On Young Feminism: A rebuttal to the Second-Wave

For anyone who follows left-wing media in the UK (and doubtless abroad) any time after 2000, a common criticism of modern Feminism becomes increasingly evident; I call it the Katie Price Principle, but it could be called the Pole Dancing principle or the Living Doll principle or a thousand other names. In essence, it’s the argument that the sexualisation of our culture has been gleefully bought into by Feminists, that Feminists are gradually reassuming traditional and newly-developed stereotypically feminine roles; women are becoming more narcissistic, more wrapped up in self-promotion at the expense of female-promotion, and as a result the Feminist discourse suffers.

I call it the Katie Price principle after the woman whose two year-old daughter Princess was snapped wearing false eyelashes, spawning a media-spanning argument about female role models and early sexualisation. Katie Price was no stranger to tabloid attention before that; she is a woman who has been described as “the Belle du Jour of glamour modelling”, the archetypal sexualised but empowered woman, peddling her appearance and her fame (a propos of nothing it seems) and revelling in the power she has – fundamentally, to make money. This, television moralists and traditional feminists (uniquely aligned) argued, marked the downfall of Feminism or its folly. Feminism, they argued, was becoming or had become a movement so desperate to rename victimhood as empowerment that it unknowingly condemned hidden victims, a movement which seemed to have stepped back one intellectual level from a generation of women who knew their rights and were sure as hell going to fight for them.

Every facet of female and Feminist expression is now analysed for this lack of intellectualism. A food blog written by a university student discovering cooking for the first time is “a return to traditional feminine values”.  A tentative attempt to examine why a woman might choose sex work or pole dancing without condemnation is the willing re-sexualisation of women. Young women who wear make up and paint their nails and say they feel empowered by that are unwitting slaves unaware of how the patriarchy has oppressed them, using the word “empowered” shallowly, misunderstanding what their mothers fought for. 

More than that, the critics argue, this kind of easy empowerment is subtly aiding those who seek to make victimisation of women seem appealing or sexy. Publicising the Belle Du Jours of this world means that the trafficked women, the trafficked children even, are sidelined and unspoken, and the sex industry (particularly its more softcore elements) is able to successfully rebrand itself. And what about mothers, especially poor ones? Modern feminism is all about being a liberated childless (or non child-centric) fashionable blogger with quirky yet mainstream style – it’s all about being a Jezebel editor, in other words. One post, responding to Fuck No Jezebel’s tumblr of all places, summed this up perfectly for me;  

“mommyjacking”? Can I call it “rich NYC party girl-jacking” when flippant little 22 year olds try to turn THE ENTIRETY of feminism into a heterosexpoitation high heels I choose my choice party?”

So there you have it. My generation’s feminism is shallow, exploitative, a fake veneer over hyperfeminisation. Except, well, no it’s not.

Let’s go back to our first example, the food blog, or as my mother put it, “cupcake feminism";   independent, snarky women baking on their weekends and posting it on the internet. They are indicative of a wider group of women; criticised for reassuming outdated roles of hyperfemininity, stooping over the 50s oven and cutesying it up Deschanel style, with any sense of irony removed because these women do not overtly criticise stereotypes of women. But that's not what's going on here; they’re hungry, and they're eating. They, we, can recognise intellectually the existence of those stereotypes, understand their harmful components (the lack of choice, the system of oppression they were at one time intrinsically indicative of), and we can enact them without bringing 1950s preconceptions of femininity with us. These food blogs or this make-up-tip article do not mark a lack of understanding of stereotype - they mark a complete disregard for the relevance of stereotype to competency. Second-wavers who would decry this trend, do you really underestimate our intellectual capacity so far that you believe we don’t understand the implications of the apron and the griddle? Because to me it seems that in order to condemn a woman as a stoolpigeon for the patriarchy you would have to either believe that she was unaware of the stereotypes she might be wading in to, or – worse – you would have to honestly believe that feminine traits are inherently negative, or that a woman cannot exhibit behaviours part of her conditioning without being aware of them.

