By Helen Puckrose
I don’t remember ever not being a feminist.
I toddled in marches of the 1970s with my mother. She became a second
wave feminist in the 1960s after being denied a mortgage without a male
guarantor and being told by her employer that she could not study for
accountancy exams because “There’s no accounting for women.” Briefly
flirting with radical feminism, she found their views extreme and
unreasonable and was berated for her heterosexual relationships and love
of feminine clothing (see her poem “
Woman the Barricades“).
She found her home in liberal feminism and from there was active in
writing, marching and protesting for legal changes which would give her
the same opportunities as men. By the late 1980s, she felt the main
legal battles had been won, and largely retired from active campaigning
though she continues to identify as a feminist and study women’s
history.
Given this influence, of course I was a feminist, a liberal feminist.
Growing up, I spoke angrily about the legality of rape within marriage
(criminalized in 1990), and won a personal battle to take woodwork at
school rather than cookery (I was terrible at it but not noticeably
worse than I am at cooking). I criticized sexist attitudes at work,
which were still quite unapologetic in the 90s, informing my boss that
he was a “good boy” when he called me a “good girl” and refusing to say
anything apart from “cheep” to any man who referred to me as a “bird.”
Liberal feminism was aggressive then, but a quite different quality of
aggression to the spiteful malevolence we see now. It was optimistic,
almost playful. We were confident that we were winning. It was fun
seeing how we could disconcert the perpetrators of sexist stereotypes
and challenge casual sexism, often humorously. We did not think older
men (or women) with sexist assumptions were terrible people or want them
punished. We simply wanted them to realize the times had changed and
catch up. Women are everywhere now. Get used to it.
At times, we needed to work with the radical feminists. Rape victims
were still being dismissed or disbelieved. People still blamed victims
for their clothing quite respectably. This needed to become routinely
frowned upon. RadFems, who insisted that patriarchy was evident in
everything, that the idea of gender needed to be destroyed and that men
as a whole were dangerous and violent, were regarded as the biggest
internal problem the movement had to contend with by liberal feminists.
Mostly, their extreme input into feminist discussion was met with
eye-rolling and “Perhaps we don’t need to go quite that far.” We were
unprepared for the problem rising in our own liberal branch.
From the 1980s, some internal criticisms of liberal feminism began to
be made. Liberal feminism as a whole was charged with not recognizing
the additional problems faced by black and Asian women and lesbians, and
being largely centered on middle-class problems. These were valid
criticisms which needed addressing and prioritizing. All women must have
equality. Many liberal feminists began to dedicate more time to LGBT
rights and highlight the particular vulnerability of women living in
communities which adhered to oppressive patriarchal religion,
particularly Islam, and subjected women and girls to “honor” violence
and genital mutilation. They did this within universal liberal feminism
and some still do but in this decade, the academic shift in the
humanities and social sciences towards postmodernism began, and
gradually filtered through to feminism in praxis. Intersectionality was
forming.
People are often confused about what postmodernism is and what it has
to do with feminism. Very simplistically, it was an academic shift
pioneered by Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard which denied
that reliable knowledge could ever be attained and claimed that meaning
and reality themselves had broken down. It rejected large, overarching
explanations (meta-narratives) which included religion but also science,
and replaced them with subjective, relative accounts (mini-narratives)
of the experiences of an individual or sub-cultural group. These ideas
gained great currency in the humanities and social sciences and so
became both an artistic movement and a social “theory.” They rejected
the values of universal liberalism, the methods of science and the use
of reason and critical thinking as the way to determine truth and form
ethics. Individuals could now have not only their own moral truths but
their own epistemological ones. The expression “It’s true for me”
encapsulates the ethos of postmodernism. To claim to know anything to be
objectively true (no matter how well-evidenced) is to assert a
meta-narrative and to “disrespect” the contrary views of others which is
oppressive (even if those views are clearly nonsense.) The word
“scientism” was created for the view that evidence and testing are the
best way to establish truths.
