It's a jungle out there!

Blogging about the blogosphere is a little like having a wank in the garden. It feels gritty and inappropriate, there's always the vague apprehension that somebody's watching and judging, and you're likely to come away with unpleasant things stuck to you. Be that as it may, I can't not comment on - well, the comments on the recent post, 'Palin, abortion and the gender agenda', where I dared to suggest that a feminist stance is contingent upon a pro-choice outlook.

The post, as many of you will be aware, weaselled its way onto Liberal Conspiracy and went nova, exploding into far and away the site's most commented piece within 24 hours. It turned into a quasi-socratic mud-flinging match between various mostly-male commentators who wanted to take the discussion away from feminism and into clunky semantics, worrying the mostly-female-and-Sunny commentators who were actually trying to make points about female physical sovereignty in best British bulldog style. Reducing arguments about real women and real issues to a 'thought experiment', completely oblivious to the fact that only men have the luxury of doing so. Some commentators took wilful refusal to listen to the point of actual aggression, the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and singing ‘laa-laa-laa, I can’t hear you!’

Now, I was shite at debating in school, which wasn't all that long ago. Oh, I could come up with shiny speeches on the fly, but I was always being told that I wasn't dispassionate enough, that I got too emotionally involved with my arguments, I took things too personally. And funnily enough, that's the accusation that's flung in the direction of feminist writers and commentators online when they try to engage in debate with men and with misogynist trolls.

Feminism isn't something you can approach dispassionately, nor should you try. We are emotionally involved, all of us, because we're women or we're close to women. The idea that empathy has no place in contempotary politics or in contemporary political debate is nonsensical, dangerous and typically masculine in a way that most great male thinkers I know find tiresome. Cold, dispassionate debate can be sometimes massively unhelpful when you're talking about something that's so emotional, so personal, something that's about, for example, your own uterus and your own future and whether you have any right to control it if the technology is there. To take a completely random example, insisting again and again and again that everyone’s feminism is valid, even if they are willing to shout 'women are filthy whores who should suffer the consequences of having naughty sex - but I'm a feminist, too! I say so! Look!' – isn’t constructive debate.

Some of the commentators (again, all male) doggedly insisted and re-insisted that, although they themselves were of course pro-choice, feminism should open its doctrinal heart to so-called ‘feminists for life’. Because feminism is a matter of theosophical consensus, and not a practical, pro-woman political position at all. And because us girls should all just learn to get along.

I spent this morning on a crumbling sofa in a tiny bookshop in SoHo, reading books I couldn’t afford. One of these was Kate Fillion’s excellent ‘Lip Service’. Sub-titling her argument ‘the myth of female virtue in love, sex and friendship,’ Fillion makes the long-overdue case that in-fighting within the movement is slowing us down, that ‘sisterhood’ was and remains an over-prescriptive, quasi-eroticised fantasy of ephemeral cross-gender solidarity, and that us gals don’t, actually, have to all get along for feminism to work.

No. I won’t accept that every man and woman who says he or she is a feminist is one. It’s not, as some Liberal Conspiracy hacks would have us believe, a case of absolutely everyone’s feminism being equally valid. That’s a cop out, a dangerous and much-misused loophole that has allowed misogynists, peddlers of regressive porn and Sarah Palin to wave tokenistic feminist flags over the most anti-woman policies imaginable.

It doesn’t work like that. Actually, there are several ground assumptions of feminism. The idea that women aren’t inherently evil, or weak, or crazy, or saintly demons, or degenerate, is one of them. The notion of every woman’s right to bodily and reproductive autonomy is another.

Nor is a position automatically feminist because a woman holds it. I’m heart-sick of people quipping, in response to anti-patriarchal ranting (me? never!) – but XX says it! So it must be okay! Actually, some women – women whose life experiences and morals are equally valid – do not participate in the sisterhood, or in feminist thought and action, whatsoever. I know, crazy, isn’t it. With the way the world looks today, with the wimminz taking men’s jobs and filling men’s universities, you’d think us bra-burning harpy feminazis were everywhere. But we’re not. That’s why those of us who are out there have to shout so loud.

I’ve known plenty of women who thing that women are naturally, biologically and intellectually inferior to men. I’ve known women who believe that a woman’s role is to have babies and please her man. And I’ve known women who firmly believe that any given clutch of jellied pre-human cells is far more valuable than the life, life choices and personal sovereignty of any woman, anywhere, and who would legislate on that basis given the chance. That doesn’t make it a feminist viewpoint, that doesn’t mean that the speaker believes in women’s equal biological rights, and it doesn’t make it okay.

