Freedom: rip it up

TRIGGER WARNING: sexual assault

A suburban comedy-drama, monumental in the way only a middle-aged, middle-class straight white American man would have the audacity to write. In this case, as in most, the monument does not yield the audacity it promises. Not even close. Here, the problem is not that the characters are simply unlikeable: they are dull, cliched, and not even believable. None of the truth, ugliness, attraction of most unlikeable characters in literature. The plot is a mess, but not a beautifully chaotic postmodern mess, simply a directionless, pointless collection of events nobody cares about. Franzen’s social realism is proudly middle-brow, what he seems to consider ambitious, without any sense that his execution of the mode is highly conventional. Yet even his realism isn’t believable: convenient events and plot holes abound. His language is trivial, ugly, too repetitive to justify six hundred-plus pages. The structure is fundamentally flawed, switching between the “autobiography” of one of the main characters, Patty, and the various viewpoints of three men, in a charade without function or finesse. If it was written by a woman, it would be read as a gossip column, dismissed as “chick lit,” hardly a Tolstoyan masterpiece of social realism. At the heart of this novel’s problem is its meanspiritedness; what Franzen sees as irony is slathered indiscriminately across the pages, the kind of sarcasm only a middle-aged white man can apply to everything that crosses his path, until the final pages when he seems to want us to care profoundly for his characters. Too late: the snow-love he wraps his ending up in is only sentimentality. In this vein, to read this book without being painfully aware of the almost unremitting misogyny is to inhabit the same world that Franzen does, the world that praises “Freedom” as a contender of the “Great American Novel.” A sexual assault early in the book is represented so gratuitously, so callously, with such a lack of understanding, that it undermines every attempt Franzen makes to cite this trauma as the “reason” for the myriad of Patty’s later issues. Women are described in terms of age, attractiveness, and pliability to men. Numerous references to men’s genitalia as cognisant conquerors and women’s as passive receptacles grow tiresome. Women and girls are the root of all of men’s problems. Later in the book, a rape fantasy is described lovingly. Every sarcastic pot-shot is a cheap shot: rather than being a sweeping, ambitious tome, it is an outdated triumph of the conventional, liberal, white, heterosexual American male in a world of (thankfully) splintering perspectives that offer far more interest and insight. But it is a high price to pay to realise, again, that the most worthwhile writing comes from women, people of colour, queers, all of us on the margins. If misogyny isn’t enough to turn a reader off this novel, let it be the presumptuousness of six hundred-plus pages of misplaced irony, directionless satire, complacent liberalism.

The Use of Pleasure

How did sexuality acquire its relation to truth? (In construction alone). How a decipherment of the self by the self, how a hermeneutics of desire? How in the 21st century did sexuality come to signal a revelation of the soul as a realm of knowledge about the True Self, where the smallest pieces of desire must be examined and analysed? Ancient Greece, on the other hand, turns to sexual practices themselves, not as moral/immoral, but as moderation, self-mastery, the superiority of the free man and his need to exercise his birthright as active, as ruler. Boys are the most beautiful, women are in a political relationship of ruler/ruled. All a juridico-moral codification of acts, arts of existence, regimen – for “free” men only.

Feminism is for Everybody: A Choice to Love (Part 2)

You are mistaken if you think feminism is about women. It is about rethinking gender in a way that unravels patriarchy, which instils ideologies of masculinity that are about domination and violence.

Necessarily, this means we must rethink relationships and family. This is what scares conservatives most, why they cry “political correctness” at any critique of gender stereotypes. Undermining gender necessarily undermines the family.

As hooks shows, “A utopian vision of the patriarchal family remains intact despite all the evidence which proves that the well-being of children is no more secure in the dysfunctional male-headed household than in the dysfunctional female-headed household. Children need to be raised in loving environments. Whenever domination is present love is lacking.”

Feminism has always been concerned with such relationships. As hooks traces the concerns of second wave feminism in relation to marriage and partnership, she mentions that many feminists “saw sexual monogamy with men as reinforcing the idea that the female body was property belonging to the individual male she was bonded with. We chose non-monogamous relationships and often refused to marry. We believed living with a male partner without state-sanctioned marriage within patriarchal society helped men maintain a healthy respect for female autonomy. Feminists advocated demanding an end to sexual slavery and called attention to the prevalence of marital rape while at the same time championing the rights of women to express sexual desire, initiate sexual interaction, and be sexually fulfilled.”

In a society in which marriage, romance, partnership and intimacy have been structured and defined by patriarchal assumptions, how can we reenvision them as feminist? Is it impossible? Certainly we must always be critical of marriage, monogamy and family units. Then again we must also be critical of polyamory, the fight for marriage equality, and the so-called “non-traditional family.” The problems faced by second wave feminists in their own lives forces us to never let our guard down. For example, is it possible for marriage to be a viable feminist option given the huge, undeniable patriarchal legacy of the institution? It remains as such today.

The discussion sparked by second wave feminism about sexuality remains with us today, though it is still fraught. As hooks advises, “While men must let go of the sexist assumption that female sexuality exists to serve and satisfy their needs, many women must also let go a fixation on penetration.” This is why feminism is intertwined with ideas of sexuality as much as with race, class, religion, and age. Feminism cannot be heteronormative, it must be queer. Because patriarchy has rested on heteronormativty. But today we still assume that heterosexuality is natural, and that sexual “orientations” are genetic, inborn, fixed, and markers of our identity. Until we let go of this, we can’t reach a feminist sexual politic.

While hooks doesn’t yet articulate this, she does recognise the centrality of heteronormativity to patriarchy: “Masses of heterosexual women remain unable to let go the sexist assumption that their sexuality must always be sought after by men to have meaning and value. To do so they must believe that same-sex sexual encounters, self-pleasuring, and celibacy are as vital and life-enhancing as sexual intercourse with men within patriarchal culture.”We see the truth of the second wave’s realisation that “women would only be truly sexually liberated when we arrived at a place where we could see ourselves as having sexual value and agency irrespective of whether or not we were the objects of male desire.”We still live in the world hooks describes here: “We will never know how many millions of women stay in relationships with dominating sexist males simply because they cannot imagine a life where they can be happy without men, whether they are satisfied sexually and emotionally with the men in their life or not. If any female feels she needs anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency. Lesbian women inspired me from childhood on to claim the space of my own self-definition.”

This is why queer women are vital in “representing” feminism to the mainstream. After all, “this is the special wisdom radical lesbian thinkers brought to the feminist movement. Even if there were exceptional straight women who theoretically understood that one could be utterly fulfilled without the approval of men, without male erotic affirmation, they did not bring to the movement the lived experience of this belief.”

