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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Telegraph: Highgate School tells pupils "Modern feminism is ‘racist’ and only focuses on ‘straight, white, middle-class women’"

112 replies

ResisterRex · 18/04/2022 17:32

It has emerged that Highgate School held a forum on anti-sexism, in which pupils were told:

  • feminism only focuses on white, middle-class women
  • to assess how privileged they are
  • that others are worse off - especially trans victims
  • that LGTBQ+ are more likely to be victims of child sexual abuse.

The forum was held to respond to the fact it was featured in Everyone's Invited. It seems that their response has been to ignore what was said about the school and what girls experienced, and tell them they’re not the real victims. Private school or not, parents decide where their kids go to school. Children don’t make those choices.

Anyone know where evidence is for the line about LGBTQ+ being more likely to be victims of CSA is from?

The school’s response was ill-informed, for example the “case by case” line which is wrong as per the EHRC guidance:

“We know that girls and women are disproportionately affected by sexual harassment and violence and LGBTQ+ people are more likely to experience child sexual abuse and less likely to report sexual abuse than their peers.
“If or where tensions exist or are perceived to exist between two or more protected characteristics under the Equality Act (2010), we will do everything that we can - on a case-by-case basis - to ensure that safeguarding every child in our care remains at the heart of what we do here.
“We continue to follow our safeguarding procedures, offer support to all of our pupils, and be led by the guidance of the DfE, local authorities and the police, where applicable. We remain committed to working in close and transparent partnership with our pupils, their parents and carers, staff, and alumni.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/18/modern-feminism-racist-focuses-straight-white-middle-class-women//_

This whole thing has echoes of this thread:

The word 'woman' is misogynistic, racist and transphobic, apparently.
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4532660-The-word-woman-is-misogynistic-racist-and-transphobic-apparentlyy_

OP posts:
MolliciousIntent · 18/04/2022 21:37

This isn't new though, this has been a complaint of women of colour for many, many years - modern feminism severely lacks intersectionality.

ResisterRex · 18/04/2022 21:38

That's really interesting OhSister. I've not seen SBA denounced (perhaps yet) but that's useful historical background. You've spurred me on to read up more on the US side of things - especially as we seem to uncritically import so much from the States.

OP posts:
PurgatoryOfPotholes · 18/04/2022 21:41

@MolliciousIntent

This isn't new though, this has been a complaint of women of colour for many, many years - modern feminism severely lacks intersectionality.
I doubt it was women of colour making the complaint at Highgate School.

Is "you lack intersectionality" ever an appropriate criticism for school staff to level at pupils reporting that sexual abuse happens in the school?

MolliciousIntent · 18/04/2022 21:43

@PurgatoryOfPotholes you're absolutely right there, these are two issues that shouldn't have been conflated. But feminism only serving white, middle class women is a fair statement. Just not at all an appropriate one for this forum.

PurgatoryOfPotholes · 18/04/2022 22:11

I'd say the chances that the staff will seek to widen the girls' awareness of issues affecting women of the world, like by fundraising for charities focused on women from ethnic minoritie, is minimal. They're not going to encourage the girls to fight for other women's rights too; they're just going to try and make the girls ashamed of advocating for their own needs not to be sexually abused.

Highgate is in London, yes? There are two specialist charities/non-profits right there, whose leaders would probably love to speak at Highgate in return for a donation: Southall Black Sisters and Sistah Space!

AnnaMagnani · 18/04/2022 22:14

So you have a school made up of largely cishet upper middle class white girls and your response to Everyone's Invited is to tell them to check their privilege?

FFS

My BIL teaches at a private school and has been tasked with doing their response to Everyone's Invited. He is not an expert, but he is a bloke, and he knows teens, and he has wisely observed that if you have a rich male teenager who gets to hang around yacht clubs in all their spare time, while being indulged by their parents, the girls will flock to him while he also behaves as a sexual predator.

BIL is starting his school's response with consent and what makes a good relationship. Not nonsense about privilege, whiteness or gender. Sadly he already thinks yacht club boy is a lost cause.

Flammkuchen · 18/04/2022 22:17

Doesn't surprise me about Highgate. They were one of the first to introduce gender neutral toilets, and then had to reverse-ferret as the year 7 girls were avoiding toilets at school.

The Head had never thought of the impact on girls.

Girls were brought in to improve exam results, but it is very much a boys school in atmosphere and entitlement.

ChateauMargaux · 18/04/2022 22:32

Women speak out against sexism and abuse and they are accused of being racist meanwhile those committing the abuse and being sexist waltz off and carry on. Great.

MorrisZapp · 18/04/2022 22:33

OhSister that was a clear and fascinating account, thank you so much.

