Fantastic article from Victoria Smith on 'dirty feminism'

[ArabellaScott]

thecritic.co.uk/dirty-feminism/

'it may seem coincidental that the language of dirt, contamination and stigma just so happens to be directed at women who seek out spaces in which to centre female bodies and lives. Shame at femaleness can be so deeply ingrained that fighting against those who embrace it can become its own moral crusade. It does not surprise me that for many women, an anti-female feminism feels purer and neater than the messy, leaky, corporeally-bound alternative.

For them, as a movement, feminism is brilliant — the only thing letting it down is femaleness itself. Feminism is clean, pristine progress; female bodies are regressive and impure. The best feminism (like the best definition of “woman”) dispenses with the dead weight of female biology.'

Interesting article. It’s occurred to me before how TW are often held up as being better at being women than women (often by women, depressingly), but I hadn’t linked this so clearly to the distaste around female bodies. It sounds credible as a theory.

I clicked on one of the links (the baby-making machine one) and ended up reading some Medium articles about transgender and transracial issues by someone called Daniel Goldman. If you want to drive yourself crazy at how pompous someone can be while also making incoherent and illogical arguments I recommend it.

At this point I'm absolutely over all the wankery. All the language and nonsense and endlessly wondering why women-haters are women-haters.

They can crack on doing whatever the fuck they like but women's spaces need to be women only and wankery free. That's the only remaining part in which I have any interest.

Sorry, didn't mean that to sound quite so sharp. In the light of today's news I am just getting very tired of the endless circles women run in trying to understand the inner lives of their abusers. We need to stop this now and LTB.

Don’t agree, this is a brilliant article that articulates really well why some women seem to be suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Might change some minds. Really rate V. Smith.

In light of a recent thread on another board; I hear you.

@nilsmousehammer we all hear you. I think we are generally all in the same mood this evening.

It's just the never endingness of this.

Excellent article. Thank you.

I liked the piece. It links to something I think about quite often which is the way the female body is linguistically erased at the same time as its widespread commercialisation is celebrated, including by those feminists who support sex work (but really only for women) and surrogacy (only for women, of course) as good career paths. And pornography producers, of course, also profit from the female bodies being widely commercialised.

I am trying to understand the atmosphere, especially online, where a certain kind of odd misogyny (or something closer to contempt) always hovers in the air, like invisible clouds with foul smell, yet so hard to isolate and define and address. Does anyone else feel that way?

thanks for posting. It really speak to my own awareness of how unwelcome are the women who dispute the entitlement of anyone not born a woman to claim women’s space for themselves. The cries about how outdated is making biology our key denominator, when we can do so much nowadays. They do not attend to how that biology actually impacts us despite every effort, pay gap, maternity rights and cold care that is not provided, and so on. They only see dirty women, complaining about the stunning and brave fakes.

Child care not cold care. Sorry for mistakes! Long day!

I am trying to understand the atmosphere, especially online, where a certain kind of odd misogyny (or something closer to contempt) always hovers in the air, like invisible clouds with foul smell, yet so hard to isolate and define and address. Does anyone else feel that way?

A general hostility? Defensiveness, aggression ... I think that might be a common side effect of social media, yes. Is that what you mean?