rage at the system – Page 10 – Another angry woman

All undercover cops are a special kind of bastard

All over the news today is the revelation that undercover police were instructed to infiltrate and smear the family and supporters of murder victim Stephen Lawrence in order to discredit them. It seems the porcine party had a precarious problem: everyone had noticed they were massive fucking racists for completely failing to investigate a racially-motivated murder. Rather than deal with the increasing mound of excreta accumulating in their lair, they felt it might be somewhat easier to try to ruin the lives of a grieving family in the hope that they’d shut up, or the public would stop listening to them.

Of course, this putrid plan failed to work out as well as the cops would have liked, but thanks to all sorts of other dicking around and failing to do anything, it still took the best part of two decades to achieve anything resembling justice (and even that was inadequate). This heel-dragging is par for the course, an attempt to make people forget just how awful they are.

Undercover policing in a particularly vicious and especially bastardly category of policing. While most policing relies on the use of physical force–or threats of physical force–to coerce, undercover policing is a more insidious beast, an emotional violation. The undercover cop slips in, distorting reality around himself, fucking shit up from the inside and selling the secrets of those whose trust he stole.*

It is not just grieving families these bastards decide to worm into. It is absolutely anyone who stands against the social order the state would prefer to silence. Eight activist women from various projects are currently taking legal action against the police as undercover police slipped in and insinuated their way into a position of trust by engaging in romantic relationships with them. They were tricked into sex, into pregnancy by liars who were tasked with gaining information on them and their friends.

All of this was found out after it had happened, after it had been happening for years. Who knows how many other women were abused in this fashion? Who knows how many other groups of people who made the terrible error of dissenting the status quo have been infiltrated in such a fashion?

And the effect of knowing all this has an impact, and it is one which I don’t doubt that the police had hoped for. Sometimes it makes us paranoid. Sometimes there’s a little shadow of concern, it becomes a little harder to trust our comrades, just in case they, too, are police spies. It can make activist circles exclusionary and cliquey, because of rightful safety concerns. Undercover policing is a violation which ripples throughout a community.

Make no mistake. This has not stopped, and it will not stop in the near future. If you listen closely, you can hear the echoes from the future of all of this happening again and again. We don’t hear about it very often, because they hide it well. It’s rare the covers get blown. We must just be vigilant, and not let the bastards keep getting away with it. Let the face of every undercover cop discovered be distributed far and wide so they cannot abuse again. Support campaigns like that for women victims of undercover police. Be critical of the police as an institution, and the role that they serve; not just undercover, but in all they do. And never, never let them get away with it.

*Using he/him pronouns here because in all the cases that came to light, those were the pronouns used. Also, the pigs still have a massive gender problem because they’re an oppressive institution.

Rape porn: a ban is not the answer

Content note: This post discusses rape

There have been a fair few debates about rape porn since campaigners have called for it to be banned. It is a thorny topic, and one where, unfortunately, a lot of people are saying some dodgy shit.

One of the biggest problems with this conversation is everyone seems to be talking at cross-purposes about what rape porn actually is. As far as I can unpick from the original statements, the campaigners have been talking about porn with simulated rape scenes, rather than filmed images of rape and abuse. The latter is already highly illegal, and I cannot in good conscience refer to what that is as “rape porn”, much as I wouldn’t refer to images and video of child abuse as “child porn”. To do otherwise completely elides the nature of what it really is: a cinematic trophy of a violation. There is nothing defensible about such double vi0lations: the rape, and then the publicising it.

Rape porn, the simulated stuff, is distinct from this, as it can be consensual. I am not saying it always is, as goodness knows there can be a terrible attitude towards workers’ rights in the porn industry which is something that needs tackling (and cannot be tackled with stigma towards the work that they do. When it is not consensual, it falls under the category above). However, it can be consensual. In private life, people explore rape fantasies fully consensually. In porn, this fantasy is also explored, and porn performers are perfectly capable of consenting to the work they do, about as much as anyone is capable of consenting to anything under capitalist patriarchy.