So too, are we ridiculed as intellectually spurious for the emphasis our Feminism places on choice. Who are we to treat the pole dancer or even the sex worker as anything other than a victim to be rescued or martyred? How can we possibly view traditional femininity or sexualisation as things to be chosen, and possibly to be proud of? Well, firstly, not all of us do. But secondly, it is not ever a question of claiming sexualisation to be inherently positive or negative; neither is it a question of claiming anything to be inherently positive or negative. Modern feminism isn't affirming sexualisation as positive - it's rejecting self-certainty as negative. How arrogant we would have to be to presume to know every woman's experience of sexualisation, how deaf we would have to be to stop listening to the women who have chosen lives we don't necessarily understand. Just because it is harder to argue for a Feminism without absolute truths does not make those non-absolute truths any less true. We would be sacrificing our intellectual integrity as a generation wholesale if we presumed to proclaim universal truths about a Feminism that has proven itself multiferous, multicoloured and intensely personal. I will repeat it again, because it bears repeating; a lack of absolutism is not a lack of integrity. And nor does it mean that Feminism is failing; quite the opposite.
 
I look up at my TV screen at the moment and I see two female news reporters discussing international politics. My female friends are among a generation who are more committed to further education and education at all than their male compatriots, who put on make-up and still insist that women have the choice not to, who are painfully aware of feminine stereotypes and aching not to be too old-fashioned. These are young women who have known their whole lives that they have access to independence and their own careers, women whose feminism is about bringing more people into the fold, rather than staring outward with hostile eyes, backs to each other, refusing to let other women drink their fill and refusing to try and understand them.

 


What we are doing to young women by telling them how to be perfect canned Feminists is exactly the same as what political orthodoxies have been doing for thousands of years. Please, you who would seek first and final feminist principles, do not claim intellectual superiority while you sit in the 1970s advocating perfect Feminists, Feminists who are untainted by the patriarchy, feminists who condemn all women who are not empowered. You are condemning as much as those you claim to hate, those you claim to fight against. And in the process, you are undervaluing a feminist consciousness that is not often reported but exists, virulent and indestructible.

For young feminists now, Feminism is about understanding, a constant effort to improve things for everyone, rather than a charged effort with no impurity tolerated. My friends understand in detail issues of Female Genital Mutilation, sex-selective abortion, human trafficking, prostitution. Their willingness not to condemn the pole dancer should not be taken as a carte blanche to the construct of pole dancing; their tactical support of legal prostitution should not be taken as support for the construct of prostitution per se. Simultaneously, young feminists are capable of understanding why patriarchy informs these constructs, and understand the negative effects of those constructs, without condemning the women who take part in them. No feminist is perfect, every feminist is worth listening to, and the struggle should not be ideologically closed.

I’m putting myself on a limb here, but I’m going to say it; our feminism is less concerned with the feminist and more concerned with the woman, and to me that has to be better. We are no longer the children of second-wave feminism, but the possessors of our own feminism; some of us are the children of the children of second-wave feminists. Some of us are men, a lot of us are racial minorities, we are LGBT, we refuse to be essentialist – about women, about feminists, about women of colour, even about our own understanding of feminism. We want to listen to what you have to say rather than what we have to say. That does not make us intellectually feeble, it makes us irrepressable. Try to find a leader of our feminism, a unified ideology, and you will fail. That makes us stronger, not weaker. If there are those among us with the power to address the subtler sexism still evident in our society (and I believe there are), they will be sourced from cupcake blogs, from book groups, from schools, from the young. In ten or fifteen years, we will be trying to shepherd a new generation of feminism.

