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.

@ArcheryAnnie

While so many GC feminists on here are obsessed by trans issues, it smacks of huge privilege that they are not having to worry about the number of maternal deaths in pregnancy/childbirth, or the heavy handed behaviour of the police and their refusal to investigate their missing girls.

I'm sorry, SirChing, but if you think that worrying about women in DV shelters, or prisons, or in migrant housing, and working very hard to make sure they are not housed with strange men against their wishes, "smacks of huge privilege", then I don't know what to say to you.

Women with "huge privilege" don't have to be "obsessed with trans issues" because they are very unlikely to go to prison, and they are very unlikely to be put by the home office into unsafe hostels with traumatised young men, and indeed they are very unlikely to be put in a whole load of other circumstances where they are forced to share intimate space with male-bodied people, because they can simply buy their way out of it. Those of us who have no choice but to use NHS hospital beds, council swimming pools and gyms, state facilities of every kind, have no choice but to be "obsessed with trans issues" when, believe me, we'd rather do almost anything else with our time.

Yep, it is privileged that enables the focus on the FWR boards to be about trans women to the exclusion of all else.

Dont get me wrong, FWR made me GC and I get it. BUT focusing on that whilst NOT talking about the issues that would result in women being imprisoned in the first place ( disproportionate number of whom are not white), and the fact that there will be fewer women alive to go to prison if they keep dying whilst giving birth (which also disproportionately affects black women), is focusing too much on one area and missing huge chunks of valuable conversation.

I really don't expect anyone to agree with me, but it seems to be that whilst a lots of women are talking about something that yes, does affect us all, but very few on a life altering daily basis, we are ignoring ALL those issues which DO effect women on a daily basis now.

The trans question is important. Absolutely. But when the focus is only that, it leaves women behind who are suffering the effects of massive inequality on a daily basis in practical terms. People talk about what is important to them at any given point.

If you aren't talking and worrying as much about police brutality, missing girls not being looked for by the police, maternal deaths, lower pay, unfair treatment at interviews and within work, as you are about whether TWAW, then YES it's a damn privileged position to be in.

[quote isequalityamyth]@HopeClearwater the auditable phew, the pressed noses against the glass window of the office I was being interviewed in... I used to partake in a certain sport, and all the boys came to have a look and did an auditable phew that I didn't look a certain way.

That office was disgusting, they would employ people who looked "right" over those who could do the job. The finance team was introduced to me as nice boobs but don't do much. [/quote]
When and where did this happen?

And if it did, why did you stay?

Sorry but unless you were being interviewed for a job in a strip club I'm finding this scenario a bit implausible.

And you didn't say racist. You said not women (IE not human)

Nice try! There is a whole other sex out there, men, who I am sure you know Black women are compared to with alarming regularity. See any thread on Serena Williams on here about her being "masculine" for an example. Except that they tend to get deleted for being racist so you probably won't find them.

@ImpatiensI Absolutely I have an agenda. To be an ally for black and BAME women who are saying loudly and clearly that in a very many cases they don't feel included in feminism, particularly on mumsnet.

If you have no interest in that, it says more about you than me.

@SirChing

And you didn't say racist. You said not women (IE not human)

Nice try! There is a whole other sex out there, men, who I am sure you know Black women are compared to with alarming regularity. See any thread on Serena Williams on here about her being "masculine" for an example. Except that they tend to get deleted for being racist so you probably won't find them.

But the people who say those things clearly aren't feminists - you claimed it was middle class feminists who didn't see black women as women.

@continuallyconflating

Which is shit because BAME women are the people who are MOST affected by the patriarchy.

Not wanting to get into any form of oppression top trumps but this is an incredibly insulting thing to say

Have you any idea of the lives some (white) working class women in Scotland live?

Are you happy with further marginalising and dehumanizing them in the furtherance of who knows what?
But I guess you are, as it seems the aim is (at it always has been) is to create squabbling factionalism
Because I expect your now going to tell me I'm a racist privileged mc white c*swoman?

You deny that black and BAME women are the ones who lose out most and are most adversely affected by the patriarchy and YOU are offended?

@NiceGerbil Glad you too think mumsnet and society as a whole is pretty racist. I agree. My point, as you put it, is that any decent person would think that is wrong, would believe the lived experiences of black mumsnetters when they say they find FWR to be quite racist, and find ways for all types of feminism to be more inclusive.

Problem with that?

Mmm.

I'm not particularly privileged, I think. I spent a year or so in a women's long-term homelessness hostel. I wasn't working there. I was living there. When I got put there, I had the choice of the women's hostel, or a mixed hostel. I chose the women's.

That women's hostel doesn't exist any more, and in retrospect, I wonder if it wasn't just austerity that saw it being shut down. There was a clear need for us, as a population, to have a male-free environment. I worry about young women today, with similar lives to my housemates, who don't have the opportunity we did to be housed in women's only housing.

I don't think that makes me privileged, exactly. Just aware of my roots.

SirChing then start threads about the issues you think are being missed.

And sorry, no, I will never take discussion of trans issues as "privileged", because the removal of single-sex spaces and services covers absolutely every aspect of women's lives, and is most likely to impact marginalised women the worst.

But the people who say those things clearly aren't feminists

And you know how they define themselves, how precisely? Or it this just another "No true Scotsman....."?

@SirChing your agenda seems to be to attack and divide. God knows why, it's not going to help anyone.

The trans question is important. Absolutely. But when the focus is only that, it leaves women behind who are suffering the effects of massive inequality on a daily basis in practical terms.