I knew none of that. Is this disputed at all? Or do historians agree that SBA was pro voting rights for all?

PurgatoryOfPotholes · 18/04/2022 23:17

Does anyone ever survey working class, black and brown women who think the feminist movements in the UK don't do enough for women who aren't white and middle class, and ask "would you like to be used as a shield to hide behind for white, middle-class teenage boys committing sexual assault at a very expensive private school?"

What are the stats on that survey question?

What's that? Nobody asked?

Yeah, thought not.

Doubletoilandtrouble · 18/04/2022 23:20

Everyone is invited initially had most testimonies from private schools as its founder, Soma Sara, went to a private school. It seems that she experienced both sexism and being fetishised for being half Asian. WTF is wrong with people men.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9414677/amp/Ex-British-private-school-student-22-rape-culture-website.html

www.everyonesinvited.uk/team

I don’t think her “privilege” helped her avoid this. It is disgusting that girls are exposed to this. And women should support everyone of them.

LittleWhingingWoman · 18/04/2022 23:29

@oliviastwisted

That is so mad how this same theme is coming up again and again and again and again this week. Where has this anti feminist agenda come from?
Yeah it's on repeat. Probably the Twitter Butler Youth downloading the new TRA lines to each other and then repeating it faithfully.
BlackeyedSusan · 18/04/2022 23:31

I see they forgot the disabled again. They usually do.

PurgatoryOfPotholes · 18/04/2022 23:44

@BlackeyedSusan

I see they forgot the disabled again. They usually do.
Maybe they're saving mentioning disabled women (who are sexually assaulted at a much higher rate than other women) until they want to guilt trip ethnic minority girls out of saying they deserve to go to school without being sexually assaulted?
Why2why · 18/04/2022 23:46

It was sexist and the biggest victims were black women - black and female. Double whammy.

Most women of colour that I know feel excluded from the “feminist movement”. Our issues and our lives are not seen as important.

Mumsnet is a good case study. Black women were harassed off the mainstream part and had to beg for a Black Mumsnetter section. Even there they are harassed and I understand that the women who asked for that space were bullied and insulted no end.

When feminism is talked about in the UK, 99.9999% the face I see is that of a white woman or women.

The school has a point though this is not new. Books have been written about it and it is studied at university.

I’m currently reading White Tears, Brown Scars.

Neverreturntoathread · 18/04/2022 23:49

Wow. Those poor girls 😥

Why2why · 18/04/2022 23:52

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

Does anyone ever survey working class, black and brown women who think the feminist movements in the UK don't do enough for women who aren't white and middle class, and ask "would you like to be used as a shield to hide behind for white, middle-class teenage boys committing sexual assault at a very expensive private school?"

What are the stats on that survey question?

What's that? Nobody asked?

Yeah, thought not.

I don’t understand this. Are you saying that women of colour should not and should never talk about the racism that is very much the foundation of the feminist movement often spoken of BECAUSE if they do so, they would be shielding white men and would be complicit in the abuse that white men inflict on white women?

I’m I understanding this correctly? If so, the racism inherent in that thinking is positively overpowering.

PurgatoryOfPotholes · 18/04/2022 23:55

The school has a point though this is not new.

I don't want an argument that is at cross-purposes, so I'm going to be as clear as I can.

If white staff at a mostly white school tell white teenage girls not to complain about the sexual abuse from their white male peers, because it's unfair to black women, what does this do for black women of any age?

I can see what the staff get out of it: the opportunity to sweep it all under the carpet by making girls feel they're making a fuss over nothing.

I can see what the white boys committing sexual assault get out of it: the maintenance of the status quo in which they can sexually assault their female peers.

But I cannot see what black women and girls get out of it.

OhSister · 18/04/2022 23:57

MorrisZapp from all I've read the history is clear that the argument was between the 'rights for all' approach of Anthony and the gradualist approach of Douglass, not a matter of either of them being 'against' the rights of the other group in question.

There are 3 quotes which are often brought up as evidence of Anthony's supposed racism. One is bogus (she never said it; it's a quote from a biography in which the author tries to express how she imagines SBA would have felt seeing voting expanded to Black men but not to women).

Here are the two that she did say, both in debate with Douglass over his request that she and other women suffragists divert their efforts from campaigning for votes for women, to instead support votes for Black men through the passage of the 15th Amendment:

"I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ask for the ballot for the Negro and not for the woman."

and

“The old anti-slavery school says women must stand back and wait until the negroes shall be recognized. But we say, if you will not give the whole loaf of suffrage to the entire people, give it to the most intelligent first. If intelligence, justice, and morality are to have precedence in the government, let the question of the woman be brought up first and that of the negro last.”

That second one does make me wince, of course (the first one doesn't... the point she was making was in the and not for the woman part of the sentence).

