Reclaiming Feminism.

I have had enough. I HAVE HAD ABOUT FUCKING ENOUGH. Why the fuck are people so fucking dumb? How did the misogynists come to win so easily? Feminism was somehow ascribed the signification 'of female supremacy' and now women everywhere are shirking it if possible, having to explain and/or mediate it (as I do: 'I'm a feminist-egalitarian... Well, I'm a feminist, but people generally get the wrong idea so I have to say I'm a feminist-egalitarian... I want everyone to be equal, but feel that we need to deal with the oppression of women first and foremost... do you get what I mean?!') or, worst yet, they proudly proclaim themselves as not feminist, as anti-feminist even.

The reason I'm so irritated is because of this interview with one of the Loose Women presenters, Carol McGiffin. Is it just me, or does she look decidedly Satanic in the picture? Maybe I'm ascribing Satanicity (my coinage!) to her based on what she said. I am going to quote it so that I can do my nut accordingly:

Are you a feminist?

Deep down, yes I am. But I have to really question what feminism is now. If being a feminist means I want to be totally equal and the same as men, I don't. I don't want to compete with men, I've got no problem with certain things that a lot of staunch feminists have problems with - the fact that men should share household chores and things like that. I don't buy that line. I don't mind if blokes want to help out, but if they don't and they can't, then I've got no problem with picking their laundry up off the floor. So if that makes me a non-feminist, then I'm a non-feminist.

Are there really any men who "can't" pick up laundry from the floor?

Yes, I know ... unless they're completely unable to move, or they've got no arms. But the damaging thing about feminism is that the man's role is completely confused - women want them to take on certain women's roles.

What is a woman's role?

Traditional women's roles: looking after a family, men and children. We argue at work about this: Denise and Andrea [Welch and McLean, McGiffin's co-stars] get blue in the face trying to make [their partners] Tim or Steve do things that they're never going to do, and I say to them, "Why don't you just do it, because your life would be so much easier?" Why can't they just accept that they are men? Yes, they're lazy and they're rubbish, but they married them, now stop trying to change them. So yes, my view on feminism is slightly flawed, but I would say deep down that I'm all for women's rights.

*weeps* You stupid, stupid, FUCKING STUPID BITCH. I'm sorry, I know it's terrible to swear so much, and probably none too indicative of a 'shared feminine spirit' or whatever, but... Christ. What really hurts me is that there are loads of ignorant women like Carol McGiffin, who don't really know jackshit. I must hand it to her for saying 'I have to really question what feminism is now.'

This woman could be my mother. This woman IS my mother - hence my classifying her, too, as Satan. What kind of passive bullshit is that, anyway? 'I have no problem with men helping, but actually I don't think they should, because then they'll be taking on women's roles and then we'll get confused OMG OH NOES HERE COMES THE SEXUAL APOCALYPSE.'

We live in an age where our understanding of transvestism and
transsexuality has developed to the point where enough outrage occurs at a lesbofeminazi (sorry, I really wanted to use that just once!) who attacks transfolk to spur 150 protesters at the Stonewall awards and where a transsexual gets on to America's Next Top Model. We have a long way to go, sure, but you'd think those little things would show people that gender roles are not sacred and set in concrete. Like pretty much everything else that makes up humanity, they are *gasp* able to be changed and destabilised!

So, Carol McGiffin, I'm sure people like yourself (and oh, I do fear that there are quite a few of them out there) find it hard to wrap their tiny minds around this, but: BULLSHIT to traditional women's roles. How about the traditional role of the bitch-goddess, huh, Kali Ma and her equivalents? The notion of the fertile-yet-destructive pagan matriarch? THAT'S a 'role' that's been around almost as long, and funnily enough you don't hear anyone trumpeting that to us. I also really hate the myth that she and many many others perpetuate, which is that feminism and compromise are somehow separate and/or incompatible: 'I've got no problem with picking their laundry up off the floor.' Well, neither have I, love, but I won't stand for being told that I 'should' do it because it's 'my role'. Especially not by you. And yes, there will be be days when he will bloody well do it himself - that's what I call compromise - being flexible and having each other's backs.

This bit was great too, and I feel, comprehensively disqualifies CM for 'feminist' status: 'Why can't they just accept that they are men?'

Well, honey, by turning around and making the mistake that a lot of women do - of saying 'Boys will be boys,' like my mother always did - you're not only insulting feminists and disempowering yourself, but doing the 'men' a disservice too. All men are not the 'lazy,' 'rubbish' figure perpetuated by Hollywood slacker movies, disenchanted mid-life divorcees and the likes of *ahem* Loose Women. I happen to think that by saying things like that, you are being as unfair as if you turned around and said that all women are hysterical and have a father-fixation (Oh wait, somebody did, and it was a man - Freud, that light of illumination who prescribed 'cocaine therapy' and advanced the ingenious theory that non-white cultures were a primitive, 'savage' form of Western culture - a view inherited from the 19th-C colonial romance and R.L. Stevenson...).

