How can feminism in the UK be more inclusive? Striving for equality for all women

[isequalityamyth]

I have spent 40 plus years pushing, fighting, scrapping at times for equality, fair pay, calling out sexism, even the every day minor crap...if you call me girl I’ll call you kid all day long (apparently that is really annoying). & no I’m not sitting on your lap or taking a ride in your "fuck mobile".

The reality is though that I’ve been fighting from a very white privileged middle class standpoint. I had the privilege of having a feminist father who encouraged my education, encouraged my promotion.

When I went for entry jobs post graduating I was met with a phew by the male interviewers. My name and hobbies are not necessarily reflective of how I look. I got told once in an interview they were relieved I wasn’t a heffer, I looked and sounded english (seriously yes this was stated). This was the normal.

Yes I’ve fought my way up through the glass ceiling, but I was given a ladder.

I'm not demeaning my own battle nor those of others, I am just conscious that I had help, I had a tool set, I had support, I had the right skin colour, I had privilege.

How does one take a different perspective, not all women are the same, we all have different experiences. We are not starting from the same position, as a white Middle class woman I definitely had a head start in the equality stakes.

So my long winded question - how do we make feminism more inclusive? Not so white MC centric. As surely feminism needs to be more inclusive and it doesn't feel that way right now.

@imogen 👏👏👏

Btw I fully agree with the OP.

The challenges faced by white women, black women, Asian women, lesbian etc... are actually quite different. You just have to look at the images going round. Not all women are labelled weak, emotional and irrational.

Just as importantly being able to say ‘enough is enough. I’m not accepting that anymore’ is a form of privilege in itself. You dint do that when you are in the bread line and can’t do wo your job if you want to feed your dcs. You shut up and put up with whatever behaviour.

@GNCQ I have never seen such inaccurate statistics. If you are going to make a statement at least bother to look up if your figures are correct.

The trade unions in Britain have traditionally been very male orientated and given that women in certain sectors are still fighting for equal pay , still appear to be less interested in their women members. Where are the feminist Labour MPs and trade unionists? Where are their male allies? Why are working class women always left out?

So, I am confused. I answered ProseccoStormfront’s post and it was deleted (as it quoted their quote casting derogatory generalizations about mumsnetters being aligned with ... well you can guess there are several topics on it currently) but has there been a name change too?

MNHQ how is that done? And if so, that hides a posters history and the overall tone of their posting history.

Or were my eyes deceiving me? If so, I apologize.

I've never seen this before on MN but it seems prosecco chose a racist name ( ending in a far right nazi website I think?) and has somehow enacted a retrospective name change. I think normally a name change doesn't affect earlier posts?

I've seen MN do retrospective name changes on the odd occasion. I'm glad they've changed it to make it less racist but ... we still all know what they chose to align themselves with when making a username.

SOBbing here...

So not just me noticing then? ProseccoStormfront has now changed to ProseccoSt?

[quote SirChing]@ArcheryAnnie I agree in some ways. But already on this thread people are dismissing that some black women feel that some types of feminism, including that on the FWR boards, isn't for them.

We have posters on this thread simultaneously saying "we are intersectional what's the problem" whilst others say "sorry, we haven't time to be intersectional, take your oppression elsewhere please".

Surely if we want feminism to be inclusive, at least on mumsnet, the least we could do is actually believe the lived experiences of black and other BAME posters who DO say they feel "othered"?

We don't want a man telling us what's sexist. What makes a largely white, MC group of women think they can say whether or not the boards here are racist? That's for the BAME mumsnetters to say. And they ARE saying it. But are shouted down with demands for "proof". It seems "we believe you" only extends to sexual assault, not racism.[/quote]
I’ve been shocked recently to read what women of colour think about feminism and whether it’s for them. I instinctively reacted with ‘but feminism is for all women, and of course I include all women in my feminism’. I decided I need to understand better, and a lot of the responses on this thread do show the same applies.

We don't want a man telling us what's sexist. What makes a largely white, MC group of women think they can say whether or not the boards here are racist? That's for the BAME mumsnetters to say. And they ARE saying it. But are shouted down with demands for "proof". It seems "we believe you" only extends to sexual assault, not racism.

100% agree with the whole post but will repost this. We need to listen.

Just to clarify things for me - when people use the word 'centred' do they mean 'prioritised'?
It's a weird one when we're talking about women as a HUGE class of people, ~50% of people in the whole world. I guess perhaps it should be based around their needs as women, but we can't really ask more than that because it seems like we start getting into pitting various groups of women against each other. We need to make sure that feminism is inclusive of all women and that people feel empowered to focus on actual disadvantages: be that disability, maternity related things, poverty, societal racism, etc, within that.

Prioritised and focussed on is roughly what I mean when I say "centred", but can't speak for others.

@PotholeHellhole

3) FWR thinks that Lawrence Fox is great, which “says everything about FWR”.

Not looking at the thread. But. If I didn't like FWR and also lacked the incredibly binary moral framework I have, I could imagine seeing the opportunity to sow a bit of dissension. I wonder how much that goes on?

