Tag: Feminism

Amnesty centers trans rights on International Women’s Day.

Trans rights are women’s rights are human rights. It’s that simple.

No. Women’s rights are women’s rights. We get to have our own rights, and we get to keep the emphasis there just like any other subordinated group. Imagine a poster that shouted

TRANS RIGHTS

ARE

BLACK RIGHTS

ARE

HUMAN RIGHTS

Wouldn’t that seem like the usual clueless white people changing the subject problem? Wouldn’t it seem like an obnoxious intrusion into someone else’s struggle in order to talk about a different struggle that is more fashionable right now?

Women’s rights are women’s rights. Trans people have other concerns, and they don’t always overlap with women’s concerns, to put it mildly. Women don’t have to share their rights any more than anyone else. Yes, we know we’re supposed to be Universal Mommy and share everything with everyone, but we say fuck that, we’ll have rights instead. Amnesty doesn’t get to decide we can’t.

Meghan Murphy is doing a talk at the Vancouver Public Library in January.

So, naturally…this:

Statement regarding Feminist Current Event

This is not a VPL endorsed event. It is a room rental. While we don’t agree with the views of Feminist Current, we are committed to upholding free speech and intellectual freedom.

Statement here: https://t.co/iRh6YrTwyw pic.twitter.com/L1947xj1Vf

— Vancouver Public Library (@VPL) November 28, 2018

Let’s read the statement:

Vancouver Public Library (VPL) is aware of concerns that have been expressed regarding an event with speaker Meghan Murphy scheduled for January 10th at the Vancouver Public Library.

VPL is not endorsing, or hosting this event; it is a rental of our public space. VPL has zero tolerance for discrimination and does not agree with the views of the Feminist Current. However, commitment to free speech and intellectual freedom are fundamental values of public libraries and are bedrock values for democratic society. As such, we will not refuse to rent to an individual or organization simply because they are discussing controversial topics or views, even those we find offensive.  We seek to be a welcoming place for all, and actively find ways to support the trans, gender variant and two-spirit communities.

That’s a cowardly, confused, and traducing paragraph. The second sentence implies without literally stating that Meghan represents discrimination (of a bad, unjust, bigoted kind) but then the fourth sentence admits she is simply “discussing controversial topics” but then takes that back again by implying (again without stating it) that they find her way of discussing controversial topics “offensive.” Then they pat themselves on the back hard enough to raise a cloud of dust. Somebody who knew little or nothing of the subject would be baffled as to what Meghan’s crime is, but also highly suspicious that she’s up to no good.

VPL takes steps to ensure appropriate conduct occurs in its venues by clients who rent our spaces, including compliance with the BC Human Rights Code. VPL has explicit requirements in its rental agreements that govern the conduct of renters and has confirmed with Feminist Current their obligation to comply with all Canadian laws relating to the content of their presentation.  We have advised the Vancouver Police Department of the event; they will be monitoring and will take appropriate action should conduct breach the Criminal Code.  If we anticipate that this event will present a risk to public safety, additional security measures will be put in place.

That is downright shocking. They’re implying (and almost saying this time) that they expect Meghan to break Canadian laws and breach the Criminal Code, and that they’ve asked the police to monitor her talk. It’s disgusting, it’s horrifying, it’s perverse. Jonathan Yxnxv, who sues female beauticians who decline to remove the pubic hair from his genitalia and ruminates in public about teaching ten-year-old girls how to insert a tampon – he is fine and wonderful and a member in good standing of the “trans, gender variant and two-spirit communities”, while Meghan, who objects to Yxnxv’s extortion and perving, is treated as a likely criminal who will endanger the audience at the library.

We recognize that Meghan Murphy’s opinions are concerning.  However, VPL is not in a position to take action intended to censor speech that is otherwise permissible under Canadian law. We have no indication that the event on January 10^th will include content that violates the Criminal Code.

VPL cares deeply about respecting the diversity of our community – intellectually, socially, and culturally – and seeks to ensure that our locations are welcoming and safe for all patrons, including trans, gender variant and two-spirit individuals. We welcome any community group to rent our spaces, and our staff actively work towards access and equity in VPL services, spaces and programs. The programs that we partner on and host are aligned with these values.

