Is feminism a dirty word? You would think so by how some people respond to the word.
Feminism is not an easy subject to write about. It has so many connotations. So many people have an opinion on it. It brings up images of women burning bras and hating men. Losing the entire point of it: equality.
What I started writing this article I put out a twitter and Facebook plea for comments about feminism. Tamsin Omond came up with a fabulous quote from J.Winterstone on lesbians: ‘they have a confidence about them that doesn’t depend on the male view. that is sexy and it is new.’
Then came the obvious,
Forbes KB: ‘Right after you finished the washing up and the ironing I hope!’ Luckily, I know he is joking.
Darren Errol Clarke did much better: ‘I dislike the word “Feminism”! It conjures up so many wrong images. Everything should be about sharing and equality, but the name doesn’t depict that!
A warrior from the Amazon once said that she was shocked that Western women were so …weak and that they were referred to as “Flowers”! She was upset that she couldn’t “See” the flowers that they were talking about. She said, “Flowers are strong, adapting, versatile and beyond the visual. A flower can be destroyed, yet come back as beautiful as before and more than before. The humans I see before more me represent nothing more than a shadow of their true potential.”
Whilst man has a lot to answer for in history, women have come through and stamped their individuality through out. I think that when women were striving to be better than the men that suppressed them they were irrepressible, but now they have joined in the drunken madness that is today’s civilization. I hope that the mantle isn’t totally buried, as it would be nice to see more women bring true equality to the world and not the fallacy that is the modern world.’ Good points there.
Lynn Burgess: ‘It’s not about pushing a female agenda. It’s about equality.’
Caroline Gold: ‘Look to the working class women and you will see there is still disparity and it’s about more than legislature. We are not a minority. Feminism is just humanism for all. Go girl!
One of the best came from film director Richard Wright: ‘Ultimately its not about pushing a female agenda or pushing a male agenda its about pushing an agenda of tolerance and understanding no matter who it is. It’s about equality across the board not the positive discrimination of one over another, that doesn’t work because it’s still discrimination. The argument should be about how we, together as a society, create a better tomorrow and where we all fit in no matter who we are.’
Amen to that.
The London Underground is never a nice place at rush hour. A few million Londoners trying to get home means stress is high and manners non- existent. Spending a 20 minute journey with your face in some strangers armpit is common. This did not prepare me for being shoved out of the way by a man so he could sit in the last seat however. That’s right: actually pushed out out the way. Not only are manners dead, but so is chivalry.
This got me thinking about equality. I always offer to pay on dates. While discussing this with a male friend he mentioned that he thought women should always pay for themselves, after all, wasn’t that what feminism was all about? What we were fighting for all these years? Well, no. It’s not. We seem to have got the worst of both worlds. No chivalry and no equality either.
I recently read an article by James Delingpole in which he claimed, because times are tough, that only boys should be sent to public school, because his daughter could just marry a rich man. Which was more funny than offensive until I read Mary Dudley’s response that she would be sending her daughter to public school instead…so she could marry a rich man. Apparently Kate Middleton wouldn’t have had a look in if she had not been to Marlborough. Doors to manual indeed. What century is this? How Jane Austen.
We were fighting for equal pay: which we haven’t got. To have any career we want without hitting a glass ceiling. To not be though of as the weaker sex. Not better than men, just equal. With different strengths. This is all low rumbling compared to some countries. Although there is a female Prime Minister in Australia and female president in Finland, in Britain we have 126 female MPs, out of 646 members of British Parliament. Where have all the women gone?
Then there is the other thing that is holding us back: other women. I have lost count of how many times I have had another actress try and sabotage me or overheard a women bitching about me. On a set recently an older actress came up to me and said; ‘You will be just like me one day. You will lose your beauty, you will have nothing left. It all goes.’
Can we really reach our true potential if we are wasting energy stabbing each other in the back? I have an amazing group of female friends now, but it took years to find them.
Then comes all of the depressing statistics. 1 in 4 women have experienced rape or attempted rape, 95% of cases are never reported, 23% of reported cases are ‘no crimed, ‘ or thrown out, by the police. Over 66% of reported cases never make it to court and the conviction rate is a depressing 6.5% for reported cases. It seems rape is the easiest crime to get away with.
In Afghanistan the female soldiers were more afraid of their colleagues than the front line. 30 percent of female US soldiers have been raped, 71% sexually assaulted and 90% sexually harassed. Four out of five cases go unreported. Helen Benedict, author of ‘The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of women serving in Iraq’, believe rapes occur not because the soldiers are sex starved, but because they enjoy humiliating female colleagues. ‘A lot of men think women shouldn’t be in the military and feel threatened. I think a lot of sexual predators sign up because of the power they’ll wield.’ Helen goes on to say that, ‘There is a culture of sexism on the military and women are seen as sex objects.’
