Radical Feminism
You’ve read the papers, you’ve seen the news; Feminism is back! From getting famous women prime position on bank notes, organising for women asylum seekers, picketing Yarl’s Wood, educating against female genital mutilation, running theatre groups for women leaving prison, organising national feminist conferences like at Feminism in London, starting new Reclaim the Night marches, or tearing up a storm online in the booming petition against page 3 of ‘The Sun’, feminist opinion and feminist activism is visible and vibrant throughout the country once again.
The issues addressed by activists today are very similar to those that have occupied feminists for centuries, and the methods, aims and motivations of younger feminists bear great similarity to those of women active in the 1970s when feminism was last at its height. This was a time known as the Second Wave of feminism, lasting across the West from the late 1960s into the late 1980s or thereabouts.
During that time activists devised a set of Seven Demands, a sort of (Wo)manifesto for the British Women’s Liberation Movement. From 1971 to 1978 they worked on this set of demands, agreeing each one at national conferences that were held in different parts of the country every year. So, what were these famous demands? Have a look, and see how many you think we’ve achieved:
- Equal pay now
- Equal education and job opportunities
- Free contraception and abortion on demand
- Free, quality, local 24hr nurseries
- Financial and legal independence, regardless of marital status
- An end to all discrimination against lesbians and for a woman’s right to define her own sexuality
- An end to all forms of male violence against women, and all laws, assumptions and practices which perpetuate men’s dominance and men’s aggression towards women
Although great strides have been made, these demands remain aspirational targets; they remain yet to be won. This is a challenge for modern feminism. Activists today face all too familiar struggles, but they face them in a world vastly changed from what is was for women in the 1970s.
On paper, we do have a lot of protections and things are better than they were in many ways. The women who paved the way for our movement today couldn’t even take out a a loan without their husband or father’s signature and policies and laws on crimes such as forced marriage, rape or domestic abuse were nowhere near as comprehensive as they are now. Activists today also enjoy the benefits of internet campaigning tools, they don’t have to slave for hours over a manual printing press or hand deliver leaflets. Young women today can reach thousands of politically engaged women and men with just the touch of a button.
So, theoretically, things should be a lot easier for activists now, yet this new climate brings new challenges. As feminism has been on the rise in the UK since the early 2000s, so has the backlash against it grown. In the 1970s men’s groups used to support feminism, run crèches for women’s meetings and make sandwiches for lunches as conferences. Nowadays, sadly, anti-feminist men’s groups are on the rise and organise large-scale bullying and intimidation of women activists, which is made possible in our online culture in which so many of us spend a lot of our time. Young women are often attacked in social media for having feminist opinions, indeed they are often attacked for having opinions at all.
Feminist activists today also have to spend a lot of time justifying themselves, they are accused of not caring about other issues; as if we can’t care about more than one thing at a time. Recently ‘The Sun’ played around like pre-pubescent boys, temporarily removing their outdated page 3 pin-up, only to replace the feature again like it was some sort of triumph for free speech. What it actually showed was that large sections of the male population really do want to present women as nothing more than objects to be leered and jeered at and that they get very defensive when anyone suggests otherwise. Meanwhile, what women activists faced was a tirade of abuse berating them for even bothering about page 3 in the first place and suggesting they focus on real issues like the plight of women in foreign countries…..as presumably we have it so good here.
Women here do not have it all, whatever that is. Here in this country two women every week are murdered by a violent male partner, there are around 80,000 rapes every year and over 400,000 sexual assaults. Government cuts have rolled back the amount of support available, slashing refuge places and helplines for women and men affected by violence and abuse. Women’s Aid research finds that over 200 women and children every day cannot find room in refuges due to cutbacks. We are nowhere near ending male violence against women. Nowhere near decent childcare provision either, with childcare in this country being some of the most expensive in Europe, a situation not helped by the fact that women are still paid less than men for doing the same jobs.
What is happening though is that a new generation of women are standing up and saying that forty years of struggle for basic rights has to win sometime and that now could be our time. Feminism is a global, political movement for the liberation of women and society, based on equality for all people. It is one of the oldest and strongest social justice movements the world has ever known. It has answers to pressing social problems we are all wrestling with today, and is creating confident and dynamic activists who may just solve them. We need women’s voices now more than ever, so, what are you waiting for?