There’s an oldish joke which goes something a little like this.
Do women become feminists because they’re ugly, or do they become ugly because they’re feminists?
This is just one of the many hysterical ‘funnies’ told about women who demonstrate any kind of belief in our own fundamental right to liberation. When you live in a world where your primary value is bestowed based on how willing you are to appease the notion of ‘femininity’, you’re also expected to maintain a sort of silent vacancy about the multitude of microaggressions and humiliations that go along with that. So it is that feminists – us outspoken banshees who stalk the streets in terrifying gangs with our ludicrous calls for ‘equality’ – are ritually and aggressively dismissed as aberrations of the feminine code. Opponents attempt to strip feminists of our womanhood (which is interchangeable with our humanity) by rendering us sexless, repulsive, foul. Because if a woman cannot be endorsed favourably by the male gaze as something desirable, what’s the point of her at all?
Still, while it’s up to every woman to identify as she sees fit I do question the motivations of those who so overtly declare themselves to be anti-feminist. I’d say this is because they almost certainly recognise the differences and particular ways that women can behave in order to gain very limited power and approval from men, even if they aren’t quite aware of just how much that can be traced back to socialisation.
For me, feminism isn’t just about gender equality as an end goal, because that implies that the structures we live under currently are the correct ones and the only problem with them is that women do not experience equity beneath them. I disagree. I am in favour of radically reimagining what our societies should look like, including the ways in which masculine ideas of power and leadership are absorbed as natural and normal. Of course, gender equality is important, but for me feminism is also about liberating women from the expectation that we behave in a certain kind of way in order to be taken seriously or given any kind of power at all, however nominal it might be.
Sure, feminists have to deal with asinine attacks from angry, threatened men whose go-to response is always to dehumanise and degrade us, but they aren’t the only people standing in our way. I might frequently be called fat, ugly, angry, sexless, slutty (figure that double standard out!) and just pissed off because other women are prettier than me, but I expect to be called all these things. What I cannot tolerate are the men who try to claim some kind of feminist allegiance (and consider themselves heroes for doing so) while lecturing women on how we’re setting back the fight for gender equality. Give me a dollar for every man who begins a sentence with ‘As someone who’s always been in favour of women’s rights . . .’ and ends it with ‘. . . you are doing more harm for women than good’ and I will use the proceeds to buy a very expensive yacht on which I can live while sailing the vast ocean of male tears that stretches on for eternity.
For a start, no feminist I know gives one iota of a fuck about the problems any man has with how we conduct our own movement. And for another thing, fuck off. I have encountered so many boring, faux feminist men who do nothing but criticise the feminists who make them feel uncomfortable, and it’s becoming infinitely clear to me what their real problem is: they’re too fond of congratulating themselves for being a Super Right-On Guy and have enjoyed too much adulation from grateful feminists in the past. Faced with this new reality of feminist activism and anger, they feel uncomfortable and targeted. They don’t like it. It’s angry. It makes them feel picked on. All of a sudden, they can’t rely on being rewarded just for turning up. And instead of sitting down for a moment and thinking about what that means, most of them lash out and use the very same paternalistic methods they claim to hate to chide women for being troublemakers and children.
It doesn’t matter which way you slice it or how much one advocates for ‘gender equality’ – women are always expected to be nice. And unless a man has truly had to come to terms with the ways he benefits from privilege and has been willing to do the work of engaging with that, no amount of pretensions to feminism will change the fact he still feels ever so slightly more comfortable when a woman stays quiet and listens to what he has to say.
How does this tie into Women Against Feminism? Because it all comes back to the same thing – women capitulating to the system in order to be given some notion of power within it. Rather than run the risk of pissing off the patriarchy and dealing with all the whiny, angry and hostile fallout of that, it’s easier for them to position themselves as foot soldiers and wardens. Women are of course free to disagree wildly over the politics of feminism and its aims, but there’s nothing more depressing than watching them join forces with men to slut shame other women, ridicule their bodies or, as I once saw happen in the misogynist shitshow of a Facebook events page, enthusiastically laugh along at a joke that implies the most intelligent part of a woman is the semen she spits out when a man ejaculates in her mouth. Look at me, boys! I’ll laugh hardest and loudest when you make degrading jokes about women because I’m super chill about that stuff! Love me!
But amidst all the frustration and head-desking over the hatred these women display for their own kind, I’ve realised there are three key things that encourage women to set themselves against a movement invested in their liberation and equality. Understanding these might just be the key to figuring out how to work together.
1. RETRIBUTION
The mechanics of internalised misogyny are complicated, but they’re largely driven by fear of retribution. Feminism is perceived as a threat by some people, and the only recourse they have is to threaten it right back. For the girls and women who experience these threats on an ongoing basis, it’s understandable that they’d want to minimise exposure to them.