It’s not okay to call yourself a feminist if you believe that women aren’t fit to make their own decisions, including over whether or not their child is carried to term. It’s not okay to call yourself a feminist if you would deny women the right to make those choices, deny them basic personal sovereignty and physical autonomy.

It’s terribly convenient for commentators like Lee Griffin to ignore or dismiss the very salient fact of internalised sexism. It’s terribly convenient to think that one can still say that one is feminist whilst prioritising one’s religious dogma, cultural prejudices and personal sexism, racism and classism over anti-misogyny and genuine gender equality. But it does not work like that.

As Fillion points out, sometimes feminism means facing down misogyny wherever it comes from. Feminism doesn’t mean insisting that all women are right, always. I’m willing to allow other women the privilege of being wrong. In fact, in the course of this debate I’ve told women who I greatly respect that I find their pro-choice, pro-criminalisation-of-abortion position deeply anti-feminst at root level. I like and respect these women, but I still believe that a pro-choice stance is essential to contemporary feminism, and I’ll take on anyone, male, female, enemy or friend, who says so.

The temptation is so strong and the cultural script so deeply written to subvert one’s own political position for the sake of solidarity, partly because there are still so few of us. It’s a lonely business being a feminist writer and activist. As a young feminist, I feel keenly the lack of a coherent older generation to set the standard and show us the way. Instead, most of what we’ve got is Julie Bindel, a rampant bigot who hates all men and most women, giving the rest of us a bad name in the process. The young activist contingent is gradually increasing its numbers and its energy, but its favourite pastime is still in-fighting (more on this later), and we’re feeling our way in the dark. We’re casting our anchors into a deep and hostile see and hoping like hell to strike land. But what else can we do?

Whatever male commentators might like to believe, feminism isn’t a happy, fluffy land of hand-holding and tea parties where everyone gets along. It’s a lonely and exhausting place, populated by bitches like me who won’t lie down and shut up. And with that proviso, we keep our integrity.

Misandry and miscommunication....

I am having, how do you say, a stomp.

Last week my little sister suffered exactly the same indignity I went through at fifteen: having a painstakingly thought-out and researched feminist debate beaten in the school debating competition by a dim boy with a grin and a guitar. In the questions round, a gang of energetic adolescents asked the same question: Do you blame men?

After years of reading and thinking and writing and talking about feminism in the nominally adult world, I face the same question time after weary time: why do you hate us so? Why is it all our fault? Why must you blame us?

And no matter how often and how exhaustively I explain that we don’t, that feminism and misandry aren’t the same thing, no matter how careful I am to distinguish between ‘the patriarchy’ and ‘male people’, the same frantic, antic, aggressive-defensiveness persists. The same terror from men across the political spectrum that feminism means sanctioned man-bashing and, worse still, that it might have a point. An inverted delusion that any feminist statement is automatically an attack on all men, everywhere.

Feminism isn’t, in fact, all about men and the terrible things they do. Feminism isn’t even all about women. Feminism is about categories, and assumptions, and prejudices, and how they work us all over at base level. The necessity of explaining this to supportive readers and wannabe trolls alike is a central dilemma for feminist bloggers. Do you take on people's assumptions and try to explain? Do you engage?

Well, of course you do. Cath Elliott at Cif and Liberal Conspiracy is a tireless and inspiring example of the practice. You engage, and you engage again, even when you find yourself attacked and wilfully misunderstood on all sides. Because the internet is a safe space, but it's also a hypertextual space - and the right of reply, the right to ask questions and pose challenges is a central part of that discourse. Yes, it makes the whole process a lot more tiring. But in the end, you step up or you step the hell away from the keyboard.

Blog Nation and men in feminist cyberspace....

Fashionably late to the party, this week I went to a massively interesting liberal bloggers' event at the Guardian. It was fantastic to finally meet people I've spent so long sparring with online; that awkward shuffling when a roomful of geeky people who know each other well but haven't actually met and are trying, shyly, to match faces to cyberspace handles felt pleasingly zeitgeist as always. It was the second part of the evening, the panel on women's blogs, feminist blogs and their interaction with the rest of the blogsphere, that really got my hackles raised.