Then there is gendercide. 100 Million girls have disappeared. In China and Northern India 120 being born for every 100 girls. Most girls are aborted. In Iraq they stone women to death and have to be covered from head to toe. They cannot even leave the house without their male relatives. Even if they are younger than them.
So am I a feminist? I don’t care about what people think of the word, or of me for using it, as long as women are stoned to death, sold into slavery or aborted just because of their gender, the answer is yes. My name is Catherine Balavage and I am a feminist.
Facts and Figures.
3 Million women and girls are slaves in the sex trade.
An estimates 18,000 women (some as young as 14) are working as sex slaves in the UK.
Women aged 15-44 are more likely to be killed by men than cancer, malaria, car crashes and war combined.
130 million women worldwide have had their genitals mutilated.
In the past 50 years, more women have been killed because of their gender than all the men in all the wars of the 20th century.
And a beautiful quote.
Mao Zedong said “women hold up half the sky.” So don’t let it come crashing down.
About women MPs: About half of the electorate are women. They have the same vote as men, that’s equality. Apparently, women voters favour male candidates and that leads to the House of Commons as we have it. There is nothing unfair about this, it’s a democracy.
And too often, calls for gender equality are just an attempt to get a shortcut in a woman’s career. Or why else are feminists only calling for quoatas in boardrooms and parliaments, but not in coal mines? http://andreasmoser.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/quotas-for-women-why-only-in-boardrooms/
I agree that the world is unfair to everybody. However, the article is about feminism and women. I think you are missing the point. There is NO men against women view in my article.
Thank you for your comments though. I am glad you joined the debate.
Best wishes
Catherine
Well, I have citations that refute some of your statistics; sorry. I tried to supply them but your blog software complained. The offer to provide them by email still stands, though. And the other stats, it’s not so much that they’re wrong, but that by omitting comparable statistics that affect males, you present a biased and, in my opinion, divisive viewpoint — by presenting a “men against women” view, instead of one of a world which is unjust to many peoples. Naturally, this will put some people’s backs up, who might otherwise be very happy to support an equalitarian platform.
Sorry, but I disagree that my article ‘misinforms, propagates myths, stokes the fires of gender conflict, and is generally unhelpful to achieving or maintaining equality.’
I double checked all of my statistics, but thank you for your comments anyway.
Catherine
“Ultimately its not about pushing a female agenda or pushing a male agenda its about pushing an agenda of tolerance and understanding no matter who it is. It’s about equality across the board not the positive discrimination of one over another, that doesn’t work because it’s still discrimination. The argument should be about how we, together as a society, create a better tomorrow and where we all fit in no matter who we are.”
This. This times 100. This is the most important thing, and I wholeheartedly agree.
Unfortunately, a lot of the latter part of the article misinforms, propagates myths, stokes the fires of gender conflict, and is generally unhelpful to achieving or maintaining equality. Sorry :(
Some issues:
“1 in 4 women have experienced rape or attempted rape”
This statistic, which dates from 1982, has been long-since debunked: [URL removed because your blog software refused to post my comment as it thinks that URLs are “spammy”. Pardon me for trying to cite my sources :-/ Email me, and I’ll supply all the missing links.]
“130 million women worldwide have had their genitals mutilated.”
WHO estimate 1 billion men worldwide have had their genitals mutilated (less severely, certainly. But still). FGM is abhorrent, but it’s also worth noting that FGM appears to be a practice largely mandated by older females — and that males who have the issues explained to them, are generally against it, regardless of cultural background (no religion mandates FGM, and a combination of explaining this, and the effects on the victims, has a profound effect on the males). I had a link for this somewhere, but I’ve misplaced it, sorry.
“3 Million women and girls are slaves in the sex trade.”
This is, of course, atrocious — it’s also very much the minority part of the global slave trade, yet it’s talked about as if it’s the only part. Whereas in fact, here and now in 2010, about 27 million people worldwide are slaves, and many of them are men or boys. Curiously, and distateful as it may seem to even think about this, in financial terms they’re valued near worthless — sold for an average of $90, but as low as $5, effectively disposable commodities, compared to the females trafficked into first-world countries who are valued highly (many thousands of dollars): [Another URL removed]
You talk about legislation not being enough, but the key difference, the key thing that determines where the vast majority of slavery occurs, is the lack of rule of law. Most of the atrocities that happen, that are labelled as feminist issues, are not: they are cross-gender issues caused by a lack of rule of law, allowing people with guns and no ethics to control other people. Issues of 3rd-world development, poverty, slavery, abuse and so on, that affect everyone. The women. The men. The child soldiers. The people of all genders subjected to genocide. It’s horrible. But it’s not about gender.
