Is Meninism the New Feminism?

As anyone who knows me moderately well will be aware, feminism isn’t something I have trouble talking about.

I studied it a bit at uni, wrote some pretty decent essays on it, and never cease to be amazed at how gender influences everything from raising a kid to greeting someone in the street.

I think feminism is as valuable and necessary today as it was a hundred years ago and could happily spend hours telling anyone who’ll listen why this is the case.

But I know a lot of people who don’t agree with me; people who are mostly kind, intelligent and not particularly sexist.

I used to be a big fan of quoting the dictionary definition of feminism in debates: no matter how big and complicated we make it, eventually it all comes back to equality. That’s what we want, right? That’s all it is.

Trouble is, equality doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone.

Look at the controversy about religious dress: telling a woman she can’t wear a veil or headscarf because it’s anti-feminist is just as bad as telling her it’s sinful for her to be seen without one.

What it comes down to is this: there’s no such thing as a universal female experience.

My experiences as a woman are almost entirely incomparable to the experiences of women of other countries, faiths and ages, and that’s what the “equality” narrative sometimes forgets. 

Dictating how other women should be liberated isn’t very liberating, and pretending that there’s some shared characteristic uniting women across the world is, at best, unhelpful.

So what is feminism?

As with any movement for social change, there’s no rulebook and its members aren’t a hive-mind. We don’t release a new edition of the Feminist Manifesto every year and adjust our actions accordingly.

Much of the actual theory comes from academics in the humanities and social sciences, but perhaps more influential are the organisations that put feminism into practice: global charities like Amnesty, national charities like the Fawcett Society, and charities for specific causes like End Violence Against Women.

Beyond this, you have smaller local or student groups who promote feminism on their home turf, and finally individuals like me.

And none of us can agree on what feminism “is”.

Professors and theorists are incredibly intelligent, well-informed individuals but that doesn’t make them right. In fact, if uni has taught me anything it’s that academia is mostly about poking holes in other people’s work.

This is the beauty and the curse of feminism: it’s a discussion, not a doctrine.

This is why I don’t usually mind arguing about it. Often people aren’t trying to tell me women don’t deserve equal rights and freedoms; they just don’t agree with the way feminists sometimes go about doing it.

This is where ‘I’m all for equality but I’m not a feminist’ comes from and I can understand why people – especially men – might feel this way.

All the “feminist organisations” I listed above are movements for women’s rights; they’re about bringing practical help, safety and freedom to disadvantaged women and this is brilliant, admirable work.

A quick Google search, for example, turns up a reasonable number of domestic abuse shelters for women in the UK’s major cities. The majority of these are quite strictly single-sex but also accept boys who arrive with their families.

However, a similar Google search for men’s domestic abuse shelters gives me noticeably fewer results, though some women’s shelter organisations like Refuge do have specific resources and advice for men too.

This indicates either that men aren’t generally victims of domestic abuse or that feminism is overwhelmingly concerned with women’s issues, and is very limited in the things it can (or is willing) to do for men.

If you’ve read my previous posts you’ll know I’m wary of statistics, but I think it’s important to give them some consideration here.

According to a report by the Office for National Statistics, as of 2013/14, 28.3% of women and 14.7% of men in England and Wales had experienced some form of domestic abuse since they were 16. That’s 4.6 million female victims and 2.4 million male victims.* 

It could be said that the shelter discrepancy is just about supply and demand: women are disproportionately affected, so there should be a disproportionate amount of help available to them.

But we also know that domestic abuse is one of the most under-reported crimes in the country.

The ONS report cites “embarrassment” as the most common reason participants didn’t tell anyone about their most recent abuse.** Though this response isn’t broken down by gender, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume men are more likely to be embarrassed about reporting domestic violence.

While I think we can also safely assume, even taking under-reporting into account, that the amount of female victims is higher, it can’t be denied that the attitude towards male victims needs to change.

There could be as much help available to men as there is to women, but that might not make those who are embarrassed or frightened any more likely to seek it out.

But is this a feminist issue? The domestic abuse of men doesn’t seem directly connected to women’s rights when you look at it this way.

Anti-feminists often point out just this: that the problems faced by men as a result of gender relations are ignored. Lack of support for domestic violence victims, longer jail terms, high suicide rates, and difficulty gaining custody of children seem to be the most commonly cited.

The thing is, these are feminist issues.

The lack of support for male domestic violence victims is the brainchild of the patriarchal notion that men are inherently more powerful, frightening and dangerous than women and should be treated accordingly. The same can be said of longer jail terms. Frankly, that’s as offensive to women as it is to men.

According to the Samaritans Suicide Statistics Report, suicide rates in the UK are consistently higher in men across every age group, with the highest at 21.9 (per 100,000 of the population) for 30-44 year-olds and 23.9 for 45-59 year olds.*** 

Patriarchal masculinities have a long history of emotional repression, in which men are implicitly taught that the only truly “manly” emotion is anger. We still see it today in action films with the hero-wins-battle-after-channelling-fury-at-death-of-girlfriend trope.

