Blindness
Another one has bitten the dust
In the January 23 Weekly Mail and Guardian, well-known feminist novelist Fay Weldon (Praxis, Female Friends, The Life and Loves of a She Devil) explains why she thinks feminism has gone too far.
"The gender switch has been thrown", says Weldon. Under the pressure of women's liberation from automatic child-bearing, sexual repression and economic dependence, men now "shrink, shrivel and under-perform, just as women did once". "Our young men", she says, "are in a sorry state ... Perhaps the pendulum has stuck and needs nudging back to a more moderate position?".
Weldon's public change of heart from acclaimed chronicler of the everyday reality of women's oppression to post-feminist will be greeted by the anti-feminist brigade with a glee reserved only for prodigal daughters.
Such feminist recanters are given more than their share of attention in that bastion of sexism, the establishment media. Nevertheless, it can't be denied that the list of high profile post-feminists is getting longer. Weldon follows in some big footsteps: Germaine Greer, Norma McCorvey (a.k.a. Jane Roe, whose 1973 case legalised abortion in the US) and Naomi Wolf, to name a few.
The evolution of post-feminists usually follows one of two paths. Some, like Roe, have been battered into submission by the powerful tide of backlash ideology since the mid-1980s. This ideology has accompanied the neo-liberal offensive against every step forward feminism ever made for women in the law, government services and the work force. Many of the individual targets of this backlash, without a strong, active feminist movement to support them, have capitulated to the pressure.
Others, like Weldon and Greer, through careers made possible by and carved out of the remarkable successes of 1960s and '70s women's liberation movement, have managed to escape from the discrimination that ordinary women still face every day, everywhere.
With fame and fortune to shield them from the ugliness of day-to-day life in a sexist world, they have forgotten what it is like not to have many choices. They have also forgotten that the political and moral centre of feminism was its aim to liberate all women from this lack of choice, not just a few "leaders".
When you stop seeing and getting angry about the systematic exploitation and abuse of women, you just might start worrying about men. Fay Weldon is right that the majority of men are doing it harder today. The neo-liberal attacks are not only against women. They are against the working class as a whole, and most men are poorer, in less secure jobs, working longer hours for less pay, in less healthy conditions and under more stress.
But that's not because women are better off. These men's wives, sisters, mothers and female friends are still working even longer hours (many of them unpaid), with less job security and pay than their male counterparts, in even less healthy conditions and under enormous stress.
The idea that the gains for women made by the feminist movement were at the expense of men is a backlash myth propagated to undermine the expectations and demands among masses of people for more and more accessible government services, for better wages and working conditions and for greater sexual freedom and democratic rights. The feminist movement was instrumental in generating those expectations.
Weldon couldn't be more wrong. Feminism hasn't gone too far.
It hasn't gone nearly far enough for the billions of Third World women still shackled by illiteracy, poverty and constant child-bearing. It hasn't gone far enough for the millions of immigrant women workers in the First World's sweatshops, or for the 200,000 women who die of botched abortions every year. It hasn't gone far enough for the 25% of all women who are sexually assaulted by the time they are 18, or the woman beaten every 18 minutes in the US.
Feminism hasn't gone far enough for Australia's indigenous women, whose health is worse today than 20 years ago. It hasn't gone far enough for the 2 million girls circumcised each year, or for those living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, no longer allowed to attend school. It hasn't gone far enough for the thousands of single mothers in Australia who can't afford child-care because no-one will five them a decently paid job and can't get a job because they can't afford child-care.
Open your eyes, Fay Weldon!
By Lisa Macdonald