{"id":2325,"date":"2015-03-23T08:30:54","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T08:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=2325"},"modified":"2015-03-22T13:04:31","modified_gmt":"2015-03-22T13:04:31","slug":"debating-dames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=2325","title":{"rendered":"Debating dames"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Left<\/a>

Left to right: Laura Bates, Jane Fae and Bea Campbell\/damesnet<\/p><\/div>\n

What\u2019s not to like? A chance to hear Bonnie Greer <\/a>and Beatrix Campbell<\/a>, among others, in a debate chaired by the Everyday Sexism project founder Laura Bates<\/a>, on \u2018What’s \u00a0All the Fuss about Feminism?\u2019 Except I had left it too late and it was all sold out. I put myself on the waiting list and forgot about it. On the day of the event, an email landed mid-afternoon to tell me there was now a ticket available \u2013 it was the equivalent of being told \u2018You shall go to the ball\u2019 (though perhaps not a good analogy in the context.)<\/p>\n

By my totally unscientific guestimate of the audience, I\u2019d say it was predominantly made up of young women, with a handful of older women and brave blokes, and even fewer middle-aged women (Why? Were they burdened with responsibilities? Had they fallen through the cracks between third-wave and fourth-wave feminism?) and, as Bonnie Greer ruefully noted, hardly any people from the black and ethnic minorities.<\/p>\n

The debate aimed to answer questions such as: Why do some women hate feminism? What is the ‘fourth wave’ <\/a>of feminism? Who decides what it means to be a feminist? Can\u00a0men be feminists? As each of the panellists set out their stall, it was clear that they represented a wide variety of approaches: Marxist feminist Bea Campbell (BC), transgender feminist writer Jane Fae<\/a> (JF), playwright and cultural critic Bonnie Greer (BG), and Yas Necati<\/a> (YN), a teenage activist who took up cudgels for feminism while still at school. It was far from being the echo chamber predicted by some of the online chatter beforehand.<\/p>\n

Bea Campbell identified Thatcherism as the tide that swept away the progress of feminism by placing the market ahead of everything else. For Jane Rae, it was all about the need to get feminist values embedded in society before we see the rollback in living conditions that climate change will bring. Bonnie Greer agreed that values are crucial to the debate, but suggested that \u2018feminism\u2019 has become a brand, and maybe a new term is needed. Having gamely ploughed through the impenetrable language of 70s feminism, Yas Necati found many differences between then and now, but some amazing similarities.<\/p>\n

Ninety minutes is no time at all in which to debate such huge topics and hope to come up with definitive answers , but along the way (if I may bring in yet another ill-advised fairy tale analogy), what pearls issued from their mouths! I\u2019ve noted below some of the discussion that chimed with me, but go to http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/live\/2015\/mar\/13\/fuss-about-feminism-sexism-live-blog<\/a> for a fuller account of the debate.<\/p>\n

BG claimed that we need to be far more flexible in what constitutes feminism \u2013 patriarchy seeks to divide and rule by putting us in little boxes \u2013 and the idea was extended in discussion to gender itself: surely it\u2019s time to allow concepts of gender to be far more fluid and less restrictive. BG also warned against focusing on inequality elsewhere in the world while ignoring the inequality under our noses in this country.<\/p>\n

JF saw the internet as a panopticon: \u2018everyone sees everything you do and you begin to police yourself.\u2019 Needless to say porn \u2013 the male-generated kind \u2013 was seen as causing a crisis for both men and women. Much of YN\u2019s activism has been targeted at countering this through better sex education, particularly on issues of consent.<\/p>\n

\u2018For men, supporting feminism is the condition of their release,\u2019 declared BC, and there was much discussion of the pressures on boys (YN had seen boys at her school who were interested in feminism having that interest bullied out of them) and the toxic nature of masculinity, certainly as defined by the media.<\/p>\n

There were many questions from the floor: on how to get men on board with the project, how to vote in the general election (the panel wisely did not tell us where to put our crosses), on how we can create the conditions to be able to live out these aspirations in the domestic sphere; and a significant challenge to everyone from an 84-year-old woman who has spent the last 17 years battling a bureaucracy convinced that a group of female pensioners would not be able to run their own housing co-operative: what are you going to go out and do about this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She took up the cudgels for feminism while still at school<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,55],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2325"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2335,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325\/revisions\/2335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}