Feminist fights for the next century

February 6, 2018 4:54 AM

End domestic violence, vanquish trolls and defeat body shame [...] One hundred years after suffrage, there is still so much to campaign for. Women including Jo Brand and Archie Panjabi set out the change they would like to see by 2118 – from unisex loos to challenging the dominance of male desire. [slGuardian]
posted by ellieBOA (7 comments total)

Read June Eric-Udorie‘s response first. They should have made that one first.
posted by Annika Cicada at 5:34 AM on February 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

Laura Bates' response is also fabulous.

I want people to listen to women. To hear their voices. To believe them. And to change the things that need to change so that another generation of girls never has to grow up to experience the harassment, discrimination and abuse that women today are bravely speaking out about. It’s not enough to write titillating headlines and turn it into a “sex scandal”. It’s not enough to say that the problem is solved because it is finally being talked about. The government needs to act. It could start by reinstating section 40 of the Equality Act, so that the employers of women such as those sexually harassed at the Presidents Club dinner have a duty to protect them.) Businesses and organisations need to act. The gender pay gap needs closing and every workplace should have clear, transparent reporting procedures in place for cases of sexual harassment. Schools need to act. Every child deserves to learn about sexual consent and healthy relationships in an inclusive, age-appropriate manner. And individuals need to act. We will never solve gender inequality and sexual violence unless we shift the normalised societal attitudes and ideas about women that enable us to go on treating them like second-class citizens, abusing them and blaming them for their own assault. Unless every one of us chooses to stand up, step in, and speak out, nothing will ever change. Your silence allows sexism to flourish.

Bolding mine.

I am so, so tired.
posted by sciatrix at 6:24 AM on February 6, 2018 [11 favorites]

snapping for June Eric-Udorie - one of the very, very few voices in this piece to talk about feminism specifically in context of intersectionality and without assuming a binary gender construction

The first thing I’d like to question is which British women won the vote in 1918? Was it white women only? Did women of colour have equal access? I ask these questions because mainstream white feminism celebrates victories that often ignore or sideline marginalised women and instead demand that we ride on the coattails of white women’s success. Ideally, in 100 years, no woman – regardless of her race, sexual orientation, class, disability, immigration status – will be left behind. As a black, queer disabled woman, I’m always fighting for today’s mainstream feminist movement to remember that people like me exist and that we matter too. In 1989, the black feminist legal scholar, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” as a means for us to understand the way that oppressive structures intersect with our marginalised identities, causing poor women, women of colour, Muslim women, and other marginalised women to face a double or triple bind of oppression. In 100 years, there won’t be a need to harp on about how crucial intersectionality is, because it will be central to our feminist practice and politics. In 100 years, there won’t be such an extortionate pay gap between white women and black women. In 100 years, when we talk about sexual assault, we’ll include the voices of migrant women, service workers, disabled women. In 100 years, feminism will be a movement working to liberate all women. Can you imagine how powerful that will be?

reminders that remain as assumed footnotes in many of the other responses here
posted by runt at 7:22 AM on February 6, 2018 [8 favorites]

I am so, so tired.

The Express, which is a free newspaper distributed by the Washington Post around DC and especially outside Metro stations, had a hand-wringing article last week about how #MeToo is hurting women because now men don't want to invite them on business trips or whatever (and not "men are hurting women because they are refusing to include them in professional opportunities like business trips") and an insert about how firefighters can't let off steam by calling people "little bitches" anymore only they said "little b******" because they know that it's not a good word to use even though they're so concerned for the poor firefighters who feel uncomfortable using misogynistic language at work now (and not, I guess, people who didn't want to be called bitches at work).

I was extremely, EXTREMELY angry at everything, from the bit on the cover teasing the article to the title to the content and the sidebar thing, just fucking LIVID, and so I tweeted at them because I couldn't find a contact form and when they responded with an email address I wrote a (lengthier than they will probably read) email outlining my concerns, and one of the points I made was that it is so frustrating that women, who are the ones being hurt by stuff like this, also have to do the work of pushing back against it and I was mad at the article but I was also SO MAD that I had to TAKE THE TIME TO ASK THEM PLEASE NOT TO PERPETUATE SUCH LAZY MISOGYNISTIC NARRATIVES and spend my personal time and effort crafting an email that wouldn't get me immediately dismissed as hysterical (not true) or a crackpot (maybe true but not because of this).

It is so, so tiring and also thankless, like, is my sending this email actually going to change anything? Probably not and if it does, it will be so incremental that I won't even notice and there are so many battles to fight and it is exhausting, I have shit to do besides email the editors of the fucking Express.

Also a quick shoutout to all the women and nonbinary people of color who are dealing with intersectional issues on top of all the regular BS misogyny with which I have to cope, and, on preview, I see that runt has covered this better than my literal footnote.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 7:42 AM on February 6, 2018 [12 favorites]

Man, the individual quotes are so great, but the Guardian’s paraphrase is so terrible! I read the whole thing and the only “call for unisex loos” was one woman adding it on as a side note on her call for gender parity in education, which multiple women called for, but it gets ignored because it’s not as good as a clickbait pull.
posted by corb at 7:46 AM on February 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

The first thing I’d like to question is which British women won the vote in 1918? Was it white women only? Did women of colour have equal access?

For those wondering:

The Representation of the People Act 1918 widened suffrage by abolishing practically all property qualifications for men and by enfranchising women over 30 who met minimum property qualifications. The enfranchisement of this latter group was accepted as recognition of the contribution made by women defence workers. However, women were still not politically equal to men (who could vote from the age of 21); full electoral equality was achieved in Ireland in 1922, but did not occur in Britain until the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928.

I'm guessing that the property qualifications would have disproportionately affected British women of color.

There was also the issue that many people of color living in the British Empire had no right to vote in the election of the Empire's government. This was not resolved until the British Nationality Act 1981, which gave Commonwealth citizens the right to vote and (among other things) allowed British citizenship to pass matrilineally as well as patrilineally.*

* A particularly egregious example of discrimination, since it's obviously much easier to prove maternity than paternity, especially before the advent of DNA testing.
posted by jedicus at 7:48 AM on February 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

Not to be too down on the 1918 act which granted the vote to (some) women but there is a lot of suggestion that the granting was in part of hold down the vote of the Labour party. The 1918 act also removed the property requirements for men so the belief was that women of property would vote with men of property against men without.

It was a good step in the right direction but it's not because the British establishment had changed their mind. Just more worried about socialists than suffragettes at that moment of history.
posted by DoveBrown at 1:38 AM on February 7, 2018 [1 favorite]