No - to abandon trans issues would be to leave behind the women who are suffering the effects of massive inequality on a daily basis.

Who do you think is most likely to end up imprisoned? Or in a DV shelter? Or in a homeless hostel? Or in migrant housing? What happens to those women as single-sex services and spaces are eroded?

@PotholeParadies Then great, you aren't part of the issue then are you?

Blimey people, you do all get that those of us who are pissed off about lack of intersectional feminism on FWR are talkng about it as a whole?

@ArcheryAnnie that's fine, I am not asking you to feel privileged. I am merely telling you that FWR these days comes across as smacking of white, MC privilege, with a massively narrow agenda, has turned its eyes away from so many other issues which effect women, and does seem to be really quite racist at times. I have seen demands for black and other BAME mumsnetters to provide "proof" of the racism they have experienced, as if it only counts as racism if everyone else agrees.

If FWR is happy with that, and happy with loads of black mumsnetters feeling excluded to the point that there are threads about precisely that, crack on!

Personally, I am looking for something more inclusive of those who are coming off the worst from living under the patriarchy.

Anyway, @isequalityamyth, have you heard of Southall Black Sisters? They're a really good charity to support. There is also Sistah Space, a specialist DV charity.

southallblacksisters.org.uk/support-sbs/

www.sistahspace.org/

If you're sick of trans issues, please look into those orgs and support them.

[quote ImpatiensI]@SirChing your agenda seems to be to attack and divide. God knows why, it's not going to help anyone.[/quote]
You call it trying to divide. I call it stating an uncomfortable truth. Potato, potato

You deny that black and BAME women are the ones who lose out most and are most adversely affected by the patriarchy and YOU are offended?

So where exactly did I say this? And really parse what I wrote

I took issue with an ignorant sweeping generalisation that on first glance appears unreproachable because it deals with race

AND IN NO WAY DENIGRATING OR MAKING LIGHT OF ANYONES HISTORICAL RACE BASED STRUGGLE

But these statements erase the communities I know and grew up in.
Communities that have faced generations of deliberate systematic abuse with the worse health outcomes, life expectancies and social indicators in Western Europe.
But despite all this, because they're white, they don't score high enough in woke politics so they can be dismissed
Have you any knowledge of the schemes of Scotland?

No - to abandon trans issues would be to leave behind the women who are suffering the effects of massive inequality on a daily basis

Who has said anything about abandoning trans issues? It would be stupid to do so. BUT that does not mean they are the only issue, the ONLY thing affecting women right now. And those things are getting drowned out by a lack of talk about anything else.

It's all very well saying start your own threads, but unless people give a shit about what is being discussed, then they will slip down the menu and get few replies.

It takes a LOT of people to start looking and caring about more than one thing at once, as FWR commentators are so fond of saying, to have threads about other things which include other feminists.

SirChing, you wondered if a focus on trans issues might be linked with the privilege to ignore everything else. This isn't a game of oneupmanship or even oneupwomanship. I'm just trying to explain that my concern about trans issues is tied to a time when I was a lot worse off than I am now.

@continuallyconflating you find my comment that "BAME women are the people who are MOST affected by the patriarchy" in your words "incredibly insulting".

Why would that be the case if you didn't think it was untrue?

@PotholeParadies

SirChing, you wondered if a focus on trans issues might be linked with the privilege to ignore everything else. This isn't a game of oneupmanship or even oneupwomanship. I'm just trying to explain that my concern about trans issues is tied to a time when I was a lot worse off than I am now.

And that's fine. But like I said upthread, lots of women on mumsnet DONT feel that way. They feel excluded at that time they have other stuff going on, because the talk seems to only be about women's rights in relation to trans issues.

[quote ImpatiensI]@SirChing your agenda seems to be to attack and divide. God knows why, it's not going to help anyone.[/quote]
Nope. My agenda is to simply say that although some of you want to deny it all day long, there are lots of women out there who don't feel included in FWR. Many of those women saying that are black or other ethnic minorities.

I think that's a big issue. If you don't, fair enough. My agenda is to try to highlight this. Pure and simple.

Why would that be the case if you didn't think it was untrue?

So you missed the bit about working class Scottish women having the worst life expectancy and health outcomes in Western Europe?

@continuallyconflating

Why would that be the case if you didn't think it was untrue?

So you missed the bit about working class Scottish women having the worst life expectancy and health outcomes in Western Europe?

Sorry, I did actually miss that paragraph.

Yep, I completely believe that to be the case in terms of the schemes in Scotland, it's truly shocking that the life expectancies are so rubbish, but I am not only talking about life expectancies, but also life experiences.

The bottom line is, some of those Scottish women on those schemes will be black or from other ethic minorities. It would be naive to think that they didn't face more challenges in that environment than white women, purely because of the colour of their skin, and that the patriarchy doesn't come down even harder on them because of it.

But in terms of numbers, BAME women are most affected by patriarchy across the entire world.

I am working class and disabled. I feel completely included in feminism at a grass roots level.

I understand that there are women doing the individual glass ceiling type thing as described by the OP. I have never really thought about whether that kind of thing includes me because it isn’t something I am particularly interested in.

Maybe OP you are overestimating the influence of the kind of feminism you are involved in because it is what you are day to day. Most feminism isn’t about women in positions of power and influence. It is about ordinary women.

But women have to fix other peoples oxygen masks before they can put their own on

Hilarious! You've bleated so much that you've outed yourself as a racist all by yourself

The "other people" you refer to are in fact....women. Divide and conquer is it?