We are conditioned to put the needs of others before ourselves
This from rubyfruitz at Sisterhood is Powerful a year ago is of interest:
It doesn’t matter what kind of politics a feminist has, unless she is fully accommodating to men (in the shape of anti-feminist, queer gobbledygook and other woman-haters) she will be attacked. Attempts will be made to silence her through a systematic campaign of hatred and intimidation.
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There has been a recent bout of attempts to stop individual feminists from speaking at events. The chosen method is to call someone ‘phobic’. You can put any word you want in front of it. It doesn’t have to be a real word, you can just make it up. In circulation, we currently have: biphobic, transphobic, whorephobic, lesbians who are somehow ‘homophobic’ (will leave you to work that one out, I can’t) etc.
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Deborah Cameron does a thorough, good, job of explaining that the constant use of something-phobia is meaningless because it implies oppression is driven by a psychological problem; a condition which gives rise to hatred. Although sometimes oppression is about hatred, it is always about power. A radical feminist analysis always involves where the power lies and why it is being used.
The trouble with libertarian feminist analysis is that it’s clueless about power and coercion.
Structural oppression, as it relates to sexuality, is about the way compulsory heterosexuality is imposed on women, from birth. The purpose is to enforce male domination. It’s nothing to do with someone’s feelings, about bisexual jokes or assumptions made about bisexual people. Any other analysis is bullshit individualism and has a libertarian agenda. That has no part to play in feminism – feminism is about the liberation of women, as a caste. It’s not humanism, it’s not about all other oppressions. It’s an unrelenting fight for women’s freedom.
That’s not to say that, as feminist activists, we should not take into account other oppressions; we may share other oppressions and we may be fighting other injustices alongside our feminism. However, losing focus on the liberation of women within feminism leads to humanist murkiness where women’s concerns, as always, is everyone else but our own caste.
That. It amazes me more every day the way women who consider themselves feminists are falling all over themselves to attack feminism, along with everyone else who is attacking feminism. It amazes me more every day the way women who consider themselves feminists are buying into claims that feminist women are “talking over” trans people, and that feminist women have all the privilege relative to trans people. The masochism and self-silencing of it is stunning to watch.
We are conditioned to put the needs of others before ourselves. Queer ‘phobic’ smoke-screens play right into that. Women, especially ‘feminists’ who have liberal notions of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ for everyone, end up fighting for the wrong team and against their own liberation. The reason liberal feminists lose focus is because they don’t recognise the importance of power in a political context. Power is more than the power of one individual. Power is about which group of people (men as a caste) control what social, financial and other resources and why. I really don’t know why we have to keep repeating this to brainwashed women on the left. But we do.
Maybe it’s the threats.
Never has this been more obvious than the recent spat of ‘feminist’ university societies targeting individual feminists. They have worked with male supremacists (whether visibly and consciously so or not) to silence both long-standing and newly emerging feminists. Having a critique, or, even better, a political analysis about why women’s liberation leads to gender abolition, is enough to get labelled one phobia or another. The mere use of the word ‘phobia’ gets ‘feminists’, and their anti-feminist allies, worked up into a frenzy and demand no-platforming of women who have something to say about male violence. It doesn’t even make logical sense half the time.
It’s surely the witch hunts of centuries past, all over again. The lack of analysis is very telling. Julie Bindel was simply called ‘vile’ by the NUS. Very mature. Over and over students admitted they had not read her work but something-something-‘phobia’. Caroline Criado-Perez has recently received the vague accusation of being a ‘damaging and exclusionary figure’ followed by an unsubstantiated but emotive ‘we urge you to distance yourself’.
And if you don’t? We will try very hard to destroy you.
Am I right to see a hint of a threat there? – ‘distance yourself, single-out and ostracise this individual or we will cause trouble’. It’s a threat feminists are beginning to get used to. It comes from MPAs (Male Privileged Agitators) and queer folk alike.
And from people who consider themselves feminists – don’t forget that part.
