tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca-fr/topics/backlash-against-feminists-9933/articlesbacklash against feminists – La Conversation2015-02-13T02:58:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/375762015-02-13T02:58:30Z2015-02-13T02:58:30Z‘Disempowered’ men still lead on economic power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71910/original/image-20150212-13186-1nsgjdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">White Ribbon aims to make women's safety a man's issue too, but ambassador Tanveer Ahmed has done damage to the cause.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtney Biggs/Newzulu/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This week “feminist” organisation <a href="http://www.whiteribbon.org.au/">White Ribbon</a> came into disrepute after one of its ambassadors, psychiatrist and journalist <a href="http://www.tanveerahmed.com.au/about-us/">Tanveer Ahmed</a>, wrote an <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/news/1/index.html?sourceCode=TAWEB_MRE170_a&mode=premium&dest=http://m.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/men-forgotten-in-violence-debate/story-e6frg6zo-1227212326612?nk=f01ebeaeedf37c338c973167e33fab86&memtype=anonymous">opinion piece in The Australian</a>, suggesting men’s violence against women could be attributed to the historic decline of men’s power. This decline, felt acutely by working class and recently arrived immigrant men, has been exacerbated by the decline in secure unionised employment. Men have become “feminised” and are, as a consequence, “humiliated”. It is this, he argues, that is “increasingly the driver of family-based violence”.</p>
<p>Ahmed says “<a href="http://www.dvvic.org.au/index.php/understanding-family-violence/key-statistics.html">statistics</a> don’t lie” – one woman a week is killed by her current or former partner – but the “old argument” about men’s power no longer applies. In fact, says Ahmed, violence by men is increasingly perpetrated because they are powerless, not powerful.</p>
<p>While masquerading as analysis, the piece ultimately reads as an apology for men’s violence. There are two reasons for this. First, Ahmed’s “<a href="https://twitter.com/drtahmed/status/565281586166661123">diagnosis</a>” is not followed with a recognition that men’s (likely very real) problems with declining power are theirs to work through, not to enact on their wives, girlfriends or other women in the form of violence. Second, he criticises, in the most stereotyped and deliberately inflammatory terms, the feminist movement, which gave the very tools and resources to make such a critique of male violence possible.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Labor MP and White Ribbon Ambassador Tim Watts calls for the removal of Tanveer Ahmed from the organisation.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Feminism forgotten</h2>
<p>One of the difficulties with this view is that it both exploits yet (unreasonably) dispenses with feminist analysis. In this sense, Ahmed doesn’t acknowledge his debt – both theoretical and practical – which makes it harder to do the work that White Ribbon is ultimately all about. </p>
<p>Indeed, the very paradigm he caricatures as out of touch – “1970s radical feminism” - was the movement that put men’s violence on the agenda and defined it as a systemic issue rather than as a series of inexplicable, isolated cases. It was the second wave of feminism – although certainly men’s violence was recognised in the first wave and earlier too – that recognised that this problem was the outcome of unjust power relations. This was a critical step in our understanding of the problem, which, sadly, remains as relevant today as it was in the heady days of the consciousness-raising 1970s.</p>
<p>White Ribbon have since made an official statement rejecting Ahmed’s views. CEO <a href="http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/news-features/white-ribbon-ambassador-tanveer-ahmed-recommitting-rather-than-resigning-20150211-13bbnt.html">Libby Davies said they were “shocked”</a> by Ahmed’s article and that it “absolutely exemplifies some of the issue around men fully understanding violence against women … when a supposedly educated person makes gross misjudgements around the issue of feminism, equity and equality”.</p>
<p>In my view what makes Ahmed’s critique especially complex is that he is, in some important respects, right. Men are losing power in a world where women have gained formal equality. Ahmed is certainly not the first to suggest that some are “evening the score”, in crude terms, in their private lives. <a href="http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415412339/">An analogous argument has been made by “radical feminists”</a> regarding the exponential rise of the global sex industry. </p>