But what of the audience? As Emily Rose points out, it’s not just rapists who get off on rape porn. And does rape porn really contribute to a culture of normalising rape more than anything else? I am not so sure: part of the way rape porn is packaged is often with the hook that this is wrong, and this is taboo, and that is what is supposed to make it sexy. And yes, of course, our culture is steeped in rape, a background drone of violence and a dismissal that any of it is a problem. I am not sure why the focus of this campaign is on porn with simulated rape: why single this out when one cannot turn on the TV without seeing rape everywhere, when one cannot load up the internet without seeing jokes about rape, when one cannot walk through Bloomsbury without seeing posters advertising a conference organised by rape apologists? I do not see why there is more of an objection to people getting off on fantasies about rape rather than laughing about it, rather than trivialising it, rather than dismissing it as an entirely normal part of sex. Sexual violence is fundamentally about an expression of power rather than the sex itself.

I am not suggesting we should ban all of these things along with rape porn. Sadly, things will never be as easy as a simple demand to ban this or that. It changes nothing, it just pushes it out of sight. Furthermore, bans on specific types of porn do little to actually stop it from happening. The first porn I ever saw, when I was wee and the internet was a newfangled thing to have in one’s house, was of a man having sex with a cow. This is illegal in the UK, but it was quite literally the first thing I stumbled upon when I went looking for porn. The way that the bans are deployed to often as a weapon against people society doesn’t much like anyway. The queers and the kinksters and the porn performers themselves. For a fine example of this, look no further than the recent fisting trials. So I am highly dubious that a ban would do anything to solve the problem of cultural acceptance as rape, and, if anything, may exacerbate problems for those who society would rather look the other way from anyway.

So what might work instead? My ultimate solution is the same as ever, and the one which is unpopular among liberals: we need that fucking revolution. Capitalism, rape culture, patriarchy, they all need to go. I understand that this might take a while, so I also have a transitional demand.

When people play with power dynamics, negotiation is utterly crucial. A conversation beforehand about what everyone involved wants, what their boundaries are, a safeword when “no” and “stop” are to be ignored. These are measures which are vital for safety of everyone playing, but they are also pivotal in helping everyone involved enjoy the scene as such negotiation ensures that people are getting what they want. Often, BDSM porn features an interview with the participants before and after, talking about what they want and what they enjoyed about the scene. Sometimes, the process of negotiation is shown.

Showing this process of negotiation would go far to mitigate some of the problems within porn. And not just in the edgy BDSM porn, but to extend this practice to vanilla porn. To normalise the process of negotiation and enthusiastic consent by embedding it in the porn we watch. For the stuff wherein non-consent is the fantasy, this can go at the beginning. And in vanilla porn, wouldn’t it be nice to see the ongoing process of enthusiastic consent through communication during sex? The performers could decide what they would and would not like to do, and we would all be party to this dialogue and begin to use it ourselves.

And then we smash everything, because that revolution still needs to happen.

Further reading:

Rape Porn: Rapists by Proxy? (Musings of a Rose)
Is the rape porn cultural harm argument another rape myth? (Obscenity Lawyer)
Why I can’t support the “ban rape porn” campaign (TheSazzaJay)

G4S running rape support. Fuck that shit.

Content note: This post discusses rape and the aftermath

I have written before about why I never reported my rape to the police, and reams about the trail of disgusting fuck-ups the police have displayed in handling of rape. I know that many feel the same way, unable to trust this violent, patriarchal institution to help healing and justice. Yet some do, or at least see going to the police is the best option available. And for some, the police really are helpful. For the rest of us, we look at the police and plot revolution, plot for a day when they are the best option for none as we deal with the entrenched societal problem with rape and let go of models of retributive justice, doing away with this coercive arm of the state.

