[JWLZG]

Quote:

18 August 2014, 10.12am AEST
Actually, women, you do need feminism

AUTHOR


Michelle Smith
Research Fellow, Centre for Memory, Imagination and Invention at Deakin University
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

Michelle Smith has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Deakin University
Provides funding as a Member of The Conversation.
deakin.edu.au

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There’s a thriving community of Women against Feminism – but how do their claims match up to the reality of women’s lives? Screenshot from womanagainstfeminism.tumblr.com
Australian university campuses last week marked Bluestocking Week, a celebration that remembers the first women who entered English universities in the late 19th century.

Women in lecture halls were pioneering. Yet these trailblazers couldn’t sit exams or expect to graduate with an actual degree. Newnham College for women at Cambridge University was established in 1871, but it was not until 1948 that women could hold a full Cambridge degree.

This is merely one area of discrimination that restricted what women could do with their lives. The reality of how little choice women had only a century ago is nevertheless absent in contemporary manifestations of anti-feminism, such as “Women Against Feminism”.

The phenomenon began on Tumblr, with women taking photographs of themselves holding signs that explain their reasons for opposing feminism. The site has been online since July 2013, but it’s only in the last month that it’s really started to generate heat online. Women’s statements range from claims that men are now the true victims of discrimination, to homophobic categorisations of feminists as “man-haters” and “lesbians”.

Any social justice movement with a long history and diverse adherents will exhibit contradictions and problematic ideas. However, Women Against Feminism is not only ahistorical, but fundamentally misreads the nature of feminism and the current status of women.

Let’s work through some of the common assumptions made in these anti-feminist declarations.

(1) “Men and women already have equal rights where I live.”

It is indeed true that in many Western nations women enjoy formal equality, but substantive equality remains elusive. Any of these rights also has the potential to be revoked at any time. Abortion rights, in particular, are continually challenged and overturned. We cannot simply say that feminism has done its work and that women will enjoy the rights and freedoms it has helped to achieve indefinitely.

Also, people regularly travel and migrate. Things might be better “where you live”, but what if you want to go somewhere where women aren’t allowed to drive, gain an education, or report a rape?

(2) “I was raised to be an independent woman not a victim of anything.”

Prior to feminist activism, it would have been impossible for most women to be “independent”, regardless of their parents' intentions. At various points in history, women couldn’t inherit property, work outside the home, learn to read, or even walk down the street unaccompanied. The efforts of generations of feminists helped to give women a say in government, the right to be educated, and social and sexual freedoms.

An independent woman would want to pursue any path in life that she wishes. She’s the kind of woman who would speak up when informed that her job has been made redundant because she’s pregnant, or who would get angry when told that she can’t walk home alone because otherwise she’d be inviting sexual assault. Independence and refusal to be a victim are feminist qualities.

(3) “I am an abomination to feminists” (because I am a stay-at-home mother).

Many Women Against Feminism believe that feminism opposes women’s work at home and denigrates those who don’t pursue careers. Historically, most women had no choice but to remain within the home and care for their children. Until as late as 1966, Australian women had to resign from the public service as soon as they married.

Feminism has always sought rights for women as mothers. Early Australian feminists, for example, campaigned for the government to provide an income to all mothers to recognise that parenting was the equivalent of a job and that it benefited the country. Feminism did challenge the expectation that women have no vocation of her own and be solely focused on cleaning and cooking for her family. This does not mean that feminism derides women who choose to focus on raising children and maintain a traditional division of labour. Though feminists would argue that the reverse situation, in which a male partner cares for the home and children, should be equally possible.

(4) “Men have rights too.”

As the vast majority of the world’s government and business leaders and holders of its wealth, it’s bizarre to suggest that men now lack social and political power. Women Against Feminism, however, often propose that men’s rights have been eroded because they usually have less access to their children after separation or divorce.

The continuing perception in courts and the general community that women are better suited to raise children, while men are better equipped to be in the workforce, is not a “right” that women enjoy. In dozens of ways, this belief restricts and hampers women’s rights and capacity to earn. The one drawback that affects men is the only one that anti-feminists mention.