Unfortunately, with the white-washed, straight-washed feminism in the mainstream eye, such truths are swept under the carpet. Today, given the length of time since the radicalism of the second wave that brought feminism to the mainstream, we have forgotten how these women dealt with sexuality and relationality in a patriarchal world. Hooks recalls that, “In the early stages of feminist movement we used the phrase ‘woman-identified woman’ or ‘man-identified woman’ to distinguish between those activists who did not choose lesbianism but who did choose to be woman-identified, meaning their ontological existence did not depend on male affirmation. Male-identified females were those who dropped feminist principles in a flash if they interfered with romantic heterosexual concerns. They were the females who also supported men more than woman, who could always see things from the male perspective.”

Internalised misogyny and girl hate abound today, to the extent that many think that jealousy is an inborn trait of women and friendships between women. How are we supposed to enact feminism in such a context? Unfortunately, hooks’ observation remains true: “The vast majority of straight women, whether they were actively feminist or not, were more concerned about their relationships with men.”

Hooks shows us what a queer feminism looks like, and why it is for all: “In a world where positive expressions of sexual longing connect us we will all be free to choose those sexual practices which affirm and nurture our growth. Those practices may range from choosing promiscuity or celibacy, from embracing one specific sexual identity and preference or choosing a roaming unchartered desire that is kindled only by interaction and engagement with specific individuals with whom we feel the spark of erotic recognition no matter their sex, race, class, or even their sexual preference.”

Most people’s aversion to this shows how ingrained a patriarchal heteronormativty is within us. Because of this overwhelming power, we struggle to envision intersectionality. Feminism becomes one thing: equality with men. But such a notion is incomprehensible unless we first examine the terms of that “equality.” So, “Women who claim to be feminist while perpetuating homophobia are as misguided and hypocritical as those who want sisterhood while holding on to white supremacist thought.”

Embracing a watered down, palatable version of feminism is easy. Heteronormativity is embedded in everything we hold dear, especially romance, that foundation of so many films, songs, books, and life dreams. But, as the second wave articulated, “female freedom could only happen if women let go their attachment to romantic love.”

Hard to swallow? Maybe, but ultimately liberating. After all:

“Romantic love as most people understand it in patriarchal culture makes one unaware, renders one powerless and out of control. Feminist thinkers called attention to the way this notion of love served the interests of patriarchal men and women. It supported the notion that one could do anything in the name of love: beat people, restrict their movements, even kill them and call it a ‘crime of passion,’ plead, ‘I loved her so much I had to kill her.’ Love in patriarchal culture was linked to notions of possession, to paradigms of domination and submission wherein it was assumed one person would give love and another person receive it. Within the patriarchy heterosexist bonds were formed on the basis that women being the gender in touch with caring emotions would give men love, and in return men, being in touch with power and aggression, would provide and protect.”This is so uncomfortable because patriarchal romantic love is what we think of as love, how we define love, it is something natural. It is difficult to think of it as socially constructed. And yet the work of feminism has shown us that it is constructed, and for a specific purpose, and that it is damaging.

Hooks offers as alternative vision: “When we accept that true love is rooted in recognition and acceptance, that love combines acknowledgement, care, responsibility, commitment, and knowledge, we understand there can be no love without justice. With that awareness comes the understanding that love has the power to transform us, giving us the strength to oppose domination. To choose feminist politics, then, is a choice to love.”

Why then would most people prefer the anti-feminist heterosexist dominating versions of romantic love we are fed every day?

It stems from a misunderstanding of the visionary nature of feminism, how it has beamed a light on our most taken-for-granted ideas. As hooks argues, this is partly because “one of the difficulties we faced spreading the word about feminism is that anything having to do with the female gender is seen as covering feminist ground even if it does not contain a feminist perspective. We do have radio shows and a few television shows that highlight gender issues, but that is not the same as highlighting feminism.”

On a sidenote, I would recommend the bitch media podcast, which certainly does contain a feminist perspective.

Feminism isn’t just about women, just as everything about women isn’t feminist. Hooks recommends “a collective door-to-door effort to spread the message of feminism,…to start again with the basic premise that feminist politics is necessarily radical.” That includes all these self-declared feminists in the public eye. “Confusion about this inherent radicalism emerged as feminist activists moved away from challenging sexism in all its manifestations and focused solely on reforms.”

Until we end the neverending defences of “feminism doesn’t mean hating men!” we won’t understand the true meaning of the movement. For everybody who has ever been caught in a debate going nowhere with someone who has never educated themselves about feminism but has expected to gain all they need to know from a mainstream mass media which is necessarily patriarchal, here is the book you can hand over.

Feminism is for Everybody: Come Closer (Part 1)

It is scary that a book published almost 15 years ago can be still so relevant and yet so controversial, on a topic such as the status of feminism in today’s society.

When I posted this picture on Instagram, it collected a few defensive comments from ill-informed (coincidentally male) folks. The sight of a small, brightly-coloured book with a kind, deliberately inclusive and hardly hostile title was apparently too much to handle. The very word “feminism” had raised their hackles.

Nor did they realise the irony of their remarks. On the first page of her Introduction, hooks relates the reactions she receives when telling people who she is and what she does. When she mentions the words “feminist theorist,” she hears the same ill-informed opinions: “When I ask these same folks about the feminist books or magazines they read, when I ask them about the feminist talks they have heard, about the feminist activists they know, they respond by letting me know that everything they know about feminism has come into their lives thirdhand.”

The eternal problem we face. Everyone seems to have an opinion on feminism, its aims, its history, its mistakes, its faults and its evils, and yet so few have bothered to skim anything that will educate them properly. How do you expect to learn about feminism through a patriarchal mainstream media? The irony is bitter.

In writing Feminism is for Everybody, hooks has given us a primer, a starting point, a foundational text. It is straightforward, short and easy to read. It tells those who have only come to know the word “feminism” through a mainstream media that is essentially patriarchal, because it is not radical, what the word really means. Where feminism has come from and where it still needs to go.

She says, “I had to write it because I kept waiting for it to appear, and it did not. And without it there was no way to address the hordes of people in this nation who are daily bombarded with anti-feminist backlash, who are being told to hate and resist a movement that they know very little about. There should be so many little feminist primers, easy to read pamphlets and books, telling us all about feminism, that this book would be just another passionate voice speaking out on behalf of feminist politics.”

