Category: media bollocks

For those not in the know, in July a conference entitled RadFem2012 is supposed to be happening, with headline speaker radical feminist–and noted transphobe–Sheila Jeffreys. The conference is open only to “women born women living as women”, a clunky way of saying “no trans people”.

Kickass feminist and activist, the thoroughly inspirational Roz Kaveney recently wrote a takedown of this particular branch of radical feminism, rightly likening it to a cult (although arguably  there are also fascistic overtones to the radfem party line on this issue). If you haven’t read it yet, please do. It’s utterly brilliant.

Sheila Jeffreys has responded to Roz’s excellent piece with an argument with so many holes it would be better suited to function as a colander. Again, this piece is worth reading, though for the exact opposite reasons to the one above. Jeffreys’s entire argument hinges upon the idea that it is only trans people who could possibly ever object to this particular murky brand of transphobia.

This is, of course, patently untrue. I’ve written myself that transphobia has no place in feminism, and I’m hardly the only one. One does not have to be trans to care about the rights of trans people. One simply has to be free from bigotry.

Jeffreys claims persecution from the trans community in the form of utter horrors such as glitter bombing and captioned photographs. Perhaps the most stark example of the hideous persecution faced by poor Jeffreys and her transphobic ilk is that Jeffreys claims the RadFem2012 conference venue to have banned her from speaking, citing evidence of her hate speech that she believes to be entirely reasonable. Throughout, notably, Jeffreys can only blame a shadowy cabal of trans people: the idea that cis allies may have in any way been involved simply fails to occur to her.

This line of thinking is not unique to Jeffreys. In the past, coming up against a transphobic radfem who I will not name because I’m utterly terrified of her, I received a string of tweets saying “sorry you’re male”. It simply did not enter this person’s imagination that anybody but a trans person could care about transphobia.

For cis feminists, there are three major reasons to fight transphobia coming from those who are supposedly on our side. The first is a moral one: we should be against misogyny and hatred in all forms. Second, we must fight gender essentialism. And third, we must stand up for bodily autonomy.

Trans people are more likely to experience violence, sexual or otherwise. Trans people are more likely to be excluded from areas of public life. A large group of women are more vulnerable than others, and in their ignorance (at best), the transphobic radfems ignore this travesty: in the case of RadFem2012, and many other instances, they are actively partaking in exclusion.

Gender essentialism is something we have fought against for years, and I had honestly hoped that it would be at least mostly dead since the publication of Delusions of Gender. Alas, no. The radfems obsess over chromosomes and what genitals a person might have and testosterone levels as if it means anything. They view trans women with an almost McCarthyist suspicion, believing that they can never be anything but men infiltrating women’s spaces. All because of a peculiar fascination with biology in an age where such essentialism is largely discredited.

And finally, bodily autonomy. This is a fundamental aspect of feminism which is ignored by the transphobic radfems, who believe the surgical and medical interventions some trans people undergo to be inherently wrong. Jeffreys couches it in the language of concern-trolling, claiming it to be a “human rights violation”, yet, surely, having the right to do whatever the hell you want to do with your own body is the basic human right?

It is curious, then, that the men’s rights activists and the radfems do not make good bedfellows: both position themselves against these feminist struggles. In her piece, Jeffreys even uses the same argument tactic as the MRAs: all she wants, she says, is to have a debate (the irony of excluding trans people from this debate is apparently lost on her).

I am not alone in thinking that transphobia and feminism are diametrically opposed ideologies. The shift in feminist thinking is firmly on this side. Jeffreys and her ilk are anachronistic curiosities, though loud and dangerous. The trans conspiracy Jeffreys fights is non-existent: in fact, she is attacking a foe far bigger than she can possibly imagine.

We are in the majority, we who reject transphobia. We must continue to be vocal in our rejection of this dated and frightening rhetoric.

New French president Francois Hollande has been making quite a splash and in his first few days in office hasn’t yet revealed himself to be a crushing disappointment. He has taken steps towards gender equality by making sure that half of his cabinet are women: something which should not be a surprise, given that half the population are women, yet under patriarchy this is not the norm. I’ll give props to Hollande for this: he’s meeting transitional demands admirably. Next up, abolishing hierarchical power structures, I hope.