We don't know everything yet. Don't take this as a disavowal of the achievements of second-wave feminism, but take it as an opportunity. Feminists still need their mothers, and those mothers still have incredible power - but while they condescend to their sons and daughters and condemn their willingness to tolerate "impure" feminism, they sabotage a movement aimed at a global improvement of women's rights. To sum up;

We bake, because we like to eat. And we are worthy successors.

Explanation Part 2

So. I explained in my first post that I'm at home due to illness these days, and last week sucked. It sucked balls. I'm explaining to the internet ether because I told myself I would, ha. I'm going to start a two-post a week schedule, less than I said before but just to kind of slow down a bit. I'm sorry to anyone (maybe one person, ha) who's reading, and I'm going to keep writing. Wish me luck!

Explanation!

Hi guys!

I don't know if anyone's reading this, but anyway; I haven't posted because I'm currently writing a three-part story to be posted tomorrow, Wednesday and Friday (with the conclusion obviously on Friday). Stay tuned!

-Alex.

Update: Due to family stuff I'm going to be late with this, but I will hopefully have this done by the end of the week.

Update: Due to similar, I'm conflating the story and I'm just going to post it as one part at the end of the week.

Humanity

My mother used to tell me there are two types of people in this world – people who are humane, and people who are not. She told me that there are a great many people in this world who are just not good at being human, at sympathy and empathy and all the elements of human kindness. She described the world to me as being like the centre of a vacuum cleaner; the sort where there’s a central fabric that the dirt clogs up on. Humans are the dirt, connected to each other in howling wind,  kept without consent. It was a mark of how my mother raised me that I understood this not to be a bad thing; it was merely the case. We are all stuck here; why make it more difficult?

My mother died when I was seventeen. She was my only relative. I knew I had uncles somewhere, in another country I couldn’t fathom, but for all intents and purposes I had lost the only person who shared my blood. She was a fantastic woman – two days before her death she told me not to cry, because people who die before they’re old get to be young in Hades. Hades, she said, because to claim she was headed to heaven would be arrogant. I knew her well enough to know that.

I considered myself a success. I had a flat, a four year-old Chartreux, and a job that kept me stocked in long shabby coats and cigarettes. I took trains for important reasons, and sometimes travelled business class. Not today.

“Is this seat taken?” The words were rushed out, mumbled as if they were rude. I’ve found it’s a particular trait of the British that we are embarrassed of politeness, as if somehow daring to speak at all is rudeness in and of itself.

“No, feel free.” I meant it, as well. My welcome intruder was shorter than me, curly haired, with the heavy lilt of south Wales on his voice. I remembered something about Tolkein and cellar door, something from my good degree at my average University.

“Cold, isn’t it?” He was shivering, as if to prove that yes, it was cold.
“Seems so. Winter’s always fashionably late in Britain.”
My companion laughed. That was my favourite weather-line. You need a specialised script in a country with weather like ours.
“You headed to Edinburgh too?” I could already tell the Welshman had a talent for small talk. He had that quality of casual interest; a voice that seemed to wash over you, comfort you instinctually.
“Stirling. But via Edinburgh. I’m visiting a friend.”
“Stirling. All I know about Stirling is there’s a castle. Must be one of those half-child memories.” I smiled. He made ignorance sound like bliss, and I liked that he said half-child instead of half-memories; it was poetic.
“I’ve never been. It’s her hometown. I brought layers.”
He laughed. “Good shout.”

We lapsed comfortably into silence. An old woman settled in across the aisle, and we exchanged a look of indignation, as if our sudden and public conclave should be respected. It was clear we were both unenthralled by our books, so after a while of glancing at each other, the Welshman brought the courage.

