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Women’s oppression remains a major feature of British society, even if it sometimes looks rather different than it did during that last big wave of feminism in the 1970s. But the good news,arguesCatherine redfern,isthatfeminismisaliveandkickingtoo Feminism: now for the good news Y ou’d be forgiven for thinking that feminism today is in a terrible state. We all know the score by now, surely: rape conviction rates are at record lows; girls’ and boys’ career choices are still split along gender lines; women are being paid less than men; there’s concern about the ‘sexualisation’ of girls; politicians are threatening to roll back the clock on abortion rights; climate change is threatening women – the poorest of the poor – worldwide. And that’s just picking a few things of the top of my head. Beyond the doom and gloom In my new book with Kristin Aune, Reclaiming the F Word, we’re presenting the good news: that feminism is being reclaimed in ever greater numbers. We’re not just arguing that more of us should embrace feminism afresh; we’re arguing that this is already happening, with younger activists fully involved. And we can prove it. In the face of all this, what have women been doing about it? Nothing apparently, according to the mainstream narrative of feminism over the past few years. Shrugging our shoulders, insisting we’re empowered and painting our nails while Rome burns. Young women particularly have borne the brunt of this criticism, routinely told they’re apathetic or antifeminist. At a recent feminist conference in Australia, 23-year-old organiser Rosa Campbell complained to a reporter: ‘We’re told all the time we have raunchy pornographic sex, binge-drink, pole-dance and are not active feminists. We’ve taken all the choices the seventies feminists won and used them for our own oppression. We’re ungrateful and rude.’ This has been the dominant narrative in the UK too. Feminism ‘has sunk into mindless hedonism’ according to one recent Telegraph article, laced with disapproving overtones about young women’s depravity, and illustrated with the mandatory photo of a group of young women partying in the street. Curiously, young women’s apparent rejection of feminism is presented as proof of their superficiality, while at the same time real feminists are dismissed and ridiculed. The truth is rather diferent. We’ve witnessed this during our own experience of feminist activism over the past ten years, Kristin as a sociology lecturer and active member of various feminist groups, and myself as founder and editor of The F Word (www. thefword.org.uk) a volunteer-run, UK-based feminist website. Throughout our twenties we witnessed our peers increasingly organise new events, groups, actions, protests, festivals and conferences. Sometimes these were reinventions of ‘second wave’ feminist forms, such as Reclaim the Night marches or national conferences. Sometimes they took new forms, such as feminist blogs, websites, Twitter campaigns, Ladyfest festivals or ‘unconferences’. Today the growth shows no signs of stopping, with new feminist groups being formed all over the country and new members flocking to join long-established groups such as the Fawcett Society. As we investigated the extent to which women today support feminism, we were further encouraged. When asked about key feminist principles, the vast majority of women and men will support them. But even the numbers of those who identify as feminists are heartening too. Various surveys tend to show that between 25-30 per cent of women will call themselves feminists. While this is frequently reported as a failure of feminism (‘only 25 per cent of women’), we feel this is actually positive. The act of labelling oneself with a political identity is something that people are normally rather reluctant to do. Furthermore, taking on the identity of ‘feminist’ (or similar identities such as ‘womanist’) suggests some sort of 34 red pepper jun | jul 2010
page 35
commitment to activism, even at a very basic level. Wouldn’t any activist movement want a quarter of their community signed up to it? Finally, we undertook our own survey, of almost 1,300 UK feminists who are involved with these new groups, organisations and events. The results supported what we had already observed: three quarters of those who responded were under 35; about 62 per cent were in their twenties or under. We had responses from more than 50 diferent groups, from national issue-specific campaigns, local groups and web-based groups as well as individuals. This doesn’t mean that older women are not involved in these groups too. But it is clear that we can put to bed the myth that young feminists aren’t involved in feminism. Reclaiming feminism from what – and why? So why, you might ask, should feminism need to be reclaimed in the first place? Reclaimed from what? The answer is, partly, from the kind of simplistic, negative discussions around feminism that we’ve seen over the past few years. In the UK, the mainstream media has been slow to recognise contemporary feminist activism, with many protests, events, groups and activities routinely going unreported. It’s only recently, perhaps due in part to several feminist books published this year (including Kat Banyard’s The Equality Illusion and Natasha Walter’s Living Dolls), as well as the tireless eforts of activists, that some quarters of the media have finally picked up on feminism as newsworthy. Even the Telegraph somewhat grudgingly accepted that feminism is showing ‘signs of life’ (while still managing to use the words ‘dead’ and ‘corpse’ to describe it). We can look at feminism’s representation in the mainstream media to shed light on how attempts have been made to appropriate or co-opt it into something less threatening to the status quo. Women’s magazines, for example, tend to present feminism as generally a good thing, but only if ‘new’ feminists with their ‘high-heels and lashings of mascara’ can be positioned against the supposedly serious, scary, older ones, pandering to those who think that what a woman looks like matters more than what she does. Feminism is re-branded as flufy and unthreatening, more about claiming an ‘empowering’ (some would say meaningless) identity than collective action or concrete changes. Is it any wonder that many people’s view of contemporary feminism is negative? While the message that feminists come in diferent shapes and sizes (so to speak) is a good one, it shouldn’t necessarily red pepper jun | jul 2010 35

