Wednesday 3 June 2009

'the f word', or 'the longest blog in the world'

It's funny how things come in waves. I won't hear about something for months then all in a week, it's the hot topic; spurred on by a news item or social happening, suddenly wherever I go we're all speaking with the same focus.

Since the NRL incident, women and sexual assault have been bashing their way through opinion pieces and coffee tables. But I have noticed a relative silence on the matter among my social circles (in person rather than online), as if we have assumed we hold the same position, we are the same brand of Feminist, we know where we stand. That little tidbit of sensation has all but exited the mainstream now, but it and the subsequent furor have rekindled my thoughts around Women and Feminism.

Things comes in waves and yesterday I could not avoid Feminism and its waves. At work, through my searches of disability blogs I came across an online battle between "radical feminist" (for want of another term) bloggers and sex worker bloggers. The contention was over bags made by and for sex workers at an Australian convention that said "Sheila is not my sister." Outraged, the women who say "prostituted" rather than "worker" had made a "Sheila is my sister" logo for their blogs and had then waxed lyrical over the "attacks" made by these "privileged, non-representative" sex workers against their "hero" Sheila Jeffreys.

Now I don't want to blog on about Sheila because what struck me in these comment wars was not about her views, but about the bloggers' inability to hear each other and their references to the alleged waves of feminism that have flowed in and over society in the past century or so.

Apparently, feminism has had three waves and apparently these waves hold values that are mutually exclusive.

You can be a second-wave anti-porn anti-prostitution warrior OR you can be a third-wave pole-dancing ignorant "mind-dazed" (an actual quote!) slacker.

You can be a rigid, out-dated, radical anti-sex Sheila wannabe OR you can be an enlightened, sex-positive, queer-friendly, sex-work activist.

You can't like porn and be a feminist.
You can't have an opinion on sex work unless you are a sex worker.
If you believe in sex worker rights you are supporting the patriarchy.
If you are anti-porn you are anti-sex.
If you engage in BDSM you are a victim.
If you are a sex worker you have a history of sexual abuse.

I couldn't believe the barrage of simplistic conclusions that absolutely disallowed complexity of thought or varying views or debate. And! When one person's comments were deemed too challenging to the view of the original blog, they started to be blocked!

I commented here and there, tried to point out that perhaps there was a middle ground. Perhaps Sheila-ites should listen to the sex workers they were supposedly saving. Perhaps there was a place for some porn, especially when it is female-made, queer or demonstrates safe sex practices...

Now, I am aware that I am demonstrating a bias towards the sex-positive, sex-worker rights side of this debate and I make no apology, nor do I wish to hide this. As a rule, I adhere with a lot of what this "wave" of feminism has to say.

The problem here is that then I am labelled third-wave, not allowed to use the word "radical" to describe myself and, according to some, am aligned with the "I can wear a short skirt if I want to" camp. Incidentally, I can and do wear a short skirt most weekends, but I digress.

Back to Tuesday:
I left the blogs and headed out for a beverage or two (non-alcoholic: see health plan).

I came across a group of friends sitting, primarily silently while two wonderful women waxed lyrical on what was wrong with the world. With the system. With the patriarchy. With the fact that even in Newtown - our supposed "pocket" - one of them could be assaulted in a park, then asked by the cops afterwards "Is that what you were wearing?"

These women are (perhaps including but not limited to) queer, sex-positive, kinky, radical, angry, intelligent, witty, bright and engaged. They have become my community in the past few years and represent a diverse range of views. And they debate!

When the conversation steered to a t-shirt worn by a man one of them knew, someone spoke up in opposition to the party line that had been drawn in the past minutes. The offending garment had said "Dead Girls Can't Say No." (It says something about my dark sense of humour that I stated that if a girl was wearing that I would think it sassy, confrontational and ironic...) One reaction was that the shirt was woman-hatred, plain and simple. Another advocated that necrophilia was the problem and that the shirt would be just as bad if it said "Dead people..." When will it stop being about women's rights and start being about people's rights?

GAME ON.

Never tell a Feminist that Feminism isn't needed anymore unless you want to see her face go purple. I won't transcribe the rest of the debate, but it was fiery and I imagine continued on after I skipped off to go see a movie (Synechdoche, New York, which incidentally I have a lot to say about - largely on the role played by women!)