Getting rid of the police and their role in dealing with the aftermath of rape requires a revolution. It doesn’t require what the state are doing: outsourcing rape support services to G4S. It is reported in the Birmingham Mail that the private security company will be managing sexual assault referral centres in Walsall and Birmingham, where their staff will be present in the centres doing medical assessments and providing advice. The regurgitated press release informs us that survivors will not even have to speak to the police first. Under privatisation, this coded little phrase usually means “because the police will send them there anyway”.

In the context of the state’s continued programme of cutting literally everything that makes life a little more tolerable, they are presenting us with a choice: get nothing for rape support, or have G4S. In a conversation on Twitter last night, I idly wondered which was worse, my own personal thoughts drifting towards it being G4S. A reply from @gherkinette helped put my finger on a lot of the problem: “allowing people to trust you and then fucking up is in my experience worse than no help at all. Others may disagree.”

Once, I told a friend I trusted about the awful things that had happened to me in greater detail than I have ever told anyone else. I was rewarded with a complete lack of sensitivity and unhelpfulness, a nagging sense of not being believed. I am no longer friends with that person, and it was not at all conducive to my own healing process, throwing me into a deep depression and rendering it nearly impossible for me to talk about any of this stuff with reference to my own personal experience. I sometimes beat myself up for putting my trust in that person, even though on a level I know that the fault was theirs and not mine.

So I can only imagine how fucking awful it must be for a survivor to make the decision to report, and be lumbered with G4S and their enormous scope for fucking up enormously. As a private company, they are far less accountable for errors than the police–who have proved, time and time again to avoid accountability at all costs. What we know of G4S is that it was they who were responsible for a cock-up of such magnitude that the Army had to be called in. That they are famous for running prisons and detention centres for immigrants, hardly a sector known for its sensitivity. That they undertake similar work in Israel and Palestine. And now, that the responsibility for sensitively helping survivors of sexual violence is being placed in their incapable hands, all for the sake of a political agenda.

They have ruined many lives already, and the doors have been thrown open for them to ruin more lives in new, different ways.

It is a repugnant state of affairs that this task is being entrusted to G4S. We need that revolution more than ever.

Is the same sex marriage bill shit on purpose?

Today our parliament votes and debates on the issue of same sex marriage yet again. Watching the last debate was just slightly better than having a chisel inserted under my toenails to a soundtrack of Enya, so I’m more likely to be watching this today.

The whole debate lays bare a lot of ugly prejudices still rampant in our society. Most obvious–to the point where the normally-oblivious mainstream media and many normally-oblivious politicians have noticed–is the homophobia from the opposition to the bill. They dress up their concerns in the language of protecting the institution of the family or fretting about the relationship with the church, as though a family can only be defined by a very narrow heterosexist standard and the church weren’t just an antediluvian bunch of poorly-dressed ringpieces. Indeed, the prejudice is so naked, I am surprised there are no petitions on change.org to protect our children from seeing its rude bits.

It’s so easy to spot–and argue against–the bigotry of the opposition that the more insidious nonsense coming from supporters of the bill gets overlooked. Supporters of the bill have been gleefully throwing poly people under the bus once again, setting us up as a deviant bogeyman in a common trick used in this sort of discourse.

The bill is also bad news for trans people. Sarah Brown has compiled a non-exhaustive list of some of the myriad problems that the proposed legislation might bring for trans people. At best, it does little to ameliorate the minefield trans people must negotiate in order to win recognition for their relationships. At worst, it makes things actively worse, bestowing a power of veto on a partner’s transition.

For these reasons, I cannot call what is being proposed marriage equality. It is nothing of the sort. Let us call it same sex marriage, for that is what it is.

