Those who take the view that anything a woman says is feminist, contend that those who believe that a feminist is as a feminist does, are "divisive." They claim that by not allowing every woman to fit under the feminist umbrella, they are damaging the feminist cause.
I think that if someone who advocates an agenda similar to the Vatican is called a feminist, we might as well toss the word - and the concept - in the bin.
Words and concepts can only mean something because they don't mean other things. If a capitalist gets to call herself a communist because she wants to do so - say, because doing so will ensure more people will listen to and support her anti-communist agenda - the integrity and clarity of public conversation suffers.
I've written about Cathy Sherry a fair bit. Most of it was published in the pre-internet era. One piece is on my site.
I also cover her in my book, What, No Baby? The excerpts about Cathy Sherry are here.
From the Preface: (p. xxv)
"[This book won't be]...a harangue against women. There’ll be no blaming of women for their failure to reproduce, or to reproduce enough, or to reproduce on time. There will be no telling younger women to partner early and to forget about their careers or risk missing out on children altogether. No attempts to stampede older childless women into grabbing a partner to procreate with (any partner — QUICK!) before it’s too late. I will not be criticising women for not realising what they are up against, nor will I imply that with just a bit of foresight and careful planning, any girl with a Palm Pilot can beat the odds.
There are, unfortunately, a number of people involved in the debate about childlessness who do this. And not only is it truly annoying, it’s also damaging to both women’s self-esteem and their chances of achieving the social change needed to have the children they want. One such commentator is wealthy businessman cum leader of the failed Australian Republican Movement cum Liberal Member of Parliament Malcolm Turnbull. In a recent newspaper piece, Turnbull urged women to close their eyes, think of England — oops! I mean the birth-rate — and get down to marrying at a younger age so they could produce more babies for ‘the nation’. What was most ridiculous about Turnbull’s intervention was not his fretting about the birth-rate, but his presumption that women’s failure to breed was caused by their bad attitude, rather than competing demands. Then there’s columnist Cathy Sherry, a young partnered mother and part-time legal academic who never tires of advising single and childless women to take a leaf out of her book when it comes to marriage, work and motherhood. In one article she chastised women who did not act as quickly as she did on the knowledge that fertility declines with age.
I also have no intention of blaming ‘feminism’ for the difficulties facing the circumstantially childless, despite the unprecedented popularity of this strategy as of late. Take-a-leaf-out-of-my-book Sherry, for instance, argues strongly that the cause of Australia’s declining birth-rate is that feminists never told her while she was at school that she should ‘aspire to have a part-time job and raise children’. Virginia Haussegger agrees. In a 2003 opinion piece in the Age that got nearly as much attention as President Bush’s declaration of war on Iraq, the childless Australian TV news presenter blamed what she describes as purple-clad you-can-have-it-all feminism for her unwanted childlessness.
It isn’t feminism, but the unrelentingly sexist world that the women’s movement tried, but in some cases failed, to change that is the source of the obstacles women are encountering on their way to motherhood. Biological clocks were never the professed nor acknowledged expertise of feminism, though over the years there have been a number of feminists who’ve intimated, or said outright, that career was more important than motherhood. Others in the sisterhood, however, have disputed this, and it’s fair to say that robust debate on this matter has been taking place ever since the late 1960s and 1970s. Whose fault is it that Haussegger was — quite obviously — totally unaware of this debate? More importantly, who — or what — is really to blame for the fact that Haussegger didn’t wind up with a career as well as a child? Feminists? Or the world that feminism failed to change? There are only around 5% of Fortune 500 companies run by women, and only one in every four of Australia’s elected representatives is a woman. Am I the only person who has noticed that women, feminist or otherwise, are not running the world?"
In The Fertility Crunch chapter (p. 242)
"Columnist Cathy Sherry has made a career out of blaming women for the various difficulties and misfortunes they suffer at home and in the workforce, except when she faces a problem, in which case it is the system that is to blame. But because Sherry had the opportunity to give birth before the chill winds of age-related fertility began blowing her way, she chastises women for the selfishness or ignorance that leads them to delay having kids:
Women are most fertile during their late teens and 20s, and yet more women are delaying childbirth until their mid to late 30s or even 40s … Most women delay childbirth in order to obtain an education, travel or pursue a career. Up to a point this makes perfect sense. Children make all of these things more difficult … But at a certain point, somewhere in our early 30s, the advantages of delay need to be weighed up against the risk of childlessness. At 32 it would be good to have another three years unencumbered to do as we please, but is it good enough to risk not being able to conceive at 35? Many women are not aware that there are risks in waiting this long.125
Even when the women-blamers acknowledge that men also have a role in baby-making, and that delays may have as much to do with male priorities and schedules as with female ones, they nonetheless offer simplistic solutions for solving circumstantial childlessness: solutions that implicitly accept the gendered division of labour snd consequently belittle women’s needs and concerns while letting men off scot-free."