Men and women are supposed to be equal under feminism, and the only sense in which they are equal for McGiffin is in her dismissal of both by reducing them to one-tack performers of a gender role. Get a clue, people! The clue's in the word itself: role. A word tied up with theatre, loaded with performative connotations. If you really want to try and assert your views as if they're law, you could at least try and be a bit more scientific about it and say 'function' instead...!

Granted, her point about expecting people you've married to change (and that too, after years upon years of marriage) is fair. This bit, though: 'I don't want to compete with men.' Biatch, it's a bit late for that. See, if everyone thought like you, you wouldn't be on TV on a show like that right now. That's because people used to think that a woman's role precluded any entry whatsoever into the 'public sphere.' You wouldn't BE on ITV, somehow eking out your 15 minutes of fame (I had never heard of her before this, and I looked her up to find out she was a radio DJ or something...?) without feminism. Yet there you are.

'So yes, my view on feminism is slightly flawed, but I would say deep down that I'm all for women's rights.'

As Michael Kyle from My Wife and Kids would say: 'Ah... nah.' You're not, dear - you're just a product of the same mindset that spawns WAG-wannabes and tabloid kiss-and-tells. That would be the 'I'm a lazy-ass who doesn't want to work, so I'm going to exploit gender stereotypes to my advantage and find myself a rich man.' Then, when you break up, you think you're leaving with half? Bitch, you trippin'. Except that ol' Carole is of the much more common 'I'm a lazy-ass who doesn't want to think, so I'm going to claim the advantages won by a previous generation while simultaneously undermining said advantages by implying that everyone should just shut up and do as they're told' breed.

See, at this point, if I were a Mail/Express reader, I would start pulling out my hair and screaming that the end is nigh. Instead, I'll go right on and make it a Julie Bindel bumper special by drawing your attention to this interview with Sheila Jeffreys about prostitution. Such an interesting read that my faith in humanity was revived (by Julie Bindel an' all! Imagine!). I didn't know who this Sheila Jeffreys was, but I wanted to marry her! (pun intentional...).

Another bitch is necessary, however. In an interview with ballet dancer Natasha Oughtred, the interviewee says:

[Do you have any style icons?]

No one in particular jumps out. Audrey Hepburn looked beautiful - everyone says that about her. When you think of that era, the stars were all so flawless and they never had a bad day.

What utterly banal rubbish! It makes me burst out laughing when you see this kind of mindless 'soft' conservatism, a thought-free, easy idealising of the past. Of course they were fucking flawless - the gossip industry, if it could even be viably considered an 'industry' back then, wasn't able to insinuate itself into the minutest details of slebs' lives like it does now. Of course people had bad days, they just didn't get papped! Whereas now, it seems that if people want to maintain any measure of privacy, they have to disappear from public life for large chunks of time at a pop, like Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Philippe.

I'm not trying to say that we should rein in the paparazzi or anything (or maybe we should, who knows?), but people need to stop being so fucking facile. Don't go bewailing the lack of demigods when you're daily falling upon the pantheon of performers and associated hangers-on and ripping the shit out of them. People with brains know far better in this age of ever-penetrating inquiry. When the whole point of performance is to act a role, why would you want to risk placing your own person within the gladiatorial arena?

By all means, throw us the scraps - the Peaches Geldofs and the Cory Kennedys (hey, I'm British, I'm susceptible to the underdog and sceptical of people who don't seem to have any job! :P ;)) - but models, actresses etc... the whole point of these people is to be unreal. This bullshit about looking at them in Heat when they're having a bad day and feeling better in yourself is just that - bullshit. It's a temporary fix, not a long-term solution, and it only feeds the ludicrous comparison-culture which is (in my view anyway) what will probably bring about the end of the world. So women of the world, though I know you won't listen, I entreat you to STOP reading Closer and Heat, Star and OK! and so forth, and GET OUT of the gossip matrix.

Feck me, I'm tired! I leave you with this rather amusing selection of quotes from Sienna Miller, who seems like a fun sort if you ask me, and the simultaneously heartwarming ('Yay! Yay for the still-single guy! You're no freak AT ALL!') and depressing Private Lives section (next week's problem made me want to cry and give the lady in question a big hug and take all her pain away, but sadly I'm not God...). I think I was partial to the bloke because he sounds a lot like my man might have done, had he ever written to the Guardian and not been snapped up by me (or some other exceedingly lucky girl) before reaching his late twenties... Mwahaha.

Finally... sleeping around from Chaucer to Castro and a really interesting piece on sex and 'our culture of excess' (which I will read tomorrow because I am really tired). HAPPY WEEKEND, ALL!