Brand Feminism.

[FloralBunting]

I've been mulling over recently how it is that Feminism, as I have understood it, stopped being about women's rights, and became an indistinct 'kindness to all' movement.

It is obviously odd that women's lib turned into something which pushed women into ever more creative ways of serving the interests of men, but I'm so curious about how it happened.

I don't think feminism was ever going to be eagerly accepted in a world tilted in favour of the males of the species, so on one level, it isn't a surprise that we still find ourselves in a place where opprobrium is heaped on us.

What I find fascinating is that many of the people ripping into feminists these days would call themselves feminists, like it's a brand. They know enough to see it as a useful term, but it has been gutted of any of the power to improve the lot of women - and bizarrely seems to focus on things which keep women as the chattels and servants of men, via prostitution, porn, surrogacy etc. and uses very traditional methods of appealing to us to be 'kind' and 'inclusive' as leverage.

I mean, it looks like a men's movement to me. What has contributed to this state of affairs? Obviously it's going to be a combination of factors. What do you think they are?

I shall mull this over further but my initial reaction is that great damage has been done by the idea that feminism is about equality for all, rather than about the liberation of females from patriarchy.

Nicely put Tinsel.

Yes, definitely. I was astounded to learn from EverydayFeminism that second wave feminism was all about dealing with the oppression we face as women, based in our biology, but that feminism moved on and became a term that means dealing with every kind of oppression and negative discrimination that exists in humanity and wasn't that great?

It's more than diluting aims, it's wholesale cuckooing the original aims right out of the nest.

I think many people have been sold on feminism meaning equality for women, to the point where a lot of women have been called anti-woman etc if they say they aren't feminists or have problems with feminism.

It's an easier sell, probably, so perhaps people thought it made sense to present it that way.

But I also think for many, that is the essence of it. It's about treating women with the same regard as men.

It's also not like you can draw clear lines around political movements in general.

It also sets women and feminism up to fail, because if in all of human history, equality for all has not been achieved, how are women supposed to suddenly get it sorted?

What would a world in which all were ‘equal’ actually look like I wonder? I suspect most people wouldn’t like it because there would be a lot who had to give up things they valued 🤔

That’s absolutely not to say that I support the patriarchy 😯 I’ve realised my post was ambiguous.

On another thread I posted about what I called media feminism.

The was part of the backlash against Women's Liberation and the concept of women organising and thinking independently.

MSM appointed their own feminist correspondents as it were, ie if you wanted to get ahead in journalism and were happy as a woman to churn out feminism lite type articles you would then get the opportunity to write a book which your patron would promote for you.

I dont realy know what everyday feminism is, but suspect like most other "feminist" projects it will be the baby of a woman with contacts who is then allowed to spread her brand of feminism, but careful never to challenge the male privilege that is allowing her to do this.

This has a parallel in funded women's organisations. Many of them started out as self organising groups responding to the needs of women they hoped to help or were part of. Once funding by local councils started it didn't take long for the originators of these projects to leave and or coopted into being the front for a form a funding partonage that dictated the terms on which women could have services provided.

In both instances this has turned feminism into little more than the sort of "good works" that the lady of the manor or the memsahib in whichever country the British Empire was occupying, in her role as being the donor of good works on behalf of the man/men who actually had/have power.

This is why so many complain of what now passes for feminism as being "white".

Stay clear of any feminist projects promoted by mainstream feminism, including the Guardian!

Grassroot feminism does still exist, but it probably doesn't have a web site, let alone waste time on twitter. It may occassionally appear in local newspapers or leaflets and flyers in local areas and sometimes libraries.

I'm not actually trying to draw clear lines, but tbh, I don't actually think it is that hard in this case, because there's often a very clear distinction between women who talk about women's liberation and rights, and those who talk about equality more generally as a feminist goal. In many, many cases, the only thing identifiably feminist in their views is the label they choose to put on them.

But I agree with you, goose, that there are a lot of women who are very reluctant to call themselves feminists, even though they would agree if I ran through basic feminist ideas with them. I was one myself - and you could probably trace my evolution on this website if the search function was good enough.

Tinsel, yes, it does set the bar ridiculously high, doesn't it? Like, ok, women can be free from oppression, but only when we have world peace or something.

