Feminism Backlash

[emmelinemay]

Following a number of debates that my posts on street harassment, the objectification of women's bodies in the media and 'male priviledge' have prompted here on my journal, this article pretty much says everything, only much better than I could manage.


Thanks to miss_soap for the link.

Comments

[mnowster.livejournal.com]

Wow. I read that, was shocked, felt a tad scared, then sick then really angry and now just plain sad. Why does it have to be so hard? Why are we always having to fight? What is so damned difficult about accepting women, I mean really, what have guys got to be scared of?[not all of you, obviously].

I'm flippin tired of it. I never realised at the time but during my interview, they asked if I had a partner/married, it never clicked in my head perhaps that was a way round to figure out if I was about ready to have kids :(

This world is so stupid and backwards sometimes. Grr and indeed arg.

[spoox.livejournal.com]

I read the article.

1. I think it is way off target on the issue of maternity leave. This is less of a feminist issue and more of a capitalist vs socialist issue: are you really surprised that people that run companies aimed at making large profits are not keen to pay people to not come to work?

2.On the point of rape convictions being insultingly low, one of the most obvious reasons for this is that victims don't want to come forward or don't want to give evidence. Once cases involving rape actually get to Court, the conviction rate is slightly above that for GBH and similar to that for most serious crime. Research has shown that women on juries are less likely to convict of rape than men.

3. All of the nonsense about how fat or thin women are tends to be in the sort of magazines written by women for women: are men to be forced to accept the responsibility for women oppressing their own kind too?

4. The part of the article dealing with current 'abortion rights' fails to take into account the concerns that many people from very different parts of the political spectrum have regarding the rights of unborn children. The only change mooted was a reduction in the amount of time one had to obtain an abortion.

5. The so-called 'evidence' for a backlash is almost entirely spurious and based upon current trends in popular culture and the growth of vapid celebrity rather than in any anti-feminist feelings among people clever enough to know what feminism is.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

1 - I don't think that a biological fact that 'women have babies' should prevent women having the same job at an organisation as men. The assumption you made, that women will lose a company money, or work 'less hard' if they have a family, is the assumption women battle agaisnt. You should not discriminate against someone because of their biological nature, and that is what discrimination against women re. maternity leave does.

2 - This is true, and I can understand why women are reluctant to come forward, when their general treatment at the hands of police, support agencies and the media is often pretty harsh (we have a victim blaming culture) and many women would rather move on and try to deal with it than have to prove it happened, prove it wasn't her fault, and be prepared to have her whole sexual background pawed over in court. I know I'd have to think about it if it happened to me. In fact, it nearly did, back in September 2000. I was basically told by the (predominantly male) hospital and police staff that there was 'no point' taking proceeding's further because 'they probably wouldn't be able to find him anyway'. I got a crime reference number, a letter from victim support with a phone number which I called and left a message with, and never heard anything back from either. I had an impression on my face of every ring he'd been wearing that night, a cracked jaw, and was left with PTSD for months, and yet, there was 'no point' in proceeding. That guy may still be out there for all I know, perhaps succeeding (I was lucky, people heard my screams and came to help) getting away with it, because there's 'no point'.

3 - I agree. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I think often, we're our own worst enemy. We're not just righting against misogyny from men, but from women too - the 'women hating' in all those magazines, and the hating female celebrities, it's a female problem. I don't know how to even begin battling against that one, and along with the acceptance of casual street harassment as a 'fact of life' it's probably the thing that depresses me most.

4 - This is also true - it's a cross cultural, cross political debate which is much more complex than a men vs women situation. However, the vast majority of those in the decision making process are men, and I don't think that can be discounted.

5 - I don't know - I've been thinking about this too. I don't think the 'feminism is bad' thing is new, I think it's been around for a long time, and I think the perpetuation of the idea that feminism is all scary butch men-hating women with no bras is actually a rather clever anti-feminist weapon, in that even I believed it until relatively recently. I think it's becoming more obvious now that many women are realsing that feminism simply means beleiving women and men are equal, and that it isn't a war agaisnt men. Of course, some feminists are like that, but they hurt the cause as much as the women that read and believe THOSE magazines, and those that say street harassment is a 'fact of life' and women should just 'put up with it' or wear longer skirts.