On top of all of this, there is a growing sense that even those putting the bill forward want it to fail. An amendment was added to the bill–quite possibly a wrecking amendment–to bring in heterosexual civil partnerships. I am fairly indifferent to this amendment, much as I am to the entire law. However, it seems about as harmlessly inconsequential as same sex marriage itself. It has driven those who put the bill forward into a frenzy, actively threatening to pull the bill based on really shaky reasoning: it might cost more money, and nobody wants it anyway. The cost argument looks fairly nonsensical, as if they have just pulled a bunch of numbers out of their arses like a string of magician’s handkerchiefs. Further arguments against this come in the form of crying about how it will damage the institution of marriage. In short, it is all of the same crap which is bandied about in arguments against same sex marriage.

And this is because society has a pretty dreadful attitude to how relationships should look. It lays bare the true function of same sex marriage: as a reward for the same sex couples who have successfully managed to behave in the way society deems appropriate. These lucky few can be welcomed with open arms into what is deemed normal, as they have danced all of the correct steps and followed the designated live script. They are not like those queers, those fags and those dykes and those queens who will not conform. And so the state throws them a little bone because heterosexism is rife and they are relieved to have their prejudices relatively unchallenged.

I have said a thousand times before that I would sooner see the entire institution of marriage crumble to allow us to be truly free to define how we love. I do not believe that this law being debated will do much positive to many, but on the other hand, it is unlikely to actively increase prejudice. There are some–those privileged few who seem to control the discourse–who will claim the battle is won, and good for them. Perhaps this means the rest of us can now fight our battles without our voices drowned out, and reclaim Stonewall from its name profaned by an organisation which gladly sweeps so much of our history under the carpet. Perhaps we can fight to be treated like humans and love as we fucking well please.

So in my own way, I am rooting for this bill to go through as it will piss off some fairly obnoxious people. At the front of my mind, though, is the knowledge that it is not enough. Nowhere near enough.

Kill all men

Well, well, well. It seems the latest thing feminism is fighting about is the phrase “kill all men”.

So, before I launch into this defence, let me point out that nobody is actually planning to kill all men. Not even some men. It’s just a phrase, an expression of rage, a rejection of a system which is riddled with violence.

“Kill all men” is a shorthand war cry, much the same as “ACAB” or “tremble hetero swine” or “die cis scum”. It represents a structural critique, presented in a provocative fashion. While my focus here is on “kill all men”, and therefore in relation to sexist oppression specifically, these points are applicable for all oppressors and all victims of oppression who dare to feel angry.

Patriarchy harms men, it’s true, but it oppresses the fuck out of women, and there are few, if any men who are not complicit in this oppression. Most men are not rapists or abusers, but many are complicit in perpetuating this violence by spreading rape apologist myths, by failing to stand against violence against women and girls, and by simply not nailing their colours to the mast and acting as allies.

I remember once being at a reading group where we were discussing the SCUM Manifesto. It was a mixed group, and we had loads to chat about. If you haven’t read SCUM, I’d well recommend it, as while its conception of gender is kind of rooted in its time, there’s a very astute analysis of how patriarchy and capitalism interact to produce a system which oppresses women. There’s also some very clever satire of the thinking of the time, flipped and reversed on its head to present a biological argument as to why men are inferior. In fact, the whole thing just inverts this system in which violence against women and girls is endemic, and exaggerates the problem to its logical conclusion. It’s really a very good text, whether or not its author truly believed what she’d written.

Part of the power of SCUM is the effect it has on men. At my reading group, the men present were allies, and I remember vividly one saying “I don’t think she went far enough at the end, letting some of the men live and act as the Men’s Auxilliary”. All of the other men nodded along. They got that this idea is just fantasy, just a satire.

On the other hand, it’s pretty difficult to mention SCUM (or indeed just cry “kill all men”) without the misogynists crawling in, crying misandry.

And this is because misogynists completely fail to understand how power works. They miss the fact that in this society, violence against women and girls is rife, that it is an everyday occurrence which is seen to at best utterly unremarkable and at worst funny or aspirational. Saying “kill all men” and violence against women and girls are completely different. There is no serious threat of the women rising up and actually killing all men, all the while the hum of background noise of another women raped, murdered or beaten by a man. That this culture of violence is gendered, and the system is set up in favour of keeping things that way.