Personally I think Identity Politics and individualism has played a big part. Women who agree with feminist ideas dont want to be called feminist, because of the baggage of the label, and people who are heavily invested in label identity call themselves feminists without any real engagement in the ideas underpinning things.

The "rebranding" is like how, without a by your leave, the music industry stole "R&B" and gave it to a new genre that bore no relationship whatsoever with what we now have to go back to calling "Rhythm & Blues".

In the case of R&B it became dusty, despised as irrelevant, "dad music" and unprofitable. The words behind the initials still make sense but a lot easier to "rebrand" R&B than the full, explicit phrase.

"Feminism" seemed to completely disappear from popular culture and mainstream media except for the occasional claim that "Feminism is dead!" or "Why women have abandoned feminism now they "have it all"!" or "How feminism made women think they could have it all" or "Did your mum burn her bra at Greenham?" and such tripe.

Unlike R&B being genuinely overtaken by new musical genres until the music industry decided they could get away with stealing the name, I think "Feminism" was deliberately depicted as old-hat, irrelevant "mum history" until Ladette Culture decided to steal the word and sever it from the old meaning of "Women's Rights".

New, shiney, glittery, personally empowered, pole-dancing "feminism" to replace Feminism as a collective enterprise.

Divide and rule.

Having done that, suddenly the words "feminist" and "feminism" were everywhere, attached to products and other things that cost money. Feminism was rebranded, without a by your leave, as the monetised successor to "Ladette culture".

A good symbol of this would be a "feminist" aspiring to pay a fortune for designer, pre-shredded denim.

What did we have left? "Women's Rights", the plural, the collective. Women. Only next, having stolen "Feminism" they diluted the word "women" so it became about men's rights too.

Now they want "female" as well so that we become, effectively, a sub-set of men. Just like in the old days, before feminism.

There was a radio programme this week about housing as a women's issue. Women in the UK could not get a mortgage until the 1970's. Technically, they can now but in every region of the UK the average salary for a woman is too low to get a mortgage on a property by herself. For men, this only applies to London and a few locations in the South East.

Until not much over 100 years ago a woman's children were legally the property of the father, as a woman was the property of her husband.

Surrogacy laws - just saying.

Proposal to remove the "Spousal exit clause" from the GRA - that skews marriage and civil partnership contracts and we know in whose favour that typically applies, i.e. obviously not in favour of the sub-human formerly known as "woman".

Even before Feminists in the US advocated for the reintroduction of the 1923 Equal Rights Act, an amendment to the US Constitution, in 1971 the marketing consultants had been selling independence as a product not a right. In the '20s they hired models to walk in a parade smoking cigarettes, and in 1968 "You've come a long way, baby" was the slogan of a slim cigarette.
There has been a government and corporate sponsored backlash against every step of legal progress women have made.
Abusive men like to ask if we are all equal now does that mean they are allowed to punch us. Somehow they manage to forget that it isn't ok to punch anyone smaller than you are, nor is punching legal.

The bottom line is that the backlash doesn't come in waves any more than the Feminism comes in waves. Both are constants. Public attention comes in waves. I see one coming now.

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." Anatole France pseudonym for Jacques Anatole Thibault (1844-1924)

This is why when women say we want equity the men say we want equality.

Interesting thread.

I suspect most people wouldn’t like it because there would be a lot who had to give up things they valued

Losing privilege can feel like oppression.

And maybe gaining some equality has felt like such a win for some women, they believe the fight is over.

Feminism was kind of replaced by ‘Girl Power’ and that rebrand was much sexier than ‘dusty feminism’ and so began the race to the bottom of ‘Ladette culture’ which again for some, seemed to cement the ‘we are now all equal’ = equality.

Female socialisation is probably where it starts. Maybe if we can break the ‘good girls are nice girls’ we might change the systems?
If we can’t change men to change patriarchy can we change girls and women to not feel guilt about wanting equality?

I’m not a feminist as in I’ve not read or studied much feminist literature, so I’m nowhere near as erudite as most posters on FWR, so hope my bumblings make sense!

Opps yes Creepster This is why when women say we want equity the men say we want equality. - I mean to say equity in my post

How could I have forgotten "Girl Power"!? Thank you for the reminder GirlDownunder! It was really uplifting seeing little girls (7-9 aged about) all feisty and excited about the Spice Girls rather than a Boy Band

Losing privilege can feel like oppression.

