OFFICIAL DEFINITION
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
RAZER DEFINITION
“Feminism” is an Australian term that typically refers to the radically inert minds of the people and women who use it. Whether uttered in spite by incels or as praise at a finance sector lunch, “feminism” conveys little more than the era’s general refusal to refine a tricky set of incompatible ideas into an actual concept.
Sure, the arrangement of thought is hard and noble work. But the arrangement of these words “feminism is a broad church” is a common crime. I will punish it harshly the minute I am crowned as feminist queen.
Seriously. Why don’t you all just yell, “feminism is the word I use to get me on telly” then shut up about the thing? I can’t take another shouty panel show in which feminism is typecast so narrowly. She must be more than (a) the traumatised virgin we worship or (b) Satan’s dirty whore. I need some peace, and so does she. So does any person (or woman) yet to walk with the mentally and politically undead.
WHY IT MATTERS
Feminism matters to me because I am ruddy sick of writing a rational account that is received at publication by several versions of that old-time hit: “Are you on your periods?” Feminism matters to me because I hope for a future in which my written labour does not invite “Are you on your menopause?” until my day of death. Also, there was that one time when the explicitly gendered cruelty of a bloke by the name of [REDACTED] turned me from secure employment and toward the shrink forever.
But it’s not about me and my professional success now, is it? I would much prefer that it were as I could then return to the well-paid work from which [REDACTED] drove me. I could look down the Q&A lens at least 10 times a year and say, “you are not a feminist ally if you refuse to buy my book”. I could make a profitable case for the leadership of Hillary Clinton for almost a dollar a word.
WHO CARES?
Hillary has cared about feminism deeply all her life as was evident with her sudden revelation of this fact at the time of her presidential run. Since at least 2015, she has tirelessly reminded us that she is a feminist and that only a feminist could tip this bad old world into an eternal age of kindness.
The feminism of non-Western origin was not down with this view. It was like they had some problem with powerful role models. Fortunately, white Australian feminism continued to care for the feminist who saved the people of Libya from the crushing boot rule that brought them the highest living standards of a continent. This was no crime. It was an equal opportunity triumph of US foreign policy in which the lady slaughtered both men and women. #ImWIthHer
RELEVANT FACTS
- The “first-wave” feminist Emmeline Pankhurst was an imperialist pile of stink.
- Feminist hero Margaret Sanger doesn’t much like dark skin.
- Ruby Rich doesn’t either.
- John Pilger was OK with me until he said that the proper place for feminism is in the peacekeeping kitchen.
- Nobody can tell me how many feminist T-shirts were sewn by female slave labour.
THE LAST WORD
Just shut up and think, FFS.
The longer and louder you mad twits bang on about “feminism”, the greater the chance that I will finish my book on the topic. Which will be very widely distributed by me to all at no cost.
This act will be due to my virtue and commitment as a feminist. If you have heard that four major Australian publishers have already rejected my half-written work of genius, this is (a) only true ‘til Monday when I expect to receive a fifth, and (b) has nothing to do with the matter at hand or the fact that I am on my periods while writing.
The rejection note we feminists receive when we truly ask “What is feminism?” is essentially the same. One of mine said “mansplaining”. One of my mate’s said “too few stories about how you feel as a Muslim woman and too many about that system racism whatever thing you learned at fancy school”. They’re stupid confessions of fear.
They are right to be afraid. The minute the Western feminist looks to the crimes of the present is the minute their future is eclipsed.
FURTHER READING
No.
Only when you have read this important essay and submitted your report can I assess your readiness to move beyond feminist trifling.
Another very thoughtful article, Helen.
From a humanistic perspective, the issues associated with ensuring that our fellow humans have agency (the capacity to give their values effect) and dignity (the respect of having their values acknowledged as good) is often gendered; that is, we are often hampered by seeing our cultural construction of gender, rather than seeing what the individual is actually doing. Your examples of reactions to your own writing are good illustrations of utterly poxy behaviour.
But to me at least, these issues remain humanistically empirical; that is, I believe they are properly grounded in the empirical study of our species and its civilisations. While subjective accounts matter, it has never been proper to privilege one group’s account of what is happening and why it happens — and replacing one privileged in-group’s account with another doesn’t replace dumb with smart, but dumb with a different flavour of dumb.
Ultimately our understanding of gendered inequities depends on our ability to ask a broad range of questions from multiple perspectives and predict answers accurately and objectively. We simply can’t do that in echo chambers where political ideologues launch circular arguments from airless ontologies that assume their own conclusions.
Of all the thoughts you write, I never admire any more than when you express sympathy for the problem while deploring the short-sighted self-privileging methodologies currently in use. And I broadly agree with you: of course there’s an economic dimension as a principle driver, and of course it has to be addressed as a primary mechanism.
I don’t personally believe that’s the only driver though. Our species doesn’t have a moral blueprint for anything, except perhaps in our capacity to delight in sharing food with strangers. Although many of the differences we consider gendered aren’t, there are still significant innate biological inequities; not all are mitigated by technology, and we need to decide what to do about that.
Wow Ruv you got all that from this piece. I thought it started well but ran out of puff.
Helen has written three or four comments on this topic that I’ve read in the last couple of years, Mark. I think what she’s doing is quite difficult: caring about the subject both personally and professionally and wanting to explore it sensibly without falling into ontological/ideological traps she loathes. Helen gets paid for smart, funny and controversial but it’s hard to find that in a fatigued topic patrolled by three generations of professional scalp-hunters and bled white by outraged sanctimony.
Razer, go on Chapo!
lol. This is one of those Extremely Online things you young persons say, isn’t it? x
Looking forward to the new book!
I loved the last one, if there were any justice in this patriarchal colony, you’d be selling better than MariKondo.
Helen, do you think that ‘Feminism’ is the only topic ineptly discussed by the media? I suggest, apart of course from ignorant white male defensiveness, Feminism is as ineptly dealt with by the media because of the dominant news media formula – reduce everything (even the most complex and plural issues) into one proposition and then divide everyone into 2 camps of protagonists. No nuance, no complexity, no uncertainty.
It was Jo Brand who admonished some twerp trying to make tampon jokes with “No woman ever said I am on my periods, either one is ‘on’ or ‘having a period’ not both.”.