Right.
Liberal Conspiracy – a site I generally love with a passion – has managed to find yet another educated, well-off woman to write a ‘women are victims and sad fannies’ piece.
I can’t tell you how furious this stupendously male vision of the female state makes me. (I’ve got a couple of articles to finish in the next day or two, and after that, I’m going to write on this in more detail). I leave you with this for now:
The young woman in the piece tells us that she’s had the good fortune of an excellent education, health, and choice and opportunity (which, in my opinion, should pretty much be where the article ends):
“I am twenty-one years old. Female. British. Middle class, and agnostic. I attended a good university, and came out with an arts degree. If I want to make money, I can, and if I don’t, I can borrow it without impediment. I don’t feel the need to compulsively buy things. I’m healthy, and I don’t hate myself.
No one will stop me if I want to leave my country, stay in my country, sleep in until midday, go out and not come home, get a boyfriend, get a girlfriend, study, drop out, claim benefits, get married, or do none of the above.
Am I the freest woman in the world?”
The answer to that question is ‘Yes – on the strength of your description of yourself, you are among the freest women in the world, by about the length of the Gobi,’ but that doesn’t stop our heroine embracing the liberal left’s cherished notion that educated women who choose how to live their lives and control their fertility, etc, are forever doomed, by virtue of their genitalia, to a life sucking on the hind tit (a tit, by-the-by, that will always be half empty):
“Except that I’m not. I can’t walk home at night alone without looking over my shoulder. I will never fight on the front line for my country. I will statistically earn less than my male peers for doing the same job, and if I stop to have children my career will almost inevitably suffer.
I am bound by social conventions, those barriers we place in our own minds, received from others. I wouldn’t dream of never shaving (and neither would most British men and women). I was desperate to pluck my eyebrows and wear a bra by the age of 12. If I don’t exercise, I feel guilty.
Every accomplishment is a second-long thrill, followed by the question: ‘what now?’ If I went into politics, I would have to spend my life lying and smiling and caressing egos before I got anywhere near to power.”
The writer makes an attempt to weave religion into the piece – I think she’s trying to argue that liberation from God ought to liberate women from social constraint – which indeed it does, but of course – no female writer today is allowed to think or imply that this liberation is genuine. All statements women make about liberation must, by today’s misogynist definitions, acknowledge that for women, there is always a catch – that even if we have degrees, good jobs, and control over our fertility, we are still small, scared, and on the receiving end.
I put this comment the article. I was pissed off at the time, but hell – why not? A girl is surely allowed to tell blogworld where it’s gone wrong:
“Is there actually an active campaign here now to find as many women as possible who will paint themselves as victims in 600 words? Am I the only women of the liberal left’s acquaintance who feels this obsession with publishing this type of whinge is sexist in the extreme? Why not just replace half the site with a nice pic of a Stepford wife?
This article is fucking offensive and I’m keen to know why its type is continually solicited, by both the blogworld and the mainstream media. Anorexics, bulimics, depressives, girls who are too scared to walk down the street – talk about falling over yourselves to reinforce male stereotypes of women as sad, weak little creatures. I’m a woman and a feminist and I’m sick to the teeth of this whining, middle class shit. Stop talking about your minor worries for Christ’s sake. Your personal experiences are neither representative, nor important. Neither are mine. Nobody cares. Start writing about people other than yourselves and get a sense of perspective. Use your advantages to help people who haven’t been as lucky as you. Women are smart, strong and capable. Stop insisting that we’re all just creeping around quietly, waiting for a good raping.
Jesus Christ, but this fucks me off.
And while we’re at it – if we’re all so concerned about women as equals, and we’re all such great feminists and so in tune with the female mind, why are there two pictures of gorgeous young birds in their underpants on the homepage?
As I say, I’ll come back to this soon. I want to expand further on stories of feminist success, and clearly need to write something that is substantiated, and speaks a little more of maturity. I hope the liberal left will join me.
I have to agree. I found it dull and more than a little whiny. However much she was shrieking about her lack of freedom as a woman, from her self-description the number of men who are less free than her could just about fill the Grand Canyon.
AGREED!!!!!!! That’s the issue – if you have an education, a job, and choice about your life, it’s obscene to argue that life ain’t fair. Feminism has done great things for me personally – education, supportive parents, job, lucky enough to travel and live in different countries – job done for me. I’m not in a position to write about poor little me. That’s why I don’t. I write about others.
Brilliant and so right – look forward to the next installment
In my opinion I am liberated. I’ve been to university which I paid for myself, I now work in a job I love, live on my own, pays my own bills and what have you. I am cissexual, bisexual and ‘single’ and masturbate fairly regulary. I don’t pay that much attention to my body, don’t shave my legs or anything like that and I haven’t bought anything for myself (apart from food or fags) from a shop that wasn’t a charity shop since 2006.
Two years I had an abortion at 11 weeks. I know that being able to have an abortion for free in this country makes me incredibly lucky, and I personally work hard to try to achive similar freedoms for women in other countries. Since having the abortion, I have been called a child killing whore, a slut, a murderer and a waste of public money. The last two were by commentors on one of the biggest newspapers in this country. I have had my life threatened by Christian activists outside the clinic where I had the abortion, and I have lost two very good friends after telling them, who told me that they ‘weren’t comfortable’ with what I had done. After a work night out, in which a co-worker strongly spoke out against baby-killers, as she likes to call us, I decided against telling my boss that I was taking the week off sick in order to have one, fearing office gossip and rejection for collegues I otherwise get on with very well.Two doctors also had to sign a form declaring I was mentally unfit to carry the child to term- not a massive deal I know but I only recovered from depression (during which I attempted suicide) a year and a half before, and being confirmed that I was ‘ill’ again a month after having officially being told I wasn’t was, to be honest, a little ego shattering.
Now do I have a right to ‘whine’ about this? Or because I’m white, cis, middle class (in background at least), and able bodied, am I painting myself as a victim too?
Course you have a right to whine about your experiences. Everyone has a right to whine about anything they want to whine about. Censorship is the last thing on my mind, and is always the last thing on my mind.
I was talking about something specific in the original post. The article I was referring to was by someone who made a distinct point of saying that nothing difficult had ever happened to her in her life. She’d been born to a well off family, gone to university, always had her health, and generally never had a bad experience.
She then went on to say that – well, none of that really mattered, because something bad MIGHT happen to her because she was a woman. She might be attacked when out walking. She might develop an eating disorder. She might be discriminated against. She was saying that her gender meant that she was a victim by definition – even before having the sort of experience that one might define as upsetting. She was painting our gender as the victim gender by definition.
I SEE! Sorry, I get all flarey sometimes. Yes, that pisses me off as well, its like going to Reclaim the Night and then getting a taxi home after cos you don’t feel safe on the tubes.
I
Flarey is good, sister! Never change that.
Think it’s an interesting topic, and it has raised some good points – ie, when is too much information too much information, and what should feminism look like today?
Obviously personal anecdote has its place – and an important place. It’s just that some writers are writing from a place where their default setting seems to be this odd victim-ness. I am a woman – therefore I am weak. I am at the mercy of forces that I can do nothing about. My educational opportunities, etc, mean nothing, and have brought me nothing, because the patriarchy places me in a victim’s role regardless. There’s no doubt that some women suffer terribly – as far as anyone knows, I may be one of them. There is also no doubt that feminism has delivered some of us of great advantages – education, economic independence and control over our fertility. Anyone who has those things is not in a position to describe themselves as hard done by.