At its height, postmodernism as an artistic movement produced
non-chronological, plotless literature and presented urinals as art. In
social theory, postmodernists “deconstructed” everything considered true
and presented all as meaningless. However, having done this, there was
nowhere else to go and nothing more to say. In the realm of social
justice, nothing can be accomplished unless we accept that certain
people in a certain place experience certain disadvantages. For this, a
system of reality needs to exist, and so new theories of gender and race
and sexuality began to emerge comprised of mini-narratives. These
categories were held to be culturally constructed and constructed
hierarchically to the detriment of women, people of color and LGBTs.
Identity was paramount.
Liberal feminist aims gradually shifted from the position:
“Everyone deserves human rights and equality, and feminism focuses on achieving them for women.”
to
“Individuals and groups of all sexes, races, religions and
sexualities have their own truths, norms and values. All truths,
cultural norms and moral values are equal. Those of white, Western,
heterosexual men have unfairly dominated in the past so now they and all
their ideas must be set aside for marginalized groups.”
Liberal feminism had shifted from the universality of equal human
rights to identity politics. No longer were ideas valued on their merit
but on the identity of the speaker and this was multifaceted,
incorporating sex, gender identity, race, religion, sexuality and
physical ability. The value of an identity in social justice terms is
dependent on its degree of marginalization, and these stack up and vie
for primacy. This is where liberal feminism went so badly wrong. When
postcolonial guilt fought with feminism, feminism lost. When it fought
with LGBT rights, they lost too.
So aware of Western imperialism having trampled on other cultures
historically, Western liberal feminism now embraced their most
patriarchal aspects. A Western liberal feminist can, on the same day,
take part in a slut walk to protest Western women being judged by their
clothing and accuse anyone criticizing the niqab of Islamophobia. She
can demand the prosecution of a Christian baker for refusing to bake a
wedding cake for a same sex-couple, and condemn the planning of a Gay
Pride march through a heavily Muslim area as racist. Many intersectional
feminists do not limit themselves to the criticism of other white,
Western feminists but pour vitriolic, racist abuse on liberal Muslim and
ex-Muslim feminists and LGBT activists. The misogyny and homophobia of
Christianity may be criticized by all (quite rightly) but the misogyny
and homophobia of Islam by none, not even Muslims. The right to
criticize one’s own culture and religion is seemingly restricted to
white westerners (The best analysis of “The
Racism of Some Anti-racists” is by Tom Owolade).
Universal liberal feminists were horrified by this development. Our
old adversaries, the radical feminists, looked positively rational in
comparison. They might tell us we are culturally conditioned into
internalized misogyny, and they certainly had a pessimistic and paranoid
worldview but at least it was coherent. The intersectional feminists
were not even internally consistent. In addition to the cultural
relativity, the rules change day by day as new sins against social
justice are invented. We opposed the radical feminists for their extreme
antipathy towards men but at least they shared a bond of sisterhood
with each other. The intersectional feminists not only exhibit great
prejudice against men but also turn on each other at the slightest
imagined infraction of the rules. Having not the slightest regard for
reason or evidence, they vilify and harass those imagined to have
transgressed.
In addition to their failure to support the most vulnerable women in
society, intersectional feminism cultivated a culture of victimhood,
negatively impacting all women in society but particularly young women.
Women are oppressed, we are told, by men explaining anything, spreading
their legs on a train and committing vague sins like “expecting unequal
amounts of emotional labour.” If they call out to us or proposition us,
we should be terrified. If obnoxious men attempt to grope us or succeed,
we have experienced an appalling sexual assault from which we may never
recover. Not only are we oppressed by seemingly all men but by anyone
expressing anti-feminist ideas or feminist ones we don’t like. More than
this, we are rendered “unsafe” by them, particularly those women who
are trans and may have to hear that a trans exclusionary radical
feminist has said something in a place they don’t have to go to. It is
hard to imagine how women manage to survive leaving the house at all.
Even in the house, we cannot be entirely sure of “safety.” Men might
say mean things to us on the internet, and we couldn’t possibly cope
with that. In reality, I find the opposite problem more concerning.