So is it any wonder that sometimes women are angry enough to express a wish to see their oppressors dead? And that this violent revenge fantasy remains just that–a revenge fantasy?

I suppose it is hardly surprising that utterances of killing all men draw such ire, even from feminists. Under patriarchy, violence is the domain of men. It is no coincidence that when women fight back, it is seen as disgusting: it allows the system to thrive. This is why more column inches are given to women who kill their partners who have abused them every day; this is why we see such sexualised depictions of women being violent in films, defanging the raw aggression; why patriarchy freaks the fuck out over Rihanna or Christina Aguilera singing about vengeance. And it’s why even merely uttering “kill all men” is seen as so shocking: we’ve internalised this sentiment, and the idea that women are not violent or angry. It is unthinkable that we can think violent thoughts.

So no, we’re not actually advocating killing all men, but what we need is for men to understand why we might. A secondary function of this powerful little phrase is to seek out allies. Some men simply cannot fathom that we might be this furious. And they cannot help us as allies, as we need.

And of course, all men are not deserving of death. In fact, most of them aren’t. I can think of a fair few I do wish painful, violent death on, although this remains but a fantasy. Patriarchy would destroy me were I to ever touch a hair on their head. Patriarchy already tries to punish me for merely expressing these thoughts, because they are unbecoming of a woman.

Remember, we are born and socialised into a culture of violence. Is it any wonder we may entertain violent fantasies against our oppressors at times?

Further reading:
Red Terror and #killallmen (Riotstarz)- An absolutely brilliant series of tweets on the topic.
Why can’t we kill all men? (Fearlessknits)- An alternative take, well articulated.

May Day, Haymarket and some awesome women

May Day is all about the workers. So, if you’re a worker or unemployed, give yourself a pat on the back for not being the oppressor, at least in terms of class. Yay, us.

The history of the day comes from the Haymarket massacre. Workers in Chicago were striking, demanding an eight hour day. Someone threw a bomb at the police, and the police did their aggressive dispersal thing. In the aftermath, seven anarchists were sentenced to murder at the hands of the state for something they were later pardoned for, once it was far too late.

Oh, and a lot of workers in the world still don’t have that eight hour day, and end up working longer hours, often unpaid.

A positive outcome of Haymarket, though, was it turned some awesome, smart women on to anarchism. So let’s give a round of applause for two of my sisters across time, Voltairine de Cleyre and Emma Goldman.

de Cleyre had her faith in the state’s justice system ripped away when she saw what happened to the Haymarket anarchists. You can read her journey into anarchism here. Goldman’s experience was similar. Watching the state kill innocent people, it seems, can turn quite a few people onto anarchism.

Both Goldman and de Cleyre went on to think very good things, and I’m going to take a moment to link to my favourite works of each of them. Obviously, they also said some dodgy things at various points in their lives, but frankly, it’s the positive legacy which has stood the test of time. The more problematic gets buried under the sands of time, after all.

From Goldman, I can’t stress enough how much I love her essay on women’s suffrage. She had a radical critique of the women’s suffrage movement while it was happening, emphasising how little would get done by simply inviting women into an arrangement which was thoroughly broken. She also criticises the movement for throwing other women, particularly sex workers, under the bus. She concludes that the key to women’s liberation is not the ballot box, but:

First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc.; by making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free, will make her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life giving; a creator of free men and women.

From de Cleyre, I adore “Sex Slavery“, an exploration of moral standards and obscenity. She makes a wonderful and witty observation:

What would you think of the meanness of a man who would put a skirt upon his horse and compel it to walk or run with such a thing impeding its limbs? Why, the “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” would arrest him, take the beast from him, and he would be sent to a lunatic asylum for treatment on the score of an impure mind. And yet, gentlemen, you expect your wives, the creatures you say you respect and love, to wear the longest skirts and the highest necked clothing, in order to conceal the obscene human body. There is no society for the prevention of cruelty to women.