I think this book is also for those who have labelled themselves feminists in the wake of “successful” mainstream celebrities claiming the title. This book is straightforward and easy to read, but it is rigorous. It comes from a woman who has a background in feminist theory, history and activism. She knows it is not just about “equality,” whatever that means. She will have no watered-down feminism. Her feminism is radical and intersectional because she sees that we cannot have a feminist vision without the destruction of the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Hardly something these celebrities, who have profited from such a system, will ascribe to. She reminds us that feminism should be unpalatable, because it wants to disrupt the status quo. But in this short book, she also reminds us that we need it.

So, fifteen years on, we still need this book. Anti-feminists and new feminists jumping on the bandwagon alike.

“As all advocates of feminist politics know, most people do not understand sexism, or if they do, they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media. The feminism they hear about the most is portrayed by women who are primarily committed to gender equality – equal pay for equal work, and sometimes women and men sharing household chores and parenting. They see that these women are usually white and materially privileged.”

This is a kind of feminism that can fit into patriarchy. Economic power can become more “equal” so women can participate fully in capitalism without ever thinking deeply about gender, heteronormativity or race.

Recently, Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Julie Bishop, when asked if she was a feminist, replied “I don’t find the need to self-describe in that way…It’s not a term that I find particularly useful these days.”

While there was an uproar, she’s right. She’s not a feminist. She is part of a government that, rather than ending sexist exploitation, is compounding it. She has benefited from a patriarchal system of domination and would rather uphold it than criticise. Why do we expect every woman in a position of power to identify as a feminist? Because the word has become virtually meaningless in mainstream culture. Hooks explains this:

“Lifestyle feminism ushered in the notion that there could be as many versions of feminism as there were women. Suddenly the politics was being slowly removed from feminism.”

And Mary Barfoot, in The Coming of Black Genocide, puts it in a way that certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouth: “There are white women, hurt and angry, who believed that the ‘70s women’s movement meant sisterhood, and who feel betrayed by escalatory women. By women who went back home to the patriarchy. But the women’s movement never left the father Dick’s side… There was no war. And there was no liberation. We got a share of genocide profits and we love it. We are Sisters of the Patriarchy, and true supporters of national and class oppression, Patriarchy in its highest form is Euro-imperialism on a world scale. If we’re Dick’s sister and want what he has gotten, then in the end we support that system that he got it all from.”

So, is feminism about women occupying more positions of power and privilege within a patriarchal capitalist system of oppression? Is this the idea of “equality” we want to embrace? Should we be happy with the small number of women CEOs and political representatives? Watering down feminism in this way has meant, as hooks says, that “in the ‘90s collusion with the existing social structure was the price of ‘women’s liberation.’”

Twenty years on this still seems to be the case. In making feminism palatable to the mainstream, dragging it against its will into an acceptance of feminism as “equality,” we are on the defensive. We start out by protesting, “No, it’s not anti-men!” In fact, that should be obvious to anyone who has bothered to look into the topic. But in an anti-feminist mass media, this must be the starting point.

Suddenly, these are the women who represent feminism. As hooks points out, “Radical white women tend not to be ‘represented,’ and, if represented at all, they are depicted as a fringe freak element. No wonder then that the ‘power feminism’ of the ‘90s offers wealthy white heterosexual women as the examples of feminist success.”Here we have feminism-lite. A feminism that slots nicely into the patriarchal status quo:

“Mainstream mass media has always chosen a straight woman to represent what the feminist movement stands for – the straighter the better. The more glamourous she is, the more her image can be used to appeal to men. Woman-identified women, whether straight, bisexual, or lesbian rarely make garnering male approval a priority in our lives. This is why we threaten the patriarchy. Lesbian women who have a patriarchal mindset are far less threatening to men than feminist women, gay or straight, who have turned their gaze and their desire away from the patriarchy, away from sexist men.”

Laurie Penny puts it perfectly, echoing the same sentiments hooks had fifteen years ago: “The feminism that sells is the sort of feminism that can appeal to almost everybody while challenging nobody, feminism that soothes, that speaks for and to the middle class, aspirational feminism that speaks of shoes and shopping and sugar-free snacks and does not talk about poor women, queer women, ugly women, transsexual women, sex workers, single parents, or anybody else who fails to fit the mould.”

Feminism that actually challenges the status quo, that is intersectional, cannot, as hooks argues, “be appropriated by transnational capitalism as yet another luxury product from the West women in other cultures must fight to have the right to consume.”

This means feminism isn’t about having “the answers.” If it is global, intersectional, aware of class, race, religion, age, and so many more, it must be about listening. Hooks does a great job of explaining briefly and lucidly while feminism must be anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. Rather than being about some vague notion of “equality,” this is an awareness of the historical and invasive formation of patriarchy. It is a complex, overwhelming, all-consuming collection of forces that is impossible to get our heads around.

Zillah Eisenstein also says: “Feminism(s) as transnational – imagined as the rejection of false race/gender borders and falsely constructed ‘other’ – is a major challenge to masculinist nationalism, the distortions of statist communism and ‘free’-market globalism. It is a feminism that recognises individual diversity, and freedom, and equality, defined through and beyond north/west and south/east dialogues.”

So, if capitalism and patriarchy are so intertwined that we can’t talk about feminism without talking about capitalism, we can’t water it down to a fight for equal pay. Hooks explains: “The truth remains that consumer capitalism was the force leading more women into the workforce. Given the depressed economy white middle-class families would be unable to sustain their class status and their lifestyles if women who had once dreamed solely of working as housewives had not chosen to work outside the home.”

I have long thought that feminism must be inherently pacifist as well, but I wasn’t able to clarify my ideas until I read hooks’ chapter in this book: “Ending Violence.” She says, “I am among those rare feminist theorists who believe that it is crucial for feminist movement to have as an overriding agenda ending all forms of violence.” All patriarchal violence – that is, violence that is an effort to dominate, to make a person or a group of people feel inferior – must be targeted by feminism. That includes sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, war, and bar fights. Patriarchy tells us violence is gendered masculine. It tells men that by being born male, they must imprint their superiority on the world. But patriarchy is complex. It positions men in a hierarchy even while telling them that by right of being male, they must assert their dominance. Hooks explains how violence, class and gender intersect in patriarchy: “Since masses of unemployed and working-class men do not feel powerful on their jobs within white supremacist patriarchy they are encouraged to feel that the one place where they will have absolute authority and respect is in the home.” In patriarchy, violence is a way of asserting your dominance, and even your identity. Violence is used to regain power and control because in a patriarchal society it is associated with strength, even while it is often condemned.