It's a really complex issue, all of it, and she tackled a huge number of topics in a short space - I think she did a pretty good job, in all.

[annomalley.livejournal.com]

1. I think spoox made a very good point there. While the biological fact of the capacity to have children doesn't stop someone being able to do other things, the reality is that when pregnancy and childbirth happen, the employer has to pay for the employee to be away, which is as it should be from a socialist perspective but not from a margin-obsessed capitalist one. The feminist aspect is that men aren't expected to take leave around pregnancy/childbirth, perhaps if involved fatherhood becomes the norm, all potential parents would be equally discriminated against by greedy bosses (or small business owners just trying to keep afloat)

2. On a similar note, you can be sure that every effort would have been made to catch that bloke if he'd cracked your jaw while robbing a bank. Shocking story, and you're totally right about the "blame the victim" culture (unless the victim is a bank), I see it at a lower level with the grievance procedures and managerial bias people have to go through when they are being bullied at work. I'm kinda guilty of it myself a lot - I find it a difficult line between the idealism of "this is not a jungle" and the reality that there are predators out there, so isn't it tempting fate a little bit to go out in a micro-skirt and no knickers and get paralytic? It doesn't make it a victim's fault, but it makes them easy targets and loses them some public sympathy. I loved the Reclaim The Street slogan of locking up the men rather than the women, however. I got very annoyed at a message from security at work telling women to not go out alone after dark after there were a couple of muggings. The bottom line is, though, that generally speaking men are physically stronger, and authorities that can't guarantee that stronger people won't use this for evil are likely to beg the weaker people to not put themselves at risk. You'd just like to think we live somewhere too civilised for physical strength to be something you think about before walking around at night, but...

3. Yup, women share the responsibility to a large degree. As long as there are women happy to live off lettuce, walk on foot-torture devices all day, wax every last hair on their body and dance around naked for men's amusement, the rest of us will be considered men-hating hairy lesbians. The problem is, the majority of men are unapologetic about liking that kind of femininity, and the majority of women think the benefits of giving the men what they want outweigh the drawbacks. This of course is partly due to a culture and history whereby women earn more in the sex industry than in most other jobs, or have such poor self-esteem or real prospects that finding a husband to live off is paramount. And so, as there seems to be no incentive for men to stop valuing a femininity that reassures them in their masculinity by emphasising the physical differences between the sexes and keeping women busy making themselves pretty (or sick), women embrace this femininity as something that gives them "power" over said men.

[spoox.livejournal.com]

1 - I don't think that a biological fact that 'women have babies' should prevent women having the same job at an organisation as men.

Agreed

The assumption you made, that women will lose a company money, or work 'less hard' if they have a family, is the assumption women battle agaisnt.

That might be true: I suspect that there is likely to be change of priorities after starting a family. The point that I was making though was that the assumption that women ought to be paid to have babies is not just a feminist issue: it is primarily a socialist issue. Many employers do not feel that they ought to pay someone while they are away having a baby. Personally, if I was an employer I would rather pay someone to work than to be away having a baby.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Work Colleague and I have been wondering if a system where the time taken off to have and recover from having the baby and maternity leave is split, with maternity leave being renamed to 'parental leave', which can be taken by either parent, or something.

I think Sweden are totally on the right track here, working parents are entitled to 18 months paid leave per child! At least 3 months of that has to be the parent that isn't the main carer.

I know...

[brute-force.livejournal.com]

ahead of time the hell I'm getting into.
But I actually keep my company below a certain number of people so I can run it my way. Not to be told who I have to hire, keep, tolerate, etc. Everyone "working for me" is a Sub-contractor, So I can dismiss them anytime I feel the need without having to worry about why. those things being the case... I do not hire anyone with children living at home. Male or Female. It's very PC to say everyone is the same. I will never be that PC. If a man came to me and said "I need the next 6 months off because I'm and alcoholic.." I would dismiss them,,Having children is a "self-inflicted" injury, like alcoholism. it is a choice. There is a price to pay for that choice. If a woman tells me they are pregnant and want a job, They will not get it. I am most definately NOT A FEMINIST. I'm an Evolutionist. If you can do the job, you keep the job, If you can't, you don't.