(5) “I don’t need feminism because…”

It is impossible to extricate yourself from collective rights relating to gender, race, or sexuality. Unless you wish to withdraw from society, you will both benefit and suffer from political and social changes to what women can and cannot do. You may not want to need feminism, but you will benefit from its continued work toward maintaining basic rights and eliminating the kinds of sexism that cannot be legislated against regardless. It’s very easy for Women Against Feminism to declare that they don’t need feminism using the voice and powers that feminism made possible and which it continues to fight for.

https://theconversation.com/actually-wom...nism-30415

The comments are notable in that the 'Mens' Rights Movement' rated a number of mentions. I'm not surprised that the whole 'Women Against Feminism' movement promptly met resistance like this. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction indeed.

[Ziltoid]

A parasitic soft science harridan chasing tenure vs. vapid tumblr attention whores...
Gee, which of these two deeply informed groups of people should I listen to?!

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

Her arguments are not just empty and misinformed, but she is also missing the target. No one here or anywhere is bashing the early 20th century feminism. We just have a problem with the monster it has turned into. It's like me telling people not to bash corrupt Croatian politicians because the Austro-Hungarian Empire has done a lot of good things for Croatia.

[Deluge]

(08-19-2014 01:47 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

No one here or anywhere is bashing the early 20th century feminism.

Not true at all. A lot of members oppose women's suffrage for example (which was feminists main goal at the time), including Roosh I believe.

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

Yes, but only on the principle of "slippery slope"/"we have seen where it leads". Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[Deluge]

(08-19-2014 03:22 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

Yes, but only on the principle of "slippery slope"/"we have seen where it leads". Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Same difference. That is exactly why it was opposed in the first place.

"The women's suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun." - Winston Churchill

[2Wycked]

Let's correct more than a few things the OP author gets wrong - at least from a common law perspective.

1. Working outside the home. This is argument advanced by dipshits. America, at least when "first-wave feminism" was in its stage, was agrarian. How the fuck can a woman work outside the home when she has a ton of work to do on the farm she and her husband operate? Feminists never, ever come from a farmer's household because a woman born into that world would know how much work is needed from women to maintain that household. It isn't a fucking privilege or "empowering" to walk a field or milk a cow: it's necessary to exist.

Also, poor women have always worked in the fiscal sense, in order to help pay their family's bills. Once again, class issues plague feminist analysis. A poor woman who works overtime at her local grocery store isn't doing it because it's "like so empowering and challenging the patriarchy and shit" - she's doing it to pay her rent or cover medical expenses for her son's cancer treatment.

2. Issues of basic legal rights. OP author doesn't know shit about common law. When did women not have the right to own property? She doesn't know about the legal concept of coverture: women's right to form legal contracts and own property extinguish when she marries. She clearly didn't go to law school, because it becomes obvious quickly that many, many important cases that shaped property law involved widows. Clearly, they regained the right to own property when their husband died. So did their ability to form binding contracts, etc.

3. Voting rights. Feminists love to pretend that it was feminists that fought for voting rights for women. By the time the 19th Amendment was passed, women in most -- if not all states -- had close to full voting rights. I am not aware of any state that disallowed women to vote for their state representatives, much less their local mayors or aldermen. I do know that it did vary greatly, so a woman might have been able to vote for her governor in one state and not in the next, but it was not a flood of female voters that suddenly got shit out by the 19th Amendment. I doubt that many framers of these state constitutions ever heard of a feminist.

4. Seeds of narcissism. I had to mention it, right?

First-wave feminism was the first expression of social discontent of women as a class. First-wave feminism didn't get any real, substantive legs until after the Civil War and the North installed themselves as the reformers of the South. The reason that women didn't bitch or whine so much before first-wave feminism was because they had loving relations with their husbands and children and the work needed to sustain life crowded out any bitching that must necessarily come from women who neither have love in their life nor directly rely on their labor to exist (i.e. raising vegetables so they can eat versus making a wage to buy the same vegetables at the supermarket).

Capitalists -- and government, by extension -- were not completely satisfied with controlling access to capital - they also wanted to control the socialization of reproduction. In other words, they wanted the responsibility of rearing children not to fall to the family, but to surrogate parents in private industry or to the state.

Feminism played right into this hand. Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- one of the most famous first-wave feminists -- famously beat into her children's heads that she was a "voluntary" mother. Stanton wanted feminism to give up women's one -- and only true power -- and hand it to the state in exchange for "careers," in which they can spend their earnings on capitalist created wants and desires.

