Don't presume

I don’t watch Question Time anymore. I’ve got better things to do than to watch lots of often ignorant people being given a national platform to air often ignorant views. But I checked Twitter last night when I was reading my book (These Old Shades fact fans) and saw that the panel were indulging in some pretty disgusting victim blaming in terms of the Rochdale case that was sentenced the day before. Comments ranged from the ‘girl surrendering their innocence for a bag of crisps’ to how we need to give girls ‘values to keep themselves safe’ and the ridiculous suggestion that we should put a ‘curfew’ on girls (what happens if the rapist is at home ey? But don’t let facts get in the way of your victim blaming – oh no!). The people that no-one was talking about of course, were the perpetrators. The men who sexually exploited and raped those girls. You know, the men. Who chose to commit these crimes. 

I took to Twitter and wrote: 

‘Rape is caused by some men choosing to rape and abuse women and girls. That's what causes rape. That's what we need to talk about #bbcqt’

There were a few re-tweets but then the responses came – responses where people helpfully informed me that men are survivors of rape too, and did I know that women can be perpetrators? I explained that I was tweeting in the context of the BBCQT discussion – especially in regards to the curfew comment. 

But the episode made me angry. Because I feel so strongly that the accusation was that because I care about violence against women and girls, and because I pointed out that the elephant in the room in the discussion about VAWG was the men who committed the crimes, then it meant I immediately didn’t care about men survivors or women perpetrators. That I’m ignorant, and that someone had better inform me pretty quickly and patronisingly of my ignorance. 

And so now I am going to tell you why that accusation is untrue, and why that patronising telling off is not only offensive, but potentially triggering.  

Like everyone in the UK, I know women who are survivors of rape and domestic abuse. I say ‘like everyone’, because 1 in 4 women experience this, so the chances are someone you know is a survivor. I also know men who are survivors of various forms of abuse and assault. A woman who I know very well was quite seriously sexually assaulted by a woman, and a woman friend of mine was in an abusive relationship with another woman. 

Finally, I have experienced two identical ‘unwanted sexual contact’ from a man and a woman. The incidents were exactly the same – I was pushed against the wall in a club and the other party stuck their tongue down my throat without my consent, before pushing me back and walking away. 

So for people who don’t know me, who know nothing about me, to have the gall to come over and tell me that men are survivors too and women are perpetrators too? How dare you? How dare you make the presumption that I don’t know this, that I don’t care about this, that I haven’t experienced this? How dare you? How dare you presume to know anything about my life or my experiences? What gives you the right to tell me what I do and don’t think, without even asking me if I know, if I’ve heard, if I’ve felt? 

There are two further points I want to make here. The first is that we need to take more care when we talk to each other online. We need to understand and respect context, so that when we start commenting back or accusing people, we know what they’re responding to in the first place. And we need to think more. Think about what that person might have experienced. Think about where they might have come from and consider whether our retort – perhaps witty or wise in our heads – could actually hurt, or trigger. I need to do this too. I’ve spoken out and regretted it later. We all need to try harder. 

But my final point is that I’m still not going to apologise for calling out the fact that the people who committed the crimes in Rochdale were men who chose to rape and sexually exploit girls. Because that’s what happened. And of the 80,000 rapes against women and girls in the UK every year, the one thing that the perpetrators have in common is that they are men who chose to rape. They didn’t have in common ethnicity. The common factor wasn’t that their victims behaved in certain ways, that they wore short skirts, or were outside, or inside, or drinking or wearing jeans. They are men who choose to rape. 

And speaking this truth that doesn’t mean I don’t care about male survivors. It doesn’t mean I’m not concerned about low reporting rates triggered by worries of homophobia, not being believed, being thought ‘unmanly’. Or that I don’t think we need a drastic re-assessment on ideas about masculinity to ensure that no survivor feels this way. It doesn’t mean I don’t find prison rape jokes abhorrent, or demand to know why rape in prison is so widespread. It doesn’t mean I don’t think men survivors need support and helplines and care. 

It doesn’t mean that I don’t count the woman in my list of ‘unwanted sexual contact’ incidents. 

But it does mean I understand that when we talk about rape culture and victim blaming, we’re overwhelmingly talking about male violence against women and girls. These are the crimes where we seek to lay blame on the victim and survivor, whilst the perpetrator is safely ignored. It’s when we talk about women that we demand curfews on our freedom, it’s women who are forced into a life of fear and it’s women who are blamed when violent crimes are committed against us. The fact that when we try and talk about this we are instantly made to talk about something else just shows all the more how we as a society are refusing to recognise that male violence against women and girls is endemic.