The mission to train feminists into being submissive, obedient, silent women goes like this: Don’t ever allow yourself to be called ‘phobic’ or else bad things will happen to you. Not to women. To you, personally. You will suffer and be punished if you express radical politics. When you’re challenging, for example, the billion dollar sex industry, you may be called ‘whorephobic’ (sic) and accused of hating prostituted women. And, if that happens, it’s not just a word with ‘phobia’ at the end, it has the power to set a stream of hatred and no-platforming your way.
And what does that do? Why, it silences feminists. Own goal!
Our ‘choices’ are limited. We keep quiet, we go anonymous and hope we’re not doxxed (by anti-feminists or ‘feminists’ who knows?) or we speak our mind under our real name knowing that years of intimidation and harassment lie ahead. The pattern of thinking for the Obedient Woman goes something like this: ‘We avoid any kind of ‘phobia’ (sic) at any costs – but see those women over there? They’re bigots and should be silenced. I am, of course, a good ally of yours, how could you think I am not? Hey you over there! BIGOT! TRANSPHOBE!”.
Witch!
I was kicked out of an anarchist group for questioning the logic of the sex industry: I wondered whether it would exist in a matriarchy, so whether it is a product of patriarchy. Apparently this means I hate sex workers.
The heavy use of “*phobic” has always been a little confusing to me. A phobia is an irrational fear, not necessarily a hatred (although obviously the two can happen together). “Homophobia”, at least as how it seems to happen in the USA, seems to be a proper term—because homophobic persons here really do exhibit clear signs of fear, which fuels their hatred.
But “transphobic” ? I’ve seen lots of people getting branded as “transphobes” who actually have expressed support for trans people and issues. I’m probably going to get branded as a transphobe just for making that observation.
Emily – Oh the irony, anarchists insisting on conformity and rule following. I hope you pointed out they were only playing at being anarchists.
Mr FP – I suspect it’s too late already. Merely by having defended (or accepted) Ophelia’s stance and having followed her here we’ve been boxed and ribboned with that label already.
You didn’t quote this part of it, so I will:
For real.
It seems to me that there are two things going on here:
The first is an attempt to merge a neo-liberal agenda with feminism. For instance, if you think that “free markets” are always and everywhere the ideal solution to everything then it makes sense to re-label prostitution as “sex work” and the whole sorry racket that goes along with it as an “industry.”
The second is sectarianism, a protection against being confronted with any arguments against the “official” position on anything. The tactic of using a linguistic label to dismiss any person or opinion that is not “approved” is nothing new. This use of the suffix “phobic” is analogous to the way various Trostkyite groups in the 1960’s used the adjective “bourgeois” and in both cases it is a way of sticking your fingers in your ears, the simplest thing to do if you don’t want to hear what anyone else has to say.
It seems the self-appointed guardians of the “One True Feminism” regard it as their sacred duty to root out heretics, who are always “evil” or “vile” or somesuch, brand them as “phobics” and drive them out of town lest they corrupt the youth.
My feeling is that this too will eventually fade away and pass into history, but my fear is that it will get a lot nastier before that happens.
This bit in particular is very reminiscent to an argument I’m having over at Lousy Canuck – a lesbian porn star is apparently transphobic for refusing to have sex with a trans-woman who happens to have a penis. I guess she is supposed to suppress her dislike of male anatomy to appease the feelings of the trans-woman?
I used to hate -phobias. I remember when I was in college, one time a lesbian came into my dorm room to watch a news report about homophobia (not many of us had TVs in our dorms, but I did). I spoke up and asked, “what do you call it when you’re not at all afraid of ’em?” She got up and left. Good times.
But it doesn’t does it? It doesn’t come from privileged men. The attempts to silence women on campus never come from anti-feminist men. Or am I wrong?Are there examples of that? Perhaps in the US?
I want to be supportive and inclusive, I really do.. but I feel like my experience is being denied and deprioritised.