Not something I would ever do, whatever my views, because I can't stand deceit. But it's painfully clear that my scorn isn't universal and people think it's fine to lie about philosophical opponents. They think the end justifies the means.

Yes.

I read that thread for a bit and certain posters stood out to me as a) I'm familiar with their contributions to FWR. Which are generally to zoom in on any post they deem "not inclusive ". These posters are also ones I've noticed by their absence on any other feminist thread that isn't about including men. Yet screech at other posters for being "trans obsessed ". Hey, at least they're consistent.

Also b) they seemed from my observation to purely pick on another FWR regulars post on that thread as evidence of all that's apparently wrong with FWR. Not feminism but that board.

Almost an opportunity to get the boot in and not really give a shiney shite about feminism.

But maybe I misunderstood

@Justhadathought

But even if we only put down the obvious trolls, won’t some new black poster think that we put down one of them

Surely what matters is not someone's perceived skin colour or ethnicity, more so the quality of their points. Nobody should expect to go totally unchallenged.

This x 100

@NiceGerbil

Trans women should be centred in feminism.

Why?

Why more than female people who are disabled, living in poverty, of minority religious or ethnic groups, are lesbians?

And across the board women and girls face sexual harassment, sexual coercion, sexual violence etc.

Why are trans women the most important group to centre in feminism?

so some of the key points you've raised here about poverty, sexual assault and harassment and the like - these are all things trans women face on top of, and often as a result of, transphobia. I will be leaving some stats for you to read at your leisure below also, holding lesbians on this pedestal is odd to me as a lesbian i'm not going to lie. do we need support additional to straight women? yes, but so do trans women, especially trans lesbians www.galop.org.uk/new-report-shows-high-levels-of-abuse-and-assault-towards-trans-people/

@NiceGerbil

Trans women should be centred in feminism.

Why?

Why more than female people who are disabled, living in poverty, of minority religious or ethnic groups, are lesbians?

And across the board women and girls face sexual harassment, sexual coercion, sexual violence etc.

Why are trans women the most important group to centre in feminism?

just reread this and realised i missed a couple of your points in my last response, my apologies. I don't believe that trans women deserve this more than women in minority ethnic or religious groups, this isn't an oppression olympics and i believe we should be practicing intersectional feminism where all women get the support they need.

@ArcheryAnnie

They face hate and violence from so many ends

begaydocrime you may be interested in the following stats:

Transwomen murdered in the UK in 2020: none.

Women murdered in the UK in 2020: approximately one woman murdered every three days.

this may be true, but let's break down your statistics a little here. A woman is murdered every three days in the UK, meaning ~120 women were murdered in the UK last year. Around 1% of the UK population is trans (source www.stonewall.org.uk/truth-about-trans ), meaning that, in theory, 1 trans woman would've been murdered if murder rate was the same for trans/cis women. Anyone with a good knowledge of statistics can tell you that the odds are therefore not that low for no trans women being murdered in a given year. This article from the British Pyschological Society explains better than I can about recordings of the deaths of trans people, and contains some statistics too on the rates of non-fatal violence against trans people. www.bps.org.uk/blogs/diversity-and-inclusion-taskforce/transgender-day-remembrance

@Sillydoggy

No transwomen are explicitly excluded from feminism because they don’t meet the basic criteria of being female. They have their own movement. Feminism is not responsible for promoting causes that do not benefit women.

just out of curiosity, why don't you believe that trans women are women?

Virtually all young women in the UK have been subjected to sexual harassment, according to a survey from UNWomenUK, which warns that most women have lost faith that the abuse will be dealt with.

Among women aged 18-24, 97% said they had been sexually harassed, while 80% of women of all ages said they had experienced sexual harassment in public spaces.

[...]

The YouGov survey of more than 1,000 women, seen exclusively by the Guardian, exposes a damning lack of faith in the UK authorities’ desire and ability to deal with sexual harassment – 96% of respondents did not report incidents, with 45% saying it would not change anything. Among those who said the event was not serious enough to report were women who had been groped, followed and coerced into sexual activity, said UN Women UK.

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/almost-all-young-women-in-the-uk-have-been-sexually-harassed-survey-finds

@begaydocrime it's not a belief, it's a fact of biology. Women are female, transwomen are male - surely that's not news to you?

That just because a culture is patriarchal the women that follow the system do so because they want to.
That because they can choose either way they can have feministic views.
The amount of time I see it questioned about my large family.

[quote ImpatiensI]@begaydocrime it's not a belief, it's a fact of biology. Women are female, transwomen are male - surely that's not news to you?[/quote]
i feel like you're missing the key point that there's a difference between gender and sex, and that gender dysphoria has been widely accepted as a condition by the medical community at this point

@begaydocrime that doesn't make a transwoman a woman. As you know.

[quote ImpatiensI]@begaydocrime that doesn't make a transwoman a woman. As you know.[/quote]
why doesn't it? if it's been scientifically recognised that trans people's brains align more with their current gender than their sex (assigned gender at birth), it is pseudoscientific to try and state that trans women are men

It hasn't been recognised at all, 'pseudoscience' would definitely be the word for that. You're talking tedious rubbish - what's the point?