Look at me, for example. I am a reasonably prominent feminist. This means I daily receive messages calling me fat, bitter, ugly, unrapeable (yes, that happens), angry, stupid, opportunistic and – in a bizarre stretch of logic – hypocritical for being paid to write about women’s rights. I don’t get these messages because there’s something special about me that incites the rage of men who would otherwise never dream of calling a woman a ‘pig-faced slut who’s just angry that attractive white men don’t want her’ (thanks, anonymous man on Twitter!). I get these messages because I’m a feminist, I talk about feminism publicly in a way that doesn’t position men and their feelings front and centre, and I’m unapologetic about that.
So of course other women see the way feminists like me are responded to and think twice about joining our ranks. Who would willingly sign up to being called a pig-faced slut every day?
Sometimes, anti-feminism isn’t about women being unable to ‘think for themselves’, as the argument goes. It’s about an unconscious battle for self-preservation. Being a feminist isn’t easy – but being an outspoken one can be even more difficult.
2. NEGOTIATION
That urge for self-preservation is very strong, and we see how it manifests as negotiation all the time. Consider the women who join in victim-blaming narratives, reasoning that if V hadn’t done X then Y wouldn’t have happened. That’s just ‘common sense’, and therefore women who willingly engage in X are ‘asking for it’ and can’t be surprised when Y happens. You know, like those danger-tempting women who walk down the street at night-time in come hither skirts as if they have some kind of wacky right to not be raped. I’m not saying she deserved it . . . but *I* would never be that stupid.
This impulse to negotiate is atrocious. It’s the worst and most ignorant kind of victim blaming, and it only contributes to the narrative of men’s violence against women as something shadowy and external – a reality that women are at risk of creating through provocation and therefore responsible for avoiding. But while women who victim blame are infuriating people acting in repugnant ways, it’s also true that many women consent to the limiting of their behaviour as a means of negotiating their own safety. The fact that none of this works is by the by. It is too easy fo
r them to believe that blaming other women for the violence they experience will offer them some kind of protection. They can’t talk about why this might not be true because it makes them a target for male rage and indignation, so instead they consent to participating in the removal of responsibility from male perpetrators in order to carve out a small slice of symbolic power within those structures.
But negotiation is not power. It’s compromise, and it never works in women’s favour.
3. WILFUL, SELFISH IGNORANCE
Feminism argues that women are people too, and all people with privilege are susceptible to the kind of selfishness that keeps them indifferent to the struggles of others. Or, to put that another way, some women are just mean-spirited and awful and they don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves. These are the women who think that feminism is meaningless because they don’t personally have any problems and claim never to have experienced any form of sexism. (LOL, whatever, love. Give me some of the pills you’re taking, because I could do with a nice trip to fantasy land.)
If you’re not forcing yourself to routinely interrogate the benefits you enjoy in society, it’s all too easy to tell yourself that other people are inventing their disadvantages. So people born into financial independence tell themselves that poor people need to work harder; people born into the relative utopia of Australia argue that refugees fleeing war-torn countries are ‘jumping the queue’; and some women favoured by the world’s preference for compliant, conservative ‘traditionalists’ understand and enjoy the benefit they think they get from being an ardent supporter of the status quo. Who cares about the grievances of angry, bitter women when your own situation is relatively comfortable?
But part of feminism’s core mission statement (at least as I see it) is to advocate for a world in which all women, not just some, are given equal opportunities and respect. That some women don’t yet understand this is a shame, but they may one day come to this realisation. That some women do but simply don’t care is an outrage.
What does all this mean for the Women Against Feminism ‘movement’? I expect it will flare briefly and then disappear into irrelevancy. Firstly, it boasts a fundamental misunderstanding of feminism from the outset, and seems instead designed to support the conservative ideals that harm women rather than help them. But secondly, it’s presenting absolutely nothing new. This is just another caterwaul from the backlash that’s always attempted to push back against feminism’s success. As frustrating as this backlash might be, it’s also never managed to do any kind of long-term harm to feminism. It’s little more than a high-pitched tantrum, a tedious annoyance far more than a serious threat. And if a woman wants to take pride in being anti-feminist, the only kind of emotional energy I can bother expending on her is pity. Whatever power she thinks she’s gaining by being a cheerleader for the patriarchy is totally illusory because it will always be connected to men’s approval. Even within the Women Against Feminism movement, the women themselves are secondary leaders to the men who congratulate them for keeping order in the house of Status Quo. What else can we do but feel sad for them and hope that one day they see the light?
The good news is that, unlike these wannabe Stepford Wives, feminists don’t need the approval of men to justify our existence. Whatever backlash they send our way will be met with resistance ten times harder, smarter and more determined. We’ll never give up fighting for all women to be treated with dignity and liberated from patriarchal oppression.
Even the ones who don’t believe it exists.
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9 –
MAN-HATER
In the fifteen or so years that I’ve been actively feministing, I’ve never tired of being asked whether or not I hate men. When I say I’ve never tired of it, I am of course lying. If I could summarise my experience of the anti-feminist backlash into one tedious, repetitive interaction, it would be thus: ‘Do you hate men? Wait, let me rephrase that. Why do you hate men?’
