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.

hmmmm .... I think some of the comments reflect an understanding of the history of women's campaigning that isn't quite accurate!

Feminism, even in the 70s, was always the wishy washy academic theoretical lets have a discussion, in which men would of course have a voice.

And this was made worse when in response to the radical politics of Women's Liberation, "feminists" ie armchair activists were allowed to write about "women's issues" even encouraged by the media.

Women's Rights is usually seen as being about, for instance, the campaign for Equal Pay, Abortion Rights etc., and has on occassion been cross party work, and better still apolitical so that you can just be a campaigner for equal rights.

That's because long before the TRAs started mouthing off about old fashioned 70s liberationists, the MRAs had started the backlash against women's liberation and ramped up misogyny.

For the very obvious reason, that 70s Women's Liberation was based on the reality that women are oppressed as a sex class. ie the oppressors are men.

That's why one of the first thing that Queer activists did was get rid of Women's Studies in Universities and turned them into Gender Studies.

And why the media lapped up 3rd Wave Feminism because it became about gender, so men wouldn't be upset because they too could be seen as being oppressed rather than being one of the oppressors.

Just to add as Women's Liberationist that the use of the C word is really anti woman. Althought our oppression as women is because of our sex, we are more than what men think is the worse thing to call someone, a part of female anatomy.

Their lies helped whip up the mob.

Which means she is never safe at these places.

I hope she sues the arse off them all.

Sorry just to add as a footnote to what I have written about Women's Liberation, that this is the reason why socialist feminists (eg like WPUK) have a primary loyalty to another set of values / political analysis.

Not saying this is true of all women who campaigned or worked as socialist feminists, but too many women felt betrayed when campaigns they joined turned out to be fronts for left wing organisations, and / or were constrained about what they could or should say.

@FroodwithaKaren

Just to mention that some of those groups have people who argue for identity first ways of speaking

Of course, yes, not least women ourselves!

It was just an explanation of the difference between two concepts which appeared superficially similar from a linguistic perspective to the PP whose first language wasn't English.

... and said PP is now a bit more clear about the woman/female person difference 🙂. Thank you for the various explanations/views of the issue!

Thank you so much to all those who have taken the time to post. This is an excellent discussion

Too many women who call themselves feminists are also handmaidens to the men's rights movement.

Good. About time all those who have defamed KJK faced the consequences of their actions. She's been far too kind for too long.

Agree with many comments up thread.

Academic feminists have fiddled while Rome burns. Rome in this case being the health, safety and fertility of children.

They don't understand and certainly aren't willing to listen to the many women like KJK who enjoy and embrace motherhood. Especially if they're working class. They don't seem to care about nor understand (at all, even in terms of the most basic level of intellectual curiosity or knowledge of the law) child safeguarding. We know child safety is one of the main reasons KJK is in this fight.

I'm with KJK on this - feminism is a loaded term and seemingly defined by academics who don't speak for all women and ignore many threats to women and children. So, I don't think I can be one.

There are some women who do the 'purity spiral' thing with feminism. So a woman says she's a feminist and the retort is that she can't possibly be because she's a SAHM/wears makeup/isn't a socialist (or, horror, isn't even left wing!)

Obviously this doesn't lead women to change the aspects of themselves that someone has decreed incompatible with feminism. It does lead a certain number of them to stop calling themselves feminists to avoid that kind of pushback.

(For the avoidance of doubt, it's the 'you're not a feminist if you wear makeup' statements that are objectionable, not the 'wearing makeup is not a feminist act' type which are usually perfectly reasonable bits of second-wave analysis focusing on actions, not people.)

I suspect KJK didn't take legal action against those who've defamed her earlier because she felt the situation was so urgent in terms of women and children being harmed that she wanted to focus on addressing those harms.

I think she's come to realize the damage unchallenged lies about her can have in hindering her work to stop women and children suffering harm, hence her recent actions.

I see women's rights or the women's movement as broadly referring to all kinds of ideas about justice for women, and women's place in society, particularly when those ideas or discussions are coming from women, across political boundaries, cultures, and even time. That's very broad obviously, and happens across very disparate environments, so the concerns and interests will vary hugely. A woman in medieval Italy is not going to have the same problems, interests, or solutions as someone living in modern Idaho.

What unites these people is that they have experiences and needs related to their female bodies, like the realities of pregnancy or motherhood, or in relation to the society wide consequences of being a sexed species.

Feminism, to me, comes out of a much more specific time and place, to a large extent its concerns and interests are focused on the context of the 20th century, its vision of what society is comes out of that period, and so do the theoretical concepts it embraces. None of that is necessarily bad, we all deal with the time we actually live in. But I find what gets called feminism seems to be very wedded to certain ideas that I just don't think really stand up, and to me have a parochial quality - the focus on patriarchy as the cause of women's oppression, a tendency to see technological modification of the female body as the only road to what it considers liberation, an assumption that freedom is the highest value, a tendency to take for granted the 20th century employment model as inevitably normative, a tendency to see the female body and motherhood as a problem to be solved, a tendency to be dismissive of family structures that most women want to exist within, and find supportive.

I would be happy enough to say that feminism is something else, and can absolutely encompass someone like KJK, or Mary Harrington, or MMurphy, or strong conservative, even Tory, women. But it doesn't really seem like it is.