And of course, no discussion of de Cleyre is complete without a link to “Direct Action“, which is one of the finest calls to arms I’ve ever had the privilege of reading.

I’ll finish, now, with another quote from Goldman, from her autobiography about anarchism and joy. It is so pertinent to every social movement, and we would all do well to find the joy in liberation struggles.

I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to behave as a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.”

Self-doubt and receptivity to privilege-checking

Content note: this post discusses my personal experiences of mental ill-health, sexual violence and emotional abuse

I have a hypothesis. It is not necessarily a very good one, as it is built almost purely from personal experience and some conversations I have had with others.

But it’s a hypothesis, and in the spirit of Week Of Posts About Calling Out And Privilege And Stuff, I feel like it’s worth stating.

As confident as I may seem, I am riddled with self-doubt, a little voice at the back of my head perpetually squeaking “Stavvers, you’re probably wrong about this and chatting shit”. It’s been there almost as long as I remember, and I’m fairly sure it is the sound of the internalisation of all of the oppressive experiences I have had throughout my life.

I’ve been raped by a partner, I’ve been emotionally abused by another. My dyspraxia means people have treated me like I’m inept and stupid throughout most of my school years. My epilepsy led to being treated like a delicate little flower who might keel over at any point, as has the vast history of benevolent sexism I’ve experienced since I’ve sprouted tits. My school never taught me I even existed as a queer woman, thanks to Thatcher’s Section 28, and I’ve experienced all sorts of bollocks as a queer woman ever since I decided to be open about it. With all of this shit, it feels like an inevitable curse to find myself experiencing periodic spells of depression which come and suck my soul away.

Because of all of this, I find it very difficult to believe I could possibly be right about anything. I try to tell that little bit of me that actually, I’m nowhere near as crap as I feel that I am, but the nagging doubt remains. My conscious thoughts, and my network of wonderful people who for whatever reason seem to like me, are much kinder to me than my emotions.

This has a major effect in conversations about privilege, in particularly with privileged people. I’ve written before about how conversations about privilege can so often feel like gaslighting: within a system of dominance, there are two opposing perceptions of reality and the privileged cannot see the problem so denies its existence, denies a reality experienced by someone else.

Because of my self-doubt, and my experience of emotional abuse, I am pretty fucking sensitive to gaslighting. When I call someone out and they deny there is a problem, just for a fleeting second my self-doubt gets the better of me. For a fleeting second, that person is my rapist, my abuser, every man who has ever patronised me, every cop who has held me against my will, every homophobe, every creep, every bastard who has ever fucked with me and I’ve kicked myself for not fighting back. Often, this passes quickly. Sometimes, it does not, and I will get angry and try to avenge myself for everything that my self-doubt has told me was my fault; or I will get sad and simply listen to the self-doubt and self-blame.

But in its own way, the self-doubt is also a gift. It makes me more receptive to criticism, and more willing to change. It means that when someone calls me out, my first instinct is not that they are wrong, but rather, that I am probably wrong. And often, as it happens, I am wrong.

I have noticed a certain self-assuredness in those with more privilege than me which makes it very difficult to challenge them when they need challenging. They genuinely don’t appear to even entertain the possibility that they could be wrong, and that that’s not a big deal.

So this is my hypothesis, that the self-doubt which comes with being fucked over by society makes us more willing to be challenged and listen, and more receptive to being called out and asked to check our privilege.

It means that getting those who actually need to try harder not to oppress others will be a far, far harder struggle if I’m right about this. If there’s not even any room for doubt and self-reflection in their thoughts, how can we possibly persuade them to change? I suppose backing each other up might go some way to help, presenting a view that this isn’t some sort of minority opinion.

I don’t really have any answers, all I have is questions. I don’t even know if I’m onto something here. So I suppose I’ll start with a pertinent question: does anyone else feel this way, too?