<p>Where Ahmed falls drastically short is in naming that the power being lost was not a legitimate power in the first place – any more than whites having power over blacks or gay couples not being “allowed” to marry was legitimate. This unearned privilege was and is part of a system of social, political and economic control that feminism as a movement for women’s equality has sought to name, critique and dismantle.</p>
<h2>Rhetoric of equality</h2>
<p>Moreover, it is false to assume that the rhetoric of women’s equality is a reality. Ahmed points out “women are more likely than ever to enter university, be breadwinners, or have affairs”. Without qualifying these statements, they misrepresent the evidence. </p>
<p>While western women have made substantial gains in their youth and are indeed <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/degrees-of-separation-more-women-enrolling-at-universities-20131124-2y46e.html">more likely “than ever” to be awarded a university degree</a> (with the notable exception of an engineering degree), in fact most women end up considerably poorer than most men in their socio-economic group. The simple reason for this is that women undertake the vast majority of unpaid care work and tailor their working lives accordingly. Research consensus shows <a href="http://w3.unisa.edu.au/hawkeinstitute/cwl/documents/AWALI2012-National.pdf">it is still incredibly difficult to “juggle” these roles</a> and most women’s careers or, more to the point, lack thereof, reflect this.</p>
<h2>Economic reality</h2>
<p>Women are not just as likely to “be breadwinners”. In fact they are highly unlikely to be the primary earners of their families unless they are single mothers. And then their primary earnings are likely to be a poverty-line conglomerate of <a href="http://jos.sagepub.com/content/38/4/361.short">welfare and the meagre earnings</a> of part-time and/or casualised service work - the very work that Ahmed suggests is leading men to become violent!</p>
<p>Once they have children, the great majority of <a href="https://www.wgea.gov.au/sites/default/files/2014-03-04_PP_Pay_Gap_and_Parenting.pdf">women work part-time and their earnings are supplementary</a> to the primary breadwinner’s; that is, to the man’s earnings.</p>
<p>Ahmed mistakes the rhetoric of empowerment for a utopian reality that has not yet arrived. Indeed, one of the reasons women have difficulty leaving domestic violence situations is precisely because of their economic dependence on men.</p>
<p>In the ensuing debate, <a href="https://twitter.com/drtahmed/status/565281586166661123?refsrc=email">Ahmed has promulgated himself as a moderate rationalist</a> who merely wants to temper and enrich the debate. However, he simultaneously undermines the platform upon which this debate rests: feminism.</p>
<p>Predictably, feminist responses have been dismissed as “<a href="https://twitter.com/Monster_Dome/status/565458538508853248">hysterical</a>” and <a href="http://www.inside-man.co.uk/2015/02/09/feminism-crisis-male-supporter-expresses-view/">lacking the reason and insight</a> that Ahmed, as a man and a doctor, has a purported monopoly on. Feeding into the very stereotypes about feminism and by implication women that are most damaging, Ahmed has done a great disservice to the White Ribbon cause.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Petra Bueskens does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This week “feminist” organisation White Ribbon came into disrepute after one of its ambassadors, psychiatrist and journalist Tanveer Ahmed, wrote an opinion piece in The Australian, suggesting men’s violence…Petra Bueskens, Lecturer in Social Science, Australian College of Applied PsychologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/321532014-09-25T06:32:29Z2014-09-25T06:32:29Z126,000 reasons why the Emma Watson hoax isn’t all bad news<p>In less than a week since actor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Watson">Emma Watson</a>’s stirring United Nations speech on gender inequality, two big things have happened – but you’ve probably only heard about one of them.</p>
<p>The first, which has driven days of global headlines, is that the 24-year-old actor (best known for her role in Harry Potter films) soon copped a backlash, including what appeared to be an online threat to publish naked photos of her. That’s now been shown to be a complicated hoax; more on that and what it has revealed shortly. </p>
<p>The other big thing that’s happened has received far less attention, but it’s much more heartening. </p>
<p>In only a few days, more than 126,000 men and boys have pledged their support for the new <a href="http://www.heforshe.org/">HeforShe campaign</a> to end gender inequality – beating <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeForShe">the original target of 100,000 supporters</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60014/original/742jskrp-1411625733.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60014/original/742jskrp-1411625733.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60014/original/742jskrp-1411625733.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60014/original/742jskrp-1411625733.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60014/original/742jskrp-1411625733.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60014/original/742jskrp-1411625733.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60014/original/742jskrp-1411625733.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60014/original/742jskrp-1411625733.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The map of global #HeforShe supporters as of Thursday 25 September 2014, 4:15pm AEST.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">http://HeforShe.org/</span></span>