While it is difficult for us as individuals and staff to accept a rental from an organization whose perspectives we disagree with, the fundamental role of libraries as a place for free speech and intellectual freedom must be upheld.

Christina de Castell, Chief Librarian

People have lost their fucking minds.

Originally a comment by iknklast on Those theorists whose lives are most directly affected.

I hate the idea of no longer calling myself a feminist, but I also hate the idea of being associated with this brand of repressive ideology. Maybe we just need to invent a term that can let people know we stand for equality without having to take on all this baggage.

I am also white and feminist; I suffered my entire life (and still do) from the whims of people who believe that gender is essential, and that I therefore am some sort of grotesque mutant who isn’t a woman at all – but not a man, either, because reasons. As a teenager, I was forced into high heels, make up, and dresses. We were not allowed to wear anything but dresses to school until I was a freshman in high school, and even then, it had to be “pant suits” with matching tops and pants. When I was a senior, they finally (grudgingly) allowed girls to wear jeans, which the guys had been wearing all along. I was required to take Home Ec, and was discouraged from taking Calculus or Economics, for which I had to wait until college. I was shuffled into the slow Biology class because that was all I could take that didn’t conflict with honors English (the assumption being that, since girls are good at English and boys are good at Science, you wouldn’t have people who were eligible for both classes…in fact, my entire honors English class was filled with people who qualified for both, but none of us could stand the pain of going back through this is a noun, this is a verb, see John run, which is the noun which is the verb…).

I have been beaten for being insufficiently female, for reading the wrong books, taking the wrong classes, thinking the wrong thoughts. I was vilified and pressured until eventually I found someone and got married, more to prove that I was a woman than out of love (I realize that now; I didn’t then). He (my ex) was getting married to prove he wasn’t gay (he was). It was a marriage doomed, and would never have happened if I hadn’t been put into the spot of being expected to “prove” I was a woman, and he hadn’t been put in the spot of being expected to “prove” he was a man.

The young feminists doing all this screaming have no concept of what the earlier feminists went through to gain these rights, and they don’t really care, because they have convinced themselves that these rights were only gained for white, cis-hetero women. Not true – they apply to all women, even those, like my mother, who would rather die than make use of most of these rights.

Now, I find out in the declining years of my life that I have lived at the pinnacle of privilege all these years, a pinnacle apparently even higher than that of the rich white males who just took health care away from millions and continue to do everything they can to make choice an impossible option.

Originally a comment by Myrhinme on Those theorists whose lives are most directly affected.

I recently decided to stop identifying as a feminist. This was a big decision for me but the recent developments in feminism have bothered me too much. There was a time that I would have said that any woman (and even any man) who supports equality is a feminist. I was puzzled when I heard women who often talked about equality saying that they were not feminists. I assumed it was because of negative stereotypes.

In recent years, feminism has become fashionable and I was glad to see young women becoming engaged. I still am glad that young women want to stand up against sexual violence and other problems that they face. However, I now see a situation where any woman who wants to call herself a feminist is told that she must actively support a range of causes even if she knows little about them or simply disagrees with some parts. She is told to accept orthodoxies about gender, that she may never question a trans woman’s understanding of what it is to be female but that a trans woman may question hers and trash her if it does not toe the party line. She is told to shut up about her body and experience and definitely not to utter the heresy that she only feels female because she has a female body.

If a feminist is white, she can expect to walk on eggshells. She can talk about race but if anyone disagrees they can call her a “white feminist”. This is an insult but if she protests that it is wrong to use a description of what she is as an insult she’s just demonstrating what a spoiled privileged white women she is. She can diplomatically avoid the subject of race but then she’s a white feminist who only cares about white woman things (as if no other women are raped, or suffer domestic violence or need contraception and abortion). What is the alternative? Absolute submission. She must defer absolutely to the views declared orthodox and never disagree with a person from a marginalized group. She must accept that she is racist but she can pay Everday Feminism a fee to help her atone and heal from her toxic whiteness.

I could not encourage girls to get involved in feminism if it means being submissive and letting people treat them like shit. They, like everybody else, should feel entitled to a basic level of respect. They should be encouraged to question orthodox views and form their own opinions.