Call-out week: a semi-coherent series of things on my mind

“Call-out culture” isn’t a thing (but it should be)

The words are everywhere these days, presented as a threat, a menace. The spectre of “call-out culture” lurks under the bed, in the back of the wardrobe, down the U-Bend, ready to sic the Online Wimmin Mob on poor innocent feminists to silence them.

As I argued earlier this week, it is patent nonsense to believe that calling out equals silencing. It is also patent nonsense to believe–as some seem to–that there is some sort of coordinated gang doing the calling out, ready at a moment’s notice to cry transphobia and let slip the dogs of war.

That’s just not how it works. In fact, it’s a kind of anarchy in action. There’s no coordination. It’s just that a few people notice that the same thing is problematic and therefore call it out. There’s no premeditation, and it’s seldom meant as a pile-on, it’s just that some people are a little more alert to problematic behaviour and language than others, and these people may call it out.

There is no call-out culture. Frankly, those of us who do call people out are in a bit of a minority. Frankly, there’s so much bullshit in so many feminisms that is going unaddressed because too many people think this shit flies. Often, only the highest-profile instances are called out, if at all.

It would actually be quite nice if there really was a call-out culture. It would be nice for feminism, because we could get better and address our failings of far too many women. We could all learn something.

And it would also be better for people being called out. Yes, really. At present, too many people mistake calling out and drawing attention to problematic language and behaviours which inadvertently oppress others as bullying, when in fact it is quite the opposite. It’s an opposition to the cultural hegemony of the white, cis, abled, economically-secure privileged few, and an opening up of feminism to those who need it. It opposes oppression.

Yet because it happens so infrequently, many of those called out think they are being unfairly picked on.

So let us develop a culture wherein calling out is the norm rather than an exception. Let us develop a culture wherein calling out is seen for what it is: a favour. Let us develop a culture wherein we understand the function of why calling out happens, and that it is not some sort of slight on the person, but, rather, a move towards those of us fighting for social justice to stop oppressing our sisters. Let us develop a culture wherein calling out does not feel like a thankless, frustrating task and rather than crying out in anger, we exist in an environment where it is no big deal.

Let us do this, and eventually, the call-out culture will die, because it will no longer be needed at all.

Call-out week: a semi-coherent series of things on my mind

Your prejudice is unconscious, but it’s still there

This week, it turns out I have rather a lot to say about the state of feminism, in particular about calling out privilege.

Today I’m going to write about something I haven’t written about in a while: psychology. Specifically, implicit biases. I’ve written two posts about this before, mostly relating to the topic of racism (see here and here). While I’d recommend reading the two pieces in full, I’ll summarise here.

In short, we all have a lot of biases that we don’t consciously notice, but manifest very subtly in our language and our behaviour. We are often slower to associate positive characteristics with people of colour, or faster to associate family roles with women, and so forth. These little biases manifest in our behaviour: we might sit further away from a person of colour, or use very abstract language which assigns blame to a member of an outgroup. People in oppressed groups often internalise at least some of this implicit bias: women may display slightly negative attitudes towards women, for example.

Most importantly, people who hold these negative implicit biases don’t know that they do, and don’t think that they are prejudiced. Yet their biases have real consequences in the real world.

The good news is, implicit biases can be overcome. While they are quick to form and harder to undo than the conscious beliefs, it is possible. And the first stage in unlearning these biases is awareness. It is then possible to educate and to reduce these biases, and their effects. This has actually been done, and with some success. It also helps if people displaying these biases are shown that this is actually not what the majority believes; it helps them overcome these beliefs.

This body of research is, of course, very pertinent to what some refer to as “call-out culture”, and goes some way to explaining why rather a lot of feminists are rather resistant to having the fact that they are displaying rather problematic behaviours or using problematic language, or just generally articulating beliefs that are not OK and oppress other women.

They don’t think they are prejudiced against women of colour, or trans women, or working class women, or sex workers, or whoever their target is. And a lot of them are completely unaware of this (though some may try to intellectualise their prejudices).