But these Tuesday adventures made me sad. It made me sad that my angriest, most clever and passionate Feminist friends are debating these issues with each other but not always being heard in the wider community. Feminists are battling against each other online, but not face to face where a little more compassion may be allowed for and where comments can't be "blocked" with the click of a button. I was sad because I am tired of fighting and fighting and fighting and would rather leave the office than speak out when co-workers gather round a computer to violently denounce pictures of women at an award show as "fat," "ugly," "a tranny," "a grandma" and so on... (but that's another story)

I am not part of a wave. I see Feminism as a continuum with space for the views of everyone (yes, even Sheila Jeffreys though I think much of her work ridiculous). I don't want to fight with other women about Feminism, but I am not going to be silent when people say she was asking for it or think that, in a world where women are overwhelmingly more likely to be the victims of violence, we haven't got a struggle anymore.

It was quite a Tuesday all round, and I haven't even told you about the meat tray I sat beside for an hour.

...

4 comments:

Ali H said...

You're amazing Maeve!

I think I keep my feminism mostly online/restricted to communities I KNOW for sure will be supportive & understand the language I use, because it isn't all that much fun actually to wind up purple-faced at the pub.

Sometimes I get going, though, and sometimes it's worth it. Was good to hear what you had to say, too.

I also love your stuff about the waves. I refuse to pick a wave, because I refuse to believe a whole lot of (to me) ridiculous things, including that supporting the self-determination of my sex worker friends means I can't have a critique of the sex class role of women's bodies in a patriarchy. Actually, it means that I can see the ways that that role plays out more visibly & harmfully in the policing & repression of sex-work than in the practise of it.

Ooh-er. I said patriarchy! That's usually my "this is going nowhere good" moment in pub-based rants.

grubkitsch said...

I love your writings Maeve. It really is sad that arguments/debates/passion-fuelled insights and criticisms, for the most part anyway - are limited to an equally understanding and critical circle. But it's also really promising because - as queer women - there is a connection being made here, which I sometimes find missing in similar circles, with women-centred issues and not just limited (although valid) queer-centred ones.

Jude said...

Excellent points about not dividing the debaters, Maeve. I find, as a guy, that it's easier (having been around unedited men on the topic of the true male attitudes about women)to adopt the approach of Sheila Jeffreys and rad-fem second-wavers as a move toward philosophical balance because the onslaught and weight of 21st century mass media is so heavily slanted toward the sex-pozzie trend men like --- including the continuing eroticization of dominance and submission (with women overwhelmingly being on the bottom of that dynamic in the overarching global culture). Meanwhile, men in charge get globally more and more unhinged (N. Korea's nuke testing, financial markets run amok, smiles and empty promises while polluters have virtually free reign). If I didn't think that guy gender dominance was poised to doom the planet, I'd be all for whatever fun everybody wants to have, but the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the need for a change in sexual politics and prevailing power dynamics.

Don't believe what I say about the longest war; let the images tell their own truth: http://thelongestwar.wordpress.com/

maeve said...

I think the important thing that you mention there Jude is that one needs to change and adapt approach according to setting and those we're talking to. When I am talking to a bunch of guys I am bound to be more hard line in my feminism (well hard line in the sense that you suggest) however among feminist women, I think it dangerous and silencing to not hear alternate opinions and question our assumptions about feminism, women, power, sex etc.

At no point do I question the idea that men in power are harming the earth - in many ways I am a bit of a separatist and have little time for the average straight man! :-) But, that doesn't change the fact that HOW we engage with other women on feminism is important. We cannot stand and declare that 'we know best' about how other women use their bodies and we cannot preach that there is a 'better' way to do feminism - we should question and suggest alternatives if we disagree, but to declare a woman 'mind dazed' or foolish if she chooses to be a sex worker is offensive. People have so many different attitudes to bodies and sexualities that I think it presumptuous and arrogant to claim any one person knows best!

Which brings me to what I believe is a fairly offensive blog you've just written on transmen (on which you disallow comments unless I am mistaken). I think your blog sexist and silencing and (assuming you are not a transman) you are once more claiming to know someone else's body better than them.

Where is your mention of transwomen? If only women were transitioning to masculinity I'd be willing to accept that it was an idolising of the male form but transgender people are not just FTM so maybe that's a clue that this is not male-centric craziness. Third genders have existed in cultures from around the world for centuries, but have mainly been MTF. Now women who identify as men finally have a societal position to claim this publicly and you say it is a travesty. Why are womens' bodies sacred and unchangeable and why aren't women able to feel that they were born with the wrong body if men are?

Across western culture we are seeing a blurring of gender boundaries - mainly in fringe queer communities but also in pop culture. Why is this a bad thing? How can you be on the one hand feminist, but then think that female masculinity (and I suppose male femininity?) is appalling.

I can't speak for everyone but all the butch, femme, BDSM, sex worker, trans and other queers I know are definitely feminists.

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