There have always been feminists that I had a problem with but they were usually on the fringes. The ones I have a problem with now are dominating the discourse and I don’t want to be associated with them. I have a background in human rights activism and want to continue with that rather than waste time with people who would argue whether I am a proper feminist or a white feminist or whatever. I want to get things done that will really make a difference.

I can only add that I am female, bisexual and have suffered from a disabling chronic condition since I was a teenager that has blighted by life. I am exactly the sort of person that social justice enthusiasts claim to represent. However, I want nothing to do with people who shut down all dissent, vilify everyone they disagree with, however small the disagreement, and attack free speech. I care too much about human rights and intellectual freedom for that.

So, I’d rather not call myself a feminist. I want to go back to being a human rights activist and I’ll choose independence of thought over dogma.

Hey, what do you know, feminism is no longer a movement for the liberation of women, it’s a movement for the liberation of everyone. All lives matter.

At least that’s according to this genius. She explains that there are two kinds of feminism, one of which is the boring dreary old historical kind that was about the liberation of women, and the other of which is the hot new kind that’s so much better than that.

There’s also another way that “feminism” is used and that’s to refer to a broader movement. So “feminism” might also refer to what we do here at Everyday Feminism: the fight to end all kinds of oppression. So this may or may not be directly regarding women. Women will certainly gain freedom if oppressive systems are dismantled, as women are still oppressed in many ways due to their identities as women; however feminism as a broader movement is interested in freeing all genders and agender people from all oppressions. So it’s a movement that focuses on more than gender-based oppression against women.

Is it? Why? Why does it do that? Why does it call itself feminism if that’s what it does?

Why can’t feminism be about the liberation of women? Why are women the one group who are expected to move over and stfu and make room for everyone else? Why are there women who call themselves feminists who buy into this shit? Why is Everyday Feminism so idiotic?

Magdalen asks the same questions.

Originally a comment by tiggerthewing on The limits of internal self-perception as the sole arbiter of truth.

I agree that the the Baby Boomers as a demographic is a pretty useless classification – especially if they extend the label up to 1964.

I was born in 1957 – late enough that I never had to risk polio (the vaccine was already available) but early enough that I had to suffer most other so-called ‘childhood diseases’. Late enough that I was vaccinated against tuberculosis; and with a father young enough that his life was saved by antibiotics when he caught TB in his teens; but old enough that his mother died of TB a couple of years earlier. Early enough that my parents were heavily influenced by the propaganda to raise large families to replace those slaughtered in the two world wars; early enough to have grown up surrounded by a cohort of women with no men, having lost them to WWI. Early enough to have lived through women’s fight for access to work that they had been doing during WWII, until they were discarded in favour of demobilised returning men and debarred on account of their sex.

I’m old enough that I was thoroughly grown up and a parent several times over before it was finally, reluctantly, acknowledged that women don’t cede all rights to restrict someone else’s access to their own bodies on marriage. Old enough to remember all sexual orientations other than vanilla heterosexuality being regarded as mental illness.

And I’m old enough to remember the big fights during the seventies, and subsequent decades, between older women and younger women about what was/is important for feminists to fight for.

Bearing in mind that the following is my own perception, as a female-bodied person raised in and socialised to English cultural norms. Each generation builds on what the previous generation has achieved. For my grandmothers’ generation, when ordinary working women literally had nothing, then focus had to be on the major issues – suffrage, property rights, access to children after divorce, that sort of thing. I used to hear some of them complain that my mother’s generation didn’t know how lucky they were, that the older women had already won the big fights, why did the younger women need to waste their energy on frivolous stuff like the right to choose to stay in paid employment on marriage? Why did they need ‘equal pay’ when they had the option not to work? Weren’t they lucky, being able to stay at home and be looked after by a man? I think that many of the older women, having a sense of how fragile the status quo was, how easily gains which had been hard-won could be taken away if the people – men – in power got upset, were terrified that their daughters would ask for one thing too many and in retaliation all rights would be rescinded once more. How dare the younger women rock the boat by making further demands?!

Anyway, my mother’s generation, supported by enough of their elders, managed to build on the gains made, and (amongst other things) won the right to be employed even if they were married, won the right to have their earnings taken into account when negotiating a mortgage or a loan (but a woman still needed a male guarantor when taking out a loan, even when I was an adult), won the right of access to contraception even if they weren’t married, and won the right to end a pregnancy on their own terms.