I’m a 46 year old who grew up with the second wave. I had my issues with second wave feminism – notably what I perceived as a privileging of academic theory over real women’s experiences so I welcomed the third wave as being more focussed on women’s experience. Except, whoops, there goes the baby with the bath water and the third wave ignores *all* structural and political theory to embrace a woolly postmodernist conception of every subjective experience being equally *objectively* valid.
I do sympathise with people suffering gender dysphoria: both the severe and persistent type that causes people to potentially need SRS to live comfortably in their skins, and the milder, usually less persistent type that, in my experience, most young women go through between puberty and their mid-twenties. Y’know the gender pressures that lead so many smart, capable, strong, beautiful teenage girls to starve, mutilate and kill themselves. However we have fought *so long* for a language to discuss our feelings about our bodies and our experiences rooted in those bodies, to use that language on the public stage and have society consider it legitimate that I *cannot* support the policing of language to eliminate any reference to the biological reality of living as a woman. I’m also from the science side rather than the arts and some of the science quoted and used is *ridiculous*. As in “not even wrong”. Women’s reproductive rights are being threatened. Women (as a class) have the ability and obligation to perform reproductive labour. Men do not. I support women having their own spaces to deal with issues that are theirs not transwomens. I support the same for transwomen to deal with their issues. I wouldn’t dream of expecting entry to Southall Black Sisters because I am white and black women have issues to deal with that do not need white women’s input (and some of those issues are white women and white feminism). Why are “cis” women not allowed that right?
These are important issues to hold on to and I am so sorry about your treatment over these issues. I have been becoming increasingly unhappy with FreeThoughtBlogs over the last few years – in a similar way to how I have become unhappy with the purity-policing of the left wing. I’m glad you have this space and I will follow you here. I wish FTB had been able to understand the difference between “disagreeing” and “X-phobia.” But then we would be able to have a dialogue and that would never do.
/rant over!
Pinkeen @ 8 – oh but they do. They come from men who think they are feminists but spend an inordinate proportion of their time attacking feminist women in hopes of silencing them.
@Holms
So much for enthusiastic consent, huh?
May I nominate Steamshovelmama’s comment for a guest post?
Lady Mondegreen @12: Seconded.
Jeezus fucking christ. I know they’re not explicitly arguing this, but when did it become OK to pressure people into having sex they don’t want because of social status and expectations?
I don’t agree with everything said in the article but I can agree with points made by some commenters. I do agree that feminism should represent all women so I support intersectional feminism (although I wish we had a better word for it). What bothers me is when it is not enough to do this. There are so many times when any disagreement is silenced with accusations of transphobia or racism etc. even when the disagreement was on a relatively minor and debatable point. Sometimes even in skeptical circles it matters less what someone is saying compared to who is saying it and which demographic they belong to.
The problem is very similar to the use of “Islamophobia” to silence any criticism of women in Islam even when the existence of severe abuses is not in dispute. I agree with the observation that feminism has often been skewed towards the interests of white, middle-class women but it’s also a brave feminist who dares wade into territory where anti-feminists will use slurs to imply she is racist. When you add to that similar slurs from feminists who agree on almost everything but disagree on one little thing and get hit by similar slurs it’s easy to see why many are more comfortable sticking to what they know.
Sorry that should be women’s treatment in Islam – it’s early.
I spoke up and asked, “what do you call it when you’re not at all afraid of ’em?” She got up and left. Good times.
Perhaps she was leaving you space to look up the etymological fallacy.
women who consider themselves feminists are falling all over themselves to attack feminism
It is important to distinguish between feminists disagreeing with each other about feminist tactics, priorities, films, etc (and agreeing about feminist values), from poeple “attacking feminism”. Of course both things exist, and people will disagree about which is which, and people will be dishonest about which is which etc etc etc. But it is important to be able to talk to each other about our disagreements honorably and have a high bar before we takfir someone as “attacking feminism” per se.