Janice Turner on feminism's new (old) fight

[everythingcrossed]

Janice has a fantastic essay in the Times today about having to relitigate old ground, fight for rights that we have taken for granted because feminism has allowed itself to get complacent.

Other political movements respect their elders even when their views no longer align with modern mores. Black Lives Matter would never forsake Marcus Garvey or Malcolm X; the LGBT movement deifies those who in 1969 bravely defied homophobic police at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. Feminism alone lays waste to each preceding generation of leaders, campaigners and thinkers as impure, backward, irrelevant, wrong.

The Pankhursts: rich bitches. Marie Stopes: eugenicist. Andrea Dworkin: man-hater, fun-sucker and (most unforgivably) ugly. Germaine Greer: transphobe, no matter The Female Eunuch rocked the world. Hillary Clinton: privileged, white, pantsuit girlboss. Besides they’re all old, like your mother, the very worst thing a woman can be. So let’s wipe feminism clean and start again.

Excoriating and refreshing.

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She’s a great writer.

Female solidarity needs to be about females. That’s intersectional, because all females are female (duh). Old females, thin females, black females, females with disabilities, females who have money and females who don’t.

By taking feminism and picking it apart into the females who matter and the females who don’t, some very credulous people are destroying any chance of female advancement.

She’s completely right

I too remember being a mid-eighties student in a world where ‘feminist’ was becoming another word for ‘crazed harridan’ - while we simultaneously basked in the freedoms feminism had won for us. It did seem strange - boyfriends laughed at you if you identified as a feminist.

My generation can at least understand what we’ve lost. I can’t imagine the cognitive somersaults which will be required of younger women who threw over ‘feminism’ as they learned to speak. What language will they have to wrest back female autonomy?

It's a barnstorming article. Janice, and many other journalists at The Times have been great at highlighting what's going on.

That's an amazing article. She is absolutely right. I first noticed it properly in the early 90s. Loads of bright young women coming out of university and instead of being radicalised and political as so many of my generation were, insisting they weren't feminists. So much ageism: so much open prejudice against Andrea Dworkin because of the way she looked. She turns out to have been more prophetic than most.

the worst thing a woman can be is old is so sadly bloody true :/

ageism is not only tolerated but celebrated by the beeeee kiiiind brigade

Love the way that brave Janice attacks younger women rather than say the newspaper owned by a 90 year old man she works for which supported the overturning of Roe vs Word.

The same old man owns a TV channel which has been campaigning against abortion for decades.

Do you think the schisms in feminism are because there are simply more of us than other 'oppressed' groups (I can't call women a minority group). More divergent opinions?

I'm perpetually appreciative of the skill involved in writing something so accessible and that reads so easily.

I take the excellence of her content for granted, and I shouldn't. This is very fine.

As Roe v Wade fell I thought of The Handmaid’s Tale. Not the famous white bonnet sex-ceremony stuff. But pre-Gilead June/Offred rolling her eyes at her second-wave feminist mother, with her leaflets and Cassandra-ish warnings. June — like me, like all liberals — was led to believe in Martin Luther King’s words: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Or as New Labour put it, “Things can only get better.” This belief that feminism had reached a cruising altitude so could switch to autopilot is why, in 2022, there are now American women legally compelled to carry a pregnancy to term, even one conceived via incest or rape.

Yes 100%. I got a post deleted (my first ever deletion in over a decade) for saying on another thread that young feminists need to stop defending the rights of 'women' with cocks and start defending themselves. They still have the youthful arrogance that they are immune from biology. They haven't yet experienced pay gap / poor healthcare in maternity care / the 'mummy track' at work. They think the battle is won.

Yes - and also because feminism isn't one "organised" group. The recent increase in women's groups fighting against the eradication of the sex class of women and the removal of safeguarding for children is to be welcomed. But just as the tedious monitors who chastise women for failing to follow the language and thoughts they try to prescribe for women, there's no head feminist. No central feminist parliament.
It's a glorious collection of women all speaking out in our own ways and making allegiances based on our womanhood and preferred political views. Hence the variety of views and approaches.