With a room full of big name bloggers from across the country, it's hardly surprising that the debate has already been written up all over the left blogsphere (jeez, but I utterly loathe that term). One particularly striking question, raised by a confused young man in the audience, was: what do you want from us? How are we supposed to respond when you're complaining both that more mainstream blogs ignore your comments and posts and that you're routinely taken advantage of online? How can you ask to be taken more seriously and not want to be pushed around or bullied? Or, as the clit-itchingly unreconstructed Mr Lee Griffin put it:

'I think it's an amazing feat to both be ignored and abused at the same time but even more complicated became the idea that feminists wanted more credit, and to be leaders of feminist issues...but while men were there to support the arguments in a debate where everyone is equal.'

I rarely indulge in the turf wars over topics like this, partly because Pennyred isn't solely a feminist blog but, rather, a plain old leftist blog, highly informed, as all liberal politics should be, by feminism. But the reactions of the men in the audience both at the event and after they'd got home, had their coffee and calmed down enough to type, were astounding. Let me make one thing clear:

In meatspace or in cyberspace, women should not have to choose between being ignored and being abused. Both are problems faced by women in online communities. The hypertextual, interactive nature of the internet, along with the anonymity afforded by avatars and handles, is just one reason that flourishing women's communities have sprung up across cyberspace, groundbreaking grass-roots activism and sisterly solidarity of a species never seen before - but the hostility feminist bloggers meet with outside dedicated feminist communities has to be encountered to be believed.

As a woman writing online, you come to expect a given amount of crass, rude, misogynist abuse in comments; you come to expect a certain amount of pointless lewdness and sexual bullying from posters using the anonymity of the internet as a chance to indulge their more tiresome and vindictive politics. You expect to be called a bitch and a slut, you expect to receive sexual threats and inappropriate propositions when you write about women's issues. I've had it, we've all had it. At the same time, Kate Belgrave and others expressed dismay that some of the key online feminist campaigns in recent months have been attributed to male bloggers, when females have put in much of the leg work. Whilst understanding that male feminists have an important contribution to make, this position is a far cry from table-thumping feminazism. Let me explain:

We need men in the feminist movement. We welcome their presence, and we value their contribution. What irks us is when men come into the movement and immediately expect to lead. We do not need leaders - what we need are allies. What we need are men who will listen to our experiences without presuming to tell us, first, what those experiences are. Anne Onne has a fantastic piece up at TheFWord this month:

'...The problem is, as a privileged group which isn’t used to hostility, it feels as if any criticism is personal. That anything directed at men means that we are criticising all men, no matter how wonderful they are. We are not, and every time you think this is the case, check yourself. Feminists have brothers, fathers, boyfriends and male friends and are sometimes even men. We know perfectly well that not all men are responsible for a problem. But we also know that if men don’t own their role in this, things won’t get better. In order to unravel privilege, you have to admit you have it, and admit that people may have a very real reason to fear people like you. Yes, it sucks that if you walk up to a strange woman in a deserted street, or are stuck in an empty lift with her, she will be nervous. But imagine what it’s like for her. Far worse.'

We need men who want to educate themselves in women's issues (for a crash-course you can do no better than a visit to Feminism101). We need men to support us and afford us the respect that we deserve. And we need men who are prepared to drop their weapons and come off the defensive, who understand that feminism and misandry aren't synonymous, that a rant against patriarchy does not constitute an personal attack on every Y-chromosomed individual out there in cyberspace. We need male feminists who will listen without wanting to lead. To call the feminist movement an unequal one because its women are anxious not to be drowned out is a feat of point-missage second only to the UK's Eurovision record.

And, guys? There will be times when you will get it wrong. You will make mistakes. You, too, are human. Don't mire yourselves in defensiveness for fear of making a mistake. We will make mistakes too, time and time again - we'll call you 'typically male' when we're tired and angry, we will even refer to you, when you've put in the effort to be kind and considerate at home, as 'well trained.' And when we display disgusting dregs of prejudice like this, we expect, respectfully, to be challenged. As we, in turn, will challenge you.

Set down this: the way that men, and male bloggers in particular, feel when trying to participate in the feminist movement is not dissimilar to the way that women feel when trying to participate in life. That cold tug on the solar plexus when you realise you're in a world that wasn't arranged for your benefit, where you didn't make the rules and where your voice might be less important purely because of your genital arrangement? Remember that feeling. Remember that feeling and imagine it applied to the rest of your life. Imagine not being able to shut down the computer and walk away.

After generations of struggle, we are still trying to build a better world, one where gender does not dictate behaviour and assumptions and opportunities. We would like you to share it with us. Online communities are one area where we're laying the foundations, and we would be immensely glad of your support, your energy and your ideas. We don't need your leadership and we don't want your bullying vendettas; all you need to do is bite down and try to understand and own your own privilege. It can be hard to swallow. But it's got to be done.