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Women’s oppression remains a major feature of British society, even if it sometimes looks rather different than it did during that last big wave of feminism in the 1970s. But the good news,arguesCatherine redfern,isthatfeminismisaliveandkickingtoo

Feminism: now for the good news Y

ou’d be forgiven for thinking that feminism today is in a terrible state. We all know the score by now, surely: rape conviction rates are at record lows; girls’ and boys’ career choices are still split along gender lines; women are being paid less than men; there’s concern about the ‘sexualisation’ of girls; politicians are threatening to roll back the clock on abortion rights; climate change is threatening women – the poorest of the poor – worldwide. And that’s just picking a few things of the top of my head.

Beyond the doom and gloom In my new book with Kristin Aune, Reclaiming the F Word, we’re presenting the good news: that feminism is being reclaimed in ever greater numbers. We’re not just arguing that more of us should embrace feminism afresh; we’re arguing that this is already happening, with younger activists fully involved. And we can prove it.

In the face of all this, what have women been doing about it? Nothing apparently, according to the mainstream narrative of feminism over the past few years. Shrugging our shoulders, insisting we’re empowered and painting our nails while Rome burns.

Young women particularly have borne the brunt of this criticism, routinely told they’re apathetic or antifeminist. At a recent feminist conference in Australia, 23-year-old organiser Rosa Campbell complained to a reporter: ‘We’re told all the time we have raunchy pornographic sex, binge-drink, pole-dance and are not active feminists. We’ve taken all the choices the seventies feminists won and used them for our own oppression. We’re ungrateful and rude.’

This has been the dominant narrative in the UK too. Feminism ‘has sunk into mindless hedonism’ according to one recent Telegraph article, laced with disapproving overtones about young women’s depravity, and illustrated with the mandatory photo of a group of young women partying in the street. Curiously, young women’s apparent rejection of feminism is presented as proof of their superficiality, while at the same time real feminists are dismissed and ridiculed.

The truth is rather diferent.

We’ve witnessed this during our own experience of feminist activism over the past ten years, Kristin as a sociology lecturer and active member of various feminist groups, and myself as founder and editor of The F Word (www. thefword.org.uk) a volunteer-run, UK-based feminist website. Throughout our twenties we witnessed our peers increasingly organise new events, groups, actions, protests, festivals and conferences. Sometimes these were reinventions of ‘second wave’ feminist forms, such as Reclaim the Night marches or national conferences. Sometimes they took new forms, such as feminist blogs, websites, Twitter campaigns, Ladyfest festivals or ‘unconferences’. Today the growth shows no signs of stopping, with new feminist groups being formed all over the country and new members flocking to join long-established groups such as the Fawcett Society.

As we investigated the extent to which women today support feminism, we were further encouraged. When asked about key feminist principles, the vast majority of women and men will support them. But even the numbers of those who identify as feminists are heartening too. Various surveys tend to show that between 25-30 per cent of women will call themselves feminists. While this is frequently reported as a failure of feminism (‘only 25 per cent of women’), we feel this is actually positive. The act of labelling oneself with a political identity is something that people are normally rather reluctant to do. Furthermore, taking on the identity of ‘feminist’ (or similar identities such as ‘womanist’) suggests some sort of

34 red pepper jun | jul 2010

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