This desire is born from narcissism and results in narcissism in the children who grow into adults. Nothing -- nothing at all -- can replace the unconditional love parents provide a child that allows said child to transcend the childish and infantile muck of youth and grow into a mature adult.

But, then again, mature women don't waste their time at a dead-end job at a corporation so they can buy their kid a toy their kid doesn't need.

[Impulse]

(08-19-2014 03:26 AM)Deluge Wrote:  

Same difference. That is exactly why it was opposed in the first place.

"The women's suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun." - Winston Churchill

God damn did Winston Churchill have some amazing foresight..

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

(08-19-2014 03:26 AM)Deluge Wrote:  

(08-19-2014 03:22 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

Yes, but only on the principle of "slippery slope"/"we have seen where it leads". Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Same difference. That is exactly why it was opposed in the first place.

"The women's suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun." - Winston Churchill

It's not "same". Both Churchill and many others (me included) are implying that we would be completely fine with feminism and equality if women behaved themselves and didn't use it as a weapon with which to enslave and destroy others. And this isn't just an empty parole: those same men went ahead and did it during the 20th century - they gave women an honest chance to prove their reservations wrong. It's impossible to claim that they are inherently opposed to early feminism.

If you need to blame someone, blame women for confirming all of Churchill's fears.

[Ocelot]

(08-19-2014 01:47 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

No one here or anywhere is bashing the early 20th century feminism.

That's not true. I wish more people would actually go and read the early feminist literature, instead of just regurgitating what everyone else is saying ("feminism used to be good, it's just been twisted!"). The truth is that feminism hasn't really changed since the declaration of sentiments. It was always an ideology based on historical revisionism and hysteria, propagated by upper class white women.

The only difference today is the calibre of degenerate fronting the movement.

[JWLZG]

(08-20-2014 03:57 AM)Ocelot Wrote:  

(08-19-2014 01:47 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

No one here or anywhere is bashing the early 20th century feminism.

That's not true. I wish more people would actually go and read the early feminist literature, instead of just regurgitating what everyone else is saying ("feminism used to be good, it's just been twisted!"). The truth is that feminism hasn't really changed since the declaration of sentiments. It was always an ideology based on historical revisionism and hysteria, propagated by upper class white women.

The only difference today is the calibre of degenerate fronting the movement.

Interesting, your point about feminism being a vehicle of the intellectual upper class. If I'm not wrong, women enjoyed much the same chances as men in traditional aristocratic pursuits -- the leisure activities, the sports and arts -- bar tertiary education, which took as late as the first half of last century to begin admitting women en masse.

Rather, feminism was (still is?) touted as a means of improving the lot of the working and middle classes, the ability and opportunity to work as a means of necessity (in cases of widows or fathers unable to work due to various causes), the equal recognition of women putting in the same amount of hard work as her male counterpart.
Of course feminism took on a far more organic course during the World Wars with women flooding into roles in the home front previously occupied by men -- including as resistance combatants in occupied territories.

And for all of Western feminism's noises, what about the massive global misdistribution of that movement? One of the article's commenters points out that Women in the West enjoy freedoms from gender demands that their gender in sub-Saharan Africa, South and West Asia and much of Russia can only dream of. It's ironic that with the latter, there was once a major feminist movement -- Soviet women served as front-line combatants in WW2 in significant numbers.

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

(08-20-2014 03:57 AM)Ocelot Wrote:  

(08-19-2014 01:47 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

No one here or anywhere is bashing the early 20th century feminism.

That's not true. I wish more people would actually go and read the early feminist literature, instead of just regurgitating what everyone else is saying ("feminism used to be good, it's just been twisted!"). The truth is that feminism hasn't really changed since the declaration of sentiments. It was always an ideology based on historical revisionism and hysteria, propagated by upper class white women.

The only difference today is the calibre of degenerate fronting the movement.

I'm not saying feminism "used to be good". I'm just saying I'm indifferent to it. If women want to do or not do something, let them. I only have a problem with shielding them from consequences of that freedom, which you'll admit is a fairly recent development.

[joseph80]

After reading this excellent article I was reminded of people who oppose workplace unions - they are happy to accept improved conditions and pay rises, but somehow believe such benefits are obtained individually at the behest of those in power.