To sum up: woman cry because woman weak and delicate. Man no cry because man not like woman – man strong.

It’s not that all men are incapable of talking about their feelings, but patriarchal masculinity doesn’t encourage meaningful engagement with emotion in the same way as femininity. I’m also not saying this is the sole reason for higher male suicides – it’s one of many factors, albeit a significant one.

You see, all of these supposedly “anti-feminist” issues are rooted in the problems with gender that feminism is already dealing with.

The equality definition doesn’t really cut it for me anymore because I don’t think it captures that.

“We want equality between these two groups” implies that we need to preserve the two distinct groups in the first place; it implies that women’s problems are not men’s problems and that solving one means ignoring the other. I don’t think that’s the case.

For me, it’s not always about bringing women back from a place of disadvantage – though unfortunately this is often necessary. Instead it’s about breaking down and rebuilding the very things we understand ‘male’ and ‘female’ to mean, because inequality is too deeply ingrained into them for anything else to make a real difference.

I think some existing feminisms have a lot of work to do here.

“White male privilege” is a phrase that’s thrown around a lot in some militant feminist circles and I’ve seen it used as an excuse to ignore men with valid contributions to make to the discussion.

The feminist hatred of toxic patriarchal masculinities can also come across as a hatred of men, and I can see that being very alienating. So-called ‘meninism’ might be a ludicrous waste of everyone’s time but I can understand how it came about.

To be clear: you can care about individual men very much and still be opposed to the weird hyper-macho, emotion-supressing, femininity-fearing masculinity that Western culture is trying to shake off. Separating the two in your head is perhaps the most important part of being a feminist.

In short, I think it’s more helpful to think of feminism as being about choice.

When men and women have complete freedom of choice in what they can aspire to, how they speak, dress, behave, express themselves and so on – independent of gender-dictated expectations – we’ll know we’ve done a good thing.

I used to be a member of the equality-but-not-feminism brigade too. Then I realised that not being a feminist wasn’t  going to make the problems I had with the movement go away.

My Barbie dolls might have been able to ride around on toy dinosaurs, but other little girls and boys aren’t so lucky. After that, I decided that the only way forward was to throw my hat in the ring and switch I’m not a feminist but... with I’m a feminist and...


*http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_394500.pdf, p. 5

**http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_394500.pdf, p. 22-23

***http://www.samaritans.org/sites/default/files/kcfinder/files/Samaritans%20suicide%20statistics%20report%202016.pdf p. 15

Lefty-Righty, Fighty-Fighty

Modern British politics is complex, difficult, divisive and – well, actually not as boring as usual.

Every morning for the last month or so I’ve woken up, reached for my phone, and scanned my Twitter feed for whatever fresh political upheavals occurred overnight. If I’ve managed to go from cynical apathy to genuine interest, I can’t imagine how people with a lifetime of political investment behind them must be feeling.

Unfortunately it’s also made me very conscious of the gaps in my knowledge.

The Referendum was an easy vote – for me at least – but if there was a general election tomorrow, I really don’t know who I’d vote for.

Maybe this isn’t because choosing between the current party leaders is like being offered a selection of mouldering food and asked which you’d like to eat for the next five years.

Maybe it’s because I don’t properly understand the choices... right?

So how does British politics actually work?

Essentially, all of the parties sit somewhere on the Left-to-Right-wing spectrum.

I could write a half a dissertation on what that means but you could just look at this diagram instead. Though bear in mind (especially when looking at the ‘support’ part) that this graphic is five or six years old and based on American politics.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/left-vs-right-world/

So if I were to put the main UK parties in order of extremity from Left to Right, I’d say: Greens, Labour/SNP (they’re so similar it’s hard to rank them), Lib Dems, Conservatives, UKIP.

Of course, I’m over-simplifying; it’s not just a linear sliding scale because a lot depends on the way Left and Right wing values are interpreted and manifested in policy. Go far enough Left or Right and you’ll end up on the other side: Stalin was about as far Left as you can go and he has a great deal more in common with Hitler than the Green Party.*

So, the age-old question: where do you stand?

Typically wealthier employers who aren’t in a social minority tend to vote Right, while minority groups and poorer workers tend to vote Left.

The parties know this, and they play to it.

The most recent Conservative Manifesto, for example, proposed changes to legislation that would mean ‘industrial action in [...] essential services would require the support of at least 40 per cent of all those entitled to take part in strike ballots’ (not just those who vote), making strikes more difficult to orchestrate.**

Generally advantageous for employers, generally disadvantageous for workers.

But again, I’m over-simplifying.

The Conservatives have just chosen their second female Prime Minister (from two female candidates) before Labour have had female PMs at all. The Greens’ voting pool contains a lot of young middle-class liberals who aren’t from poor backgrounds. There’s also a lot of talk about UKIP replacing Labour as the party of the working classes, which is a pretty big swing on the Left-to-Right spectrum.

There are people who have voted for the same party all their lives and party ‘heartlands’ in different areas of the country. I’ve lived in a staunch Conservative heartland most of my life which means, regardless of how I vote in General Elections, my representative in Parliament will probably be Conservative. Though I’ll admit to voting Conservative in the last election anyway (I know, boo hiss).