And the same old man also owns a variety of other papers in his home country with left leaning audiences….

That man is a capitalist, absolutely true.

But your continued push across threads about Murdoch lacks depth.

It's a really beautifully written piece 👏

How is she always so bloody spot on?

‘Love the way that brave Janice attacks younger women rather than say the newspaper owned by a 90 year old man she works for which supported the overturning of Roe vs Word.’

She is brave. And she’s right.

I saw a conversation on Twitter only yesterday when someone asked why some lesbians prefer to call themselves gay women rather than lesbians. One woman popped up saying she called herself gay to distinguish herself from all the boring older political lesbians and their joyless, humourless talk of separatism and man-hating. And this morning Janice Turner publishes this.

The Murdoch-mentioners, how about a bit of demographic examination of the people who run tech - I don't just mean Musk and Zuckerberg but at every level including the forum mods and those who chose which Twitter stories to bump up the headlines and which accounts to cancel or hide - because I'll bet it's overwhelmingly white males.

Don't listen to a feminist writer, quick, look at that dead cat....

Great piece from Janice Turner, as always.

Roe v Wade wasn't overturned because of young feminists. It was overturned by old men and the women who support them.

The January 6 insurrection was supported logistically and financially by several right to life groups and allegedly involved Clarence Thomas's wife. Yet yesterday I see someone on this board pondering that he doesn't deserve all the criticism that he gets. A flat out sexual abuser, not just someone with whom I disagree on everything but trans discourse.
I'm told to listen to and compromise with anti choice gun rights nuts who want to enforce their position with personal and state violence. I live in the US, I know what they're saying and what their goals are. Why would anyone here tell me that their viewpoint is worth considering? You don't have any trouble telling anyone else to put a sock in it.

I know how much you admire WOLF and their bad assery but it's completely wrong that they're the only ones who care about imprisoned women. I will never believe that men belong in a women's prison but I will never lose sight of who is putting these women in prison in the first place. And they are ready to weaponise the criminal justice system to enforce this sick reproductive zeitgeist.

The groups that you're aligning yourself with have no qualms about saying the word woman. They're very clear about knowing what a woman's body is because they want to control it. I happen to agree with GC feminists on trans ideology but I don't think you're of much use to us beyond that. I don't much relish the idea that it's okay to be dragged back to the eighteenth century because at least you didn't have trans women back then.

Super piece of writing from Janice.

This Murdoch mentioner thinks that someone mentioning the active role of the man who owns the newspaper that pays J Turners wages every week which came out in favour of abolishing roe vs Wade and who owns a tv channel which pumps out anti trans hate and relentless propaganda against women’s abortion rights is important.

after all J Turner isn’t going to, is she?

And that has what to do with young women’s views on feminism?

The groups that you're aligning yourself with have no qualms about saying the word woman. They're very clear about knowing what a woman's body is because they want to control it. I happen to agree with GC feminists on trans ideology but I don't think you're of much use to us beyond that. I don't much relish the idea that it's okay to be dragged back to the eighteenth century because at least you didn't have trans women back then.

How very interesting to regard other feminists as consumer items that need to be of use to others; it's inline with some popular ideologies.

I'm sure you're already aware that the fact that somebody coincides with one about the perceived colour of the sky doesn't predict that other interests or perspectives align.

As for the rest, you seem to be out of step with the contemporary fashion for transing the dead. However, I have confidence in your ability to catch up.

This is so powerful

”But for those in Missouri or Texas, hashtags and mic drops are no help. They need the type of basic, thankless feminism of lawsuits, lobbying, fundraising, back-room deals and interstate transport to clinics. The stuff that does not look good on Instagram, but was the means by which now-nameless feminists throughout history slowly heaved that arc towards progress, only for ingrates and cowards to carelessly let it go.”

As the Times leader put it

"A draft US Supreme Court ruling would overturn judge-made law and put the issue in the hands of elected politicians. That is the right approach"

I would say the editor of the newspaper, and its owner (who also owns the vehemently abnto abortion Fox news are more responsible for the outcome than are some young women from Janice Turner's imagination