Feminism vs Women's rights: why the division?

[TheTERFnextDoor]

Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere.

Does anyone know why many women in the gender critical movement refer to themselves as "women's rights campaigners" (or a variation of this) and reject the term "feminist"?

KJK is one of the women who does this. I always find this surprising as, to me, she's one of the best feminists in the UK! I understand feminism as someone who stands up for the rights of women and girls. Therefore, to me, the terms are synonymous?

I'd appreciate some explanation from others.

Ah thanks rocketsalads, I hadn't realised that.

I still describe myself as a feminist and personally I believe it was a mistake to cede the word although I understand the reasons why. I think the division has added fuel to the argument that feminism belongs to the left, which I don't agree with. I think feminism should be a broad church - and it's always been an argumentative one - and that KJK has as much right to the word as WPUK.

“I don’t believe abortion up until birth is fine unless to save the mother or for medical purposes”

Just to say I can’t imagine when this would ever happen. In my experience after 24 or even after 20 weeks if a pregnancy has to be terminated for the mother’s health the baby goes to NICU and everything possible is done for him or her, this is completely different than a late term abortion, in that case the baby is killed via lethal injection prior to inducing labour.

I feel much more aligned with Megan Murphy and KJK on quite a lot of things to be honest.

I also find it quite annoying and cringe that many of the GC feminists are afraid to just speak like normal people and say women and men. Instead they talk about “female people” and “male people”🙄.

To be fair, that's largely to avoid being deleted.

'To me ‘women’s rights’ is clear and simple. It’s insisting that our fundamental rights are respected.

feminism is harder to define and means different things to different people'

I do see your point, but I don't want to give up on feminism just yet. I'm a radical feminist, and have no time for wooly handmaiden TWAW nonsense

Agree with this. This is my journey too, much of it influenced by pregnancy and motherhood and then the erosion of women's rights.

Of course I'm a 'feminist' in that I passionately agree in equal rights, but I probably wouldn't describe myself as one because now it means things that don't align with me and that I think are harmful to women.

So I can understand where KJK is coming from.

Yes, I'm pretty much on the same page as you. I'm interested in women's issues - regardless of the particular political, social, cultural, racial background. The issues which are rooted in the fact of femaleness and the experinences which tend to be unique to women on account of that.

This is where I'm at too.

Yep. I do it. So that my posts stand and don’t deleted.

I also find it quite annoying and cringe that many of the GC feminists are afraid to just speak like normal people and say women and men. Instead they talk about “female people” and “male people”🙄.

I am not a native English speaker. Could you explain what the difference is between woman and female person? Even if I translate to German, those terms are identical to me... Thanks! 🤗

I think the logic here is that because the word "women" has now been redefined to mean "most female people except those who identify as something other than women, plus some male people who identify as women", the term "female people" makes it clear that you are actually talking about people who were born female, with female anatomy.

But it is somewhat misguided because many trans women now self describe as female.

Some great arguments put forward here. I have always considered myself a feminist but it seems like nowadays to call yourself a feminist you have to have read all the books and know what type of feminist you are. Some feminists seem to dream of a world without men and some would rather we pretended we aren't mothers and don't suffer from problems to do with our female biology.

Excuse my ignorance; I haven't read the books or studying the subject at university.

I prefer the term cunty type women, but as with women then female, a male person will come along and describe themselves as having a cunt?

Pretty sure IW already reckons they have an undistinguishable from a womans, vagina.

We change words to suit our needs, they appropriate those words and we again change our words >appropriate >change ad infinitum.

Somehow I have managed to avoid deletion! I’m not sure how. Perhaps because I am only an occasional poster I don’t get targeted by the monitors.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here.

I consider myself a feminist but other than in specific contexts I wouldn't refer to myself as a feminist in conversation because many people I fundamentally disagree with in relation to women's rights (and do not consider feminists) call themselves feminists.

I also think academic feminism is the reason why so many women who believe they are men's equals don't consider themselves to be feminists. Academic feminism is so far removed from most ordinary women's lives that you can hardly blame those ordinary women for thinking feminism has nothing to do with them.

I've had feminism mansplained to me by a man who calls himself a feminist and says that I can't possibly be one because I haven't read Judith Butler or Catherine McKinnon and because I disagree with Gloria Steinem on whether trans women are women.

It's worth noting that most of this academic feminism is coming out of the US, where I think actual feminism has failed. If you're a feminist living in a country where many women can't access safe and legal abortions and there isn't federally mandated paid maternity leave, trans women should be very low down your list of priorities.

If someone asked me if I was a feminist, I'd say of course I am. But I'm not left wing and left wing feminists, people whose views I respect, have told me personally that I can't be a feminist - like they own the word. I really resent that because for me feminism me is the belief that women should be treated equally/fairly. Who would not agree with that?

When pushed, left wing feminists will put the left wing before women's rights. I guess it's a tribalism. They will put whatever characteristic intersects with women's rights first. It's a clever divide and rule and I dont understand why these smart women dont understand that this attitude undermines women as a class. A lot of these women are amazing, they spend much of their lives fighting for women but will also tell women to budge up or tell them they're not welcome.