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

Why do they call it a vagina. An inverted penis is still a penis. A vagina has a function, it's not just a hole that leads nowhere.

I realise they change the meaning of all words relating to women these days but this in particular seems very strange. It's not a vagina is it.

I think women's rights is much broader than feminism. For me, feminism is based on ideology and does not take into account the full richness and complexity of women's lives, past or present. The oppressor/ oppressed and patriarchy narratives only scratch the surface of the male female dynamic. Feminism seems to appreciate male ways of being more than female ways of being (eg hard power vs soft power, trucks vs dolls). I don't believe for a moment that women are just blank slate non men with female plumbing below the neck.

I'm politically centre right. "Women's rights" resonates with me better than "feminist".

I've seen too many "you can't be right wing and a feminist" posts on here. I'm centre right and I care a lot about women's rights.

Someone on twitter said that men have lots of words to describe how they would make the world better - liberal, conservative, libertarian, socialist...

Women have one - feminism.

I think the distinction between 'feminist' and 'women rights' is a mixure of trying to find words for different theories and focuses within feminism, and a reaction to the idea that some arent feminist at all, enough or doing it wrong. Rather than waste time arguing over a word, they rename themselves completely.

@dimorphism hey I'm a working class mum (alot of that on my own), I'm a socialist feminist. I have almost twenty years working safeguarding practice - does KJK ? I don't sit around interviewing far right men who want to take women's rights off them like KJK does. Okay she lets women speak, why do you need her to tell you can speak?
And now she wants to sue other women like JCJ . Grow up ffs.

I'll catch up later (am watching a gripping film in a misguided effort to get sleepy) but since this comes up regularly: Position statement.

I've been a women's liberationist, a feminist, a liberated woman, pro-equal-rights, a women's rights advocate and probably some other labels I've forgotten, some of them in cycles. I just say what I think is most likely to convey my stance to the listener under prevailing cultural conditions.

In actual fact I'm an old-school feminist of the cast sometimes called second-wave or radical. Under all the above labels I've campaigned for the rights many younger women now take for granted and are merrily 'sharing'.

I am, politically and philosophically, a gender abolitionist. Therefore I'm obviously gender critical and opposed to all philosophies that reinforce gender (sex-role stereotypes).

I have not abolished gender in my personal life because I'm an imperfect product of an imperfect society; I have, however, worked since early childhood to undermine gender-stereotyped expectations of anyone, including by my own actions.

"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."

✔ I'm totally Team Posie.

... addition:

I'm really glad that young women are now waking up and realising our rights are recent, fragile and easily lost. I worry that the reawakening isn't strong enough or fast enough.

My generation won many of these rights - mine; I am alive and typing on the internet right now. All the other rights - the big ones, starting with a vote - were won by my mother's and grandmothers' generations. That is, by women who lived during my lifetime: in living memory.

This is so recent! Five generations, set against a thousand or more generations of patriarchy. And it's hardly a done deal at that. So ... grab your rights to autonomy & independence, women, lift them up and strengthen them!

Have a gif.

I agree. I use "women's rights" because feminism is misunderstood but it's not the same. I think a lot of people would claim that (except for the present craziness) women in the West have equal
rights. That might be true on paper but in reality attitudes and expectations need changing. Feminism deals with this.

KJK is not telling anyone they can speak. She is providing a space in which women can speak.

Your brief post demonstrates how socialist feminists a) feel superior to KJK and b) tell lies about her.
No evidence of socialist feminists actually achieving as much as KJK though.

By that logic, socialist feminists cant sit around talking to socialist men because they want to take womens rights away, too. Women cant talk to any man because every political movement leads to women losing out somehow.

Certain men, regardless of their political beliefs hold a lot of influence. We can choose not to engage with them, or we can use their influence to get what we want and need.

Women are trying to do what they think is right to stop child being harmed by gender ideology, some engage with right wing men, some write academic papers, but unless anyone knows with certainly what will bring it to an end, why stop other women trying their way?

the focus on patriarchy as the cause of women's oppression, a tendency to see technological modification of the female body as the only road to what it considers liberation, an assumption that freedom is the highest value

If systems set up by and to benefit men are not the cause of the oppression of women, what is?
If freedom isn't the highest value, and something women should be aiming for, what is, in your opinion?
What do you mean " technological modification of the female body" please?

Sorry, trying to understand, and I don't.

why stop other women trying their way?

Yes.

As soon as you get to the point of saying 'but I know better than you and am more qualified than you so my voice should matter and you should shut up and let me speak for you' - you're no different to the activists.

Who insist that their homosexual stripped 'LGBT' is the only one and speaks for ALL LGBT PEOPLE shut up shut up shut up sit down, your voices and lived experience are really inconvenient and damaging to our political goals, be quiet while we harm your interests and those highly privileged women who shout about how wonderfully inclusive and socially awake they are and can't wait to rip their kit off in front of any random male are right and should speak for all women shut up shut up, your faiths/beliefs/disabilities/traumas/needs/age are all very very inconvenient and you're a less kind of Not Like Me woman anyway

it's snobbery and classism (and racism, ablism, ageism, homophobia, misogyny) on crack.

No one speaks for all people. All voices and experiences from that group are valid. Any group claiming superiority and the right to speak for and over others (and the whole privilege points system has been immediately exploited by the powerful to enable righteous silencing of everyone else in their own interests) is FUBAR.