So next time you decide to take it upon yourself to explain to me that men are survivors too and women are perpetrators too, don’t. I know it. 

Men who hate women

This is a quick post on the conviction of nine men jailed for raping, trafficking and sexually exploiting girls in Rochdale yesterday: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/09/rochdale-gang-jailed-exploiting-girls?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

The nine men convicted yesterday of trafficking, raping and sexually exploiting girls as young as thirteen did not commit their crimes because they were Asian, as some parties or news outlets would have you assuming.

They committed their crimes because they were men who chose to traffic, rape and sexually exploit children.

Contrary to the reporting in the Guardian of judge’s statement yesterday, it wasn’t that ‘ in some cases "those girls were raped callously, viciously and violently".’

Because all rapes are vicious, callous and violent. 

These girls weren’t raped and sexually exploited because they had ‘chaotic lifestyles’ including being in care. They were abused because these men chose to abuse them. 

And these girls continued to be abused because when, four years ago, one of them came forward to the police to report the crimes she had suffered, she was deemed ‘unreliable’. The police and the CPS didn’t pursue the case. How many girls were harmed in the remaining four years? How many girls were harmed because the system refused to believe the testimony of a young, abused and traumatised girl? 

This case is not about ethnicity. This case is about the men who choose to abuse women and girls. Those men are identified not by the colour of their skin, the country they were born in, their class or job or status or family or wages or music taste. They’re identified by the fact that they are men who hate women, men who choose to exploit and harm and rape women and girls. 

We need to change the conversation when we talk about cases like this. We shouldn’t be talking about race for starters. We should be talking about how we live in a society where violence against women and girls is endemic, is increasing and is ignored. So far this year 3.3 women have been murdered every week as a result of violence against women and girls. Rates of domestic violence have increased since 2010 (http://eoin-clarke.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/domestic-violence-soars-25-in-first.html) and on average 80,000 women and girls are raped every year. 

These men raped and exploited these girls because they hate women. And because they could. And because, for so long, we let them.  

Crooked Rib publishes 'Mothers in Fiction: the marvellous, the mean and everything in between' by Carrie Dunn

Renowned feminist writer Carrie Dunn’s collections of literary sketches of the relationships between mothers and their offspring is a must read for fans of fiction and feminism, and for anyone who is, or has, a mother.

Dunn takes the reader on a journey through literary history, visiting Mrs Capulet, Mrs Bennett, Sue Bridehead and Mammy Walsh along the way. Her well-observed portraits bring to life this often-neglected relationship, as we rethink our attitudes to the marvellous, the mean, the flighty and devoted mothers that populate our favourite books. 

“This collection of portraits is a joy to read. It was a great opportunity to revisit some of my favourite novels (as well as discover some new ones) through the mother characters that we often miss, or take for granted, or fail to appreciate. Whether it’s the horror of Mrs Reed in Jane Eyre, or a new way of looking at Pam Jones, this book took me on a journey through literary history and introduced me to its key players in a new and refreshing way.”

                                                                                                            Sian Norris, blogger

Dunn notes that throughout history, mothers have been silenced or ignored by literary criticism, or else their motivations and actions have been dismissed as trivial. Her book aims for us to take a second look at the role motherhood has played in literature, and demands that we re-evaluate and question our often negative reactions to mother characters – from Mrs Bennett’s superficiality to Mrs Capulet’s abandonment of Juliet. She examines how sexism or male bias in literary history has led to condemnation of mothers in fiction whilst failing to recognise or evaluate the social and cultural norms of the period that influenced or shaped these characters. Do we judge and ignore literary fathers in the same way?

The portraits Dunn paints in her book are very funny, very knowing and sharp. The 20 short sketches take us on a literary journey of 500 years of literature’s mums. This book is for anyone who is, or has, a mother, and for anyone who loves great reads.

Buy your copy here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/carrie-dunn/a-brief-history-of-mothers-in-fiction-the-marvellous-the-mean-and-everything-in-between/paperback/product-20091594.html

The Light Bulb Moment: My chapter

The book launch of the Light Bulb Moment is only two weeks away (where has this year gone?) and so as a little taster I'm going to share with you my chapter from the anthology. 