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<p>You can see how many have signed up <a href="http://www.heforshe.org/">in your country on the site’s interactive map</a>. The campaign’s <a href="http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/09/24/celeb-feminists?cmpid=tp-twtr">male supporters</a> include fellow actors Matt Damon, Patrick Stewart, Russell Crowe and Keifer Sutherland, and now thousands more from around the world.</p>
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<p>Watson’s passionate and moving speech at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, above, has already been viewed more than 4 million times on YouTube. You can <a href="http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2014/9/emma-watson-gender-equality-is-your-issue-too">read it in full here</a>, but highlights include:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I started questioning gender-based assumptions when at eight I was confused at being called ‘bossy’, because I wanted to direct the plays we would put on for our parents—but the boys were not. When I was 14, I started being sexualised by certain elements of the press. When at 15, my girlfriends started dropping out of their sports teams because they didn’t want to appear ‘muscly’.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not limiting the speech to gender difficulties faced by only women, Watson described how gender stereotypes hurt men and boys too:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness unable to ask for help for fear it would make them look less ‘macho’. In fact, in the UK suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20-49; eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the benefits of equality either.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Watson’s speech won a standing ovation inside the UN and even greater applause beyond. But it wasn’t long before her strong stand on gender equality triggered a backlash.</p>
<h2>A double hoax</h2>
<p>Only a day after her speech, a mysterious website and a blog’s “news” story speculated that a hacker was about to publish naked photographs of Watson, just as happened recently to stars including <a href="http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/jennifer-lawrence-nude-photos-leaked-hacker-posts-explicit-pics/story-fn907478-1227043406704">Jennifer Lawrence</a>.</p>
<p>That sparked a media frenzy. </p>
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<span class="caption">A hoax “news story”, now removed from the internet, which sparked the global controversy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">via Business Insider</span></span>
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<p>The world watched as the website www.emmayouarenext.com counted down the hours to when purportedly private photos would be released. Just as disturbing as the website itself were many of the comments about it, including “That feminist bitch Emma is going to show the world she is as much of a whore as any woman”, and “She makes stupid feminist speeches at UN, and now her nudes will be online, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH”.</p>
<p>Instead of talking about the content of her speech, social media was ablaze with outrage at hackers, particularly the image-based website <a href="http://www.4chan.org/">4chan</a>, which appeared to be linked to the Watson attack site.</p>
<p>Finally, on Wednesday September 24, the countdown was supposedly over – but there were no naked photos. Instead, users were directed to rantic.com, a webpage claiming to be devoted to shutting down 4Chan, complete with a petition to US President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>And as if it couldn’t get any weirder, it now appears that even that “advertising company” rantic.com is <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/emma-watson-naked-photo-countdown-hoax-2014-9">actually a fake</a>, and the whole thing is the work of a group of serial internet hoaxers known as <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/emma-watson-nude-countdown-socialvevo-4chan/">socialVEVO</a>.</p>
<p>So what have we learnt from this elaborate hoax, which duped millions of people including many in the global news media?</p>
<h2>Easy targets</h2>
