Why I am not a feminist

If there is one topic about which I've had almost a 180 degree turn in the last couple of years, it'd be feminism. I finished my undergraduate degree in a political space somewhere between smug liberal and wide eyed anarchist, with all the pitfalls of both positions. My influences were RA Wilson, Hakim Bey, Grant Morrison and Manuel Delanda (all of whom I still rate very highly). I was hovering between radicalism, apathy and the descent into naked cynicism.

I'd never really thought about Feminism before, or women's issues in general. I still maintained the broadly misogynistic opinions that are drilled into young men by both the elites and the mass culture. If I had a position on feminism, it was more or less that, while our current society did discriminate against women, and this was deplorable, the over focus on women's liberation was at best a parochial goal and at worst an expression of naked self interest. Of course sexism was a problem, but so is classism, racism and hierarchical thought in general. Just wait, comrade sisters, we'll get round to you.

It didn't help that the current media scape carries a subtle anti-feminist vibe. Feminism had become one of those positive/negative words, like health and safety, or political correctness, which could not be said without a slight sneer or wearied tone. Worse, there were associations of man hating, the "sex is rape" brigade. I knew several smart and ambitious young women who would openly avoid the label feminism - because, I think, they didn't want to be pigeon holed as a "women's issues" thinker, and because they (in the distorted logic of a broken culture) associated demanding equality with asking for extra help - and thus an admission of weakness).

I brought the position put out by RAW and others that "women" was just another essentialist label to describe the swarming multiplicity of real people. This led me to a deep suspicion of any political position founded upon "woman". When one is in revolt against oppressive social institutions, is the best method to really adopt the oppressors categories and othering? Even worse, I saw feminist critiques as, erroneously, essentialising men in turn - as a species of rapists, aggressors and tyrants.

Strangely, it was through an interest in women's issues that I renewed my (stagnating) interest in Anarchism and the politics of liberation. About 18 months ago, under some very good influences, I began to seriously sit down and think about the feminist critiques - both of mainstream and radical politics. This has, I feel, done a world of good both to me and my politics. I've come to accept the immediacy of the need for a counter power to the dominant, masculine discourses. Gender has, for me at least, become a new ground to contest hierarchy and privilege upon. As far as I am concerned, these changes are immensely positive.

Why, then, don't I identify as a feminist? While I dislike labels in general, I'm happy enough to be called an Anarchist when pushed (or a Left Libertarian, if pushed). Why not a feminist?

Firstly, I still feel a vestige of that anti-essentialist, anti-dualist vibe that kept me away from these issues for so long. I'm still not entirely sure what the "femin" in feminist really refers to, the same way I'm not really sure that my own status as a "man" is a particularly meaningful one. While, obviously, within the social contexts we live these terms are extremely important and these identifiers carry any enormous amount of weight, I still raise eyebrows when I hear anyone assigning universal or essential characters to people based purely on whether they have external or internal genitalia. While I roll my eyes at characterisations of men as "decisive" or "rational", I am equally uncomfortable with descriptions of women as inherently "caring" or "nurturing". The stereotypes of the oppressor, even the positive ones, are still just social fictions.

Secondly, I'm not sure that the focus of feminism needs, necessarily, be on women. I remember a few months ago discussing an anger management program being run by a Scottish town to deal with abusive husbands. The person I was talking to was dismissive, asking why all the attention and effort was being wasted on the men, who were, after all, the guilty party in the relationships. My answer then, as now, is because it's the men who are the problem. While, of course, the victims of abuse need to be supported and helped as much as is humanly possible, in a real world of limited resources and attention, we can only take a damage minimisation approach and try and stop this happening again. Since we reject the hideous old attitudes that "women bring it upon themselves", who needs to change? Elsewhere, who commits genocide? Predominantly men. Who fight, and overwhelmingly die, in the hundreds of wars around the world? Men. Rape, discrimination, abuse - it is men who are doing this, and thus men who need to change. While I have a lot of time for the women's empowerment projects and pro-active self defence programs, we also need to work upon changing men's opinions and behaviours. Once we move away from the position that certain (or all) men are inherently bestial or act out of purely evil motives, then we can start dealing with the broken gender roles, the toxic masculinities and the ugly insanities that lie at the root of our cultures.