Meanwhile in the UK, right wing bog roll The Daily Mail has reported on this story rather poorly. I will not link to the article, but here’s a taster from the beginning of an article entitled “HOLLANDE’S HONEYS: NEW FRENCH PRESIDENT UNVEILS HIS CABINET OF BEAUTIES”:

Carla Bruni has only been out of the Elysee presidential Palace for a matter of days.

But already a new line-up of glamorous political beauties is threatening to make the French former first lady a distant memory.

Newly sworn in French President, Francois Hollande, last night unveiled his cabinet, led by a bevy of young, stylish Mademoiselles.

Unsurprisingly, the rest of the article is largely photographs of women’s legs with commentary on how their looks. I would really, really recommend not reading it, as this summary I have given is completely accurate and every time you look at the Mail a baby penguin dies.

The title “Hollande’s Honeys” echoes the “Blair Babes” of the nineties, which makes it ghastly enough in and of itself. It also fails at alliteration: are we meant to voice the silent “h” in “Hollande”, or are we meant to drop the “h” from “honeys”? Most importantly, though, it is sexist as hell.

Words like “babe” and “honey” manage to simultaneously sexualise and infantilise the target. They attribute characteristics of saccharine femininity, yet are also almost always used to cast the target as a sex object. While regional variations of the words apply, the intention behind the the Mail’s label is clear: look at these sexy little things doing politics! Isn’t that cute? Let’s all have a furtive wank over what they’re doing.

The fact of the matter is that Hollande’s “honeys” are highly unlikely to have been appointed as a bit of popsy, and are actually capable grown women who have successfully managed to smash through the glass ceiling and into positions of political power. Rags like the Mail, dedicated to preserving patriarchy at all costs simply cannot handle this and feel obliged to throw these women back into their place. It reminds us that women can’t be successful: we are sweet little things who walk the tightrope between whore and Madonna, teetering in our heels as we wait to be told how pretty we are.

The appointment of a cabinet which is somewhat representative of the population (at least, in terms of gender; race, disability, etc seem to be as neglected as usual) is big news: a wedge has been driven into a crack and it might just be possible to wriggle it open and smash down the wall of patriarchy. The Mail can’t let this happen, so it pretends to celebrate the success of these women by turning them back into the delicacies that they believe them to be.

Trigger warning: this post discusses domestic violence/abuse

Interactive billboards seem to be the New Favourite Thing of advertisers. Hot on the heels of the billboard that judges your gender (badly) and the billboard that shows you boobs if you hold your phone up to it, National Centre for Domestic Violence has decided to take a slice of the pie.

The ad takes place on billboards at Euston Station. On one billboard, there is a moving image of a man shouting aggressively at a woman. Next to them is a caption, reading “USE YOUR PHONE TO DRAG HIM AWAY” and a URL. If you enter the URL into your smartphone, you are faced with a little yellow arrow next to the man, and using your finger you can drag him away, and he’ll still be bellowing, helplessly dragged across the rest of Euston’s billboards followed by some text about injunctions. You can see a video here.

Now, I can see the good intentions to this campaign. Really, I can. But unfortunately, this campaign is problematic as fuck. The biggest problem with it is the same problem inherent in all of these “shock” campaigns: triggers. The experience depicted in this billboard is one which is frighteningly common, and at a busy train station, it is likely that at least some women will have experienced this. While some might feel empowered by the interactive nature of the billboard and drag the fucker off, it is likely that many will respond negatively. Ad campaigns of this nature are flat-out irresponsible for this reason alone.

On top of this, there’s a whole heap of other problematic content. Firstly, the campaign portrays a very “typical” example of violence with a male aggressor, shouting overtly and aggressively. Sadly, abuse often doesn’t look like this. The perpetrator can be of any gender, as can the survivor, and, most crucially, it often doesn’t involve overt shouting. There is a host of tactics used by abusers, and many of them are stealthy and subtle, causing the survivor to doubt hirself. A lack of acknowledgement that this happens maintains the culture of silence, keeping survivors in that perpetual state of doubt. This campaign could work just as well with images from the film Gaslight, and would then branch out beyond the “traditional” view of abuse.