<p>Why was it so easy to believe that anonymous, angry internet “trolls” would immediately recoil at Emma’s suggestion of gender equality, and attack her privacy by publishing naked photos? (If any actually exist, that is.)</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, it was easy to believe because too often women <em>are</em> victimised online, particularly in sexualised ways, and particularly when they take a stand on gender equality as Watson did.</p>
<p>It is ironic that in her speech, Watson declared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the exact sentiment that was threatened. The fact that this threat was just a hoax – the motives for which are still unclear – does not excuse the manipulation used to generate this attention. </p>
<p>Whether intended or not, the message to women that’s been reinforced over the past few days have been all too clear: speak out and you will be targeted. </p>
<p>And even if the website was a fake, the public response to it – which included vicious and perverse comments about Watson being a whore – were sadly all too real.</p>
<p>But if there is one glimmer of good news out of all this, it’s that the extra attention garnered by the controversy has driven more people – particularly men and boys – to back the <a href="http://www.heforshe.org/">HeforShe campaign</a>, on its website and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/heforshe">on social media</a>. These are just some of the thousands so far.</p>
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<p>But amid so much focus on nude photos and hoaxes, we shouldn’t forget what Watson’s speech was all about: gender inequality.</p>
<p>Too many men and women around the world still live with emotional and social restrictions because of gender stereotypes – and that has to end. </p>
<p>The last word should go to Watson, who answered her critics and her own self-doubts in her speech.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You might be thinking who is this Harry Potter girl? And what is she doing up on stage at the UN? It’s a good question and trust me, I have been asking myself the same thing. I don’t know if I am qualified to be here. All I know is that I care about this problem. And I want to make it better … English Statesman Edmund Burke said: ‘All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men and women to do nothing.’ In my nervousness for this speech and in my moments of doubt I’ve told myself firmly — if not me, who? If not now, when?</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32153/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Evita March does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In less than a week since actor Emma Watson’s stirring United Nations speech on gender inequality, two big things have happened – but you’ve probably only heard about one of them. The first, which has…Evita March, Lecturer of Psychology, Federation University AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/254182014-04-15T10:00:14Z2014-04-15T10:00:14ZRape and death threats are all too common in feminist circles, just ask Laura Bates<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46452/original/xdq74q4d-1397554246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Laura Bates has received rape and death threats since launching the Everyday Sexism project</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">TED</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From jokes to rape, there have been nearly 60,000 posts by women recounting their experiences of sexism and sexist violence since journalist and feminist <a href="http://www.tedxeastend.com/speakers/laura-bates">Laura Bates</a> launched her <a href="http://everydaysexism.com/index.php/about">Everyday Sexism project</a> in April 2012. Now the material has been <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Everyday-Sexism-Laura-Bates/dp/1471131572">collected for the first time in a book</a> of the same name. </p>
<p>I’ve been familiar with the project for some time. Yet the sheer pervasiveness and repetitiveness which emerges when the material is presented in book form, accompanied by Bates’ clear, angry, witty, feminist commentary, is refreshing, depressing and enraging.</p>
<h2>If this sounds familiar …</h2>
<p>Everyday Sexism also feels incredibly familiar – and not simply because of the inevitable echoes with my own experiences. I have read this book before. </p>
<p>It is <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dear-Clare-This-Women-About/dp/0091749158">the book Clare Short MP wrote in 1991</a>, comprised of letters that women had written in support of her anti-Page Three campaign. </p>
<p>It is Sue Wise and Liz Stanley’s <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Georgie-Porgie-Harassment-Everyday-Pandora/dp/0863580181">1987 book Georgie Porgie</a> where, like Bates, they talk about the “drip drip” effect of sexual harassment in reducing women’s aspirations, modifying their behaviour and creating a climate of everyday fearfulness. </p>
<p>It is <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Surviving-Sexual-Violence-Feminist-Perspectives/dp/0745604633">Liz Kelly’s Surviving Sexual Violence</a>, which in 1988 introduced the notion of a “continuum” of sexual violence: a concept Bates uses to powerful effect. </p>