The second quote sounds terrible out of context, somewhat less terrible in context. It was said during a public meeting where she and Douglass were debating whether the women's suffragist movement should mobilise in support of the 15th Amendment. Anthony isn't even arguing against the amendment; she's arguing against the position that women suffragists should temporarily tamp down their campaign for women's suffrage and expend their energies on helping pass that Amendment first. She was replying to Douglass, who had made some comments appealling for women's support by flattering them in that 'of course we all know that women are the more intelligent, refined and civilized sex; they can get their husbands to vote as they wish them to' [not a direct quote] kind of way. Anthony's response was a rhetorical device conveying something like 'well if you truly believe we're the superior sex, and you truly believe that fighting for one group at a time is the way to go about it, then why not pass women's suffrage first and see how happy you are with gradualism when it's your group that comes last?' The transcript records breaks with attendees laughing and applauding during both speakers' remarks, suggesting that the tone of the meeting was hard hitting but good natured on both parts. They were both extremely smart, eloquent people, and they were scoring points off each other on logic and rhetoric, not just moral righteousness.

It is true that some white supremacists used the fact that white women couldn't vote to argue against Black men being extended that right, saying it would put their own wives and mothers in an inferior position to those Black men, which they found unthinkable. Once Black men had got the legal right to vote, some within the women's suffragist movement felt they could exploit that perspective to gain support for womens suffrage, by making the case that now that 'Negroes' could vote, surely white men wouldn't deny their own wives and daughters the same level of citizenship? Some within the movement supported this approach as pragmatic, while others eschewed the approach of courting such unsavoury bedfellows and did not want to taint their righteous struggle with those associations.

As for Anthony, I don't think there's any evidence that she took that approach to the argument after the 15th Amendment was passed. Though even if she had, the view that "women shouldn't have fewer rights than Black men" is only offensive if you believe in Black liberation but not in Women's liberation.

Her record as an abolitionist and an advocate of universal suffrage can't really be disputed; she is on the record and the historical accounts of her political activity are there for anyome who wishes to look. It's only these two quotes (plus the false one) which get cited over and over by those who would dismiss her as racist.

Doubletoilandtrouble · 19/04/2022 00:00

I think every single girl who is sexually harassed or assaulted has the right to feel awful about it, scream and report it to the police. Why on Earth can’t white, privileged girls report sexual assault? Rape/assault is rape/assault. Usually committed by a man towards a woman.

Why2why · 19/04/2022 00:03

Oh dear. Sure, tell women of colour about their history, about how they should think and feel, what their real issues are, etc. What do we know and how misguided we are in who or what we think is racist.

Do go ahead and school us and re-educate us. All this misunderstandings we’re labouring under.

I shall politely leave this certain type of feminism space. I should have known better.

PurgatoryOfPotholes · 19/04/2022 00:03

I don’t understand this. Are you saying that women of colour should not and should never talk about the racism that is very much the foundation of the feminist movement often spoken of BECAUSE if they do so, they would be shielding white men and would be complicit in the abuse that white men inflict on white women?

I’m I understanding this correctly? If so, the racism inherent in that thinking is positively overpowering.

Imagine that you are a member of school leadership at a very expensive, mostly white private school. Your school has been named in a campaign revealing schools in the country where female pupils are sexually abused.

You are now trying to manage this situation and at a special meeting about all that.

Is your response to sexual assault victims, all of whom are minors, who were sexually victimised under your leadership, to lecture them about how others have it worse?

If the answer is yes, congratulations on a stupendous coverup operation. Sadly, you will be a natural for school leadership positions across the country.

Doubletoilandtrouble · 19/04/2022 00:08

I must be very thick tonight. I am on a thread about minors who have been sexually assaulted and told not to complain about it because they are “privileged”. How absolutely awful is that? Rape is rape. Assault is assault.

And somehow this is turning into a discussion about how feminism is racist? Where did that come from?

PurgatoryOfPotholes · 19/04/2022 00:08

Oh dear. Sure, tell women of colour about their history, about how they should think and feel, what their real issues are, etc. What do we know and how misguided we are in who or what we think is racist.

Why not answer the question?

If you were the headteacher at Highgate school (who is probably white) and at a forum to address the culture of sexual abuse in your school under your leadership, what would telling the girls that they were privileged do for black women and girls?

You seem certain it would do something. I can see that it will dissuade them from reporting their peers for sexual abuse. What does this do for black women and girls?

Why2why · 19/04/2022 00:08

If white staff at a mostly white school tell white teenage girls not to complain about the sexual abuse from their white male peers, because it's unfair to black women

I am sure the school is not saying this and has not said this. But you know that, don’t you.