Hadley Freeman's First Column for the Sunday Times

[Igneococcus]

"When did feminism become a dirty word?"

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/089098d6-728c-11ed-a107-df8b1c5e158a?shareToken=5c6de958abdf67a9ff1a2ba4208a3647

That has warmed my heart this Saturday night.
Thank you for sharing and thank you, thank you Hadley Freeman.

Brilliant 👏👏👏

I kept dithering about subscribing to the Times and eventually got a 4 months for £1 offer last week. Must remember to cancel when time's up as I don't think, sadly, I can countenance giving money to Great-Uncle Rupert.

You can almost hear Hadley going "WHEEEEEE!" as she writes. That article, plus her resignation letter to Kath Viner, are pretty powerful testimonies.

That's a good one.

Enjoyed that. Thanks for sharing.

Great rational piece… really need to start subscribing. Also hate giving £ to Murdoch but how else are we to be able to read someone talking sense?!

Sure, but they have global impact. Floyd's death rang around the world, sparked riots, the removal of statues. It's important.

Thanks for sharing, that was a fabulous read.

the article is a bit confused though.

The Radfem conference at Conway Hall was no-platformed in 2012 for not allowing transwomen. 2012. That is ten years ago. The growth and strength of gender ideology is not a backlash to #MeToo or women seeking their experiences of rape and sexual assault to be heard; it was already there and closing down women’s voices. It’s more like the number of women who were voicing these concerns in 2012 have been listened to, and their numbers have grown, at the same time as gender ideology has become more mainstream and the issues have come into mainstream consciousness. It’s more like the arguments made by ‘radical feminists’ in 2012 have become mainstream in public concerns about gender ideology, not that feminism per se has failed. That is because of brave women who have stuck their necks out, written, argued and spoken, despite the threats to themselves.

Freeman seems to be blaming fourth wave feminists for losing their way into commercialism and social media, and forgets that liberal feminism was only ever one strand of feminism.

Thanks for the share! Excellent work, Hadley.

Thanks for the share token. If comments are open, what is the flavour of them?

There is a section of misogynists who snort 'har, har, well you wanted women to be the same as men' or 'Well, women wanted to be in men's spaces!' They see this as our comeuppance. If there are comments, I expect at least a few to be like this.

I don't think trans rights started as a response to #metoo, as pp said it began too early. But I think there was an intersection between that and a #metoo backlash which somewhat boosted it.

The only point I was confused about was what fourth wave feminism is.

Years ago I'm sure wiki defined it as what's now seen as revisiting rad fem or "GC."

Then I remember it got hastily rewritten but i can't remember to what - intersectionality possibly?

Hadley says it's metoo etc and you're right, ameadow, Lib feminism is non existent.

Though she's a full year of articles to write to clarify ... 😁

Wiki now says it's "feminism on the internet" (plus trans inclusive intersectional) - which would mean that women won't weesht, sex matters and I stand with JKR and mumsnet: fwr is part of all that...

But of course! It's wiki! We are bigots.

Just the fact this piece has been printed in a national newspaper is brilliant. I can’t wait to hear more from her. She’s freeeee at last!

This was largely negative though, importing an ideology that is toxic even in the US, and elsewhere still toxic and even more disconnected from actual history.

It's one thing to know about it going on but encouraging that kind of transfer seems like a bad idea.

Hardly anything like that actually. Almost unanimous support for speaking the truth.

Thanks @AlarmClockMeetWindow I didn't expect many but I've been surprised, but delighted, if there wasn't at least one.

This.

That's definitely been a piece she's wanted to write for a while.

It must have been killing her having to put up with the shit at her previous paper.

Brilliant article by Hadley. Also have Janice Turner in the Times today. Happy to be a subscriber:

Women who can’t define a woman are sunk

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/women-who-cant-define-a-woman-are-sunk-chq8qc68n

Really enjoyed this article, particularly ending with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's words.

I would have liked an historical reminder that 'Karen' was originally used by Black US women to describe white women who use their social power to denigrate and poorly treat Black women who are in uneven power positions (most commonly white customer/ Black service worker interactions).

Sadly, "Karen" morphed from an important critique of racism in uneven power dynamics to a word used as a slur by misogynistic men. I feel this nuance gets lost too often whenever feminists discuss the Karen word.

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I agree the article is a little chuck-it-all-in, and several points could do with more depth, but I think it's a good opener to set out her stall in fairly general terms - she can go back and expand in future.

Quite a contrast to her final Guardian article.

That's a good article. No, it's not perfect but she is laying out her stall.

I'm so pleased that Hadley is working for the Times now. It's really stuck in my craw having to give the guardian my clicks to read her.

I've got over my Murdoch thing and will carry on my times sub because I get a lot out of it.

And I'm going to reread Backlash. When I first read it, it really resonated so I think it could do with being dusted off.

Well sorry to say I think this article is deeply disappointing. It falls into the category of media feminism ie a knowledge of feminism that is based entirely on what other media feminists have said.

And one of the reasons this is disturbing is that what was known as 4th wave feminism had very little impact on feminists who already existed and those who became interested in women's rights. It was largely a creation of media feminists just popularising her friends.

At that is what this article does. ie it mentions those the media already knows about as though they are THE feminists. And particularly after the detailed discussion about the deception at FiLia and the wide spread astonishment by feminists who were taken aback at WPUK going all out to support a film that is a direct rip off and attempt to nullify PP's work, this is quite shoddy.

Added to which the telegraph has in the past couple of days had so many articles that cover these issues in a better way, apart from the Jo Bartosch one which was really thin, this article doesn't really stand out.

It always amazes me the contributors of FWR are such thoughtful and independent thinkers, but get caught up in fanzine feminism.

Yes, great that HF has survived and left the Guardian, but maybe that qualifies her to talk about that experience but does not make her an expert on the development of feminism.

One example, the huge impace of queer politics that 4th Wave feminism acted as a trojan horse to contaminate women's liberation politics, and of course the ageism.

I hope the Times doesn't use her as their go to commentator on feminism, but they continue to treat it as an issue that needs journalistic investigation, not a sort of lifestyle coverage by a name writer.

Agree. Karen was real but got co-opted and its meaning was changed.