<p>It is <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Pornography_and_Sexual_Violence.html?id=7wjaAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Everywoman’s 1988 publication</a> of the civil rights hearings on pornography organised by the late Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon. There too, women and girls talked about how men’s everyday use of porn affected their lives and sense of self, even before the ubiquity of internet porn.</p>
<p>I could go on … </p>
<p>In no way does this detract from the significance of Bates’ book. But it does raise important familiar questions about how the knowledge of the <a href="http://www.britannica.com/women/article-216008">second wave of feminism</a> has been publicly forgotten. This is despite the fact that <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.womensaid.org.uk%2Fcore%2Fcore_picker%2Fdownload.asp%3Fid%3D1963&ei=47NLU-jyIc7G7AaIu4FY&usg=AFQjCNGRok-BBByr3zAFU6bQdeYl18hnCw&sig2=uw8FHs6XT1RN15i0kiuoJg&bvm=bv.64542518,d.d2k">feminist organisations set up in the 1970s</a> to support women experiencing male violence are now well known, depressingly well used and horribly under-funded.</p>
<h2>Bates and the old guard</h2>
<p>Refreshingly, Bates herself does not perform this act of erasure: in a <a href="http://www.glasgowwestend.co.uk/aye-write-glasgows-book-festival-2014-laura-bates-and-anne-dickson-everyday-feminism-and-how-to-fix-it/">discussion at Glasgow’s Aye Write festival</a> last week, she clearly acknowledged the legacy of the second wave. Unlike so many proclamations of the rebirth of feminism in the past two decades <a href="http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/the-everyday-sexism-project-key-element-in-fourth-wave-feminism/">this fourth wave</a>, as heralded by her publishers, is not premised on the death of the feminism before it. </p>
<p>Bates’ book is the 21st-century equivalent of the <a href="http://www.womensliberation.org/priorities/feminist-consciousness-raising">consciousness-raising groups</a> of the Women’s Liberation Movement. It still has the feel of “newness”, of capturing an epidemic of previously untold proportions. The accessibility of the project and its incredible public profile mean it is almost certainly reaching women who missed out on feminism’s previous waves. </p>
<p>Most heartbreaking are the accounts from women who have kept abuse secret for years, decades. Feminist analysis of male violence has been around long enough that this shouldn’t have happened. But in the face of media misrepresentation, the pervasiveness of everyday sexism and the endurance of patriarchy (a concept no less real because academically unfashionable) it shouldn’t be a surprise that it has.</p>
<h2>The university context</h2>
<p>For those of us working in universities, Everyday Sexism poses a number of challenges. It gives grim insight into the pressures our female students and many colleagues face. We still need to know more, not only about campus experiences but also how our institutions respond to them. </p>
<p>When women (and men) are brave enough to come forward, we need to ensure the response they receive within our institutions is appropriate to the century we live in. Not a big ask, although you wouldn’t think it to read many of the experiences in this book. </p>
<p>Academics also have a role to play in following up on the research agenda this book sets. One urgent area for investigation is contemporary feminists’ experiences of the backlash. While backlashes have existed for as long as feminism, the way that backlash is now experienced is new. </p>
<p>In the first month of the Everyday Sexism project Bates received up to 200 messages a day threatening her with rape and murder. No-one has yet been charged in relation to any of these threats. </p>
<p>Bates’ experiences may be extreme, though certainly not unique. In my own circle, hardly a month goes by without one of my feminist friends sharing a rape or death threat they’ve received. While these are sometimes worn as a kind of badge of honour – it shows we’re doing something right - none of us should have to put up with this. </p>
<p>Ignoring the trolls may be useful advice at some level, but having a more systematic account of exactly what feminist public figures endure as a group would be an important first step in understanding the bigger picture behind these anecdotes. Everyday sexists should no longer be able to hide in plain sight. Bates’ book makes it clear that we all have a role to play in exposing them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen Boyle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From jokes to rape, there have been nearly 60,000 posts by women recounting their experiences of sexism and sexist violence since journalist and feminist Laura Bates launched her Everyday Sexism project…Karen Boyle, Chair in Feminist Media Studies, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.