My generation, supported by enough of the older women who didn’t think our demands frivolous compared to their own battles, won the right to say no to sex in marriage, the legal right to equal pay for equal work (even though employers still manage to exploit loopholes to avoid paying women what they deserve), legal access to previously forbidden careers, the removal of homosexual orientation from mental illness lists, etc. and raised daughters to adulthood who, for the first time, could assume as a matter of course that they were equal to their brothers and that any discrimination was morally, ethically and legally dubious.

However, in a way my grandmothers’ generation was right – women assuming equality by right seems to have been the ‘step too far’ that they envisioned; the backlash has been horrendous. A particular cohort of old men, it seems, were happy to feel themselves magnanimous in doling out favours to the ‘little women’; perhaps they did think that the ‘pretty young things’ would look more favourably upon them if they handed out a few concessions. But a whole generation who think that they are the equal of men? Wasn’t it bad enough fighting off competition from their sons and grandsons, whilst keeping just enough rights from their sisters that the latter weren’t a threat? How could they cope with an entire generation, instead of half, who were after the power they had wielded by right for so long?! So they started poisoning the minds of the younger generations of men, blaming competition from their sisters for the lack of access to the best education and careers, subtly ensuring that the true cause – a generation of men raised in an unequal world, hanging on to power with a death grip – would be ignored.

So we have the situation today, where young women are finding it particularly hard to build on the gains made by their feminist forbears, but instead of recognising the true cause of their woes – the intransigence of the hidden male establishment – they are blaming the generations of women who fought before them, for daring to ask “What is really important to fight for?” And, since older feminists can recognise that LGBT rights tend to coat-tail on those granted to women (because LGBT prejudice is an outgrowth of misogyny) and so don’t put them centre-front of their agenda, younger women have grabbed onto LGBT rights as a way of having their own cause. With marriage equality being the last bastion to fall for gay people, it seems that only trans issues remain.

Young feminists are fighting about trans issues because they want their own rallying-cry to distinguish them from their predecessors, and because they haven’t noticed what the real enemy are doing.

Jindi Mehat at Feminist Current on liberal (what in the US would be called libertarian) feminism.

She started out as a libertarian feminist herself.

For me, then, and for liberal feminists today, the individual is queen. Any choice a woman makes is, by definition, a feminist choice because choosing is a feminist act. Even choices like pandering to the male gaze or self-objectifying must be applauded. As a result, I often engaged in decidedly unfeminist behaviour while uncritically wrapping myself in a comfortingly progressive label.

The other really important word for this view is “agency.” If you question the “choices” of other women, you’re denying their “agency,” which is “paternalistic,” and thus the opposite of feminism.

It’s a fatuous idea, because feminism is inherently all about questioning choices. All politics is about questioning choices. All critical thinking boils down to questioning choices. If you can’t question choices you can’t do anything but praise the status quo, and what’s the point of that?

Uncritically worshipping individual choices ignores the structures and institutions that support patriarchy. Focusing narrowly on advancing in the public sphere ignores the oppression women face in our homes. More worryingly, refusing to examine the context and impacts of our choices allows men and women to continue reinforcing misogyny and male supremacy while patting themselves on the back and failing to work towards liberation for allwomen in any meaningful way.

Supporting misogynist ideas, behaviours, and structures while declaring yourself a feminist requires a stunning lack of self-awareness and critical thinking, and an intricate set of unquestioned beliefs whose main purpose is to preserve a self-concept that’s allegedly based on beliefs in women’s rights, when in reality, that self-concept is based on an illusion.

Nowhere is this creative ego preservation more evident than in the commonly used catchphrases liberal feminists recite en masse, mostly in response to critical thought and discourse from radical feminists who understand that examining our internalized misogyny, analyzing our choices and beliefs, and dismantling patriarchal institutions is essential work for feminists who are truly dedicated to the liberation of all women.

Unless of course the status quo is already perfect, just as it is.

So she’s doing a series called “Shit Liberal Feminists Say” and this is the first post in that series. First up: Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist (SWERF).

