Only very embarrassing and uncool people
Sarah Ditum reviews Laurie Penny’s new book in the Times.
“This is a story about the choice between feminism and fascism,” Laurie Penny announces in the first line of Sexual Revolution. That’s not true. Actually, it is a story about Laurie Penny, a 35-year-old manic pixie dream person (pronouns they/them) who blundered to public attention as an angry young woman blogging about feminism, went on to chronicle the Occupy movement, and has spent the following years maintaining a white-knuckle grip on whatever the latest trend for the online left happens to be.
Just as the online left itself has, which economically explains why it’s so horrible.
“Fascism” is nothing but a placeholder here for “things Laurie Penny thinks are bad” and the concept of “feminism” is similarly abused. The traditional understanding of it as a movement for women’s rights is, alas, tainted by the fact that only very embarrassing and uncool people would use the word “woman” in its ordinary sense these days. (In Penny’s moral universe, one of the worst criticisms you can make of something is that it’s “embarrassing”.)
So Sexual Revolution cycles through ungainly formulations such as “women and femmes”, “women and queer people”, and “people who can become pregnant”. Roughly translated, these mean “women and anyone who wears make-up”, “women and anyone who claims to be mildly kinky”, and “the people formerly known as women”. In what sense these groupings make a plausible political class is never explained, although it is unlikely that any explanation would improve things.
If only Laurie Penny could write as well as Sarah Ditum…but then she wouldn’t be Laurie Penny any more, because to write that well you have to think that well, and Laurie Penny…doesn’t.
The biggest question left by this book, though, is: “Why?” Penny claims not to be a woman, and claims furthermore that women have no shared qualities as a group, so why identify with feminism at all? Why not leave the politics to the people who know what they’re talking about, and just spend more time doing whatever it is you get up to in Berlin?
Really. Why is a woman who says she’s not a woman writing about the choice between feminism and fascism? What’s it got to do with her? Why should anyone pay attention to her?
Laurie Penny is not a feminist, it is the opposite of a feminist. It is a self absorbed ninny.
Wonderful writing. Nobody should pay an ounce of attention to any mediocre attention-seeker. I still have no idea who Penny is (and can’t be bothered to find out), but from what I have read here at B&W, I have come to the conclusion that she might have had some attention as a teen which went to her head; and now she wants more, despite having no talent, no ability, and no notable contributions to make to society. She just wants to be adored for being Laurie Penny. Perhaps Laurie is short for Lauren.
Do I look bothered ?
Ouch! That one’s gonna leave a mark…
To be fair to Penny, on her day she can write very well, especially reportage, but she is too lazy to do research and has to be achingly edgy and modish. She was an enfant terrible about 15 years ago, with a gig at the New Statesman (there she was purely feminist, none of this genderqueer stufff) and has gone on been an ageing Enfant Terrible ever since.
George Eliot wrote about the ageing Infant Phenomenon in her essay Too Young.
http://www.online-literature.com/george_eliot/theophrastus-such/12/
This is so delightfully damning.
Isn’t it – and even better, on Twitter she made it “manic pixie dreamthey,” which made me laugh raucously.
“Dreamthey” is what she thinks is a pronoun?
Eh, probably a noun. But it’s doubtful that she knows or cares about the distinction.
No, Sarah Ditum made her “manic pixie dream person” into “manic pixie dream they.”
Well, “manic pixie dreamthey” is a pretty good way of dealing with the demands of Twitter but the original formulation is too good not to steal.
Penny is an exemplar (as well as an exponent) of how feminism, at least for many younger people, has become just another religious order in the anti-racist and genderist religion. I noticed a tendency a few years ago of people to seriously worry about whether a certain behaviour was a “feminist act”, and then circumlocuting their way into justifying essentially any mode of behaviour or pattern of thought as “feminist” when looked at from a particular lens.
That is essentially religious thinking. Feminism, at least for Penny’s set, is no longer about achieving concrete goals in the advancement of women’s equality (if indeed there are enough of these both left to achieve and actually achievable in order to organise an effective political movement around), but rather colonising the mind-biomes of as many people as possible and getting them to do pretty much everything they were already doing, but calling it feminist.
It is actually rather quaint. Tertullian this lady ain’t.
“Not very feminist” has become a stick used by the glitterwoke to beat women for…. well, for being feminists, usually. It’s a sort of universal put-down. When a woman says something like “sex is sometimes important”, she’s told, condescendingly, that’s not very feminist. If she’s supported by male allies, that’s not very feminist either.
Unusually, I think, there’s a male equivalent: ‘misogynist’ is used to shut down any argument between a man and a woman (once again, funny how people seem to know which is which when it counts). For example, I’m told most days that I’m “mansplaining” when I’m not (and, of course, I can’t explain why it’s not mansplaining because that would be mansplaining). I’m accused of telling women what to think or how to behave when I’m definitely not. It’s intended either to shame me into silence or give onlookers permission to ignore me or dogpile.
They’re both the same thing, a lazy, incorrect use of a previously valid and reasonable argument. I won’t say it’s weaponising feminism because I think feminism should be a weapon; it’s weaponising the desire of people to be considered feminist or not misogynist.
It’s crude, it’s lazy and it muddies the waters. I think both are a large part of the appeal, I hate it.