“I know it’s childish, but I still find train rides a bit exciting. Like they mean a trip.” He grinned sheepishly.
“S’not childish. I was a London kid. Getting somewhere non-rectangular was a fucking field day for me.”
He laughed at that, and we earned an edifying scowl from the old woman.
“Not a London kid now?”
“In spirit, but I’m Peterborough-dwelt these days.”
“Ah. I’m in Cambridge.”
“As in the University?” I was impressed. He grinned the grin of somebody proud of their achievements and nervous about their possible arrogance.
“Yeah. I’m doing my doctorate in Biochemistry. I study Yeast for a paltry living.”
“How bourgeois.”
“First against the wall, right? It’s a good thing I’m a Welsh miner’s boy, very socialist. Can’t argue with my credentials.” The Welshman flashed pearly whites, uneven.
“Mixed-race child of a single mother; I’m bred for reality television.” I smirked.
“Ah right, you get stuck with all the R&B throwbacks week-to-week.”
“People of colour can’t sing indie. You’re a biochemist, you should know these things.”
“Must’ve slept through that lecture.” We laughed in unison, looked at our books, and fell silent.

The ticket collector shuffled through our carriage a few minutes later, pushing his little cart. Both of us were over-eager ticket-finders; both of us had return tickets.

“So what’re you planning in grand old Stirling?” He was casual again. I paused, letting the hiss of my newly-opened Sprite subside.
“A funeral.”
His eyebrows rose. “A funeral. Oh. Of your fr-“
“My friend, yeah.” I shrugged a little.
“I didn’t mean t-“
“You didn’t.” I looked up.
“What was it?” His curiosity was innocent, it understood the value of sharing.
“Car accident. Standard, you know.”
“Death’s not standard.” He was frowning for me.
“I mean for a car accident.”
“Right.”
We settled into a more awkward silence this time. I could tell he was forming an apology, but I could also tell he thought it would sound insincere. Twenty minutes trundled by.

“Her name was Sarah.”
Welshman looked up. It was the kindness in his eyes. It prompted you. “Sorry?”
“Sarah. My friend. She was an estate agent; she liked to make jokes about how estate agents are evil, but she actually believed all of that rubbish about potential and character – she loved houses. She did her A-levels and went straight into an apprenticeship with the estate agent’s, because she knew what she wanted to do. Used to tease me about University life while she was pulling down more than I do now. Team mother, you know? That was Sarah.”
“Why was she living down south if her hometown’s Stirling?”
“It’s not, really. I mean, not emotionally. But her family’s from there and they get say, obviously.”
Welshman nodded.
“She was just nice. Most people aren’t just nice for shits, you know? They do it because they think it makes them good people or they do it selectively, but Sarah was really honestly nice. She did volunteer work, for fuck’s sake. All I do is sit in my flat and read and stare at the world like it’s going to bite me. Sarah was fucking brave. She’d talk to people like they were an old friend, instantly. She had this talent of...humanity. It was humanity.”
Welshman wrinkled his brow. “How d’you mean?”
“You know how some people do good things but they’re still fundamentally practical? They can look at people and turn them into numbers in their head, even if they really, really care, because they have to?” I was leaning forward, willing him to absorb the words I was saying. He tilted his head in assent.
“Well,  Sarah couldn’t. She was gloriously, wonderfully impractical, and you know - I think practicality’s overrated. I think a lot of practicality is just heartlessness justified – wise heartlessness maybe, but still heartlessness. And I wish we were allowed to call it that without it being a personal attack, because the people who can’t put their heart aside are really fucking rare and deserve recognition for it. Because they’re fucking wonderful, they really are.” I realised I was speaking pretty loudly, and I felt suddenly chastened. Welshman was looking at me with this strange look; this implicit recognition, combined with something like pain, but calmer.