Despite repeated evidence that women in prostitution are largely poor women of colour, many of whom were sexually abused as girls, entered prostitution while underage, and identify lack of housing as their main barrier to leaving prostitution, liberal feminists cling to the romanticized notions of “sex work” depicted in movies like Pretty Woman and, in doing so, literally whitewash reality. For liberal feminists, sex work is inevitable, voluntary, empowering and fun, and women who choose it should be unquestioningly celebrated.

Which is strange, when they are (in my experience) all noisily proud “intersectional” feminists who can check their privilege, or at least tell other people to check their privilege, faster than anyone else on earth. What could smack more of privilege than extrapolating from one’s own joy in “sex work” to conclude it’s like that for everyone? Imagine you’re a prosperous middle-class educated presentable man with an eccentric taste for working in non-unionized chicken processing plants. Would it be reasonable for you to say it’s “paternalistic” for journalists to expose unsafe working conditions in chicken processing plants? (Spoiler: no.)

In contrast, abolitionists see prostitution as male violence, as the sexualized practice of dominance and control over women who are coerced, with money, into sexual activity in which they wouldn’t otherwise participate.

Contrary to liberal feminists, who demonstrably exclude most women in prostitution so they can uphold a uniformly empowery notion of “sex work,” abolitionists don’t exclude any women from our analysis. We acknowledge that some women choose to enter into prostitution. Understanding that patriarchy both limits and shapes women’s choices, abolitionists believe the context of more privileged women’s choices — and the impacts those choices have on marginalized women — must be scrutinized as part of the hard work needed to make sure our movement leaves no woman behind.

But the libertarian view is that that’s just SWERFery, which is not just wrong but evil, and shun-worthy.

Supporting an argument that excludes the majority of women in prostitution, while calling the very women who consider the whole picture “exclusionary,” shows how intellectually vapid and hypocritical so-called liberal feminism is. Just like calling support of prostitution, which exposes the most marginalized among us to increased levels of violence and abuse, a feminist position, this isn’t about women’s liberation, it’s about feeling good and progressive and not having to actually change anything.

Supporting prostitution and screaming “SWERF” at abolitionists isn’t feminism, it’s capitulating to male supremacy and writing marginalized women off as collateral damage. It’s living in a dream world of consequence-free individual choices. It’s refusing to go beyond scratching the surface, and instead hiding behind buzzwords and tepid half-measures while trying to silence women who are willing to dive deep no matter the cost. Screaming SWERF at abolitionists is misogyny in feminists’ clothing, and it’s just some senseless shit that liberal feminists say.

I’ve gotten very familiar with misogyny in feminists’ clothing lately, and I don’t admire it.

Meghan Murphy last June: The sex industry’s attack on feminists.

Pornographers have long defended the products and practices of their extremely profitable industry as “free speech,” even as they sexualize male power and violence against women. Similarly, defenders of prostitution, which they strategically call “sex work,” frame the movement for its legalization and normalization as liberatory.

But they don’t want free speech for their critics. Last March

a number of prostitution lobby groups threatened to boycott a conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, that had secured the renowned journalist and Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges as a keynote speaker. Because Hedges had written an articlecalling prostitution “the quintessential expression of global capitalism,” these groups attempted to no-platform Hedges and would have succeeded in their efforts if not for an impassioned responsefrom local women’s groups.

Pornographers went after Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin in the 90s, too.

In order to appeal to well-meaning progressives, a “sex-worker rights” movement was invented to oppose those feminists who believed prostitution to be an extension and perpetuation of male power and violence. The prostitution lobby adopted the language of the labor movement in order to advocate for men’s rights to open brothels and buy sex from women, and it also adopted the language of the feminist movement to frame prostitution as a woman’s choice.

They have the media on their side, as well as the pimps and johns. The capitalist interests of mainstream media mean that pornography and prostitution are presented simply as business ventures, and their patriarchal foundations mean that the idea of women’s bodies as consumable objects is accepted as the norm.

So all women are seen as objects for consumption, either good ones if they’re gorgeous and hot, or bad ones if they’re ugly and cold. In neither case are they people with their own plans and ideas.

While manipulative language designed to appeal to the liberal masses is a huge part of advocacy to decriminalize pimps and johns, another key component is the smearing of feminists who challenge this discourse.

