Feminist

Some feminist theory and opinion appals me and there is not one favourite feminist theorist whose writing I swallow whole.  But I am a feminist. Unlike being a Marxist or a Darwinist, where you follow one person’s theory, being a feminist is like being an economist. Economics is the study of wealth and human behaviour and there are many different economic theories often in opposition to each other. E.g. John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman. Feminism is the study of gender in patriarchy that proposes that women are equal to men. But there are many different feminist theories, often in opposition to each other. E.g. Andrea Dworkin and Camille Paglia. I am mostly a Dworkinist, I am never a Pagliaist female essentialist (although I admire Paglia’s brilliant prose style) but I am a feminist, a person who advocates for the rights of women.

Because feminist theory in practice means power sharing between women and men, which means a loss of male privilege, feminists have always been considered a dangerous threat to patriarchy and the male dominated status quo. The backlash against feminism is frequently violent. To call yourself a feminist, whether you are a woman or a man, is like sticking the label ‘hate me’ on your forehead. Made afraid of being ‘hated’ and falsely characterised as ‘man-haters’ many women eschew the feminist word. Experience has taught women that attaching feminist to your name can reduce employability and the saleability of your work. So threatening is the socio-political revolution implicit in the word feminism that the word is frequently banished, avoided and denied – feminism is a dirty word, the F-word. Of course revolution is threatening, of course learning to share power is difficult, but gains of happiness and equal human rights for men and women that occur when gender apartheid patriarchal systems are destroyed far out way any losses. I love the word feminism. Feminism has given me my life and my freedom. I stand shoulder to shoulder with women and men all over the world who are refusing to shut up about sexism.

Sexual desire is no excuse for violence. I valorise women who as adults, to survive in and negotiate the male dominated workspace, ‘take their kit off’ or work in the sex industry.  Some feminists believe that if women censor their sexuality and what they wear – cover-up not skin, dungarees not mini-skirts, bare face not make-up – then male attitudes and behaviour will change from calling women whores to respect. Censoring what women wear to control male sexual violence and engender respect for women is an unworkable failed tactic. This ‘looking respectable’, this anti-sexy tactic that some feminists advocate, plays into the power that patriarchy has to blame women for rape. Feminists who want women to cover-up and who denigrate women when we dress sexy are colluding with patriarchy’s hysterical panic about female flesh, they are endorsing patriarchy’s control of women which taken to its extreme leads to the nikab and the burka.

My feminism states that it is male behaviour that must be modified not women’s dress. Feminists, instead of damning women for dressing sexy demand that men learn the rules: No Means No and Look Don’t Touch!

I am a SEX-POSITIVE feminist.