The event features contributors to the book reading their chapters, followed by a panel discussion on the future of feminism, featuring Natasha Walter, Zohra Moosa, Chitra Nagarajan, Mara Clarke and Anna van Heesvijk. 


You can buy tickets here: http://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/3451/festival-of-ideas-the-future-of-feminism/


Anyway, here's the chapter:

Finding my sisters

Siân Norris

Considering it was my idea to put together this anthology telling the moment we became feminists, I have found it extremely difficult to discover and tell my own. Was it, as I often joke, the influence of watching Maid Marian and Her Merry Men on TV as a child, with its outspoken female lead who ruled the roost of men? Was it when I was 16, and my friend Nadia lent me The Whole Woman, a book I devoured and then parroted for years, until as I got older I began to question some of the things in my feminist bible (notably the transphobia and her comments on female genital mutilation). Was it my feminist teachers at school and university who encouraged me to write essays on Djuna Barnes, Katherine Mansfield and Jean Rhys whilst everyone else was doing Joyce and Milton. Was it my early activism in the anti-homophobia movement and the influence of having two mums, a dad and a step-mum?

It was, of course, all these things. As well as organising Ladyfest Bristol 2007, writing a feminist zine and blog and ultimately co-ordinating a feminist network of a few hundred women and men.

But the more I thought about it, the more I put my actual, lived and activist feminism down to a period in my life of depression; and the decision I took to stop it, to move forward and to be happy. And I think a big part of this for me was in learning about and discovering sisterhood.

In the anthology that inspired this book, Click, one of the writers says that feminism was her consolation prize for surviving an eating disorder. I feel the same way, except that my form of self destructive behaviour wasn’t around food, but self harm. Self harm is lonely. It is about struggling to deal with emotional pain, so turning that pain on to yourself to try and control it with a physical pain. I cut my arms and legs with shaving razors from the ages of 16 to 20, with a few gaps in between. I don’t know now if I could really articulate what the emotional pain was, if I even understand now what it was. But I know that it was real and it was big, even though now I can’t really name it. And the only way to make it manageable, to make it small, was to turn it into a physical pain.

During one of these bouts of depression I wrote the following story. I can still remember the anguish and the anger that fled out of my pen and into the A5 ringbound notebook on my lap, in that freezing cold room I lived in in Dalston (this was 2005 guys, before the hipsters moved in). I wrote it after having been sexually assaulted on a bus by a man who leaned over and grabbed me and tried to kiss me: 

“The bus is making me feel sick. Everyone is playing a game of musical chairs that they haven’t told me about. Every time it jolts to a stop, everyone seems to get up to swap seats, and I’m just left sitting here. The man behind me is talking about the weather.
This is the most awful bus journey. It is worse than the one with the woman talking to me about her boyfriend who used to beat her up, or the one where the man tried to kiss me and I had to push him away hard.
It jolts again to a stop and it is my turn to leave the game. I walk fast down the street, it’s dark, and each time my foot hits the pavement I jump that it is someone else’s. My whole life I have been afraid of the no one behind me on the street.
My key sticks in the lock, but I battle it open. The living room is crowded with lived in mess. There’s drinking, but I go to bed instead.

My body slides down, sinking into the valleyed mattress. The covers are heavy, but I’m not warm. I daydream about a mattress that I don’t sink into. That doesn’t collapse along with me. My room isn’t dark, but it’s peaceful. The water pipes gurgling remind me of my childhood. Being afraid of the witch that lived in the boiler cupboard.
Next door, I can hear my housemate having sex. She has thoughtfully turned the music up, but all it does is emphasise the fact that there is another noise to cover.
The mattress is swallowing me. My back is melting into it in a sticky mess and I can’t unglue myself. My legs have stopped working. I grab the top of my left thigh to see if it is still there. I think maybe it is. I imagine my hand is yours. Whichever one of you.
My fingernails are dirty.
It’s disgusting. I know I should clean them, but you can pretend they’re not.

Sometimes, when it starts to go this way, when it gets to feeling that my bones collapse; I can feel every filament in my body. I can feel my brain moving against my skull, it is creaking, and when I move my eyes, I can sense the scraping of them against the sockets. I feel it in my neck. I can see every little pore in my lungs open up. I can track the blood rushing to all the drought-ridden places in my body, I can hear it squealing. I can feel the cells’ pain when they split and break and crack into two parts. I can feel a tension under my breastplate every time my heart remembers to try and convulse.
It makes me wonder what my body looks like to an outsider. How it feels to the hands that grab it and to the tongues that smear it. What it is in my body that inspires such strength in another, that triggers that burst of love and steals that loss of control, and what it is in my body that defies all that, so the hands scuttle away like little crabs.
Slut body.
Sick body.
My body.
It belongs to all of you.