He took out a packaged sandwich.
“Do you want half?” It wasn’t a question. I took it meekly and we broke bread together.
“You cared about her a lot.”
I paused, chewing. “I knew her for a really long time. After my mum died she did all of it right; didn’t try to be family, didn’t encroach on my space, but…pestered me just enough. Allowed me to get annoyed with her, told me when I was being a dick, kept me standing on the ground. Some people just feel like elements, and she felt like Earth. Fuck, her tea. This woman’s tea.”
“Did you love her?” Welshman had sat back.
“Of course. Y’know, platonically.” I smirked a bit, despite myself. “We could’ve spent a whole life together, talking about fuck-all.”
“Did you guys travel in wide circles?” He was avoiding the use of the word “friends”, I think.
“She did, I didn’t. I think that’s probably part of it. I’m not a social person, you know?”
“That’s a shame.” He was watching me, I could feel it on my bowed brow.
“Not really.” I looked up, faced him properly. “I’m a loner, fundamentally.”
“But even loners need people.”
“Yes. I needed her.”
Welshman looked at me for a long time after I said that, but we slipped into silence again. By the time he spoke again, we were pulling into Edinburgh station; our stop.

“I could be that person. I mean, not face-to-face all the time, but I don’t think you’d need it anyway.”
He said it so simply, like it was an offer to look after my cat. I could tell my eyes were swimming. It was that fundamental trait, that humanity. It was slipping off of him as if he was bathed by a moving light, like he was shedding it.
“I just mean – if you need it.”

I looked at him for a few seconds, coughed, and nodded.
“I think I do.”
Like two fleshy pebbles we found our way into the flow of passengers emptying onto the platform, the hubbub of conversation washing over our subsiding exchange. A wrought iron roof magnified the speech, like some vast urban choir playing for a strange Cathedral.  As we left the platform, I turned to him.
“You know, you remind me of my mother.”

Screw!

I suck and am late. I was having a life. =/ But I've almost finished something for tomorrow. =D

Bhanga from a Stereo

My hands wove through his hair like diving birds or a snake through grass; eminently natural, collecting the individual strands of thick black Pakistani curl. I was a field-working woman, gathering together the crop into one swaying basket that tilted as I tilted. Cross-legged behind him, I could have been meditating – and he could have been some Rajah, some great King.

“Now you do my head,” he had said, in his accent thick as the qeema he had served us three or four times, to our naïve Western tongues untouched by the spices of the east. He had a way of speaking that made what he said seem timeless, self-evident and unquestionable – so I had sat behind his wicker chair and now I massaged his scalp, took his hair around each of my fingers as we slipped further into a strange sort of coalescent movement; he, swaying slightly to the bhanga from the stereo, I, tilting both with the music and the undulation of my fingerprints against his skull. We had reached a queer conclave, a bizarre stasis.

We were miles from the nearest city, and maybe that was what made unfurling here so easy. I felt as if over the last few days I had opened, allowed the sun I hid from on any ordinary day to absorb into my blood vessels and warm my body. He was a strange man, alternating between childishness and hopping rage; but I had been brought up an Englishman. I was proud of my stoicism, proud of my ability to withstand stress with a straight face and no trace of embarrassment. My travelling companion, my best friend, dwelt in England but didn’t claim herself English – she was as continental as her parentage. Thus, she said, knee deep in our weeding patches, she was perfectly qualified to complain.

 I had tuned her out a while ago, and since we were working on opposite sides of the farm, I was left to my own silence, left to lose myself like a million tourists in the repetition of manual labour, the calmness of small-scale natural exploitation. We worked eight hours a day and were always finished by two in the afternoon (followed by long walks through the countryside). After our conversation died, we were left to continue on, watching the aquamarine Polish sky bring out the lustre of the surrounding agriculture.

“I know, he’s a Pakistani in Poland who speaks average Polish at best, it’s weird,” my friend had said, tapping at the keyboard to find airline tickets. “But he’s paying for us to go and paying for us to work. So we might as well go.”

I was glad I’d come. We were sleeping in the attic of a barn, but I’d never slept better. I was reliably informed that this was not the real face of rural Poland but a result of him demolishing his house two days before he arrived. There was a lot that had been proclaimed to me as if it was unassailable. Living here was like living without science. But there were upsides; there were moments that seemed unpleasant in conception, but turned out to be calming. Like these massages.