So, even while the media reports on domestic violence, while politicians speak out against it and organisations aim to “educate” us, this won’t be effective. Because, as hooks sees, “even though representations of domestic violence abound in mass media and discussions take place on every front, rarely does the public link ending male violence to ending male domination, to eradicating patriarchy. Most citizens of this nation still do not understand the link between male domination and male violence in the home… In mass media everyone raises the question of why this violence is taking place without linking it to patriarchal thinking.”

It is also true that “early on in feminist thinking activists often failed to liken male violence against women to imperialist militarism. This linkage was often not made because those who were against male violence were often accepting and even supportive of militarism. As long as sexist thinking socialises boys to be ‘killers,’ whether in imaginary good guy, bad guy fights or as soldiers in imperialism to maintain coercive power over nations, patriarchal violence against women and children will continue. In recent years as young males from diverse class backgrounds have committed horrendous acts of violence there has been national condemnation of these acts but few attempts to link this violence to sexist thinking.”

I am reminded of a recent debate in Australia in which Greens senator Larissa Waters endorsed the campaign “No Gender December” which shows the harm of gendered toys. She stated that “outdated stereotypes…feed into very serious problems such as domestic violence and the gender pay gap.”

Predictably there was outrage over this “political correctness.” But if dolls are designated as “girls’ toys” what are you saying about the traits of caring and nurturing? If superheroes and toy guns are “boys’ toys” how can we deny that physical strength and violence are gendered masculine in our culture? If boys cannot dress up in fairy outfits, what are you telling him about girls and femininity? That it’s “weak,” trivial, and that he best stay away from it at all costs or he will be “emasculated” (one of the most amusing words in the English language). Emotional intelligence, creativity, and interpersonal closeness are for girls, while physical strength, dominance and violence are for boys? Great.

Hooks provides an explanation that the general public, crying “political correctness,” may want to think about: “We do know that patriarchal masculinity encourages men to be pathologically narcissistic, infantile, and psychologically dependent on the privileges (however relative) that they receive simply for having been male. Many men feel that their lives are being threatened if these privileges are taken away, as they have structured no meaningful core identity.”

Come on. Do we want to keep sticking up for an outdated patriarchal masculinity when it makes men into people like this? What would we lose by slowly ungendering toys, so that children are seen as people rather than boys or girls?

Doesn’t hooks have a better solution? “Boys need healthy self-esteem. They need love. And a wise and loving feminist politics can provide the only foundation to save the lives of male children. Patriarchy will not heal them. If that were so they would all be well.”

I will delve into the second half of hooks’ book in the next couple of weeks.

I Don’t Hate Men, I Just Want to be Equal: Feminism, Apologies and Salvaging Radicalism

“When those who have power to name and to socially construct reality choose not to see you or hear you, whether you are dark-skinned, old, disabled, female, or speak with a different accent or dialect than theirs, when someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked in to a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul – and not just individual strength, but collective understanding – to resist this void, this nonbeing, into which you are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.” – Adrienne Rich

Apparently, feminism is all about equality. All we want is for men and women to be equal, that’s all! Look, that’s the definition of feminism, you’re a feminist too then! We’re all feminists! I’m a feminist, but I’m not a lesbian, I shave my legs, and I’m not ugly! Oh, and I don’t hate men. That’s the extremists you’re thinking of. I’m not like that.

Why do we need to placate the patriarchy? Why have some of us watered down feminism so much that it becomes about “equality between men and women,” a lovely phrase signifying nothing? This defeats the entire purpose. Feminism should be radical. It should be extreme.

Feminism is ultimately about smashing the patriarchy. That goal encompasses a whole of lot of complicated, radical aims.

Of course, we need those sell-outs who pander to the system. So we have Beyoncé, constructing herself as a feminist icon while putting out music that glorifies domestic violence and sexual assault (“Drunk in Love”) and objectifies herself as a piece of marriageable property (“Single Ladies”). Then Katy Perry who claimed she was a feminist because “it just means that I love myself as a female and I also love men.” Um, what? Sometimes I need to hear statements like that, if only to remember what it was like before I ever stepped foot into a Gender Studies class. Even then though, I knew that performing desire purely for the male gaze (“I Kissed a Girl”) was pretty high up there on the list of anti-women activities.

Fine, we need celebrities like that, if only to publicise the word “feminism” and perhaps encourage people to actually look into the word with a bit more care. And I am optimistic that a fourth wave of feminism is underway that is not spearheaded by celebrities but harnessing the radical potential of social media. It also appears that the masses are far more adept at using consumer culture to subvert patriarchy rather than prop it up, as Beyoncé enjoys. Perhaps we also need figures such as Sheryl Sandberg who empower women within the existing power regime, asking them to “lean in” to the white capitalist heterosexist patriarchy rather than question it. What is called “corporate feminism” has no ounce of radicalism to it, no recognition of the fact that their category of “woman” excludes women of colour, queer women, women with disabilities, poor women, and so on.

This is similar to the way first wave feminists fighting for the vote reassured the patriarchy that they were nurturing, gentle, and a civilising influence on the future citizens of the nation and should therefore be allowed a voice in reform. They used patriarchal constructions of women and femininity to gain rights and yes, most of them probably believed the arguments.

      But why haven’t we moved on from the backlash against first wave feminists, who were apparently mannish man-hating monsters? That is still the popular conception of feminism.

And the popular way to dispel that conception is by saying “No, we love men, that’s only the extremists, that’s radical feminists, the rest of us just want equality.”

No.

It is the anti-feminists who have conjured up the image of man-hating feminists. This came from no truth except people who were invested in patriarchy feeling threatened by feminism. And so they should. Feminism should be petrifying if you are invested in patriarchy. This goes for men and women.

“It is easy to be considered a misandrist when men are socialised to feel entitled to women and our time. So, if you ignore them, you’re a misandrist. If you insist they leave you alone, you’re a misandrist. If you focus on building healthy female-centred relationships over relationships with men, you’re a misandrist. Misandry is basically prioritising your agency, autonomy and fellow women over men in a society that teaches you that being feminine relies on giving into men’s feelings of entitlement” – highly intelligent anonymous person.

Patriarchy should be scared of feminists because we want women to stop being dependent on men. Politically, economically, socially, culturally, and sexually. For a woman to feel that her self-worth and survival have nothing to do with her attachment to a man is the ultimate threat to the patriarchy. Apparently the most insulting image is a woman made monstrous because of her independence from men. And the best way anti-feminists can think of to threaten feminists is to tell us we are not attractive to men. Because that is supposed to be the ultimate blow to any woman.