It isn’t that no one cares. It is that no one cares enough. And the hands that grab and touch, and the lips that grab and touch, push me away and I fall back on the mattress that swallows me up. Gulp.
Lying in bed, my body shrinks to the size of a pin. My legs retract and my head and my arms are pulled in and I lie there, a pin. I’ll prick your prick your prick pricks me.
But it’s changing. Now my body crumples in on itself, and I crinkle and crack and all that’s left is a piece of dirty newspaper, with two hands kneading it, and I can see my mouth in its folds. Or is it more than two?
The hands pull the paper flat, and suddenly I’m white and clean and smooth and plain. I lie there still and blank, and you can write me, as you will.

You draw me a face of the wide eyes of your ex, while You and You put on the big lips of the girl you’re in love with, and of course there’s You who paints on the cute smiling cheeks of the girl that You are in love with still, whilst You let me keep my nose, to remind you that it is me you’re using, but You lengthen my hair and give it a new shade to suit a generic fantasy. Then I’m ready for all of you. And I lie here for you all, I’m hidden, I’m curled under my flat stomach and I love you all and I love you all and I think yes this is it this is it this time surely one of you will stay. But then you collapse on my breasts and then you rumple my hair fondly and then you stand up. My eyes behind her wide eyes are blinded. You lift the white sheet with its attractive additions and go back to who they really belonged to all along. You leave me my nose and my flat stomach.

Anytime you want me to, I can make you happy.
There’s nothing I won’t do, just to make you happy.
And you all know it.
And you all know it.

So you can leave me with the safe knowledge that I won’t.
So you can go back to the real wide eyes and the real big lips and the real cute cheeks and the original better, bigger, brighter mix of parts, and know that you can always come back. Lay a clean sheet over the crushed blood and bone on my dark dark dirty sheets and re-draw me to make you happy.

It’s good to be here.
It’s some kind of bliss.

But you know and I know that my bed isn’t enough. You are all frightened to admit it, but I know that you all know. So although I lie here in wait, it is no surprise to me when you don’t come back.
I lie here in wait for the next time you need attention and flattery.
And for you, I lie in wait for the next time you argue with her and need some comfort.
Whilst you know I lie in wait for you for when you want to feel good about yourself and your power over me.

The longer I wait, the more changes you all need to make to the paper. Soon you must close your eyes when you come; to make sure you don’t catch sight of my real face behind what you paint over it and I fake it oh and I fake it ah and I fake it don’t stop and I fake it that’s right and I fake it harder and I fake it faster and I fake it yes!

Anytime you want me to, I can make you happy.
There’s nothing I won’t do, just to make you happy.”

I decided to use this piece of writing to tell my story because writing it was my light bulb moment. I think that despite having always called myself a feminist, despite reading Greer and writing academic essays on gender and mouthing off about all sorts of feminist subjects; despite all of this I hadn’t been acting like a feminist. I had been careless with myself and I had been careless of other women. I had let patriarchy in through the cracks of my book-ish armour and not only had the result left me unhappy and struggling; it had also left me silent on the subjects of how men were treating the women around me, as well as how they were treating me.

Years later, when I thought about this period of my life, I remembered a man I had slept with laughing about how he had pulled this woman, had sex with her and then left because he realised how ‘ugly’ she was. At the time I remember thinking this was awful, but not challenging it.

After I wrote that story, I realised that I couldn’t call myself a feminist if I continued to refuse to treat myself with respect and failed to treat other women with respect. So, a few months later, I stopped self harming. I stopped sleeping with people that I didn’t want to sleep with. I stopped reading celeb magazines and joining in their mocking of other women’s bodies. I stopped judging what other women were wearing, or saying or doing. I started to treat the women around me as sisters. I realised that I wasn’t going to like every woman I met, but that wasn’t what sisterhood meant. Sisterhood, in a feminist sense, meant seeing a commonality with women, and a commonality in the way patriarchy harms us.

This didn’t happen over night of course. It was a process of years more consciousness-raising. But it started then.

