July 8, 2010

La plus ça change, encore une fois

Posted in Feminism and Gender Equality, Hysteria, Politics, Society at 7:30 am by Paul Sagar

I recently came across a collection of political campaign cards from the early 20th Century centering on the demands of the suffragettes, both for and against. The following is some sort of postcard, graffitied into anti-suffragette hate mail. (Apologies for poor quality, I only had my iPhone camera):

Front [the "Striking Example..." passage is added by hand]:

Back:

What I find fascinating – albeit depressingly so – is the extent to which misogynist abuse has not changed in nearly 100 years.

The claim or insinuation that campaigns for women’s rights and equality are rooted in a lack of family to cater for (“no homes”), rejection by men (“no husbands”) and infertility or barrenness (“no children”) are apparently as old as the hills yet very much alive and kicking.

Over at the Guardian’s CiF threads, anything remotely relating to feminism will attract exactly these sorts of derogatory comments. A fair number of them include aspirations to violence (“why don’t you drown yourselves”), and hence have to be removed by the moderators ASAP (usually with howls of indignation against the feminazi conspiracy).

I’ve previously asked Laurie Penny – one of the UK’s best young feminist writers - about the abuse she receives as a feminist commentator and journalist. She confirmed that all the above are standard tropes: “My very least favourite are the ones that tell me ‘you know you’re just doing this because you’re frustrated that you don’t have a baby yet’. That’s a common line.”

Laurie estimates that she receives about 35 abusive emails and comments a month. Indeed her comment forms have to be pre-moderated because the abuse got so bad in the past. You’ll note that The F-Word also has to pre-mod comments to keep things under control.

In her book Backlash, Susan Faludi argues that throughout history whenever steps towards women’s rights or equality are achieved it doesn’t take long for a counterveiling “backlash” movement to come into force. A key part of that backlash typically involves blaming women’s continued inequality and disadvantage on the women’s movement itself. As recently exemplified by Phillip Blond.

But also common to the backlash phenomena are techniques used to denigrate and dismiss women’s campaigners, in particular painting them as unfulfilled, lonely, bitter trouble-makers. You guessed it: lack of family, lack of babies and lack of a man to clean up after usually come top of the list.

The above example, an entirely typical exhibit from the period, only adds support to Faludi’s observations.

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