1 in 2 and 77.7p – some numbers

Excellent and important piece on VAWG and the pay gap for disabled women. Must read.

Across the Great (Gender) Divide – distributing criticism widely

Content note: This post discusses rape, rape apologism, Caitlin Moran and Hugo Schwyzer. Also I need to come back and put links in when I have time, this is a quick and dirty post for the moment, I’m afraid.

Now then. I’ve been seeing a lot of articles and discussions about online feminism recently which seem to take one of two viewpoints which on the surface of it seem to be in direct opposition to each other – one is that men within the feminist/gender equality movement are judged more harshly than women when they fuck up (such as Hugo Schwyzer, or, as one of my excellent Twitter friends calls him Hubris Scheisser), and the other viewpoint is that feminists are much, much harsher to women when they fuck up or say oppressive or damaging things (such as Caitlin “I lay awake at night thinking about raping women in high heels” Moran).

So feminists (particularly intersectional feminists) are apparently harsher to men while simultaneously being harsher to women. Unless we’re just happily giving genderqueer/other non-gender conforming people a massive pass on peddling kyriarchical bullshit and raping people, this doesn’t make sense to me. And there’s a reason it doesn’t make sense. It’s total bollocks. I’ve also seen people say that intersectional feminists give journalists or people in the public eye a harder time and that is probably true – because the larger your platform, the more damage your words can do. I see young feminists spout the same kind of “me-me-me” self-centred bullshit which only focuses on improving the lot of women who are already pretty damn privileged (in all the ways the person tweeting is, naturally) all the time, and I don’t criticise them as harshly as I would Moran, Helen Lewis or Suzanne Moore to name just three because they aren’t spouting it in a national newspaper or to thousands of followers, and I don’t know for a fact that they’ve been brought up on this dozens of times before and have failed to take that on board. I think that’s reasonable.

But back to the “harsher to men”/”harsher to women” thing. I think there are elements of truth in both arguments – when a self-proclaimed feminist like Moran says that women wouldn’t get raped if they didn’t walk home alone it does in some ways hurt a lot more than when a recognised right-wing arsehole like former Senator Todd Akin says that it’s not possible to get pregnant from a “legitimate rape”. Yes, what he said is more backwards, and yes, he said it from a position of more power, and as someone who – as a cis male – will never be directly affected by the issues in question and does not live with the fear that he might be made pregnant by his rapist. And all those things make his comments worse, all of those make the anger against them sharper and more pointed. But Moran claims to be on our side. She is a woman, she does live under the yoke of patriarchy and rape culture and she’s a self-professed feminist, who we would expect to be smashing, not encouraging, rape apologist victim-blaming falsehoods. No one really expects an elderly male Republican senator to have a fully developed and nuanced understanding of the issues involved in rape, but I do expect someone who claims to be one of Britain’s leading feminists to at least try to. Moran’s words will influence a generation of young feminists, and that will seriously damage the movement which stands in opposition to and which aims to challenge and smash views like Akin’s, and the power structures which put him in a position to do so much damage with his backward and ridiculous ideas.

Another aspect of this is that I think a lot of people outside of intersectional feminism see it as unnecessarily harsh because they don’t fully understand the importance of calling out, of being called out and of learning and improving one’s views, which is at the core of IF. I don’t just criticise journalists, I also call out my friends, I tell them when I think they’re wrong, and I expect them to do the same of me. That’s why they’re my friends, because we respect each other enough not to just nod and smile whatever the other says, but to be really critical and, yes, sometimes harsh, to help each other grow. I have hurt friends by speaking up, but they’ve always come back to me and said “you were right” or “thank you for challenging that” or “I do now appreciate your points”, and when I’ve been called out and it stings, I’ve done the same. The fact is, pointing out that someone said something oppressive usually only has any point to it if you think they are capable of critical self analysis and a will to do better. I think Caitlin Moran probably is, and that’s why I get so angry when she fails to. In fairness to her, she has now issued an apology of sorts and I hope that she will show she has taken things on board as she says. I hold out much, much less hope for the likes of Akin, but you never know, and if he were to openly admit how wrong he was and start agitating to change laws which prop up rape culture and which restrict bodily autonomy, I would happily accept his personal growth and development and cautiously acknowledge him as part of the greater struggle. (and probably go make some snowmen in hell).

Hugo Schwyzer, on the other hand, has actually admitted to being a rapist and a violent abuser of women. He knows far more about rape than most people, because he has committed it. He has used his expert knowledge, now that he’s supposedly reformed to smash rape culture do all he can to uphold rape culture and blame his victims rather than take any responsibility for his vile actions. We are harsh in our criticism of Hugo Schwyzer because he’s a creepy fucking rapist abuser arsehole who uses feminist spaces to justify his actions. He’s not alone or unique, there are many like him. I was raped by a self-proclaimed “feminist” man, who also raped and sexually assaulted other women, often in feminist or anarchist spaces. Honestly, anyone criticising feminists for speaking out against admitted rapists trying to co-opt and take charge of our spaces is a rape apologist arsehole. Even if Schwyzer were actually reformed and showed remorse for his actions and genuine attempts to use his experience to smash rape culture (which he absolutely has not), he would only be able to do it from within feminist spaces at the invitation of women. He would never get to self-define or try to lead feminist movements on these issues. That is not how you fucking atone for your sins. We are not harsh to Schwyzer because he’s a man, but because he’s a rapist.

Are we harsher to men? To other women? To each other or to outsiders? It’s a complicated question, and I’m not saying that it’s not worth bearing in mind how we call out everyone, how we can best draw people’s attention to the harm their words might do. There definitely is, and it’s certainly something I do think about and take seriously. But I still think the most important thing is that we do call bullshit where we see it, and that we do not stand for septic, damaging, kyriarchical views infecting and tainting our movement. Intersectional feminism is about the constant strive to be better, to do better, to fight oppression of all kinds from anyone – from outside the movement, from inside it, from men, from women, from gender non-conforming people, from strangers, from our friends, from our enemies, from ourselves. If criticism is valid, the fact it’s in an unnecessarily harsh form doesn’t actually change that. And really, if someone criticises you and all you focus on is their tone or how harsh they were, and you don’t unpack the criticism and at least wonder if they might have a point, you’ll never be able to do any of that.