           

Some say that the concept of sisterhood is an outdated one. But I disagree. Sisterhood was my saviour. Now, many years later, I am surrounded by sisters in the feminist movement. Of course I owe my change in confidence and happiness to lots of other things too, including counselling, friends, family, boyfriend. But my feminism, my strength in my sense of sisterhood and community – that’s what started the change. I saw that I had to wake up to how women were being treated, and how I was complicit in patriarchy’s project. And that feminism and sisterhood could make my world a better place. So, slowly, I started working within this feminist sisterhood to ensure that the pressures of patriarchy that hurt me would not be around to hurt my one-day daughters.

Now that I am a fully-fledged feminist activist, sisterhood is even more important to me. As I learn more about global inequality and how patriarchy impacts on women and men in so many destructive ways, the need to reach out to women across the world has become vital. The fight against patriarchy isn’t just about fighting the ways in which it hurt me. Being part of this global community, this global network, gives me the strength and enthusiasm to keep going, to keep fighting. Together, a better world is possible.

You can buy your copy of The Light Bulb Moment here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/sian-norris/the-light-bulb-moment-the-stories-of-why-we-are-feminists/paperback/product-18726169.html

33 women in 111 days

It’s been a year since I wrote my letter to our political leaders regarding the cuts to domestic violence support services, and just under a year since I received my (sole) reply from Theresa May. Since then, despite May assuring me that councils were being asked not to see this area as an ‘easy cut’, along with a vague reference to investing in ‘people’, everything that we predicted would happen to the sector and the women it supports, has happened.

In particular, refuges are closing down or losing their funding. Women’s Aid are reporting that refuges are turning away 230 women a day (http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/care/charities-have-to-turn-away-women-seeking-refuge/6520815.article), often with advice to sleep in occupy camps or A&E departments, or even in bus stations. Of course, many of these women, having found the courage and strength to leave a violent home, often with children in tow, will be forced to go back. They might not have anywhere else to go.

The warning from the domestic violence support sector was stark. Make these cuts, they said, and more women will die. And they have, devastatingly, been proven right.

According to Nia Central, between 1st Jan 2012 and 20th April 2012, 33 women and girls have been murdered as a result of gender-based violence. The suspects are their husbands, their boyfriends, their exes or male family members. That’s 33 women in 111 days. That’s one woman or girl (as some of the victims are under-18) every 3.3 days (https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=362416127128605&id=251422554894630).

There is little to say in the face of such horror, such damning evidence. Other than that this is a war against women. As a comparison, less UK military personnel have died in Afghanistan (15) than women have died as a result of gender-based violence in the same time period.

The government cuts are leading to the destruction of a support system that was – despite always being underfunded and overstretched – helping 1000s of women every day escape violent homes (and men too – Gemini for example provides refuge places for men). The closure of refuges has resulted in hundreds of women being told every day that there is no-where for them to go to escape violent homes. And this lack of support, this lack of escape route, is resulting in a higher rate of domestic abuse deaths – a figure that some evidence suggested was decreasing (from 2 a week to 1.5). 

A report published last month found that funding from local authorities to organisations supporting victims and survivors of domestic and sexual abuse had fallen from £7.8 million in 2010/11 to £5.4 million in the current financial year (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/mar/03/refuge-chief-warns-charity-close). This is in spite of official reports that there were 400,000 domestic violence incidents reported last year and the police receive a domestic abuse related phone call every minute.  Some local authorities have made funding cuts to this sector of nearly 50% (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-12402776). Despite Theresa May’s promise to me last year, councils are seeing domestic abuse support services as an easy cut. Victims and survivors of domestic violence are being silenced and they are being forgotten. And with the continued closure of refuges, women are being offered the impossible choice of staying in a violent home and risking being killed, or leaving and sleeping rough with their children. This is not a choice at all.

When I write about domestic abuse murders, I am often questioned on my statistics. People who don’t believe the numbers, who think they are ‘too high to be true’. On the flipside, I’ve (unbelievably) had people comment that 104 murdered women a year doesn’t seem ‘very much’. I now feel that the government and local authorities have joined those online ‘trolls’ who don’t see the terrifying domestic violence figures as ‘very much’. Because, really, how many women have to die, before they say enough is enough? Before they stop these cuts? Before they see that closing refuges, cutting domestic violence support services is leading to the deaths of more and more women every week?

33 in 111 days?

Mr Cameron. Mr Clegg. Mr Osborne. Ms May.Ms Featherstone.  Enough is enough. 
I will be sending a copy of this blogpost to above names.

