The bitchiness has to stop, we are inhaling it like it is a carbon emission blowing out of the exhaust pipe of the cross town bus we are stuck behind.
Snark is the idiots version of wit and we are being polluted by it.
There are things we can do. Things that we can do every day, things that are free. We can be one inch nicer to each other, an inch more polite, we can be decent.” – Will McAvoy in Newsroom
Clementine Ford is an intelligent, articulate and passionate journalist and I am terrified of her.
Ford argues her position on feminism with ferocity.
That in itself is not a bad thing. The problem begins when her passion does more to silence debate than enhance it.
The problem is even greater when her tools of argument include snarkiness and ridicule.
A couple of days ago, journalist Wendy Squires published a piece which argued men needed to be added to the feminist equation in order to create change.
But this isn’t about Eddie, this is about good men in general – men who do not want to be considered part of the patriarchy. Good men who read the same domestic violence stats – showing one in four Australian women will be abused by a male known to them in their lifetimes – and who want to do something about it. Good men who do not talk about their sexual conquests with their mates, reducing women to mere sperm receptacles. Men who believe in equal rights, equal pay, equal representation and who respect and value the effort that goes in to raising children.
It is to good men such as these I would like to hand on the baton of feminism because I, like so many women I know, am fatigued. I just don’t know if I have the energy to run another lap, to espouse the same messages and urge on change yet again.
I feel we women have shouldered the heavy load for too long, because the reality is, if we really want change, it is men who are going to have to activate it. The next, and much-needed, wave of feminism has to be led by men if it is to succeed.
Think about it: If we want equal pay, it is up to the men who are running the business in Australia to insist on it. If we want more board positions, it is men who are going to have to elect us. If we want generational change, it is men who are going to have to instil respect for women in their sons. And if we want to stop domestic violence, it is men who are going to have to unclench their fists and stop hitting women.
Now I’m not going to argue lauding Footy Chief, Television Broadcaster, Eddie McGuire as a feminist, and including the immortal line “I love men” did anything to add to the conversation (and it really gave Ford a free ticket to ride the sarcasm train).
However, to dumb old me it didn’t suggest handing men the power to run our lives because last time I looked THEY ALREADY HAD THE POWER.
To me it echoed what I passionately believe, the next wave of feminism has to have inclusion at its heart because WE ARE STALLED PEOPLE.
Elizabeth Broderick, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner appears to recognise this with her Male Champions of Change project.
In April 2010, Commissioner Broderick was instrumental in bringing together some of Australia’s most influential and diverse male CEOs and Chairpersons to form the Male Champions of Change group. The group aims to use their individual and collective influence and commitment to ensure the issue of women’s representation in leadership is elevated on the national business agenda.
Ford disagrees with Squires entirely.
But most of all, I’m tired of this being the world we live in and yet still being beaten over the head with the boring “we love men” drum that feminists are forced to wield as a glorified speaking stick in order to negotiate being allowed to talk at all – as if the only way we can hope to be listened to is if we are careful to remind men that it’s not really about them so therefore they don’t really need to change or challenge anything about their own behaviour. And I wonder when it was we all agreed to sign this contract of capitulation, this agreement that our activism would be nurturing and gentle instead of rageful and uncompromising. My feminism isn’t governed by how much I love men but by how much I love women. And it is because I love women that I want them to be free.
Read the whole article here.
On twitter Ford engaged her following by creating an I am tired hashtag.
However, I am tired is not a hashtag, it’s a way of life for ALL the women I know.
It is insulting that the women in positions of power (and access to mainstream publications is power) take that as a chance to belittle and degrade each other rather than focus on the million and one issues feminism hasn’t managed to fix just yet.
While the above stories are not the best example of this nastiness, they are what has finally pushed me over the edge. #Iamtired – too tired to go wading through the twitter feeds of all sides of the debate to find the examples which frequently inhibit me from joining the conversation or see me slamming shut the laptop in despair.
My generation, the Gen Xers embraced the concept of “having it all” and believed “equality” was a given. Then we went out and lived it and crashed and burned.
We now have a generation of experience that can be tapped into but I’m not sure anyone is listening.
It’s not about giving up the fight for equality, it is about being strategic about it.
It involves the contribution of all, mothers raising a new generation of feminists (both male and female), blokes who want to contribute, older people who have a lifetime of methods of dealing with discrimination and setbacks, younger people with enthusiasm and new ideas.
It is clear if you spend anytime on social media there seems to be a line dividing feminists (and I’m not even going to go into the whole “who qualifies as a feminist” distraction they like to engage in), with two different schools of thought on what moving forward should look like. Some appear to want to negotiate and engage, others advocate a more adversarial, take-no-bullshit stance.
That’s fine, you don’t have to agree on the approach, both have their strengths and flaws, but for chrissake stop with the bitchy snark.
While you two teams face off and devote so much time and energy to fighting each other YOU’VE TAKEN YOUR EYE OFF THE BALL. Divided you diminish your power but actively undermining each other you destroy any hope of moving forward at all.
Meanwhile, out here in regional towns and outskirt suburbs women continue to try to eke out an existence, often with casual and part-time jobs, our predominately male employers deciding when or if we can work. We attempt to raise decent children while juggling the daily demands of life. We take on volunteer roles that keep our society running (and save it a shitload of money). We multitask until our bodies physically fall apart or our minds require medication.
We live our life of first world problems the best way we know how, sometimes we do it with a good man beside us, sometimes we do it on our own, sometimes we do it with a good man we couldn’t keep living with but who still figures on the sidelines, but we do it.
We need talented women like Ford to do what we cannot, speak up loud about the problems of inequality that still exist. However, we also need Ford to look outside her sphere of experience and acknowledge the differences which contribute to individual views of the world, to be willing to debate and discuss concepts without judgement. Clearly the solution to this mess has not been discovered yet and I don’t believe the answer will be found in manufactured outrage on twitter.
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