This is not the only way many people would feel like they were losing something if we had equality. I think this idea has created some real blind spots in different equality movements.

One of the almost inevitable effects of oppression or even just a setting apart as different, of a group of people, is a strong sense of solidarity and identity among those people, and often the creation of a culture.

One of the effects of dismantling the barriers and lines and definitions around that group, assuming there is nothing really materially substantial, is likely to be the weakening of that sense of identity, that group solidarity. It could even potentially mean that any real sense of that identity disappears, the cultural differences are diluted, if for example you suddenly have al kinds of intermarriage and cultural merging.

This can create really significant barriers to change at all levels.

Personally I think Identity Politics and individualism has played a big part. Women who agree with feminist ideas dont want to be called feminist, because of the baggage of the label, and people who are heavily invested in label identity call themselves feminists without any real engagement in the ideas underpinning things.

Yes I think it's this.

Feminism was vilified in popular culture by misogynists. I feel that trickled down and made many women want to distance themselves from the perceived stereotypes. Equality includes men so that was more acceptable.

I also think that having the freedom to actually be more equal in terms of careers etc has become taken for granted until inequality does hit, based on biology, which for many women is later in life, as more women have children later.

I'm ashamed to say this is how I felt till I had my children, and a number of friends experienced domestic abuse and violence.

Liberal feminism has also had a part to play.

A bbc report on free sanpro for girls in school I've just posted a thread about doesn't mention word girl or female once.

It doesn't mention the fact that girls are disadvantaged by period poverty and this is a way to help make their education more equally accessible to boys.

And yet they use "equal" language by using pupils, children, students.

These words have a place obviously when discussing all students in other situations, not dividing into boys and girls is an important equality and feminist principle. Either this has been stupidly and ignorantly applied here or it's deliberate wokism.

It's either misunderstood

Yes, me too.

Several excellent posts.

Encouraged when young to think that I could aspire to anything.... and at the same time, being shown very more forcibly that men were in actual charge, whenever it came to a showdown. And that if I just smiled and simpered and flirted with men, then I would be fine, little lady.....

You raise a good point GirlDownUnder. And it's something I have also thought often about. A lot of feminist discussion focuses on men's behaviour, yet if women are said to be socialised to be passive, nice and people pleasing, then to me that's what needs to be tackled in order to see long-term progress.

However, there needs to be a certain realism too. A lot of biological differences between the sexes has been covered up or glossed over for many years. I don't know if it was a deliberate strategy or a case of feminist ideas not being conveyed well to the general public, but there is a pervasive concept that men and women are actually identical in every way and it's only because of socialisation that we have differences and disparity, and if we socially engineer society then the disparity will disappear.
My impression of feminism at a certain period is that it seemed very reluctant to admit that there were some fundamental differences between the sexes that no amount of social engineering could eliminate. This idea seems to have been distilled into liberal feminism, with many young women convinced that there are no differences between the sexes and that's why it's ok for men and women to compete together in sports, for example. Where did this denial of biological differences come from? Was feminism heavily invested in social constructionism at a certain point?

Where did this denial of biological differences come from?

It was explained to me a few years ago here that acknowledging biological differences could be used against women eg 'pregnancy brain' stereotypes could lead to women being quickly dropped in workplaces as soon as they're pregnant.

I don't think pregnancy brain is a definite thing, however we do know that women can suffer from all the physical changes of pregnancy. Hence inclusion in the EA. The recent suggestions that menopausal women could have certain supports at work was interesting as again we need to be careful of stereotypes affecting treatment and opportunities. At the same time it can affect some women really badly.

I think it's a very fine line and can be misinterpreted.

What's missing is the active support of women in term of already good medical care for things like menopause as some of the biological differences are related to reproduction.

Very interesting thread, am reading avidly. I’m better at talking than typing-pithy rather than lengthy but following!

Thanks for the explanation, NeurotrashWarrior. It does seem like the fear of stereotypes being used against women might have led to a swing in the other direction, which is now problematic.
You're right that it's can be easy to misinterpret and policy makers and employers want quick, easy, blanket solutions rather than more nuanced approaches to the problems faced by many women due to our reproductive capability.