In Catharine MacKinnon’s words: “Socially, femaleness means femininity, which means attractiveness to men, which means sexual attractiveness, which means sexual availability on male terms.”

That is why feminism must be anti-patriarchy. That is why feminism must question every lovingly held idea of gender, what is “feminine” and “masculine,” and break the delusion that such things are biologically determined. It cannot simply be about equality between two pre-determined sexes. Because there is no such thing. It is patriarchy that has constructed a binary view of gender – that male and female are opposites, and necessary to one another. For this reason feminism must be queer. It must also be intersectional – that is, alive to the ways that race, class, ability, age and many more “identity markers” intertwine with gender. Mainstream feminism – that is, feminism that attempts to make itself appealing to the patriarchal status quo – is utterly heterosexist and cissexist. Women who are traditionally appealing to men are less of a threat. Where are the queer and trans* feminists in popular culture? Why is there still a monopoly of heterosexual-identified, cisgender women promoting feminism? That seems to defeat the radical purpose feminism has of smashing heteronormativity and the patriarchal idea that women’s energy is directed towards relationships with men.

For feminists to go on the defensive, to always have to start from a point of saying “No we don’t hate men” only gives the winning point to the anti-feminists. It is the same as always having to start from the point of “Is global warming caused by humans?” in the climate crisis debate. It is a distraction. It wastes time.

Hearing debates in mainstream media about whether we still need feminism is truly cringeworthy. We always go right back to definitional issues. While people who haven’t read Simone de Beauvoir or bell hooks are trying to grapple with the question of whether feminism excludes men, domestic violence is going on unhampered, thousands of objectifying ads are lining the streets and infecting the television, and male politicians are flooding parliament.

But when you have read these women, when you become alive to the fact that violence against women and the oppression of women isn’t some problem located in “third world countries,” it can be tough. It’s tough to see the overwhelming discursive and structural power that infiltrates your every move. It’s more comforting to ignore, to say, “That’s the way of the world.” I don’t want to go into “Women against feminism” because the trend is simply a whole lot of misguided foolishness and nothing else. But I mean those women who are not angry, who believe it’s easier to live with the patriarchy than go against the grain.

“Many women, I think, resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships. It is as if our oppression were cast in lava eons ago and now it is granite, and each individual woman is buried inside the stone. Women try to survive inside the stone, buried in it. Women say, I like this stone, its weight is not too heavy for me. Women defend the stone by saying that it protects them from rain and wind and fire. Women say, all I have ever known is this stone, what is there without it?” – Andrea Dworkin

Here are some common attempts the average citizen employs to shut down feminist spaces:

Get a life. Stop being paranoid. You’re making too much of this.

Ah, the tried and true way of shutting a woman up. Belittle her. Tell her she has nothing to back up her claims. Talk over her. Interrupt her. Laugh at her. She is over-emotional, irrational, perhaps explained by her menstrual cycle, which is a thing too disgusting to even mention but something we can fall back on when a woman gets out of hand. It takes a damn strong person to refuse to believe this. To see that this response actually justifies her fury, because of the very reason that is dismissed.

“Women hear it all the time from men. ‘You’re overreacting,’ we tell them. ‘Don’t worry about it so much, you’re over-thinking it.’ ‘Don’t be so sensitive.’ ‘Don’t be crazy.’ It’s a form of gaslighting – telling women that their feelings are just wrong, that they don’t have the right to feel the way that they do. Minimising somebody else’s feelings is a way of controlling them. If they no longer trust their own feelings and instincts, they come to rely on someone else to tell them how they’re supposed to feel” – Harris O’Malley.

I’m not really interested in it. There are more important things than feminism.

This implies a fundamental misunderstanding of the extent and all-pervasiveness of patriarchy. One of the most effective strategies of power structures is to make themselves invisible. If you can’t see them, if you internalise them as simply “normal” or “natural,” you can’t conceive of them as constructed, let alone figure out ways to challenge them. That’s why people laugh when you say the word “heteronormativity” or even “patriarchy” – to hear the names of these techniques of power is so out of the ordinary it becomes funny to people who have never got past their invisibility.

It’s also a misunderstanding of the way power works. People think that when you say “patriarchy” you are referring to some sort of group of white silk-suited men who write out their methods for the oppression of women. But as we should have learned from Foucault, power is not possessed by individuals, it is diffuse. Power is normalised, internalised and everywhere. It is not top-down, meted out by superiors, but exercised and re-created again and again, every day, by everyone we come across. It isn’t one thing with one definition, it’s always changing. Nor is it merely repressive, it is productive. Our every conception of gender is part of a discourse that is everywhere. Feminism attempts to make the construction of gender clear, thus to make the sources of discipline clear, so we may find new ways. It will always be a process, because techniques of power are so complex.

To say that there are more important issues is to ignore the interconnections of all of these techniques of power and knowledge. So the way we think about gender is intertwined with the military industrial complex and capitalism. This was the problem with Marxism and other left-wing movements. They failed to see that the relationship to the means of production that they took as the be-all-and-end-all intersects with patriarchy, and often such movements were as misogynistic as the regimes they struggled against.

Women have it worse in other countries.

What a terrible argument. “Hey, those women over there have it worse off than you, so shut up and stop complaining.” It is yet another way of attempting to delegitimise women’s experiences and voices. The true justice, the smashing of patriarchal gender ideology, that feminism aims for is not to be achieved “by comparison.” In other words, because Western women can drive, vote, and get educated doesn’t mean that patriarchy is not alive and well.

Men are victims of domestic violence too.

And? Yes? Go on? I don’t recall denying that. Firstly, when feminism addresses violence against women it does so with an understanding that this violence is structural, not just individual. There is not a systemic problem of violence against men by women. The power imbalance simply does not allow that. Now hold on. That does not mean there are not individual instances of violence perpetrated by women against men. But it does not come from rape culture, objectification, and entrenched cultural standards about men’s and women’s behaviour and romantic relationships.

Secondly, just look at the stats. In Australia, less than 5% of men who experienced violence in a 12-month period were assaulted by a female partner or ex-partner. [Check out http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/056A404DAA576AE6CA2571D00080E985/$File/49060_2005%20%28reissue%29.pdf] Also, “men’s violence is six times more likely to inflict severe injury and is more humiliating, coercive and controlling. Women’s violence is more likely to be expressive in response to frustration and stress rather than purposeful with the intention to control and dominate.” [Check out   McKenzie, Sarah. Domestic violence reality check for the ‘manosphere’ [online]. Eureka Street, Vol. 23, No. 18, Sep 2013: 30-32: http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=672075196326892;res=IELLCC]. That’s what I mean by entrenched cultural standards.