News!

Hi all

So it's been a big week for me.

First of all, I've started my new job. I'm working as a conceptual copywriter for a small agency in Bristol that specialise in charity clients.

Which is great!

And secondly, I got a publishing contract for my children's book Greta and Boris. Which is basically a dream come true for me.

So it's been champagne and cava all round!

Feminism's back and you're gonna get in trouble

Feminism’s back, exclaims the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/09/feminists-hail-explosion-grassroots-groups), in what by my count is the 6534^th article of this nature since my own missive in November 2008 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/26/women-feminism-groups).

Feminism’s back and this time we don’t fit into those ‘stereotypical moulds’. We’re fun and feisty urbanites and country dwellers and some of us are even…men! Yay!

Ok. As you can probably tell from my tongue in cheek intro I’m going to critique this piece and media bias, but first of all I want to point out all the wonderful things about the article. The great thing is that this article highlights how many young women are engaging in feminist activism and running their own campaigns – girls who are still at school, the same age I was when I first read The Whole Woman and only had one friend my age who identified as a feminist. It is fantastic that these young women are getting angry, and active. It’s also thrilling that from being one of few feminist networks in the UK back in 2007, we are now one of many. And I have so much love and respect for Kat, Anna and Matt (all quoted in the article) and the brilliant work they do in empowering women and men to get active in feminism and tackle sexism.  I consider them friends; I’ve known Kat for a while, Matt contributed to my book and Anna is speaking at my book launch.  

However, just because this article celebrates such great achievements, doesn’t mean it is beyond criticism. It is an example of media bias and stereotyping of feminism. Please note that this article is not a criticism of anyone quoted in the article, but a critique of the way the ‘feminism’s back!’ narrative tends to go.

The fact that this is the 6534^th article about feminism making a comeback is my first issue.

There was a point when the feminism making a comeback articles were met by us feminists with glee. After decades of the media declaring us dead whilst we stood shouting in the corner ‘we’re over here!!’, we were suddenly recognised, noticed! We were inspiring articles excitedly revealing that feminism had never died. But four years on, and the same articles are still being churned out. Feminism’s back, a lot of them are young, they don’t burn their bras (grr!), they wear lipstick (yawn!), and they love men (double yawn).

The reason this repetitive rhetoric about feminism’s Lazarus moment irritates me is because by endlessly concentrating on us being ‘back’, there’s very little concentration on what we’re doing, and what we’ve always been doing. Namely, fighting the patriarchy to end the oppression of women and liberate us all. And a lot of that activism is focused in ending violence against women and girls (in all its forms – I have a very broad definition that includes the sex industry, representation and cultural femicide) and how the patriarchy allows and excuses violence. So often I find that the celebration of ‘feminism’s back!’ goes hand in hand with articles that seek to de-politicise the movement by assuring us that we’re not like ‘stereotypical feminists’.

Almost every ‘feminism’s back!’ article spends time reassuring readers that the new, 21^st century feminism isn’t like the stereotype of old, 20^th century feminism. In short, these articles endlessly re-hash the old media stereotypes that feminists are ‘fat hairy lesbians’ in order to encourage readers to understand that nowadays feminists aren’t always ‘fat hairy lesbians’. But what this narrative spectacularly fails to do is demand to know why there’s this belief that it’s wrong to be fat, or hairy, or a lesbian. Because one of the HUGE points of feminism is to question repressive beauty ideals invented by the patriarchy that waste women’s time, energy, money and self-esteem; as well as question hetero-normativity and compulsory heterosexuality. Feminism means standing against patriarchal beauty ideals that say women are only acceptable if they’re thin, shaven and straight.

It simply isn’t acceptable for the media to be using offensive and homophobic tropes to try to ‘sell’ feminism. Yes, it’s important to break down stereotypes, but if that isn’t coupled with an understanding that these stereotypes are a typical way that patriarchy seeks to shut women up, then we’re not moving forward. Especially if it means the same media is simultaneously silencing the women who don’t fit feminism’s so-called ‘new mould’.