And it can be quite horrifying having it brought to your attention that actually you are seething with prejudice that you never noticed within yourself. Isn’t it only bad people who are prejudiced? Well, no. Research into implicit bias actually tends to show that most people are kind of prejudiced and I’ve never seen anything correlating it with Being A Bad Person–no matter how this variable is operationalised.

The question is, when awareness is raised of these biases, is what do you do with this information? Some people decide to make a conscious effort to change what they do, to learn, to overcome this. Others pretend it is not a problem.

It is, though. It really is. I cannot stress enough the implications of these implicit biases and how important it is to try to get over them. Being called out does not mean you are a bad person, it merely means the back of your brain needs a bit of retraining. Get to it.

Retraining is painless, particularly in comparison with what your brain had been doing before.

Call-out week: a semi-coherent series of things on my mind

This post was inspired by a conversation with the lovely Cel.

When silencing isn’t silencing and sisterhood isn’t sisterhood

A few weeks ago, I expressed some fear that perhaps the cis supremacists might be winning. Nothing has happened since then to allay these doubts: in fact, if anything, I am even more convinced that feminism has an enormous problem in its camp that some are doing all they can to keep raging.

Once again, I am not going to name names or link links, as the climate in which I write this post is somewhat sour, and it feels like any attempt to address the shit that is in our backyard is automatically taken as some sort of unsisterly “attack”, and cries of silencing abound.

Well, the thing is, when expressing some opinions, people should feel silenced. This is definitely the case with bigotry. Compare the rallying cry of the Daily Mail commenter, whining that one “cannot say anything any more” with how some cis feminists have reacted to being called out . It all comes from the same place, a sense of entitlement to being able to crap all over other people, because you and yours are clearly the most important people in the world.

And accusations of being unsisterly are just as absurd. As Stillicides so eloquently put it, sisters don’t have to get on. The belief that unpleasant opinions should not be challenged–and that it some kind of attack–if they are put forward by a woman is patently bollocks. Is it really OK for Nadine Dorries to poke around in our uteruses just because she is a woman? Should we just let her keep on going with this just because she is a woman? Of course fucking not, because it’s fucking dangerous rhetoric and absolutely should be challenged.

But, just as Dorries complained of victimisation because of our uterine missives, we see a lot of complaints of vicitimisation at calling out privilege and behaviour which–whether intentional or not–oppresses other women.

Being called out on bigotry may make you feel a bit bad. Hell, it might ruin your fucking day. But what it is you are being called out on ruins lives. Cissexism/transphobia, racism, classism, whorephobia, all of these oppressions are shit that a lot of women face on a daily basis from society at large, and then also from within feminism. It’s hardly sisterly to make these women feel like shit repeatedly just because you don’t really want to critically examine how you could be contributing to making them feel like shit.

And it’s hardly fucking silencing to have to shut the fuck up and apologise once in a while. What is silencing is telling a lot of women–women already struggling uphill–that their problems do not matter, that your own privileged freedom of speech is far more important. It is strange how listening to a diversity of opinions in feminism does not include listening to why bigotry is just not OK.

The people who are actually silenced and alienated by such challenges are precisely the people who need our help the most, whose voices we need to amplify rather than silence: trans women, women of colour, queer women, disabled women, women experiencing the diverse and horrid rainbow of intersectional oppression.

I am not sure why there is such a prolific belief that bigoted and problematic views cannot be challenged when articulated by a feminist. I understand fully that it is quite, quite horrible to realise that you’re actually part of the problem, but there are two ways to resolve this dissonance. The first is what too many people are doing: pretend that all of this criticism is unfounded. The second is what will actually make feminism stronger and help it to include all women: accept the criticism and try to change.

We have thrown far too many women under the bus already, when in fact what we should be doing is hijacking that bus and driving it at full throttle into the barrier marked KYRIARCHY.

Call-out week: a semi-coherent series of things on my mind