Similarly, if you say men who experience violence from a partner are discouraged by cultural norms to admit it, thank you for providing more evidence of the need for feminism. Which wants to smash such gendered norms as men being unemotional, stoic and needing to “man up.” We also want to smash the idea that violence is inherently masculine.

 

Male privilege? But dead soldiers, workplace accidents, homelessness, custody.

This always amuses me. Thanks for giving me more evidence of the damage done by patriarchy. Why are men sent to war and not women? Because apparently they are biologically stronger, more violent, and less important for nurturing children. Why more workplace accidents? They are more likely to work dangerous jobs that need a yellow “Men working” sign out the front. Why? Because they are seen as physically stronger and more suited to technical, practical activities such as factory work, construction and electrical work. Why homelessness? Men are not encouraged to rely on others. Women are more likely to rely on male romantic partners even when they are worse off in such relationships. Women are told they need to be protected, men are told they should be able to cope on their own and not ask for support. The ways men are taught to express their problems – through violence, alcohol and drug abuse – are also more likely to get them into trouble, destroy their support networks and make people more fearful of helping them. Again, patriarchy has created this situation. Why are men less likely to get custody of children? Simple. Patriarchy wants us to believe women are inherently more nurturing and therefore better at raising children.

Male privilege does not mean that in each and every situation men get their way. I won’t go in to hegemonic masculinity theory here – the fact that in each context, certain types of masculinity are privileged over other types, meaning some men are subordinated in favour of other men – but in a patriarchal society, men as a group are privileged over women as a group. Gendered ideas – such as men being physically strong and independent, and women being nurturing – work to uphold patriarchy, but that doesn’t mean those ideas won’t backfire on you in certain situations. The entrenched belief that women are more nurturing and should be the primary caregiver for children has benefited men in countless situations. To pick out one situation, such as custody battles, where it does not benefit them is to miss the point entirely.

Imagine sexism is a gun. Sure, it’s going to recoil on you sometimes, but that’s nothing like getting hit with the bullet.

Not all men.

What you are doing here is putting your personal feelings above structural, entrenched misogyny. In the face of women expressing the myriad occasions they have experienced misogyny, you feel the need to point out that you are not personally at fault. Men who do this are derailing the conversation. In fact, they are reinstating the huge force of misogyny by flipping the conversation back to men.

This comeback also misunderstands the entire point of feminism. It is not anti-men, it is anti-patriarchy. When we discuss misogyny, we are not discussing men abusing women, we are talking about a power structure that enables and normalises instances of abuse by men against women.

Not all men sexually assault women, punish them for moving through a public space, or neglect to listen to women musicians, read women writers and watch women-led TV and movies. But all men profit from patriarchy. So all men need to actively assess how this privilege helps them at the expense of women. How about instead of putting in your two cents about “Not all men,” you listen to the voices of the women telling you about their experiences of misogyny? And then you make an effort to disrupt that system.

On a related note, yes, “patriarchy hurts men too.” But that is not the fact that legitimises feminism.

“My mistrust [of men] is not, as one might expect, primarily a result of the violent acts done on my body, nor the vicious humiliations done to my dignity. It is, instead, born of the multitude of mundane betrayals that mark by every relationship with a man – the casual rape joke, the use of a female slur, the carless demonization of the feminine in everyday conversation, the accusations of overreactions, the eye rolling and exasperated sighs in response to polite requests to please not use misogynist epithets in my presence or to please use non-gendered language (“humankind).” – Melissa McEwan

“We live in a society that’s sexist in ways it doesn’t understand. One of the consequences is that men are extremely sensitive to being criticised by women. I think it threatens them in a very primal way, and male privilege makes them feel free to lash out. This is why women are socialised to carefully dance around these issues, disagreeing with men in an extremely gentle manner. Not because women are nicer creatures than men. But because our very survival can depend on it.” – Brianna Wu

Don’t you just have to chill out sometimes? I mean, I agree with you and all, but you’ve got to live in the world, and this is just how it is!

“Knowledge makes me more aware, it makes me more conscious. ‘Knowing’ is painful because after ‘it’ happens I can’t stay in the same place and be comfortable. I am no longer the same person I was before.” – Gloria Anzaldua

Guess what? Patriarchy wants us to keep silent, it wants us to let everyday misogyny go by unscathed. That is power’s greatest weapon: keeping itself invisible. That’s why it’s so awkward to call people out on their apparently “harmless” sexist or heterosexist remarks. I hate awkwardness. I want to avoid it as much as the next person. But also, knowing is painful. It means that those remarks that would have slipped by you before, or at most elicited an eyeroll, really sting. Because you recognise that it is just one more technique of disciplining, controlling, enacting violence. One thing I like to say is, “Hold on, I’m sorry?” Just put a halt to the conversation. They will have to explain. All of a sudden, a remark that would just be part of everyday flow is under the spotlight. They will see that perhaps it was not harmless. To make someone stop and think twice is a very powerful thing, even if they are a lost cause.

As Desmond Tutu reminds us: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

“I hate when people comfort the privileged. I want you to be uncomfortable. I want you to take notice of the people being killed, raped, beaten, alienated because of their identity. I want you to think about how the system favours you and what that means for others. I want you to reevaluate your actions to make sure you’re actively working against the systemic oppression of others. If you’re comfortable, then you’re in the wrong” – highly intelligent anonymous person.

As for the pseudo-sympathetic plea, “You’ve got to live in this world, don’t you?” which has been put to me by pro-feminist people, no, I don’t want to live in “this world” as you call it if it means accepting your patriarchy and heteronormativity. There are some people who would prefer to go against the grain and we don’t live on other planets. So I think I can survive pretty well with my dangerous consciousness, as well as my shelves of feminist literature. Yes it’s exhausting. But falling into step with patriarchy is out of the question. If you want to take up the mantle, Audre Lorde gives us a rallying cry: “Sister outsider.”

Let’s not give up all the ground we’ve won. Feminism should not be palatable to the patriarchy, that’s the whole point. You think feminists are man haters? Okay, fine. I’m not going to stroke your ego by telling you about all the men I love. You think feminists are ugly? You think feminists don’t shave? I’m not going to point to all the women whom the male gaze has deemed appealing and who are also feminists. You think feminists are lesbians? I’m not going to make you feel that feminists really need men after all, with something about “companionate” marriages from the 1950s. You think feminists can’t “get” a man? I’m not going to spout something about how a man should want a “strong” woman after all, because then he’ll know she’s with him because she cares, not because she’s forced into it! In truth all feminists are man-hating lesbians who do not shave, are hideously ugly and actually long for a heterosexual relationship because we actually know that’s the only fulfilling path in life and lesbianism is simply bitterness. Because those are your standards. Feminism wants new ones.