Like many ‘feminism’s back!’ articles, this piece in the Guardian focuses on the fight against sexual objectification and the sex industry. This is a fight I have been long involved in myself, and it has become one of the key feminist issues. Organisations like UK Feminista, Object and the Anti Porn Men Project are well versed on the links between sexual objectification and violence against women and girls – how one can cause the other and how we cannot fight one without fighting the other. As feminist groups, these organisations are active in fighting VAWG and in discovering the links between how various means of oppression are linked, and they work in solidarity with other feminist orgs who might have a primary focus on violence. As a co-ordinator of Bristol Feminist Network, I’m a member of UK Feminista and Object and I am awed by the incredible work they do. However I find that all too often ‘feminism’s back!’ articles are reluctant to make these vital links between objectification and violence – de-politicising a political issue. 

Further, the ‘new feminism’ is repeatedly portrayed as being only and always focused on matters pertaining to sexual objectification in itself, away from its impact. They also tend to refuse to acknowledge that there are other feminist orgs beyond UK Feminista, Object and the Anti Porn Men’s Project. I’d love to read a ‘feminism’s back’ article that interviewed other organisations that are active on a range of vital feminist issues. Sexual objectification and the sex industry is a huge issue that impacts on many, many issues that need to be tackled. It doesn’t exist in isolation and it shouldn’t be reported without investigation of its impact. By portraying the movement as only focused in this area, the media is doing feminism, and the orgs being represented, a big disservice.

Another problem is that by tending to always focus attention on three organisations, the media tends to make the rest of us invisible. The media loves leaders, it loves a spokesperson. But the beauty of the feminist movement is that we don’t have leaders. We’re all standing together fighting patriarchy. I don’t believe that the women and men promoted to leadership by the media see themselves in that role. Again, it’s patriarchy demanding that we play by their rules and have a hierarchical structure where someone’s in charge.

My final comment pertains to men. Now, I have to point out that I am not a separatist although I understand and support the need for women-only space. I believe that men should be feminists because I believe everyone should be a feminist. I think anyone who looks at how patriarchy and male privilege is used to oppress women (and looks at how intersectionality and privilege works to oppress others) and doesn’t go ‘woah – we need to sort this mess out’ needs to ask themselves some serious questions. I co-run a feminist network that is mixed (although most sessions are women only because only women turn up). When we feel it is necessary, then we will specify that an event will be women only (open to all self-identifying women). This mainly happens if we are having an open space to talk about male violence against women and girls. I don’t believe, as someone said in an activist group meeting once, that we should be grateful that men want to be feminists. I don’t feel I should be grateful because I feel we should demand that everyone stands up for liberation and equality.

The (majority of) men I know who identify as feminists are incredibly supportive and respectful. They don’t fall into the old traps of talking over women, telling women how to be feminists or denying women’s experience.

However, I can’t help but feel a little aggrieved when ‘feminism’s back’ articles spend so much time talking about how men are involved now, at the expense of talking about what women are doing. I also find it incredibly frustrating that these articles fail to recognise the necessity of women-only space and the necessity of radical feminist views and actions. I feel all too often that these articles expect feminists to put aside our political and valid reasons for critiquing patriarchy and, particularly, male violence, in order to make sure men feel included. And I feel doubly frustrated because the (majority of) feminist men I know do not make this demand. They don’t complain about women-only space, they respect women’s experiences, they are willing to tackle their privilege and are part of the fight against patriarchy.

The other incredibly angry-making thing about this media bias is that when we spend so much time talking about making feminism acceptable for men, a focus is lost on how feminism needs to be relevant and real to women, all women.

Last year annifrangipani of BFN and I spoke at an academic conference about feminist activism. During our Q&A, a woman in the audience asked us where the men were at this conference (there weren’t any there). But she didn’t ask where the BME women in the audience were, or the women from non-university educated backgrounds (there weren’t any there). Sometimes we are so concerned with making sure we get men in the room, we forget to get women in the room.

Feminism is a movement for everyone. As I said, I believe everyone should be a feminist. I love the sense of solidarity and sisterhood that I get from being a feminist, the feeling that I am standing shoulder to shoulder with women and men across the globe, fighting for liberation. What I don’t love is the media creating an acceptable version of feminism that de-politicises and silences big chunks of the movement so that they can reassure everyone that it’s ‘cool’ to be a feminist now, whether you’re a woman or a man.

It IS cool to be a feminist. Because we’re leading a revolution that will change the world. Not because we’re ‘country dwellers or urbanites’. Because we have the power to liberate everyone from patriarchy. And we’re going to piss people off along the way.

Please read this: http://feminismfinallyallaboutmen.wordpress.com/

I wouldn’t have written my post if I hadn’t been inspired by this first.

Here’s The Angels singing the song that inspired this post title: