Mind the Gap

It’s been just over a year since I got actively involved in feminism, and a nebulous number of years since I’ve considered myself to be a feminist, on and off. It should be a simple question of answering ‘because women are still second-class citizens’. However, I think it’s still a good idea to take some time and assess what I’ve learned, how I feel about the whole feminism deal, and whether I still want to continue applying the word ‘feminist’ to myself or not. So let’s have a look at some of the factors to take into consideration. What’s prompting this? Well, a need to question my own political beliefs every once in a while, more than anything else, and, I won’t lie, a certain discomfort with some of the attitudes I’ve seen among feminists.

 

Definition

 

First of all, whether you fight for women’s rights or not, calling yourself a feminist is largely dependent on your cultural background, partly because of who dominates feminism in terms of visibility, who gets intellectual kudos for talking about panties on national TV while hundreds of others are somewhere in the background discussing the complexities of intersectionality and doing all the hard work, but mainly because, well, the word is culturally specific, it has a latin root, although there are things we could retroactively call ‘feminism’ going far back into the middle ages and all over different continents, I think it’s a mistake to identify anything that differentiates you from a doormat as feminism – I’ve known lots of women  who would never identify as feminists, and none of them were doormats, whether they were elderly French farmers, German business-owners, Polish neurologists, students from the Cameroons who ran market stalls and did hair-weaves on the side, nuns from Madagascar, or Alsatian anti-globalisation activists. None of the women I mention here would describe themselves as feminists – and it’s really not up to me to go up to them, particularly if they’re about 30 years older than me, and say ‘oh but you are, or you wouldn’t be a neurologist’. Some of them might even have attitudes I would described as submissive. But so do I, so it really has nothing to do with being a feminist or not.

 

Feminism is just one way of looking at relations between people, that implies the existence of a Feminine which is partly inflicted on women as a means of discrimination, and partly the consequence of women being discriminated against. [On a side note, it’s interesting that one of my friends, who studied English, told me all the feminist lecturers and professors loved Adorno, but the feminist students tended to hate him.] For me it’s very much about liberation, not so much equality. Of course equality should exist, but it’s not enough, because after all men are discriminated against too on various grounds, though not for being men – so equality with men still implies discrimination, particularly if you don’t factor in class or race. In fact, the characteristics of the Feminine or the Mysterious Other are applied to men quite often to justify discrimination against them on grounds of race or class, which is, by the way, what was originally meant by saying that sexist discrimination was the oldest form of discrimination and the model for all others – not that sexist discrimination is worse and older, which is highly debatable.

 

Women the world over aren’t all discriminated against equally, or for the same reasons. There is a thread of sexism going through it certainly, but the consequences are far different, depending on your position in society. In fact, one way to look at it would be to say that we’re generally discriminated against slightly more than the men in our own social group. That’s why it makes sense to say ‘it’s all about equality’ if you’re privileged to start with. So really, calling yourself a feminist isn’t ‘just common sense’, it has culturally specific implications. Being a woman is a very different experience depending on your cultural background, and femininity changes too.

 

History and personal background

 

I realise that I bang on about feminist history quite a lot. But my knowledge of feminist history seems to be quite specific, and it’s interesting to see which parts we all tend to know a lot about, and that by and large, UK feminists seem to identify more with American feminists than European feminists – possibly a language thing, I guess. Then again, there is a problem with the fact that certain feminist writing is considered to be just plain ‘feminist theory’, whereas other works of feminist theory, which are just as fundamental as Germaine Greer or Betty Friedan, are considered to be ’specialist’ feminist theory, like foreign feminism, feminism for black people. But how is the work of Angela Davis, for instance, less central to feminism than that of Andrea Dworkin?

 

So let’s take a look at my knowledge of the different parts of my background. I know a wee bit about French feminism, from 18^th Century feminists and women’s rights advocates such as Olympe de Gouges or Francois Poulain de la Barre, through to Simone de Beauvoir, and second-wave feminists such as Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous, activists such as the lawyer Gisele Hallimi, and later names like Samira Bellil. I know next to nothing about Irish feminism, it has just occurred to me, although I’ve read quite a bit about the UK suffrage movement, enough to know that there’s a lot there I can get behind, and a lot that I can’t. But the fact remains that I, like many other feminists, seem to know the most about feminists whose history has nothing to do with me. Although the ones that I have gained most inspiration from have been Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Pankhurst and Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, for reasons that seem pretty clear to me from my background of libertarian conservatism and atheism with the odd bit of colonialism thrown in, the ones I feel obliged to know a lot about are 60s and 70s white, American and middle-class feminists, who have absolutely nothing to do with me culturally – and let’s face it, of the three above, the one I have most in common with culturally is Simone de Beauvoir, and even that connection is tenuous.

 

So, it’s all very well to ‘remember our feminist history’, but do I have one? Well, I get to vote and I get to choose whether to have kids or not, for one, so I’d have to say, yes, definitely. But I’d have to conclude that history has very little to do with great women and big names – something we’d probably do well to remember, especially those who are interested in becoming ‘big names’, prominent feminists, and so on. Actually, I think it’s probably a mistake to think in terms of ‘feminist history’. None of us live outside of history, and it’s up to us to remember it, and that includes, for white feminists, a huge amount of colonialism and oppression.

 

We can’t pick what we like and don’t like about it – and that means we need to acknowledge the racism and classism that has been in the white feminist movement from the start, as well as the accomplishments of previous generations of feminists. It’s not all portraits of Emmeline Pankhurst and cool black and white photos of protests. My main problem with feminist history is to determine where ‘reclaiming’ stops and co-option starts.

 

Gender and sexuality

 

Now, there’s a problem right from the start here: I know what I like and I’m fine with it. But I don’t even identify as bisexual, or as anything – in fact, a lot of my ideas on sexuality are based around Lacan’s idea that trying to define your sexuality for certain is a form of neurosis, and that sexuality is a symptom – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not, you know, an idea that feminists are terribly enamoured of. In fact, gnarly old male psychoanalysts aren’t a feminist favourite, even though a lot of feminism is based on the combination of psychoanalysis and Marxism that a lot of theory is based on.

 

I also find my sexuality to be a hugely emotional issue – probably because it took me ten to twelve years to stop trying to convince myself that I wasn’t attracted to women – I probably spent the first five trying to convince myself of the obvious, that this didn’t mean I wasn’t attracted to men. There are probably many deep, psychological reasons why I still refuse to define myself one way or the other. But it’s no less of a thought-out decision for all that, and this doesn’t tend to sit well with feminism in general, and to be honest, I often feel that I’m not even qualified to talk about my own sexuality because ‘real’ queers and ‘real’ heterosexual people will immediately recognise me for a massive fraud. This is pretty neurotic, but the fact remains that it’s not just in my head, there are vast portions of feminism that have a huge ‘not welcome’ sign on the door to people like me.

 

As for gender performance, I don’t really have a problem in the world at large – most people would just notice that I buy my clothes in charity shops, have a thing for coats, hats and shoes, and wear a lot of big, dangly jewellery. However, as soon as I walk into a feminist space, I feel like a sore thumb. And a lot of feminist discussion around personal adornment revolves around people talking about how they don’t wear this and that and the other, because they’ve emancipated themselves from all that nonsense – which may well be true, but I do get the feeling when they see me they see someone who has failed to emancipate herself from feminine trappings. I could dress down specially for feminist meetings, but let’s face it, that would be ridiculous.

 

It’s not like I want to walk into feminist spaces going ‘I must be acknowledged!’, but women are supposed to be able to be open about stuff like their gender and sexuality in these spaces, and there’s a lot of work still to be done on that count.  

 

Practical stuff

 

Now, why would I want to be involved in feminist politics in the first place? Of course, something needs to be done about certain issues, so there’s a sense of responsibility. There’s also a certain amount of looking for a community of (least favourite word coming up here) like-minded people. Well, there are more 30-year-old women into noise rock than I previously thought, but still, why feminist activism rather than any other?

 

There are certainly points against it. I’ve gone on at some length about the problems I have with large feminist events, a lot of which leave me with my head in my hands going ‘Oh good grief!’. I’m also unable to accept that if I can’t say anything nice I shouldn’t say anything at all. And after all, why should I sit there while people call working-class men Neanderthals and assume African women are all horribly submissive and need to be emancipated from their culture? I wouldn’t stand by if someone was making a sexist comment along the same lines, you wouldn’t put up with someone asking which country had the finest women. Yet I’ve got into the most trouble with feminists for trying to highlight our internalised racism and classism – mine as well, mind. In fact, I’m more interested in pointing it out in big, influential names than in my fellow bloggers. Still though, it’s present and it’s ugly. And I don’t particularly enjoy people trying to imply that I just get excited about this stuff because I’m cynically looking for stuff to criticise for irrational reasons of my own, either.

 

So, why feminism rather than socialism? Well, most left-wing groups I’ve encountered so far make me want to chew off my own face, for a start. I wanted to feel all idealistic about them, but really they’re mostly about the privileged few teaching everyone else how oppressed they are and how they should rise up and overthrow… who, exactly? Well, yeah,  the bourgeoisie. Who are the ones telling everyone to protest in the first place. Seeing rich students in their gap years identify as ‘the oppressed’ is enough to make me shit my own brain out. In fact, you could almost say that left-wing activism has turned into a movement of middle-class people fighting against their oppression by the readers of less sophisticated newspapers.  

As for feminism, well, so far my experience has been positive at the local level. By and large, I’ve met lots of feminists who are incredibly positive about getting stuff done, or about feminism itself being kept alive, and who seem sincere about it. There’s a lot more variety of political opinion in feminism as well, which I like because it keeps me on my toes intellectually.

However, as to being ‘a feminist’, well, I’m increasingly feeling that the more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know enough about the world to say ‘I’m a [           ]ist!’. But it looks like I will certainly stay involved in feminism for a little while yet.