Industry advocates will stop at nothing to silence the voices of those who speak out against their interests. Labeled as prudes, religious conservatives, oppressors and bigots, the war against these feminists has recently culminated in widespread efforts to no-platform dissenters.

When the Swedish journalist Kajsa Ekis Ekman was scheduled to speak in London last year about her book “Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self,” the bookstore hosting the event was threatened with boycotts.

Was she labeled a SWERF? I’d be amazed if not.

The current climate in “Anglo-Saxon feminism” is one that supports witch hunts, Ekman told me. Such a witch hunt begins with “smear campaigns, appears to be coming ‘from below,’ and calls famous feminists power-crazed, elitist, ‘cis-sexist,’ racist and ‘whorephobic,’ ” she said. “It then proceeds to full-blown silencing campaigns, boycott threats, petitions, isolation of anyone who sides with the feminist and guilt by association.”

We’ve seen that happening. Repeatedly.

Prostitution survivors face silencing tactics as well. Bridget Perrier, a First Nations educator and co-founder of the Toronto-based sex-trade survivors and abolition group Sextrade101, said the efforts of the pro-prostitution lobby are focused on invalidating the experiences of women who have left the industry. Their stories are often called into question.

Rachel Moran survived seven years in the sex trade in Ireland and has published a book about her experiences, addressing many of the myths and lies perpetuated by the sex-work lobby. For her crime—speaking the truth—she has been subjected to endless harassment, accused more than once of inventing her story.

“I have been defamed, slandered, threatened, physically confronted and screamed at,” Moran told me. “I’ve had my home address, bank details and personal email circulated amongst some of the most seemingly unhinged people, who have tweeted me portions of my home address in a clear we-know-where-to-find-you style threat.”

This is the world we live in now.

The denial of truths that would hurt efforts to present a sanitized version of the sex industry aimed at selling prostitution as “simply a job like any other” is key to the campaign for its legalization.

Moran told me she was shocked at the lack of compassion exhibited toward her by sex-industry advocates who claim to have a vested interest in women’s safety. “They simply do not give a damn that they are constructing a deliberate and organized bullying campaign against a woman who was ritualistically sexually abused by adult males since she was 15 years old,” she said. “My truths do not suit them, so my truths must be silenced.”

And Murphy gets the treatment too.

In desperation, unable and unwilling to respond to basic feminist, socialist arguments against the sex industry—namely, that it exists on a foundation of male power and capitalism, perpetuating misogynist notions about male “needs” and women’s bodies as the things that exist to satisfy these socialized desires—these lobby groups resort to lies and slander.

These groups try to pass smear campaigns off as “critique,” but they are anything but, Ekman, the Swedish journalist, said. “What is going on now is not critique. Rather, it resembles a full-scale Maoist cultural revolution.”

“If you are a prominent feminist, you won’t escape this,” she continued. “If you haven’t been targeted yet, you either will be or you’re not dangerous enough.”

I have been writing about the sex industry and prostitution legislation in Canada for years now. The attacks on my character and work have been relentless. In recent weeks, a number of Canadian sex-industry lobby groups mounted a major smear campaign online, framing arguments against the objectification, exploitation and abuse of women as “bigotry” and willfully distorting my work and views beyond all recognition.

The nonsensical and baseless accusations hurled at me—“transphobic,” “whorephobic,” racist and so on—replicate those used against all women who challenge the status quo in this way. The intention is not justice, but to slander feminists so that their arguments can be ignored and dismissed and in order to bully others into doing the same.

And, in this looking-glass world, people who think they’re ardent progressives join the bullying.

In her essay “Liberalism and the Death of Feminism,” MacKinnon wrote that “once there was a feminist movement”—a movement that understood that criticizing practices like rape, incest, prostitution and abuse was not the same as criticizing the victims of these practices. “It was a movement that knew [that] when material conditions preclude 99 percent of your options, it is not meaningful to call the remaining one per cent—what you are doing—your choice.” She wrote these words 25 years ago, and we are still fighting the same battles. Now, to speak out against patriarchal systems means your livelihood will be threatened, as well as your credibility and your freedom to speak.

