'Unfinished Business - the fight for women's rights' Exhibition at the British Library

[AbsintheFriends]

This was covered (very badly - combo of disastrous phone line and poor interviewing) on Woman's Hour today.

From the BL website -

A fairer world for everyone: the fight for women’s rights is unfinished business
From bodily autonomy and the right to education, to self-expression and protest, this new exhibition explores how feminist activism in the UK has its roots in the complex history of women’s rights. With social and racial inequalities thrown into sharp relief by recent world events, join the debate and add your voice to the many fighting for a fairer world.

In theory it sounds great, but my expectations had already been somewhat lowered by our favourite celebrant of women's erasure tweeting that their GRC would be one of the exhibits, 'to acknowledge trans women's rights as women's rights.'

They are in no way raised again by the promotional video on the British Library's homepage
www.bl.uk/events/unfinished-business

I won't be heading to London anytime soon, but if anyone goes to this, please let us know what it's like.

Hmmmmmmmmm, most of the blurb appears as you'd expect from an exhibition billed as Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women's Rights... Mostly alright although I am a bit suspicious of Sisters Uncut inclusion. Then along comes the last paragraph (in the link OP gave) thus,

Recognising that inequality is experienced differently depending on race, gender identity, class and sexuality, this exhibition celebrates those who have struggled to overcome the barriers to living a fully-realised life

Nah, overcoming being a woman in our misogynistic society is about the bleeding, pregnant biological realities of being a woman, not a magical gender identity. Although if I thought for one minute this exhibition would be including the detransitioner stories, of young women unable to face being women I'd have to eat my words.

Fully realised life? FFS who writes this guff, definitely not the WASPI women cheated out of their pensions after working on lower pay them men for half their lives.

Not been to London since lockdown, don't fancy public transport just yet.....

That paragraph jumped out at me too Socrates but I couldn't articulate why it infuriated me nearly as well as you have.

Obviously there are a small proportion of women who believe they have a male 'gender identity', and it's reasonable to reflect their experiences in an exhibition on women's rights, especially in the light of the recent massive increase in girls and young women wanting to identify out of womanhood. Including those women whose sense of 'gender identity' subsequently shifts back would be interesting and relevant.

But I can't see any reason why an exhibition on the fight for women's rights should feature people who spent their formative years (and often far beyond) as men, and have no experience of the many barriers to women achieving true equality. Including Shon 'enjoy ur erasure' Faye's gender recognition cert 'to acknowledge that trans women's rights as women's rights' appears to make a nonsense of the whole endeavour.

I'd be genuinely interested to know if the exhibition ends up feeling as skewed towards TWAW, SWIW, or if this is just virtue-signalling appeasement for the PR material. I might be tempted to brave trains and tubes to venture into London for a visit if I thought it would be a great representation of women's struggles, and an uplifting celebration of the women who have forced change, but suspect I'd be sadly disappointed.

Woman's Hour are repeating this segment right now because the line was so awful yesterday.

I’ll not be able to go in person but have started having a look at the online element of the exhibition: don’t know what’s [not] included. The mapping of the Women’s Liberation Movement using Spare Rib is brilliant though. And the exhibition bookshop has The Female Eunuch which could be construed as a bold choice in the current climate.

This is not quite on the topic but of course the main problem with the rise of the gender ideology is that it is built on extremely uneven ground.

It would be perfectly fine to let people identify as whatever they wish if the original situation had been one of perfect equality between the sexes.

But it was not and is not, and shifting away from addressing sex-based oppression in this giant manner is going to be very harmful. Sexism is not going anywhere and misogyny is glaringly obvious even within the trans rights movement. Yet we are now focusing on the demands of a very small minority because their demands have been framed so that the sex class 'women' appears a privileged sub-group of the gender identity class 'women.'

Sorry but if the are mapping Women's Liberation / 2nd Wave via Spare Rib that is a "truthful" a version of women's activism as using Guardian articles to indicate current concerns of "feminists".

As the Library has access to what were the Women's Liberation Newsletter and WIRES which was the link between local activist groups it is highly concerning that they have glossed over / erased that history.

As would looking at the Guardian and not looking at mumsnet to reflect current issues that concern women.

And as for Germaine Greer, she was never part of Women's Liberation and just compiled as sort of airport bookshop quick seller skimming together issues better covered by other women.

So based on comments above it sounds like another conventional retelling of women's activism to fit in with the sloppy research of the Library and the sort of mis teaching that appears to happen in unversities.

This is just another example of curated feminism for casual apolitical consumption.

Thanks for highlighting the online link TooFond, it's certainly a rich source of information. Will fire up the laptop this weekend for a proper look.