Really, it’s highly disingenuous to mix up issues of the society in which we live every day, sip our drinks and post to the internets, with those of countries torn to wrack and ruin, in which everyone, regardless of gender, gets abused, murdered, enslaved, etc, and I think it only serves to muddy the waters of gender issues and stoke up conflict between people who should really be trying to work together.
If we look at our own society, we see very different statistics. Domestic violence, for example, is typically seen as something perpetrated by males against women and children. Yet, the victims in cases of _serious domestic violence against adults_ are 52% female, 48% male (UK, 2007/2008), a very different picture indeed. Men, however, rarely report to the police due to societal attitudes, and even where reporting occurs, are frequently mishandled, and prosecution rates for IPV against males are abysmal. Not to mention that there are almost no shelters for battered men — despite making up approximately half of the victims, there are only about 50 refuge placements for them in the UK, compared to around 7500 for females.
And considering the wider picture beyond domestic violence, males of all ages are 3x more likely to be murdered than females, and men (and young men in particular) suffer a disproportionate rate of violent crime. Not to mention that the suicide rate of males aged 15-25 is a shocking 600% that of females of the same age, which I think is an important insight into how their lives have played out.
Regarding equality of pay, it’s instructive to look to Sweden. It turns out that promoting strong paternity leave rights for fathers, has a number of beneficial effects for people of all genders, one of which is to greatly narrow the gender pay gap — lending support to the idea that time taken otu for childrearing, not societal bias, is a major factor in that pay gap: [And again. Silly blog software.]
The gap isn’t closed entirely in Sweden — but then again, the report suggests that women still insist on taking the bulk of the new-child leave (4x as much). Does this cover the shortfall? Hard to say, but I do think that the simplistic approach often taken when discussing gender issues, is missing the point. The Swedish Institute of Labour Market Policy Evaluation notes “a mother’s future earnings increase on average 7 percent for every month the father takes leave” which definitely shows high correlation.
And how about the future? Of the 15 job categories predicted to grow in the future (in the US, I don’t have UK figures), all but 2 are considered female-dominated fields.
And, of course, education is going to have a huge effect, but our schools and universities are increasingly failing to meet boys’ needs, in large part due to gender bias against boys, who then live up to (or rather, live down to) expectations.
For example, according to this article, “Girls believe they are cleverer, better behaved and try harder than boys from the age of four” — while, interestingly, at that age, the boys don’t yet have a gendered opinion. Yet, by the age of 8, the boys have adopted the girl’s views and believe they are less likely to succeed than the girls: [There goes another URL]
Possibly, this could be related to the fact that men have been chased out of the teaching profession? 1 in 4 primary schools have _no male teachers at all_, and the situation is only getting worse, with new teacher recruits being _15 times_ more likely to be female than male: [And another URL]
And this has a real, long-term effect. The articles above note the effect on GCSE and A-level results, and 2004 US census data shows females are typically 25%-50% more likely to pass any given level of education, than males. Eg, for every 100 men who get a BA/BSc, 136 women do. For an MA/MSc, it’s 100:162. How is this going to play out as the next generation ages? And yet, we’re told that women are the suffering gender while men are privileged — largely on the basis of sound-bites from talking heads in colour supplements (which is pretty much the definition of sound and fury signifying nothing, if you ask me).
This isn’t to say that there aren’t inequalities that affect females in our society. But clearly there are also huge inequalities that affect males in our society too, which are swept under the carpet or just treated as “normal and acceptable”. To trot out statistics that suggest women are being oppressed by the evil men, is to be divisive, and in fact counterproductive.
Personally, my outlook is “post-gender”. I don’t agree with “[…] equal. With different strengths”. I believe that different _personality types_ have different strengths; and while it _may_ be that certain personality types are more commonly found amongst males or females, that’s purely a statistical construct. None of us is a “statistical male” or a “statistical female” (or trans, intersex, etc…). I don’t believe those personality types are a specifically gendered construct — I know too many women “from mars” and too many men “from venus” to believe in that kind of gender determinism. Instead, I believe it’s more helpful to identify issues that affect groups of people using _who_ they are, not _what_ does or does not happen to exist between their legs.