Although my care factor for whether or not men think I hate them hovers somewhere just below zero – and I will teach you how to adjust your scale similarly – the blatant lack of self-awareness on display when this question is asked (and asked and asked and asked, repeatedly, on and on into infinity) still manages to astonish me. Here’s a sample of some of the things that have been said to me by men distressed by the thought that feminism might not be a political movement that advocates for gender equality, but just a club for ugly chicks to hate on blokes:
Misandrist. Man-hater. Feminazi boner killer. Joyless harpy, jealous of the prettier girls. Dumb fat cow. Ugly femmo. Sour-faced wrinkled bitch who’s only angry about rape because no one would ever rape her. Wants to kill all men, but only because no man would ever touch her. Hope you like living alone, bitch, because no one’s every going to want to put up with an ugly, angry cunt like you. Lose some weight, you fat heifer. Clemmy’s growing a moustache, she must be transitioning. She’s been drinking so many men’s tears she’s turning into one. Did the doctor build that vagina for you, bitch? That bitch is as ugly as a dead dog on the side of the road. I bet no one’s even pierced your virgin smelly arsehole until you cried, you ugly cunt. Fix your teeth, fix your face, go on a diet, get over your fucking victim complex, stop being such an angry, irrational cunt all the time. Are you a sociopath? You have major mental health issues. You’re a sick, twisted individual. You bathe in men’s tears? Do you bathe in the tears of Tom Meagher? You must have loved the Paris bombings – think of all those murdered boys and men whose tears you can bathe in now. You’re a cunt. I hope you get raped by someone with AIDS. I hope you get raped by a pack of Muslims. Fuck you, you fucking man-hating dyke.
Do feminists hate men? When you consider the level of hostility women are subjected to just for standing up for ourselves, surely the better query is why do so many men seem to hate women so fiercely, so aggressively, so violently and so passionately?
As pertinent as this question might be, it’s rarely asked in response to the knee-jerk paranoia around feminism and what it supposedly means. Instead, feminists and non-feminists (or, as I call them, dickwads) alike funnel endless reams of energy into debating the utterly pointless question of whether or not feminists are required by law to hate all men, as if answering this will reveal the secret key to unlocking real gender equality. In actual fact, this boring, trivial fixation is nothing more than an effective means of constantly diverting any attention away from feminism’s success (potential or actual) and directing it towards feeding society’s obsession with placating men at all times. That misogynists (both the out and proud ones and the ones still hiding in the closet) are able to effortlessly wave away the comprehensive evidence feminists have for women’s oppression in the world is a feat in and of itself. That they manage to do it while also elevating themselves and the violation of their feelings as a more legitimate and unconscionable form of oppression is nothing short of remarkable.
Oh, you think that domestic violence is a terrible scourge, do you? You think it’s an outrage that almost two women in this country are murdered weekly by aggrieved partners or ex-partners, and that the all-too-common response to this is, ‘Well, why didn’t she leave?’ instead of ‘Why did he kill her?’ You think it’s astonishing how few people know that the most dangerous time for a woman in a situation of intimate partner violence is the period immediately after leaving? You think we should be horrified that one woman is hospitalised every three hours in Australia as a result of gendered violence? You think we should be outraged that Aboriginal women are eighty times more likely to make up these numbers? You think we should shine a light on misogyny and take a united stand against abuse? You think we should do that instead of perpetuating it by insisting that sexist jokes are hilarious, that there’s no link between the way society views women and the way society discards them, that perpetrators of violence couldn’t possibly be influenced by the world they live in, a world that shits on women regularly and valorises the strong, heroic man who sits at t
he top of the food chain? Why don’t you care about the men who are victimised too, you misandrist bitch?
Oh, you think that girls and women shouldn’t be blamed for their own sexual assaults, as if they have the right to exist peacefully in their own skin without having to give up something, like their autonomy or dignity or fucking right to free agency? You think girls should be allowed to wear what they want, as if it’s somehow men’s responsibility to control themselves around women instead of women’s responsibility to fend off temptation? You think women should be allowed to sleep with one man, and this freedom doesn’t mean they have an obligation to sleep with his friends? You think we should consider it cause for major concern that one in five girls over the age of fifteen will experience sexual violence in her lifetime? You think girls of colour shouldn’t be excluded from the protection all adults should afford to all children, that they shouldn’t be described as ‘fast tailed’ or having ‘dressed older’? You think women with intellectual disabilities should expect to be treated with dignity and sexual respect? That we should be utterly disgusted to sit with the knowledge that over 90 percent of them have been subjected to some form of sexual violence? You think that the sexual assault of girls and women shouldn’t be treated as some kind of unfortunate by-product of being alive, but the symptom of a diseased society which views women’s bodies as expendable commodities to be used, thrown away and then blamed for being on display in the first place? You think men should be held to a higher standard than that? Well, answer me this, feminazi: why do you paint all men as rapists?
Fight Like A Girl Page 14