Recently, in a disagreement with an intersectional feminist man, he
began to change his mind! Much encouraged, I continued the discussion.
After some time, I checked his bio and spotted that he was carrying on a
parallel conversation with another man in which he was expressing
exactly the same views he had since changed in our conversation.
Challenging him on this, I was informed that he did not feel he should
disrespect my lived experience as a woman by contradicting it with his
own views as a man. However, he still disagreed with me and felt able to
say so to another man. I could not get him to see that all this had
achieved was excluding me from the conversation and wasting my time. I
might as well have been made to withdraw to the drawing room to let the
men talk.
Perhaps men might criticize our academic writing or blogs? Richard
Dawkins was accused of misogyny for mocking a postmodernist sociology
essay that happened to have been written by a woman (He’d mocked one
written by a man a few days earlier). He was asked, by numerous people,
why he hated intelligent women or why he had to criticize women’s
writing? Surely, it should be clear to everyone that not doing so
excludes women from academic discussion? If we want to be taken
seriously as academics (or as bloggers), we need people to be able to
criticize our work.
Like many universal liberal feminists of my generation and above, I
decided to hang on and try to tackle, from the inside, the problems of
cultural relativity, science denial, raging incivility and the
disempowerment of women by feminists. This resulted in my being blocked
by feminists, told I am not a feminist, called an “anti-feminist,” a
“MRA,” a “misogynist” and even a “rape apologist” (I had suggested that
the men who invented date-rape drug detecting nail polish were
well-intentioned). I have been told to fuck myself with a rusty
chainsaw, and that I am a confused middle-aged woman who does not
understand society. Following one encounter with a feminist in which I
said I did not get death and rape threats from men, a new account with a
male name was suddenly set up which began sending me some.
At the same time, non-feminists were telling me that I was not what
they understood by “feminist” or even asserting that I was not a
feminist. I assured them I was because I was concerned about female
genital mutilation, “honor” violence and forced marriage affecting
British women today and rarely prosecuted. I am opposed to the
disempowerment of young women who are being told that they cannot cope
with different ideas and that criticism is abusive by feminists in
universities and schools. Are these not pressing issues affecting women?
My friend, Kath, a recovering RadFem, helped clarify my thoughts on
this.
This is true. I agree with Ayaan Hirsi Ali that western feminism
needs to stop focusing on “trivial bullshit.” I don’t have a huge amount
of sympathy for women who feel traumatized and excluded by scientists’
shirts or video games. When it comes to the little things, the playing
field becomes much more even. We all have gendered expectations we’d
rather not comply with. I suggest not doing it. There is very little
point in complaining about gender expectations whilst perpetuating them.
The idea that women cannot defy such expectations because of fear of
disapproval seems contrary to the entire ethos of feminist activism and
those who have gone before us.
I think it’s time I accepted that “feminism” no longer means “the aim
for equal rights for women” but is understood to refer to the current
feminist movement which encompasses so much more and very little that I
want to be associated with. I posted this on Twitter recently:
The serious issues faced by British women that I want to be involved
in are encompassed by human rights activism, and the disempowerment of
young women can only be opposed, sadly, by opposing feminism itself.
I used to be pleased when people told me that I had made them think
more positively about feminism, but now I fear that this may simply have
prevented that person from criticizing a movement that really needs to
be criticized. Feminism has lost its way and should not have public
respectability until it remedies this. It seems that more and more
people are realizing this. A recent study showed that
only 7% of Brits identify as feminist
although over two thirds support gender equality. My sadness at
abandoning the identity bequeathed to me by my mother is mixed with
anger when I consider that she too, a woman who was instrumental in
getting banking qualifications opened to women, would now be regarded as
deeply problematic.
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Helen Pluckrose is a researcher in the humanities who
focuses on late medieval/early modern religious writing for and about
women. She is critical of postmodernism and cultural constructivism
which she sees as currently dominating the humanities. You can connect
with her on Twitter@HPluckrose
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Source:
https://areomagazine.com/2016/12/29/why-i-no-longer-identify-as-a-feminist/
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