Being "empowered" by Emma Watson

[DialSquare]

This has been mentioned in AIBU on an older thread about Emma Watson's Feminism but I thought it would be worth posting here too. There's some good responses.

mobile.twitter.com/TheWomensOrg/status/1292370163531120642

And that's lib feminism summed up nicely. Let's not examine the environment where these "choices" are made.

She should stick to acting. Badly.

I don't have much time for EW and her comment was fairly shallow.

I think Bindel is being unfair though and maybe deliberately so. I don't think Watson means anything like "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". I think her intent is to support policies that would, for example, give more choices to a woman stuck in an 11th floor flat with her three kids. Be it free education, social assistance, daycare, whatever.

Without something more specific than "empower women" it's not that useful a statement, and there are lots of questions about any policy approach. The stuff about armpits is naive, as if people just aren't affected by social norms. The idea of freedom being about choice can be challenged on a basic level, too.

But Bindel is leaping to an interpretation which I don't think she would if someone else said it was important to empower women.

I think it was her response to JKR that makes any statement like this from her now seem totally meaningless.

She wants to empower us to 'run for prime minister'? She'll need to put a different electoral system in place first, then, won't she?

Lifted from some US document and tweaked, if I'm not mistaken. Fallen at the first hurdle.

@AmandaHoldensLips

She should stick to acting. Badly.

Yup. Such nonsense. Comments are great though.

So tame. Who cares about shoes???!!

She's a dimwit. She has no idea about the lives of normal women. Her whole life has been a bubble of privilege, celebrity and unearned status (why does the UN make these know-nothings ambassadors?), all facilitated by a woman whom she now reviles and bullies via social media. Because of her status, she can afford to throw away rights that normal women need (and which she probably never will) and elevate the needs of men. She is a disgusting human being.

I often think how wonderful it is that I don't want to run for Prime Minister. As that's not really how it works in the UK system, I'd be facing so much disappointment.

I do feel very powerful in my footwear and hair removal choices, though. I mostly wear brogues and only shave my toes when the hair on them starts snagging when I run.

“If you want to run for Prime Minister, you can.”

Is that in flip flops or heels 🤔 and would it help if I was AMAB?

If she gave a shit about women and feminism she’d be using her profile to do something like stand outside Leeds Civic Hall, shouting about the managed zone of paid rape with impunity.

Are we really going to accept any lesson in feminism from someone who comes out with this unfettered tripe?

( . _ .)

I was shaking my head when that dim bulb went on about shaving armpits and the shoes. I think she must believe that this is what being a F%$()@%( woman is. Don't we gals just love shaving our armpits and wearing goddamned shoes. It's so BONDING. That, and running for prime minister. OR NOT! See, we ladies have SO MUCH IN COMMON. How could anyone doubt that TWAW when we can all wear flats and shave our armpits????

I find the "running for Prime Minister" comment really fatuous and irritating.

The population of the UK is 66 million. Almost everyone one who is entitled to vote in the UK could, in theory, "run for Prime Minister"

In my lifetime 12 people have been Prime Ministers -2 of them female. 2 out of 12 isn't great but it's not terrible and is improved if you add in the female First Ministers of the devolved regions.

I'm sure there will be future female PMs and FMs but most people do not want to be and never will have the slightest chance of being the PM.

If she gave a shit about women and feminism she’d be using her profile to do something like stand outside Leeds Civic Hall, shouting about the managed zone of paid rape with impunity

Oh absolutely. Your comment illuminates for me what I found so irritating about the "running for Prime Minister" comment.

@NearlyGranny

She wants to empower us to 'run for prime minister'? She'll need to put a different electoral system in place first, then, won't she?

Lifted from some US document and tweaked, if I'm not mistaken. Fallen at the first hurdle.

Yes, I thought that as well.

Yeah, why does that never happen? Why do these glossied-up celebrity feminists always zero in on the torments of armpit hair or the height of heels, or, if they have slightly more about them, negative body image due to their industry promoting certain mendacious visuals? Why is it always vacuous grandstanding?

I remember the short film Kiera Knightley did about DV, and it was really very good. But I can't think of many things like it. Speechifying at the UN on podiums and posting filtered pictures on Insta isn't powerful and I'm so bored that anyone is pretending otherwise.

Dear god that was patronising. Smug twat.

Its a fluffy statement. I feel like if you're going to call for female empowerment with a platform as big as Watson's she should be the driving force behind campaigns to end policies which disadvantage women.

You should also be able to define woman by something other than 'someone who feels like a woman' too....

www.spiked-online.com/2020/08/10/the-unbearable-vapidness-of-mainstream-feminism/

Spiked article.

Eurgh, the nature and level of the comments on that site! Off to wash my eyes and try to forget...

What an idiot.

This is akin to “ let them eat cake” in her inability to grasp the real issues that normal women face. She is also telling us who she is, which is helpful.

Shave your armpits, don’t shave them, wear flats one day, heels the next

It might at least have been slightly less banal and pointless if she'd been directing those comments at men.

I have a dream that women of this nation will one day rise up and wear flats one day and heels the next

@Wavescrashingonthebeach

Dear god that was patronising. Smug twat.

Emma Twatson.

We know she only cares about women willing to accept a cock and balls as female, so her (rather dim) comments are meaningless.

Running for PM, FFS. I despair.