[load-of-flannel.livejournal.com]

1.

I think the problem here is that maternity pay as it exists is grotesquely unfair in all sorts of ways. You can be working and receive less money than those who don’t. Or if you are in a beneficial position you can manipulate it to make sure you benefit grotesquely out of the government creating a situation where basically the richer you are the more the government (us) pay you to have a child. In addition the assumption that you should automatically be entitled to a year off if you are female is absurd… especially when it is apparently unthinkable that a woman might want to return to work immediately and let her partner look after the child.

Flexible working hour requests upon return are questionable, many feminist lobbies are suggesting that refusing such requests is tantamount to sexism. However many employers suggest that they have already kept your job available for a year and it is ridiculous to suggest that they have to let you change your manner of working on return or be slapped with a sex discrimination suit. Which is what is happening. You knew what your job was when you left, its been kept for a year… you shouldn’t have the right to demand it changes and becomes different hours just because you now have a child. The world does not exist to facilitate your breeding.

I agree entirely with Emmeline on this ground, there should be parental pay. Women need the time off to have a child, that’s a biological fact. So obviously it is unfair to disadvantage them on that basis. Its also where the biological fact ends. Suggesting post this point that child rearing is the prerogative of a female is sexist. So what would seem sensible was to give the pay and time off for having the child and offer parental leave to the family unit after that point which can be taken by either partner according to their own personal needs.

In the situation where a mother does actually need to recover after the child then this can be adequately dealt with as sick leave. It seems preposterous to suggest that a mother cannot work and is physically and mentally debilitated but that she can look after a newborn child. Yet at the moment we insist that this is the case and therefore that time is included in maternity leave and not as sick pay. Whilst we also simultaneously make it diffficult for a male partner to help.

Unfortunately the most vocal parts of the (alleged) feminist lobby are trying to extend maternity rights and are not paying the least attention to equality of rights between partners this has resulted in a gradual extension of rights for the mother without addressing rights for the family as a whole. This has had a knock on effect with the disparity growing between anyone who happens to be female with a new biological child against anyone else at all, the situation surrounding adoption is even more fraught. Currently the lobby groups are pressing for flexible working rights for mothers seemingly oblivious to the fact that they have not created a system of equality but one of discrimination….. I believe equality was the aim of feminism originally, not to create a system where females have more rights than men because of their gender.

The entire system needs an overhaul and pressure groups need to work together.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

1. This is in conflict with the notion of "equal pay for equal work". If in a given 2 year period, 1 person (male or female) has worked 2 years and another has taken a year off (for any reason) it's unfair that the latter person should get "free" increases in seniority and pay. So it's not really a gender-specific issue.

3. It is so totally not a gender-specific issue. Men's Health magazine on how if you can't get a body like their cover model in 6 weeks it's because you're lazy (never mind that it probably took him 6 years). Brad Pitt on masculinity in Fight Club. Any underwear or aftershave ad on what is sexually attractive. Just because men are less forthright about talking about unrealistic portrayals of our gender in the media doesn't imply that it is entirely lop-sided.

5. Those unpopular celebrities are all awful, awful people. They would be equally appalling if they were men. Again, not a gender issue.

[cov-cloud.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link, I read the article with interest. One thing she didn't mention (and what i find wholly depressing) is that the market these trashy mags promoting picking women to pieces are aimed and usually bought by women - women/ girls are being encouraged to take part in mass bitch, bitch, bitch attacks from outrageously young ages. The media seems to be cashing in on the 'instinct' of british women to criticise other women - scary stuff.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

That's a really interesting point, something I've been thinking a lot about lately. Why are we our own worst enemies?

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

Hell no. The times I've picked them up (usually at other people's houses, once I bought one for a long journey - WASTE OF MONEY) they've made me so utterly furious I don't read them to protect the health and well being of those around me.