It is notable in this campaign that while the aggressor is animated in his aggression, the woman remains still, only blinking slightly to demonstrate that she isn’t just a photograph. This continues throughout the display. She does not move when a passerby interacts with the billboard, she doesn’t react as the aggressor is conveyor-belted away. She’s just there. To me, this seems like a distasteful lack of agency bestowed upon the survivor: things just happen to her. While abuse often takes away a sense of agency, I would have expected some notion of activity to be demonstrated in the “response”. It would have been gratifying to see, at the very least, her posture shift from “frightened” to “strong”.

This ties in, though, with the solutions NCDV are providing in their campaign: recommending securing an injunction. Now, this can be very important in abuse cases, as it is legally-enforced space between survivor and aggressor, but it is hardly a panacea. An injunction can be broken: it is not a magical forcefield, and a determined aggressor will not be deterred. Given that even in this ad campaign the aggressor is still shouting as he is “dragged away”, this suggests that the injunction is not the route to a happy ending. Furthermore, given the conservative nature of the legal system, injunctions may not be passed, particularly for less “recognisable” forms of abuse. Finally, if only dragging an aggressor away were so simple!

Ultimately, NCDV tried, and they tried hard, but trying isn’t enough. Campaigns of this nature need to be better. Being eye-catching alone is nowhere near enough.

Another day, another oppressive ad campaign. This time, soap-merchants Lush decided to “raise awareness” about animal testing by putting on an “art performance” wherein a woman was tortured by a man. Graphically. In a shop window.

Now, this isn’t the first time women have been instrumentalised and objectified in an ad campaign, and certainly won’t be the last. What is interesting about this particular stunt, though, is that Lush clearly put some thought into it (unlike PETA, who tend towards the “let’s stick in a naked lady, and we’ll get more attention”). Unfortunately, their thought process was this:

It was a performance of violence (not violence against women) where – unsurprisingly – the oppressor was male and the abused was vulnerable and scared. We felt it was important, strong, well and thoroughly considered that the test subject was a woman.

This line of argument is summarised quite nicely by @NadiaKamil: “it wasn’t misogynist but -unsurprisingly- we had to use misogyny”. Both sentences appear to be diametrically opposed to one another, to boot. The first seemingly argues that the “performance” definitely was not gendered, which some defenders of the campaign have also been using. The second states that it definitely was.

And it was gendered; it doesn’t matter if the performer was playing the role of an animal. Violence against women is something that happens, and happens a lot. Each day, women are injured, raped and murdered. I don’t believe this is in any way the same as animal testing, but even if one does, this is not how one would raise awareness.

It is somewhat comparable to the awful adverts targeted at “raising awareness” of rape, which feature graphic depictions of violence which will somehow magically end rape. Such campaigns are triggering for the sadly vast number of people who have had similar experiences. The same goes for a performance involving the torture of a woman by a man in a shop window.

Lush’s stated aim of this action is to raise awareness of animal testing, because they’re very against that. Defenders of Lush have argued they do very good work to make sure that no animals were harmed in the making of their products. By raising awareness, then, Lush are implicitly inviting consumers to purchase more of their own products.

In other words, Lush are instrumentalising violence against women to generate profit for themselves. This may be entirely well-intentioned, but it probably isn’t, as Lush are a commercial company whose ultimate motivation is to turn a profit. They are capitalising on depicting a violent, every day occurrence.

There is also an issue of class here. Lush is a fairly expensive shop, charging ludicrous sums for a small phial of bubble bath. Maybe they are more ethical than other cosmetics companies, but few people can afford to purchase their products. The effect here may therefore be that many people, upon feeling shocked and triggered by the instrumentalisation of violence of women, feel a sense of guilt that they cannot reconcile as they cannot fork out a small fortune for something which is sold as more ethical.

Whatever the intentions here, there are some unpleasant effects from the campaign that must be examined and cannot be excused. Lush have used violence against women to promote their own products. This is never acceptable and ultimately serves to perpetuate the context in which this occurs.