You cannot claim to be progressive but advocate against democracy. You cannot claim to be feminist but support the silencing of women. This new McCarthyism will not liberate us. It offers us up to those who work toward our demise.

Oh well, we’ll always have the Kardashians.

A reader has been asking me about the second and third waves of feminism, and my energetic agreement with Meghan Murphy’s rebuke of knee-jerk disdain for the second wave. The reader was wondering about my insistence that the third wave did not invent intersectionality, because he had read in many places that it had – that is, that 2 wave just didn’t know from intersectionality until 3 wave came along.

Nope. 2 wave was aware of the issue of being too white and middle class all along. There were huge arguments and splits over the issue all along. There were huge arguments over lesbians’ place in the movement all along.

That’s not to say that 2 wave was brilliant at it or that it got nothing wrong, it’s just to say that it wasn’t clueless about it, and it didn’t have to wait for 1980 or 2010 to realize that race and class matter. (It was a bit slow on the sexual orientation part – it was weirdly squicked by lesbians.)

So this primer on intersectionality from Routledge seems off the mark to me.

Second-wave feminism is associated with the women’s liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. While seeing themselves as inheritors of the politics of the first wave which focused primarily on legal obstacles to women’s rights, second-wave feminists began concentrating on less “official” barriers to gender equality, addressing issues like sexuality, reproductive rights, women’s roles and labor in the home, and patriarchal culture. Finally, what is called third-wave feminism is generally associated with feminist politics and movements that began in the 1980s and continue on to today. Third-wave feminism emerged out of a critique of the politics of the second wave, as many feminists felt that earlier generations had over-generalized the experiences of white, middle-class, heterosexual women and ignored (and even suppressed) the viewpoints of women of color, the poor, gay, lesbian, and transgender people, and women from the non-Western world. Third-wave feminists have critiqued essential or universal notions of womanhood, and focus on issues of racism, homophobia, and Eurocentrism as part of their feminist agenda.

Ennnnnnnh…yes and no. Yes some 2 wavers ignored all those viewpoints, but not all did, and the issue was much discussed. These things are cumulative, so feminism does a better job of it now, but there’s no reason to assume that 2 wave feminists just suddenly froze solid in 1980 while everyone else progressed. Guess what: 2 wave feminists are part of 3 wave feminism, too. There was no break in between. There was a break of sorts between 1 and 2, but not between 2 and 3. Feminism never went underground between 2 and 3 the way it did during the 30s and 40s and 50s, so 2 and 3 are basically the same movement.

Feminist social theory has influenced and been influenced by the agendas and struggles of each of these waves. “First-wave” theorists like Mary Wollstonecraft and Susan B. Anthony were influential for their focus on how women’s lack of legal rights contributed to their social demotion, exclusion, and suffering. “Second-wave” theorists like Betty Friedan and Andrea Dworkin were prominent for their focus on women’s sexuality, reproduction, and the social consequences of living in a patriarchal culture. And “third-wave” theorists like Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak are significant for critiquing the idea of a universal experience of womanhood and drawing attention to the sexually, economically, and racially excluded.

If you’re lumping Betty Friedan and Andrea Dworkin together as essentially similar theorists, you’re doing something wrong.

Meghan Murphy has a sockdolager of a piece explaining that no feminism isn’t anything and everything but rather is something particular and substantive, so no you’re not a feminist just because you wear stilettos or have a platinum card. She offers 9 items that actually do make you a feminist, a better feminist than people who lack them.

First is being a woman.

There are male feminists of course, and since we need all the feminists we can get, maybe especially among men, I think it’s important to emphasize that, but her point is that men don’t fully get the female experience.

2) Understanding that feminism is not a feeling or an identity, but a political movement

And a set of ideas and claims.

If you think that objectifying women or street harassment or male entitlement or gender stereotypes or sexualizing violence against women is good and ok, you aren’t a feminist. Taking a selfie orgetting married or wearing stilettos or making a bunch of money does not equate to feminism (yet feminists are allowed to do these things! See how that works?) because feminism isn’t about you as an individual feeling personally “good” or empowered in the moment. You can feel empowered, but that doesn’t necessary produce feminism. Similarly, feeling “good” [does] not equate to empowerment. Empowerment, in the context of feminism, means social empowerment for a group of marginalized people (in this case, women). This is why, for example, posing nude and feeling sexy in a fashion or porn magazine might feel good for the individual doing it (they will receive positive reinforcement, feel attractive, profit financially, etc.) but does not constitute “empowerment” as it does not lift up women as a class.