All of us feminists know the truth of Lewis’ Law: “the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.” Backlash against feminism shouldn’t determine its priorities. After all, the goal of anti-feminism is to discredit it. The patriarchy has made it perfectly clear what scares it the most: a woman whose entire life, daydreams and self-worth don’t depend on a man, but on herself. And, God forbid, on her vast web of human relationships.            

Fight Like a Girl: Constructing an Active Femininity

Why is fashion mocked but not sport, where the goal is, for example, to put a ball on the grass behind a line?

Why are girls at a pop concert thought of as stupid but not men screaming, crying and fighting at a football match?

Why are romance novels scoffed at but not ghostwritten crime thrillers?

Why do romantic comedies elicit eye rolls but not formulaic Bond films?

Why is pink a frivolous colour but not blue?

Why are girls allowed to play with trucks but boys aren’t allowed to play with dolls?

Why is it okay for girls to enjoy soccer but not okay for boys to enjoy ballet?

Why so much attention on about girls playing with pink toys but not boys playing with guns, swords, all kinds of military apparatus?

Why is it shameful to enjoy Britney’s music but not AC/DC’s? (After all, the musical value is the same)

Why is knitting foolish but not playing pool at the pub?

Why is a love of handbags laughable but not a fixation on accessories for a car?

Why is celebrity gossip shallow but (male) sports gossip, which fills TV news, newspapers and programmes like “The Footy Show,” a worthy use of time?

Why does “man up” mean “stop being weak”?

Why do women read novels by men but very few men read novels by women?

These questions all have the same answer.

It may seem that the easiest way to achieve gender equality is to do away with femininity, with the idea that women should reshape their bodies, decorate themselves, spend hours turning themselves into people that “look like women.”

But this privileges masculinity. This buys into the very idea that the patriarchy has propagated: masculinity means strength, rationality, aggression, and power. Femininity means passivity, emotion, artifice and frivolity.

     

If we want to break down all patriarchal concepts of gender, that the category of man is synonymous with masculinity and the category of woman with femininity, and are mutually exclusive (that is, that you can’t be a “real man” and be feminine and vice versa), we have to rethink femininity all together. We have to construct it in a new way, make it powerful. I use the word construct deliberately. It needs to be conscious. We are still too deep in patriarchal concepts of femininity to use femininity without consequence. Everywhere objectification and sexualisation and women and girls bombards us. How can we reconstruct femininity in a way that isn’t patriarchal?

First of all I want to say that femininity should not be associated with women. But this is a complicated idea because of patriarchy’s centuries-old construction of femininity to assist its oppression of women. Those traits I mentioned earlier – passivity, emotion, artifice, frivolity (and you could name thousands more) – are negative. Masculine traits are positive. And here is the crux: they are only positive when men possess them. So we get the typical insults applied to women who are seen to transgress femininity (and how easy to overstep the mark): “shrill” for women who speak their mind and out of turn, “bitch” for the same thing, “bossy” for women who show leadership, “slut” for women who claim sexual agency rather than passivity, and how long could we go on for? Femininity is ultimately supposed to be about attracting men. That’s why feminists are called “man haters.” Because they fundamentally oppose the idea that their existence needs male validation. That’s the scariest idea patriarchy can hear.

By the same token, insults applied to men police masculinity just as effectively. As Jessica Valenti writes:

“What’s the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don’t hold back, now.
You’re probably thinking of words like slut, whore, bitch, cunt (I told you not to hold back!), skank.
Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, girl, bitch, pussy. I’ve even heard the term “mangina.”
Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult. Now tell me that’s not royally fucked up.”

Policing masculinity works through denigrating femininity and therefore women. It works through misogyny.

““Femininity is depicted as weakness, the sapping of strength, yet masculinity is so fragile that apparently even the slightest brush with the feminine destroys it.” – Gwen Sharp

Our binary gender system means that men who express “feminine” traits, say by crying or enjoying “feminine” things such as arranging flowers, are not “real men.” You can’t be masculine and feminine at the same time. In fact, masculinity is defined by an avoidance of femininity. How about if we de-sexed and de-gendered femininity? This means that “feminine” wouldn’t be attached to genitals, chromosomes, even bodies – however we define gender. Basically the term “femininity” wouldn’t be suitable for the kind of body-performance I suggest but since I’m working in a patriarchal symbolic I will use the word. I also use the term because I recognise the denigration of femininity has been synonymous with the denigration of women, is the basis of misogyny, and reclaiming it is a way of freeing women from being the objects the patriarchy wants them to be, to become true subjects with human agency.

Most essential to me is making femininity about subjectivity. Femininity under patriarchy is about making our bodies amenable to men. Is there a way to reclaim femininity for ourselves, as fluid and changeable, so that one day we can feel like curling our hair and wearing heels and the next wear trackpants and no bra, without feeling that we are abandoning our duty, without feeling that we aren’t “real women” today, without worrying we won’t be treated with respect, without feeling we are missing any advantages by not complying with patriarchy, without feeling guilty, without the world curling its lip or heaping slurs on us?

Traditionally femininity has been about objectification. Yes, turning ourselves into objects. Looking at ourselves as objects. Decorating our bodies by inhabiting the male gaze. The way women have internalised the male gaze is scary.

As Simone de Beauvoir said back in 1949 “Woman…is even required by society to make herself an erotic object. The purpose of the fashions to which she is enslaved is not to reveal her as an independent individual, but rather to offer her as prey to male desires.” So skirts, heels, frills, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, decorative hats, unwieldy coloured fingernails are not designed for free bodily movement and in fact often hinder it. Men’s clothing needs to be practical: shirts without lace or frills, plain pants (it’s forbidden for men to wear skirts), flat shoes, and on special occasions suit and tie. It is not supposed to draw attention to men’s body but allow him to express himself, allow his personality and opinions to shine through. On the other hand, women in positions of power are constantly criticised or evaluated on their choice of clothing, hairstyles, bodily comportment. Women in movies and TV shows are shown fretting over what to wear – this would be unacceptable in a male character. Why? Because women’s bodies are viewed as objects, something to be adorned, and women in sexist pop culture view their own bodies as objects, to be adorned for the male gaze. To be shaped to be amenable to patriarchy.