Today I honestly don’t know if I stand by that decision or not.

I won’t deny that – individually and on policy level – they’ve said and done some pretty abominable things about LGBT+ and women’s rights in the past. I’m also disappointed they’ve raised tuition fees, saddened by their disdain for the arts and social sciences, and appalled by the way the NHS seems to be going.

Though as with anything in politics and economics, direct cause and effect is impossible to establish. These things might have happened anyway if the government was different or they might not. I don’t know enough about how it all works to be able to say.

And besides, not much good can be said about the legacy of the previous Labour government either. Blair and Brown’s time in office wasn’t exactly shining beacon of social and economic betterment.

Though maybe it’s easy for me to say that. It’s generally the most vulnerable who are hit hardest by austerity, so my middle-class background make me more likely to vote Conservative.

This is another criticism often levelled at Right Wing politicians: how can we expect a small group of people from incredibly wealthy, privileged backgrounds to represent our diverse country?

Thankfully Parliament is getting more diverse: Sadiq Khan, a second-generation immigrant and the son of a bus driver and a seammistress; the late Jo Cox, the first member of her family to attend university; Ruth Davidson, a Conservative MP who got engaged to her girlfriend earlier this year. I won’t deny there’s work to be done but I’m confident it will come with time.

I also don’t think being from a privileged background makes anyone incapable of empathy by default. Parts of the Left have a way of insinuating that wealth makes you an inherently greedy, selfish person and, though I’m sure politicians like that exist, I don’t buy it as a generalisation.

Cameron did often have the privilege criticism directed at him, and indeed some of his policies were idiotic and poorly-thought-out (Brexit and the Bedroom Tax to name just two). Despite this, I am sad that he’s gone.

He was measured, unflappable and seemed like a decent person to work for which I think is an important quality in a leader. Joblessness is at a ten-year low, the deficit has been reduced (whether it has been “halved” as promised is up for debate), and marriage equality laws have finally been passed. Again, direct cause and effect is impossible to establish but, all things considered, I think it could have been worse.

As for Cameron’s replacement, I’m confident Boris Johnson would have been a disaster and 99% sure Michael Gove is actually three aliens in a lab-grown flesh suit. I didn’t know a lot about Leadsom and the leadership contest finished itself up before I got around to finding out. I’ve heard opinions on May ranging from “she’d be perfect for the job right now” to “she’s the devil incarnate” and have yet to make up my own mind.

So far her Cabinet appointments seem calculated – which isn’t necessarily the same as good. Gove is nowhere to be seen, and Boris and Jeremy Hunt are being forced to sink or swim in the mess they’ve made for themselves and the country.

But what about the next general election? In theory it should take place in 2020 but the Fixed Term Parliament Act means that, if May could secure the backing of two-thirds of MPs, she could call one now.

I’ve already said I don’t know who I’d vote for in this scenario. Despite my middle class upbringing, I am also a young female English graduate from a single-parent family. Surely it would be in my interests to drift Left?

In truth I’d like to be able to vote Labour in the next election, but I won’t if Corbyn is still in power.

For me, he’s too divisive to be a credible leader – as evidenced by the divisions in his own party – and I’m not adverse enough to the current government to warrant voting him in anyway. I feel like I’d be endorsing the Jeremy Corbyn Party, not Labour, and that makes me uneasy.

I’m almost certain they couldn’t win a general election if it was announced tomorrow for exactly that reason, and unfortunately I can’t see them doing so until Corbyn is no longer leader.

But is he going to? Owen Smith, Corbyn’s only remaining leadership rival, doesn’t fill me with confidence. It’s pretty clear Corbyn isn’t going to step down and the support he has from Labour members – many of whom signed up specifically to support him – looks too great for Smith to stand a chance.

I’m not sure what kind of authority paying a £3 subscription gives you against elected MPs with a lifetime of political experience behind them, but I suppose that’s democracy.

Reading back what I’ve written I realise this post came out more Right-leaning than I expected. I honestly feel like I’m pretty centralist in my alignment, but the Right are so widely demonized (especially online among young-adult audiences) I felt like I needed to compensate.

And regardless of what anyone thinks of the Conservatives, it’s difficult to deny that they just work. Their political machine has managed to dismantle and rebuild itself before its opponents have even read the instruction manual.

The way things are going at the moment, they could well go unrivalled for a very long time. And I’m not particularly comfortable with that.

The fact is, neither Left- nor Right-wing politics are sufficient in themselves; nor, I believe, will they ever be. We’ll always vote in line with our own interests – whatever that might mean – and neither end of the political spectrum has the means to make everyone happy.

This is why it’s important for the parties not in power have a say in Parliament; that’s why we have Shadow Cabinet Ministers to disagree with everything their rival counterparts say.

Balance is the key to good, effective politics. So Labour: do us a favour by proving me wrong and getting your act together. Your country needs you.

*For more info and some great diagrams illustrating how this is possible, go to: https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2

**The Conservative Party Manifesto 2015, p. 18