Until this month, the only protests I’d attended were feminist ones (that is, if we don’t count Pride, which is less protest, more party). In the past I’ve Reclaimed the Night and been one of a (slightly hyperbolas) Million Women to march London’s streets against male violence. The format of both these events bothered me: despite the fact that 1 in 4 instances of domestic violence are committed by women, neither of them allow men on the march only letting them attend the rally that follows. Though this decision seems wrong-headed on a number of counts, right now I want to focus on the explanation given by its defenders. The claim usually runs like this: women for so long have lived in and remain used to a world in which male dominance prevails. Though it is true that men are the victims of female violence, male violence against women is more pervasive in society, and once we start distinguishing kinds of violence (sexual violence, for example) we see that women are exponentially more likely to be the victims. Finally, it is argued, that the presence of men at a march (as one of my fellow feminists put it) ‘changes the vibe’.
This strikes me as a curiously incoherent phrase. How it is that a pro-feminist man might corrupt the atmosphere? And how do we make these claims without signing up to exactly the kind of essentialism that most modern feminists reject out-right. We’ve all met misogynist women, straining for the chance to show the lads she can talk do demeaning banter like the best of them. It is beyond question that if modern feminism is going to win its remaining battles (of which there are plenty) men must be embraced by the movement on equal terms.
With all this said, this November I have been to two of the protests against the cuts to Higher Education, one in London on the 10th and the another yesterday, in Cambridge. These two experiences brought into sharp relief the question of whether there really are some fundamental distinctions between the ways men and women express their discontent.
In London it was the placards. The casual misogyny was rife: David Cameron was warned that if he fucked the country, SamCam was in for the same and Nick Clegg’s mother can apparently ‘bend over and take it’ just like he will learn to. As a women, this was a pretty alienating experience: here I was marching shoulder to shoulder with people for whom I was meant to feel solidarity, but could really summon little but disgust. The language they chose to criticise the Coalition evoked the very real practices of London’s gangs where the rape of a female family member has become a tool retribution amongst mini-mafiosos. This problem is so internationally pervasive that the UN have recognised rape as a weapon of war. I don’t want people paying more for Higher Education, but neither do I accept that there is ever a case for constructing political protest on these terms.
Yesterday afternoon in Cambridge I was delighted by the lack of this. The atmosphere throughout was determined yet positive and the banners and signs amusing rather than offensive. After a march through town we reached the lawn of the Senate House where some members of Cambridge Defend Education addressed the gathering crowd. At first, there was nothing to be concerned about – indeed there was a near perfect gender balance of those squeezed onto the pylon sharing two megaphones between them. Then a boy next to me turned to a group of us and asked: ‘What do you bet the girl speaking has never had sex? You can always tell, the girls who speak at protests are the ones who’ve never fucked anyone’.
My ensuing rant fell on deaf ears. He had an audience, they thought he was funny, eliciting my anger was only further capital. At that moment I felt I understood something of what the organisers of these feminist marches were getting at. Being undermined for the body you inhabit is horrible; and there does seem to be a sense that protesting is a male preserve: men are natural speakers. In their deep bellows we hear the echo of Pericles, a rhetorical master no woman could ever hope to conjure. Is it any surprise that protests, then, still speak in a male language, still threaten other men with age-old punishments of stripping them of their property and their wives (where the boundary between the two is imperceptible).
Another way that women’s protest is undermined is evidenced by today’s Mail. Worse than alienating women from protest, the Mail seek to eradicate them altogether from history, presenting young women only now as taking to the fore in a radical way. These dunderheads need a history lesson in ROSA LUXEMBURG.
It is of course possible that the entire story I am suggesting is a giant misattribution: I could just be noticing the empirical fact that misogyny prevails in all aspects of society and being a True Blue Tory or a Socialist Worker has little bearing on whether or not you’re its vehicle. But it seems to me that these women organising their femlae-only marches are on to something. Maybe women do need the chance to work out what their paradigm of protest looks like, and if this is the case, I hope that my male friends who feel frustrated by this might see that their own understanding and acceptance of this absence is, in fact, the epitome of feminist action.
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You’ll never destroy the binary by adhering to its tenants. If you’re dividing permitted attendance along the crude lines set down by society, you’re part of the problem. It is not somehow “un-feminist” to point this out.
*tenets
Hi James,
thanks for even bothering to read my ramble, let alone comment. Sorry it has taken me so long to respond.
I think it’s slightly unfair to suggest so quickly that I’m ‘part of the problem’; I’m inclined (perhaps quite arrogantly) to feel that anyone trying to think hard about this stuff doesn’t really deserve that sort of comment. It is more likely that I am just missing some of the implications of my statements, which is exactly the sort of thing I’d like people to highlight for me.
It seems you think I’m calling people who reject ‘women only’ marches ‘un-feminist’, but I would dispute that. (Apart from anything, I clearly refer to them as feminists!) I’m just trying to understand why the women in charge do resort to imposing limitations based on this admittedly narrow and unsatisfactory gender binary when planning their marches. As I said at the top of my post, I have always been uncomfortable with this. Nonetheless, the practical experience of recent protests gave me an insight into why the organisers might feel cautious.
If your main problem is that the organisers are adding to the problem when they don’t let ‘men’ march because they further impose restrictive gender binaries on society, then I do take your point. And please don’t get me wrong, I would like my male friends to be there with me when I go on these marches – as I said in the post, the idea that issues such as domestic violence can be addressed without men is absurd.
The problem for both of us then becomes the reality that there are dominant modes of socialisation that many young men are exposed to- and that the result of this is often a form of protest that alienates women. I have experienced this, in a somewhat diluted form, from even my most feminist of male friends – and although it’s immediately obvious to them when pointed out, it doesn’t change the frustration I feel when made to feel inferior for being someone that identifies as a woman.
I suppose I was just trying to point out that rather than just see the decision not to let men march as a piece of reactionary ignorance, it might be better understood as a kind of political trade off. One might think that it’s a trade-off whose negatives don’t outweigh its benefits, but the point is there is another side to the argument. Lots of people who identify and have been socialised as men use modes of protest that are offensive to the many who identify as women — this is a reality that these organisers are trying to address. Even if their way of addressing it is flawed, I don’t think the problem itself should be ignored.
If your point is the slightly more extreme one, that there is simply never any use in using the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ then I’m afraid we just have a clash of intuitions. We live in a world so wedded to these categories that I think the best we can do is to deconstruct the stereotypes that exist around them, and ensure that they encompass a plurality of ways of being, rather than work on abandoning them altogether.
P.