really reflects on her personally much.

Where would she even get the idea to try and think about it differently?

Well, books, newspapers, the internet, feminist talks, youtube? It's not as if feminism is suppressed out of sight - many leading feminists write for major publications both in print and online; if you want to know why some feminists have issues with TW in sport and women's spaces it's not hard to find their arguments; you can go to a feminist lecture or group quite easily in most cities, and discuss the issues. She could even read this board to see a range of interesting and backed-up arguments.

I do agree she's young with very limited experience, and as a PP said, I was probably more like her 30 years ago than I am now and my feminism evolves as I learn and understand more and have more life experience. But she's not living in a total bubble - she can access information. Even if she didn't agree with it and wanted to argue with other feminists, that would be better than making these confused statements about choice.

Even her self partnering thing needs addressing by her. Perhaps ask herself why society is so obsessed with why she isn't married or in a long term relationship.