I really dislike Fair Cop’s style around that burning M too. It and the hinting make serious issues look like social media spatting and takes away from their serious player standing in my mind, better to stick to the issues of free speech I would say.
But who feels free to have fun with things can depend on who feels entitlement to the public space, to an audience, knows they will get a good reception to their more flip tone and who has enough feeling of confidence and personal or organisational standing not to care if they piss people off with their delivery. Also it can be a reflection of who feels they have personal skin in that particular game, or not.
I do tend to notice a difference in style between feminist organisations and free speech ones. The free speech orgs are not just working on women’s issues. They obviously have a lot more men in them. That scene can seem quite male dominated in number and in also in their prominent voices that gather wider public attention.
I can get it why free speech groups may like directness or levity as an expression of freedom and politically why they may not want to be worryIng too much about ‘how’ they express things. More important to focus on what they are actually saying. I get that.
On reflection of why that style seems clunky and ‘style taking away from substance’ to my own ear/eye, when free speech people/orgs comment on women’s or feminist issues (which I do really want them to be doing and be interested in- these also ARE free speech issues!) I wondered if it’s because as women we’re more used to having to put our points very seriously, offering detail to prove our case and doing so with a forensic demeanour as individuals.
Isn’t that just to ensure we are read as credible to ‘deserve’ to be listened to? If women’s groups posted burning initials of organisations we were critical of, or dropped the earnest tone for something more social media speak, I think probably we’d get laughed at or ignored or told we were uncaring and wishing bad things on vulnerable kids or something.
While at the same time being fair game to be dismissed as ‘humourless’.. (because women aren’t really allowed to be funny in public, either)
I am aware that I worry about all of this because of a lifetime of female socialisation, but I also don’t think it’s untrue either. Anyone can see the double standards applied to women speaking in public spaces, which the ubiquity of social media has laid open and also reinforced.