For everyone
Yet another FEMINISM IS FOR EVERYONE burble, this time from The Irish Examiner.
When I discuss feminism with my students, I stress that feminism is for everyone. It is a social and political ideology intended for all human beings. Feminism is about equality, regardless of gender, sexuality, race, or creed.
No, it is not. Of course it’s not. Look at the “fem” part. Take as long as you need.
In a way, all rights struggles and equality struggles are about everyone. The core ideas of equality, fairness, rights, justice are for and about everyone. Human rights benefit all humans, yes. But the reality is that rights and equality struggles are struggles: they have to be struggles because we don’t in fact have perfect human rights and freedom and justice. Many categories of people have to struggle harder for their share. Those categories of people get to carry out that struggle, without being told that their struggle is for everyone.
I go on to explain that this fight for equality is blighted by male violence. I explain that male violence is also a problem for men, who are attacked by other violent men. But more so for women.
But more so for women plus male violence toward men isn’t a feminist issue and isn’t a problem women are required to solve. But Jennifer Horgan thinks it is, because otherwise the men won’t listen. She says we must raise our boys to be allies.
There is a brand of feminism now, stuck on an anti-trans argument, that seeks to destroy this alliance, thereby returning us to an unhelpful and overly simplistic ‘us versus them’ gender-focused struggle.
Yes, sure, it’s frightfully simplistic, but it’s also frightfully simplistic when men beat up women or rape women or refuse to promote women or take over women’s spaces.
Hayley Freeman wrote in the Sunday Times last week that feminism is becoming a dirty word.
Great job. She means Hadley Freeman, not Hayley. Top quality feministing here.
Why? Well, according to Freeman, it is becoming a dirty word because it is no longer OK for biologically born women to criticise trans women (born male) accessing female-only spaces. She claims that LGBTQ+ rights are trumping women’s rights.
Liar. She does no such thing. She doesn’t lump trans people in with LGB people.
She goes on for several more paragraphs, dismissing concerns about men in women’s prisons with the breezy confidence of the safe and comfortable, and telling us more about “dirty feminism.” It’s grotesque.
It would be interesting to see what her reaction would be if someone were to say racial struggles are for everyone. We could probably find out easily, since people have been saying that in the form of #alllivesmatter.
People of color are allowed to have their battle be for their rights. Feminists are allowed to make their battles for women’s rights. LGB are allowed to have a battle for their rights. None of us should be required to include white people, men, or trans people.
I do wonder why they haven’t put the same spin on other civil rights movements. BLM is for everyone, that’s why it rebranded as ALM…Oh wait, it didn’t, in fact saying ALM became a dog whistle that you were trying to undermine BLM by broadening the topic so much that you lost sight of the point about the unequal treatment of African Americans at the hands of police officers. I suppose you could say that it’s already happened to the LGB community getting lumped in and subsumed by the TQ+++ crowd to the point where talking about same sex attraction is a transphobic dog whistle.
How do smart people get so stupid? [By that I mean that I think the woman who wrote that article is smart but her article is stupid.]
Of course, FEMINISM IS FOR EVERYONE.
How did you not see the suffragettes were fighting for the rights of men to vote? That Andrea Dwarkin’s feminist critiques of porn were to ensure more men were made aware of porn, and Germaine Greer’s “The Female Eunuch” was a call to arms to Incels?