They make me RANTY. Big time.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

I meant more that women are women's worst enemies sometime, but I know I am too, a lot of the time!

I am guilty of ending up staying in because I look 'fat' or my hair won't work - why care so much? Because I know I'll be judged by my looks first, and the rest later. And I know I have bitched about what other girls are wearing in clubs, and, really, I think it all comes from my own insecurities about my own body.

Cov_cloud made an interesting point about women being actively encouraged to hate other women, and, in a way, I guess we also hate aspects of ourselves which don't conform to what we are lead to believe is the 'idea' way to look.

Hmm. I shall have to think about this one more.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

:P

[medusa-nw.livejournal.com]

I think you should add this link to your post: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7484160.stm

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

That is just really depressing.

[medusa-nw.livejournal.com]

Isn't it? The really awful thing is that they got only 8 responses, and 3 of those say they have been raped! Now I know they're probably more likely to answer precisely because that's what happened to them, but it's still horrible.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

Really, really depressing.

But then, as I said in my reply above to Spoox, I was told there was 'no point' in taking my attack any further because 'they probably wouldn't be able to find him'.

[unclesatan.livejournal.com]

In defence of the police officer on your point and I'm not saying this is right it's just an opinion that I heard from a police officer once.

What you have perceived as institutionalised disintrest, can be (from this officer's point of view anyway) doing you a kindness. Sometimes as you say the police officer believes that there is no chance of catching a person who has committed the crime, the he saw no point in subjecting the victim to the added violation that any investigation would bring. I'm not saying that this is always the cause, but sometimes the officer has done the cost (to you)/ benefit analysis in their head and feel that it's not worth traumatising you any further, where there is liitle chance of any benefit.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

It is quite possible, and it was long enough ago for me to not have issues with it in that way any more, but I thought it was a relevant point as to why perhaps so many sexual assaults (or in my case, attempted sexual assault and GBH) go un-reported and un-prosecuted.

[purplegril.livejournal.com]

"the officer has done the cost (to you)/ benefit analysis in their head"

Don't you see how patronising and sexist that is when you say it? Do you think it would be OK to say that for every crime? Because it's true of many crimes, but I wouldn't expect to be told that if I went and reported my wallet getting nicked, never mind reporting a violent attack!

[unclesatan.livejournal.com]

It happened to me when I was pepper gassed by the kids in the estate behind where I live. The officer said there's no point taking it any further as we wont catch them and even if we do they'll only get a slap on the wrist.

[purplegril.livejournal.com]

"if the system is as unkind to victims as it's been stated then you begin to see the point."

No, I don't. Because that would necessitate someone sitting down with the victime, explaining the likely outcome and allowing them to make their own decision. Where a man decides what is best for a woman and says "Don't bother, it's not worth it" it sends out a whole load of incredibly negative messages which I really don't think the police have the right to give out. They should be there doing their best and trying to get convictions for crimes whether the likelihood of a conviction is good or not.

[unclesatan.livejournal.com]

Not really as bluekieran says below it happens in every crime and in the case of crimes with a sexual content the investigation can be particularly invasive.

I was putting forward the view above not necessarily as being right it was another viewpoint to the belief that the police are recluctant to proceed because theey dont care about the victim, however misguided you may feel that it is.

[purplegril.livejournal.com]

I referred to a very specific sentence on purpose. Nobody has a right to do a cost/benefit analysis FOR someone else and tell them their opinion. They should be setting out the facts, telling them clearly that their opinion is just opinion, giving them all the options and really being supportive. Especially as to go ahead with a case like that, you need support, so it's even harder to get a conviction when the victim doesn't feel like they can get the police to do any work, never mind actually getting the damn thing to court and getting a conviction.

I was in someone's house when a rape happened there two years ago. I've not even been interviewed. The treatment cases like this get is so fucking appalling, and the police's attitude, when it's like that above, makes it worse.

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

good article - although I'm not 100% convinced on some of the sex industry stuff - if completely depressing.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I often get alarm bells around the sex industry too - I don't necessarily think that women working in the sex industry are necessarily exploited or anti-feminism.

But yes, depressing.