He was a little man with a little head, and I dwarfed him by at least half a foot; so it was not difficult to position my hands correctly, enough so that the novice swirls I pressed against his hairbed were not too uncomfortable. He seemed to radiate calm while I massaged his head – as if I was bringing him a taste of Nirvana. When he fell asleep, inevitably lulled by the sitar music he had playing out of his stereo, I would leave, gentler and quieter for the effort. I did not have to say anything for him to know that my English bones were softer than when I had arrived.

Cambrians: The Candidates

“Mooorning”. Syllables duly dragged, Naomi dropped into the train seat opposite Max and Mags. It was a point of pride for the three of them that they never phoned each other before nine o’clock in the morning; they liked to prove to each other that they were not yet co-dependent. If they met up on the train, it was by coincidence. There was a long pause.

“Morning.” This was with more emphasis. Mags looked up dully, pushing back a lock of dark red hair, dyed. “Hi.” Max looked up and gave his little half-smile.
“Jesus, you guys are lively.”
Mags grimaced. “Blame history. I understand that 19^th century British politics is important, but couldn’t they have taken a break from legislation and done something…I don’t know, important AND fun?”
Max coughed amusedly. “What, like windsurfing?”
“You laugh, you always laugh,” Mags stabbed a finger at them both, “but I honestly think the Great Reform Act would’ve been a lot easier to pass if at least one Whig was into extreme sports. How do you say no to a liberal in a wetsuit?”
“It’d be madness.”
“Exactly!” Mags slumped again. “Anyway, I was up until midnight. It’s the least fun I’ve ever had after dark.”
Naomi grinned. “I reckon I can cheer you up.” She fished around a bit in her cavernous bag and pulled out five, shiny looking rectangles. “We’re going to see…a play.” This was, of course, in her best Pippa Middleton accent.
“A play?”
“A play.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “I feel very middle class.”
“Don’t you though.” Mags had approached Joanna Lumley levels of drawl.
“My dad did some of the specialist set building,” Naomi put in, “and it’s also kind of a new production so they want anyone to show up.” She paused. “I mean it’s supposed to be really good, but Cambridge is the first place they’re doing it, so –“
“Bad plays are almost better than good plays, so it doesn’t matter.” Mags waved a hand. “Who are we inviting, anyway? I dunno who qualifies to tour with the Ely Massive.”
“Christ, we have a name?” Max looked sceptical.
“Of course. You can’t be as awesome as we are and not put a name to it.” Mags shrugged off-handedly. “I say we invite Alfie.”
Naomi gave confused face. “Is he the big one?”
Max spoke. “He’s from the Hearse, I think, private school guy. Quiet, though. He’s not a dick.”
“He’s nice.” Mags nodded. “He gave me a pencil, he’s in my tutor group and we’ve got most of our frees together. I like him.”
“What about Eddie?” Naomi shook her hair back a bit. “He’s the guy who sits at the back in German. Always looks stoned. He’s funny.”
Max thought. “I like Dylan.” Mags and Naomi both gave him the same confused look, which would’ve made him smile, except for the fact that people always forced him to explain his smiles. “Newspaper guy. The one really eager to take the arts and books section. I think he’d appreciate the play best.”
“But he’s so moody.” Naomi was sceptical.
Mags frowned, slightly bemused that she’d forgotten his name. “He’s not, he’s just…sarky. I think he’s funny in the right space.”
Max shrugged.  “I prefer him over Alfie.”
Mags scowled. “I’ll take anyone over Eddie, I think he just thinks he’s funny and people go along with it.”

They looked at each other, realised they’d just cancelled out each other’s choices, and laughed. Mags thought to herself. “Why don’t we just…talk to all of them. For a week or something. And then decide in a week?”

Max and Naomi looked at one another, thought to themselves, then nodded. Naomi gave a cat-like smile.

“This is the first interesting thing to happen all year.”