This is an old post from July 2021, back when this was a Tiny Letter newsletter. I was thinking of writing something about the ‘obsessed with genitals’ line when I saw the Greens’ Rachel Millward take it in response to Piers Morgan asking the (not very difficult) question “can a man have a penis?”. Then I thought, can I be arsed to explain what’s wrong with it again? (Though there’s a slightly different, homophobic edge when the ‘obsessed with penises’ charge is aimed at straight men — something that those doing it no doubt excuse as ‘that’s the kind of thing that would bother them because they’re the homophobes here’). Anyhow, I thought I’d publish this again because this argument still isn’t going anywhere and feeds into a culture that shames and silences those who most need to be heard (which probably doesn’t include Piers Morgan, to be fair, but it’s about the overall message …).
Earlier today, I witnessed the following twitter exchange between a well-known liberal feminist and a less well-known (proper) feminist:
[LWKPF] “I have a 15 year old daughter. If she was in a woman’s changing room and someone with a penis came in and took all their clothes off near her, how do you think she would feel and what would you advise her to do?”
[WKLF] “How am I supposed to know how she would feel? I haven’t met your daughter and I’m not her parent. But I’d advise her not to stare ay other people’s genitals without their permission, because it’s rude.”
Do not worry. The rest of this is not all about penises. Because that is not the issue. The issue – highlighted in another of well-known feminist’s tweets today, in which she told feminists who think biological sex is politically salient “your feminism is bad and you should feel bad” – is making other women feel ashamed of their feelings, their fears, their boundaries, their entire inner lives.
This is not about trans people. It is not about questioning the authenticity of someone’s self-perception. It is not about gender identity, or genitalia, or “being one’s true self”. It is about something far bigger than that. It is about the absolute patriarchal basics: power, shame, blame and control. It is about rape culture, domestic abuse, coercive control. It’s about all the things certain feminists claim to want to stop, then go on to reinforce.
When you recommend shaming a young woman for any potential discomfort – when you insinuate that it is somehow strange, rude, obsessive not to want to be in close proximity to the naked male bodies of strangers – you are doing what abusive men have always done to women and girls. Victims of sexual and domestic abuse endure years of shame not least because they are told that their very discomfort suggests something dark and manipulative about them. Stop dwelling on it. Maybe the reason you think about it so much is because you wanted it really. You love the drama, and the pain. You love the idea of yourself as a victim. What is a feminism that endorses this message all over again?
I think of it as a kind of abuser feminism, a feminism that replicates the tactics of those who hurt women the most. It’s a feminism that focuses on making women feel bad about feeling bad, as though this might lead to the ultimate cure for female suffering: that women just stop having feelings at all. If only women felt nothing – or, failing that, if only they could resolve never to acknowledge or express their own pain – then we might see an end to all the struggles. Come on, girls. Just give in.
Don’t cry; your tears are manipulative, deceptive, the weaponisation toxic femininity against people more vulnerable than you. Don’t speak; don’t be a Karen complaining to the manager, exploiting your experience of trauma to prop up carceral norms. Don’t acknowledge distress at the things that are done to and taken from your body; it’s all just penetration, just gestation, just meat, just nothing at all. Don’t respond to your own fears, your own panic, your own shame, in the face of any threat. This fear, this panic, this shame, make you a bad person. Perhaps you will never stop feeling. The least you can do is hide it, then no one knows how bad you are.
I grew up feeling like this, convinced I was a terrible person because of things that were done to me, because somehow, when I talked about them, I talked about them the wrong way, made it worse. Feminism was a refuge from this, until it wasn’t. I am furious at the cruelty of this current strand, with women – many of whom, I am guessing, did not grow up with the same shame – encouraging other women and girls to believe they are awful people. It taps into everything an abuser teaches you. It tells you, “no, he was right. How could you ever have thought there was an alternative view?”
The shonky raunch feminism of the nineties and early noughties told young women they could own their own objectification. We were taught that the way out of the bind we found ourselves in was to tell ourselves we’d chosen it all along. What we have now is worse. We are told to own our own abuse, become our own abuser. If someone exposes themselves to us, we must lecture ourselves on how perverted we are to have noticed. If someone rapes us, we must remind ourselves never to report (carceral feminism!) and never to tell (weaponisation of trauma!). Whatever happens to us, we are always the privileged bitch who might, potentially, exploit it; in that sense, every assault is another trump card. Every time our stomach tightens or our breath shortens, every time a freeze or flight response sets in, we have yet more physical evidence of how awful we are. For fuck’s sake, Karen. Who’d want to rape you? Or, if you are raped, well, so what? They’re going to do it anyway. Stop clutching those pearls.
This is a dismantling of the most basic principles of feminism: that women matter. That we have a right not to feel pain, and a right to express it when we do. That our voices and feelings are not shameful, dangerous, violent, cruel. That we do not, secretly, want all the things that are done to us to keep being done because deep down, trauma is just something us soulless bitches love to exploit.
I see women absorbing these lessons, believing there might be virtue, some ill-defined liberation, in following these heartless rules, never putting themselves first, but never putting other women first, either. Vying to be the best at not feeling anything, condemning those who foolishly slip up. It is so cruel, and so rooted in active dislike for women as people. It is also rooted in class privilege. The women who are charged with doing the most getting over themselves – the most denial of feelings – are not privately educated career feminists. They’re women in refuges, prisons, surrogacy hostels, brothels. Women who, presumably, aren’t always classy enough to know not to be “rude”. Thank god their betters are on hand to advise them.
As feminists, loving women is the most radical thing we can do. Telling them they are bad people is much easier. Feminism would indeed be a much easier project if women’s feelings didn’t matter. That’s not really feminism, though. Whatever this is, it really has to stop.
You have articulated so we'll what I've been trying to explain to some but never managed to get anywhere. Thank you 😊
Pretty crazy that we lived through an era where some people thought it was more rude to stare at unexpected genitalia than to expose genitalia unexpectedly