With KJK I think there was an element of academic / intellectual / political snobbery against her to start with which was exacerbated by her success and appearance which I think contributed towards jealousy.

I love that KJK says she never loses. I hope she sues everyone she can for the lies that they have told.

Right, I'm off to buy some merchandise!

I'm a proud socialist feminist and gender critical. Oh I seen that Father Ted video with Posie . "And now we come to liars..." Seriously is she okay? She doesn't seem that way. I hope she has good people around her. I have my issues with KJK but suing JH, WPUK a major political party and JCJ? Wtf? She is handing an open goal to the JP, SH, SJB , Mini Shipman etc who love to see the terven broken and on it's knees.

Yep.

I'm over being any kind of 'ist'.

I use these terms as shorthand sometimes but I'm not interested in aligning or allying or flags or whatwhat.

As soon as you say you're an ist, ten people will pop up to tell you why you're wrong. All ists are divisive.

@Walkingtheplank

I used to be left wing and I suppose I still am in many ways.

But to me, being left wing or right wing is broadly about your economic views. If you believe in high taxation and spending tax revenue on things like public infrastructure and utilities, education, healthcare and benefits, you're left wing. If you believe in low taxation and people being responsible for securing their own financial stability, you're right wing.

I think those two opposing approaches have leaked into other political positions as well, probably due to the divide between whether you believe in individual responsibility or collective responsibility. So for example, if you are right wing from an economic perspective and you believe in people having personal responsibility for their own finances, you might also be more likely to believe that criminals should have the book thrown at them and support the death penalty, less likely to believe that we should be in the EU, in favour of wealthy people being able to buy properties to let and set their own rents whilst having minimal responsibility for their tenants, less likely to support the NHS. You may also have more socially conservative views on things like gay marriage or abortion. But these things do not necessarily go together and there are exceptions to all these things on both sides of the political spectrum.

Those on the left, however, have a particularly annoying tendency to claim all that is good as theirs and associate all they perceive as bad with the right. They often think they own the political loyalty of working class people and become quite offensive and patronising when people they believe should rightly belong to the political left actually have right wing views, and it's also why they see no issue with telling lifelong left wingers that they are now right wing if they disagree with certain beliefs the political left now holds, e.g. JK Rowling the famous Labour supporter not agreeing that trans women are women.

It's very annoying and alienating to many former left wing voters (myself included).

@Delphin

To me, the difference between "woman" and "female person" is part of a broader "person-first" way of speaking.

Using "person" as the noun, then describing them with adjectives ensures that a person isn't defined by one of their characteristics. For example, a black person is a person who is black, but saying "a black" is reducing that person to the colour of their skin and defining them by it. Similarly with a disabled person, "disabled" describes one of the many facets of a person, rather than saying "a cripple" and defining them by their disability.

I do, of course use "man" and "woman" where appropriate, as they are words which readily combine a number of characteristics which usefully define a group of people.

Maybe. Whereas I have had quite the number of deletions, strikes (when they were handed out) and posters tell me in the thread they have reported me. And lost significant posts with information links because of it.

Feel free to post how you feel comfortable. Go for it. But I do. Or judge any person on FWR for their carefully worded posts. I have been on threads where my posts and very few other posters have survived a reporting attack. Who does that benefit in the reading back?

I would love to let fly and just use the terms freely, but ultimately I also keep in mind that threads also get “mined” for information and for reporting in retrospect as well. And again, information can be lost. It is a personal choice I make to stay on this site.

I know nothing about any of the academic side of feminism and don't know any of the authors or campaigners or anything, so my view is totally coming from someone who's just an average woman becoming more aware of what is going on.

And from my very limited perspective, I would have said that feminism is working to give women equality in areas where there should be equality - i.e., overcoming barriers and disadvtanges that biology or socialisation or expectation put in the way, where men and women would and could otherwise be equal (being paid the same for the same work, for example). Whereas women's rights, on the other hand, is about working to make sure that women can have areas where they do need to be treated differently to men, to address areas of disadvantage that otherwise remain (e.g., having separate changing rooms and toilets, or separate sports competitions) - more an equality of outcome, I guess, than an actual equality.

Yeah I think I think she is spreading herself a bit thin maybe. I'd like Posie to have a break. Not stop, but have a break. I've been concerned for her since the awful New Zealand lynch mobbing. It's not fair it always has to be her, though she's the bravest woman I know.

Just to mention that some of those groups have people who argue for identity first ways of speaking, for example you might describe someone as a person with Autism and they would be passionate about being an Autistic person, with nothing about them that is separate to their Autism.

It's all got very political, essentially, and you'll always have someone ready to tell you off for getting it wrong.

I say 'female' rather than 'woman' when I want to clearly differentiate between what some posters will passionately argue means a mixed sex group and the group I perceive as the only group who are women, who are biologically female. I say 'male' when I would much prefer to say 'man', but would prefer not to lose my post because another person desperate to control my word choices whinges to HQ about my not putting sufficient fig leaves over the truth.

Father Ted video with posie?

Do you have a link?