Number 3, stop being anti-intellectual.

There is no activism without ideology. Ideology is the body of ideas that frames a political movement. We need that, otherwise how the fuck do we know what we’re doing? (What’s that? We’re just taking selfies and shouting intersectionality at each other on Twitter? Good then. Fuck ideology. Fuck movements. Fuck yeah.)

That. That’s why I abruptly jumped off the train between stops. I’m not interested in a politics that’s all formulas – check your privilege! intent isn’t magic! my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit! – and no thought. Formulas are ok for some limited purposes, but that’s all. Shouting intersectionality at each other on Twitter doesn’t cut it.

4 is about that too.

5) Not being ageist

At what point did ageism become acceptable in feminism? Oh right. The third wave… Ok, so we understand that rebellious teenagers want to “Your not my real mom!” *slams door* their elders, but we are not rebellious teenagers. We are adults. And if you are a feminist it is unacceptable to make “second wave” an insult. That is some woman-hating, anti-feminist, ageist garbage and if you want to pull that shit, congratulations, you’re doing patriarchy. Keep your ignorance and keep perpetuating sexist notions that women who are no longer youthful are silly, old-fashioned, prudish fuddy-duddies, clutching their pearls all the way to the old folks home, where they can stick to Bingo, but know that you’re no feminist. Older movement women know more than you do and we aren’t going anywhere without them.

Cough cough cough.

There are a lot of “feminists” out there who decidedly do make “second wave” an insult – usually while shouting something that second wavers originated 45 years ago. We’re not your mommies, we’re not Miss Marple, we’re not old dears with bundles of knitting. Get a fucking clue.

6) Not accusing feminists of hating sex and men like it’s a bad thing

Women are allowed to hate men and sex. Hating men and sex is perfectly natural. Men and sex with men has been a source of trauma for countless women, over centuries. It is also perfectly natural to love particular men and to enjoy having sex. None of these realities are things that should be used by feminists to insult, attack, or dismiss other feminists. By accusing feminists who challenge male violence of “hating sex” or “hating men” you are reinforcing heteronormative garbage and feeding into stereotypes that say feminists are just angry because they aren’t getting fucked enough. These tropes are connected to rape culture — it is the idea that men can fuck women into passivity or fuck them straight. It is the idea that only fuckable women are “real” women. It is the idea that women need men in order to be whole beings and to matter — that they only exist in relation to men. These are anti-feminist ideas.

And 7, 8, 9, too. Read it all, then read it again.

Josh Spokes just reminded me that Twisty Faster exists and we should all be reading her.

On the performance of femininity for instance.

Author Kat George’s article is titled “Six Things That Definitely Don’t Make You a Bad Feminist.” Like everything published on the internet these days, it is a list.

The gist of her list is that performance of femininity does not conflict with feminist activism. It includes permission for feminists to change their name when they get married, to get waxed, and to let dudes pick up the tab.

The revolution has succeeded at last! All the problems are now solved. Just call everything “feminist” and see the waxy yellow buildup disappear.

But see here: if feminists who do understand feminism keep their traps shut when feminists who don’tunderstand feminism go around explaining feminism wrong, everybody loses.

Good thing I’m on the case!

For the public good it will be necessary to tweak Ms George’s definition of feminism just a smidge. Rather than a lifestyle accessory in the shape of some passive, nebulous, and capriciously applied “belief in gender equality,” feminism is in fact a political movement the goal of which is the liberation of women from patriarchal oppression.

It’s not just Ms George, either. So many of these ladies are flitting about the countryside with the idea that feminism is about believing in equality. Often they embellish the concept with vague notions of “empowerment” and the pseudofeminist mandate to “choose” “choices.” Suggests George, when you’ve got feminism onboard, “you can be whoever you want to be.” Particularly, it seems, when who you want to be is a woman who performs femininity, a set of behaviors specifically engineered to ensure the dehumanization and subjugation of half the global population.

Josh is right, I need to read more.