Thirdly, I am sometimes unconvinced by the moral arithmetic that is sometimes bound up in feminist discourses. Specifically, I am concerned about some of the ideas of suffering and privilege that emerge from feminist discussions. Returning to one of the cases I mentioned above, it is men who overwhelmingly fight, and die in war. In the form of the draft and the press gang, literally millions of men are thrown into the meat grinder. If they survive they can carry the wounds of their experiences, physical or mental, for a lifetime. This is the product of the stupid, broken, mad ideas about gender that still infect our society. The discourses that privilege men in certain ways also, conversely, limit them and destroy them. Why do young men kill each other in the street? Why am I statistically far more likely to be murdered by a stranger (but less likely to be killed by a partner)? I am opposed to the existing social constructs on gender not simply because it limits and disempowers some people, but because I am convinced that it is ultimately a threat to everyone. Liberation, through the destruction of constraining and toxic gender constructs, is a path for all of us.

And, I'm pleased to say, within feminism there are thinkers and currents that address exactly those concerns I've raised above. So maybe I'm not a feminist...

...but, if it quacks, floats and has feathers, well...

Three short inspirational quotes from my old influences (all men, I'm afraid). All half remembered, so apologies to for typos etc.

1. "Would you make everyone equally rich, or equally poor?" (RA Wilson, Prometheus Rising)
   
2. "We're trying to create a world in which everyone gets what the want - even the enemy" (Grant Morrison, The Invisibles - Say You Want a Revolution)
3. " You were told this was a war. You were lied to. This is not a war - it's a rescue mission" (Grant Morrison, The Invisibles - The Invisible Kingdom)
   

Its funny how certain words become insults, it’s a great way to try and get people to stop ‘making trouble’. It’s a way to stop people being different, or at least noticibly different, and it’s a way of protecting a world that is comfortable, familiar, and possible works in your favour in a least one respect. An example of this is how “gay” has become an insult. “Oh my god that is soooo gay” has become in the last few years a common insult, that I hear regularly, casually used by people who aren’t especially homophobic.

Now I am not a grumpy language purist, offended by the notion of any change in language. In fact on the whole I think messing with language is a wonderful thing. Changing it, playing with it, enjoying it and claiming it back from high-minded folk who want to pin it down into prescriptive dictionaries and grammar books is a powerful form of democracy. I say use whatever you need to communicate. Yet when language tricks are used to shut down communication, to ignore and silence people, to cut them out of the conversation- it becomes sad and empty. This happens with making Gay an insult.

The implication that being gay is bad is obvious enough and nothing new, but the harm goes further. It literally steals the word out of the mouths of people with something important to say. So few words exist to describe gay people which aren’t vicious or derrogatory, and most are deemed inappropriate in formal settings that the adoption of the term gay – claimed and used by gay people for themselves, is one of very limited options. I have friends who actively try to reclaim words – faggot, dyke etc. but the history and connotations are hard to ignore. The only other option available in formal spaces is homosexual which has strange medical/zoological connotations which make me uncomfortable. If gay starts to mean bad, gay people are forced to link themselves with badness, or are pressured into silence. Let the word war commence: instead of being able to discuss the violence, discrimination, damaging stereotypes, and ostrasisation gay people face – we now have to start with simply the ability to define, to use words. It’s a great way to derail a movement which is actually getting somewhere.

The same happens with other words that seem innocuous to me, but if used repeatedly to mean negative things become difficult to use. Feminist – becomes just an insult. The dismissive “Oh what are you? Some kind of feminist?” pushes people into distancing themselves from a movement, a set of beliefs they might actually hold. Feminist becomes a Bad Thing, linked only to the negative aspects of the movement, and defined by its undesirability. Hence we get the subversive “I’m not a feminist, BUT…” phenomenon. People try to say what they believe, feminist beliefs, but refuse to let the other person dismiss what they are saying because they are “A feminist”. Again, self identifying feminists are drawn into a word-war where so much energy is expended in defending the name, the right to share a definition, just get together that the violence, discrimination and oppression that they object to gets obscured.

Anarchism too suffers a similar fate. It is made an insult, used to describe any violent or disorganised group, or anyone throwing stones at MacDonalds or a bank. The definition perpetuated by people outside the movement, leaves people with something to say lacking the vocabulary to say it. The energy to communicate gets lost in trying to explain why anarchism isn’t a terrible thing, rather than what Anarchism has to offer, and the alternatives it has to the injustive in our current social system.

I get so exhausted trying to explain my views to people who think they know them. People that think they have the definitive definition of what words like Gay, Feminist, and Anachist mean, and because of that they don’t have to listen. Words are tools, and listening to how/what/why people are using words is more important than what a dictionary says, or other people say they mean. Asking what people actually mean or understand by words is harder than dismissing and ignoring them but it means you don’t miss what they are actually trying to say.

I picked these particular words as examples – there are others. The same gets applied to Conservatism, Capitalist etc. within the left. Its just not helpful. It shuts down the conversation, prevents engagement, perhaps because engagement is often painful as you realise that the big Capitalist Enemy is actually a rational human too.