Feminists, anti-feminists or psuedo-feminists? You decide.
//I think that if someone who advocates an agenda similar to the Vatican is called a feminist, we might as well toss the word - and the concept - in the bin.//
ReplyDeleteI half expect someone to write a nice piece on the causal link between global warming and females. But with a feminist spin on it. ie sea levels only began rising after women got the vote. Cath Sherry, if I want your opinion or advice, I will ask for it.
Sam.
I have to say right off that I absolutely loved your book "What, No Baby?" It was powerful and came out just at the right time (for me anyway) and I have recommended and quoted from it to friends many times. Re-reading these passages I now remember who Cathy Sherry is. And I'm a little mad at myself for forgetting... Attitudes and woman-blaming like that still make me mad as hell.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, what has struck me on the whole MTR debate (I've been following on Twitter), is that the arguments are just going round in circles. No one is going to convince anyone because both sides are arguing from a different definition to start with. Both sides are calling the other bullies and fighting over definitions each disagrees with.
I'm pro-choice, I'm not anti-porn, I am worried about some aspects of "raunch culture" vis a vis my little girls, but I also think some of the worry about it is overblown. In short I am more "Leslie Cannold" than "Melinda Tankard Reist". But I have always found Tankard Reist likeable as well and I think she is a good person and sincere in what and how she is fighting. I don't think she is being duplicitous with her religion; I think she is probably a middling-level devout Christian and genuinely feels her religion does not inform her feminist beliefs and her work. And why can't that be true? We atheists know that ethical beliefs, morals, etc don't come from religion. We all know of plenty of religious zealots but the majority of "Christians" I believe don't examine their faith too closely and maintain their own set of ethical beliefs and standards that sometimes agree with and sometimes conflict with their religion's tenets.
I don't see why Tankard Reist needs to be "outed" as a fundamentalist Christian when (a) she is probably not and (b) others with varying views aren't questioned on their religious beliefs. She is not hiding anything I don't think, as she obviously believes her work goes beyond her religion.
To me any pro-life opinion tends to make me shudder, but I still think MTR can call herself a feminist. Her definition is different - in part. She is still a champion of females, even if you (and I) disagree with many of her views. In her mind right to abortion does not equate to choice, it equates to coercion and misery for the women. I totally don't buy that, but it is what she believes and therefore she's arguing on behalf of women, and what she believes is in women's interests and NOT, like the Vatican, arguing from ideology that doesn't give a crap about women's interests. There is a slight difference, I think. Even if I have not articulated it well!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Jackie,
ReplyDeletewhat I think matters in all this is now where you come out on the "who is a feminist" issue, but that you have had the disclosures necessary to form your own views about that. Until recently, Melinda's past - not just her religious views but more importantly her pro-life activist activity and her 12 year employment history with Brian Harradine - had dropped off her biography. Indeed, until it was impossible for her to hold this line, but certainly while she was promoting her book Giving Sorrow Words - a now seminal text for the anti-choice movement in Australia - she claimed she was on neither side of the issue. I think particularly when public figures can't be counted upon to be entirely truthful about what they believe and what they are advocating for, we must demand that they disclose relevant facts about their past so we can decide the weight we wish to give their views, not them, by controlling what we know.
To concerns about how to know what is relevant, I think one clue is by what they wish to omit, particularly when their grounds are that if people knew it, they might not listen. It is not up to a doctor to withhold info from me during informed consent for fear I won't take his advice to undertake a procedure he thinks best for me. In the same way, it is not the prerogative of a public figure to omit something they worry might lead me to discount what they say because they know I need to hear it.
Given the sensitivity of religion as a private matter, I think you can make an argument it shouldn't be among the disclosures necessary though the counter argument - that if you impose your religious views on me it's not private any more - is also persuasive. Certainly it seems indisputable that we need to know if a think-tank producing research showing a law favoured by a sponsor is good, we need that sponsorship disclosed.
In the same way, where a woman that promotes a political agenda that is identical to the Vatican and ACL, she needs to disclose not just that she considers herself a feminist, but her pro-life employment history so that all comers can form their own views about the truthfulness of her assertion that her views are feminist, or whether instead they see her as a less than fully truthful right-wing Christian in feminist clothes.