To reclaim femininity we have to understand these origins. Yes, it has been utilised for patriarchal purposes. Maybe we can say that femininity can be feminist, but it can be (and certainly has been for centuries) anti-feminist. To use Foucault’s analysis, femininity has been used to create docile bodies, though Foucault of course was bad with gender, so we have to apply his very good concept of (male) bodies being manipulated into soldiers, prisoners, students. If only he had picked up on the incredible differences in the ways female bodies are produced.

Sandra Lee Bartky’s analysis of the way female bodies are produced as objects is pretty much the best thing ever. She knows that “[t]he strategy of much beauty-related advertising is to suggest to women that their bodies are deficient” so that femininity is based on a “pervasive sense of bodily deficiency.” Shame is used to make us discipline our bodies in often crazy ways. You shouldn’t have hair there. You shouldn’t have fat there. You should have a gap there, and a curve there, and a visible bone there. This is because “[w]oman lives her body as seen by another, by an anonymous patriarchal Other” as Bartky says. This is reinforced at every turn. On billboards. In “women’s” magazines (often working against women rather than for/with them). On the street when a man thinks he has a right to comment on her appearance. In her home when a relative calls her pretty.

This is the message women get from everywhere: the most important thing is how you look. Then they are laughed at for accepting the message. Girls are told they should be pretty, they should like pop music, they should like pink, and then they are mocked for it. Girls are caught in a double-bind. Why can’t we stop telling them that being a girl is essentially weak, without giving them any alternatives?

This is also why girls claim to be “not like other girls” or to take it as a compliment when someone (usually a boy) tells them they are “not like other girls.”

When femininity is trivialised, women are trivialised. When masculinity goes unquestioned, patriarchy goes unquestioned.

So, do undo all this historical and cultural work we have to be aware of it. One way to do this is by acknowledging that all gender is artifice. Femininity has been intimately linked with artifice, superficiality, “faking it,” while masculinity has been linked with solidity, truth, natural, pragmatic, down-to-earth. “Feminine” gestures are unnecessary and foolish, such as the stereotypical hair flick, movement of the hips, limp wrist. Drag performances show up this “constructed” femininity clearly. We also get this idea through the common assumption that queer men who “act feminine” are “flamboyant” or somehow faking their speech patterns, body movements and gestures.

Heterosexual masculinity is the only form of gender expression that is “stripped back” and “natural.” Surprise surprise.

But masculinity is just as much faked and performed. Do men really need to sit with their legs so far apart? Do they need to drape their arms over nearby pieces of furniture? Do they need to swig from a glass with their elbows at a ninety-degree angle? Do they need to clap each other on the back?

Nope. Artifice. Of course, we can’t avoid Judith Butler here: gender is “a stylised repetition of acts [so that] the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief.” Basically, gender is “real only to the extent that it is performed.”

If we recognise that gender is a performance, we can detach it from arbitrary markers of genitals and chromosomes. Why would we want to reclaim femininity? It has been used to objectify us, distract us, trivialise us. All that time we spend putting on makeup could be spent reading good books. All that time spent criticising a woman politician’s outfit could be spent examining her policies. But femininity isn’t inherently any worse than masculinity. And there are some things typified as “feminine” that we need a whole lot more of: emotion, affection, kindness, carefulness, even frivolous fun. I think we can reclaim femininity by dissociating it from objectification and shame.

Shame is really hard to get through. As women we feel obligated to shave our legs, our armpits, shape our eyebrows. We are obligated to make ourselves objects. If we can come to a different, more liberating understanding of our bodies we can spend hours looking for a nice dress or putting on makeup if we feel like it, but if we would rather sleep in or read a book we won’t think anything of it. Above all there should be no requirement for women to shape their bodies and faces as if they were deficient, just as there is no requirement for men. If a woman never shaves, plucks, dyes, whatever other regimes that get thrown at women as compulsory, why should we care? Her body isn’t there for us to look at. Rather than looking at our bodies we can experience them, how they move fast, sweat, beat, let us feel pleasure, let us feel pain, the thrill and exhaustion of running or scoring a goal or lifting weights, how they show what we’re feeling, tears or embarrassment or laughter. If we feel all this, if we know our bodies in this way, shame takes up less space. This is body positivity – knowing all the things our bodies can do rather than all the ways that they don’t look. Let’s not leave Riot Grrrl in the 90s. Femininity can be feminist – if we don’t view our bodies with the male gaze, but experience them as our own, as our connection with the world and all its sensations and joys and tragedies.

45 years ago Germaine Greer wrote: “Whenever we treat women’s bodies as aesthetic objects without function we deform them and their owners. Whether the curves imposed are the ebullient arabesques of the tit-queen or the attenuated coils of art-nouveau they are deformations of the dynamic, individual body, and limitations of the possibilities of being female.”

The definition of strength that suits patriarchy is aggression, competition, denial of emotion and self-reliance. But when you have all this, who would suggest that tanks, guns, brawls on footy fields, hacking a path through jungle, speeding around in a loud and decorated car, swallowing back tears, looking at women’s bodies as if they had no heart, soul or mind and shuddering at the idea of drinking a “chick drink” are examples of strength? Until men stop viewing “feminine traits” as weak and seeking to avoid them at all costs, we won’t be rid of our stupid notions of gender and the damage patriarchy has wrought on women, men and the world.

We need to detach “being a woman” from objectification. A femininity that is not about attracting men. We need a feminist patriarchy-smashing femininity.

I am an I, not a she, not a her, not “my girlfriend” or “my daughter” or “my wife” or sweetheart, baby, darling. My lipstick is the colour of blood, the lifeforce. I know that flowers grow from nothing, everywhere. My hair is long and not ornamental, it catches the light and gives out its own light, it whips and warms me and drips with sweat. I cry when I feel beautiful music and I feel the beauty and spirit of the wide mountains like a kick in the guts. When I cry it is salt and water and heat and intensity. I eat pizza, read philosophy and keep my nails sharp enough to cut skin. I don’t smile in deference, I smile because I am strong enough to show kindness. I am not scared of my emotions. I don’t need to beat nature or prove my survival skills because I know I am part of it. I don’t leave a room that is filled with sadness. I touch without violence. I am not an empty space, I am filled with strength. My body moves fast, sweats, heats up. I am not pretty. I wear skirts and occupy my own space and don’t apologise for it. If you undermine me I can protect myself. I lift weights with my brothers and box with my sisters. I’m wear heels and I haven’t shaved my armpits. I wear a thousand bracelets and I am quick to anger. I cry when I see somebody crying and I shout at those who take me for decoration. I see no contradiction. My makeup is warpaint.