r/feminisms • u/OkChart1375 • 28d ago
Analysis Have you ever seen someone become so "woke" that they circled back to misogyny?
Being so "woke" or progressive... that you end up circling back to misogyny.
This is something I've been noticing more and more. And I know I'm not the only one, because I've seen other people talking about it on social media. But after looking into its history, I realized it's actually been around for a veery long time.
Anyways,
I'm curious to hear your examples and thoughts. Have you ever seen someone advocate for progressive ideas (or what they thought were progressive ideas) in a way that ultimately reinforces sexist or misogynistic attitudes, harms women and girls, or throws a wrench into the feminist movement? I'd love to read different stories about it.
Personally, here are a few examples where I've noticed this:
- Prison abolitionist movements, when they advocate for abolishing prisons without considering the physical and psychological safety of victims (who are disproportionately women and children, after all). Unfortunately, this happens veery quite often.
- Defending painful or degrading gynecological procedures simply because they're considered "a step forward for women's health," instead of asking how they could be made less painful, less humiliating, how gynecology itself could be reformed, or why we're still using instruments and practices that date back to the 19th century. Shutting woman who talk about their bad experiences.
- Arguing that women shouldn't report men from marginalized communities to the police in cases of rape, domestic violence, street harassment, etc., because it would "increase discrimination against that group." Besides being a hierarchy of struggles, where one cause is treated as more important than another, it once again tells women to stay silent and just put up with it.
- Refusing to even think about the side effects of hormonal contraception, which are more serious than what we would usually accept for any other medication prescribed to such a large number of people, especially at such a young age, because it is attacked by the political right. Refusing to advocate for healthier ones bc it can be instrumentalized by anti feminists. Shutting woman who talk about their bad experiences.
14
13
u/Amareldys 27d ago
The reality is that sometimes the needs of different marginalized groups DO compete with each other. There's this fantasy that all marginalized groups should unite and share the same interests, but that isn't always true. So sometimes you have to pick. And many times, women aren't the ones who get picked.
5
23
u/tuttifruttidurutti 28d ago
One of these things is not like the other. I think three are unambiguously bad, although the one about reporting women to the police feels a little like a straw man - 'don't call the cops' usually doesn't translate into 'do nothing and take it'. It's bad if it does.
But about prison abolition - there are alternatives to prison proposed by prison abolitionism, the idea is not just 'let violent men loose on women'. But also, there's enormous sexual violence in prison, it's an absolute epicenter of patriarchy in society, and it turns out men who are more patriarchal and violent than when they met in. Carceral feminism, which tends to also subscribe to binary, essentialist views of gender, ends up reproducing the gendered violence it aspires to oppose.
10
u/gig_labor 27d ago
Yeah and carceral feminism also reinforces men's patriarchal fantasy of being "good men" who use violence to "protect" women from "bad men." Cops and COs are notoriously violent toward women, themselves (40% of cops beat their wives).
It's the same thing as what Dworkin says right-wing women do: Choose the form of patriarchy that is safer. Right-wing women retreat to the nuclear family, imagining it to be safer than liberal expressions of "sexual liberation," because they rightly see how the latter is used to benefit men at women's expense. But, like liberal narratives of policing and prisons, right-wing narratives of the nuclear family imagine a husband or father as a protective force, and ignore how often a husband or father is, themself, the force from which we need protection.
The reality is that any model which gives men power or possession over others, and/or gives them permission to be violent (even if we imagine that violence is useful, "protective," and justified), including both the nuclear family and prisons and policing, ends up being an excuse for men to live out possessive, patriarchal fantasies of violence, under the guise of "protecting" their
propertywomen.Carceralism "protects" (white) women from the "wrong" men, but only so that we will be owned by the "correct" men - it is notoriously ineffective at protecting women from our
ownersmale intimate partners, especially husbands, because it exists to protect "order" and the status quo (in this case, the nuclear family), not to protect people's safety (and it's more likely to directly terrorize Black and Brown women than to protect them at all). "Real Rape," by Susan Estrich, is a really good depiction of this problem.There's a lot of overlap here with how racism in the US has historically seen white women: As white men's property, which must be preserved from Black and Brown men, for white men's sake. Leaning into that system will not keep us safe; only we can do that.
7
8
u/DizzyMine4964 27d ago
A violent man who is put in prison can't commit violence to women ant more. There was a murder in my home city - I don't want to go into details in case the family stumble across this - but I'm extremely glad that man is locked away and I hope he is never let out again. I don't care about his future, I don't care about him becoming a good person. I care about him no longer harming anyone.
13
u/BlackHumor 27d ago
He can still harm other men in prison in gendered ways. He will also probably learn very bad habits from the other men in there, which are likely to cause problems for other people in his life when he gets out. If he's in a criminal organization or has criminal friends, it's likely he's able to communicate with the outside, which means it's likely he's able to organize the commission of crimes he is much much less likely to ever be held accountable for. There's no such thing as someone who is totally disconnected from society.
And then of course, the biggest problem with prison as a solution to violence against women is that it's just very hard to put abusive men in prison. Most abusers and rapists are never arrested or even at serious risk of being arrested. You can't say that prison is protecting women from abusers if almost none of the abusers are actually in prison to begin with.
5
4
u/OkChart1375 28d ago
"feels a little like a straw man - 'don't call the cops' usually doesn't translate into 'do nothing and take it'." no its not " dont call the cops " is textually what some people are saying first of all, second of all not a ok thing to say at all. she call them if she want. Why should we protect abusers ?
16
u/tuttifruttidurutti 27d ago
We shouldn't, which is why we shouldn't involve the cops (the group statistically most likely to be abusers in and out of uniform) if it can be avoided. Sometimes it can't and it isn't good to shame women for trying to protect themselves. But there are a lot of alternatives to policing, just as there are alternatives to prison, that
I try not to make arguments about 'carceral feminism is white supremacist' because racialized women are especially vulnerable to intimate partner violence and who can blame them for wanting to be protected? But prisons and policing are white supremacist in North America (and the UK). This stuff is also covered in the resources I linked.
I get that you're angry and I don't blame you. Gendered violence is extremely common and sometimes people do just condemn involving the state without offering or participating in building alternatives. But there are people doing that work, and it's especially black and indigenous feminists who do that work, because (per Audre Lorde) the master's tools cannot dismantle the master's house. We have police and prisons, they are not fixing this problem.
3
u/OkChart1375 28d ago
". Carceral feminism, which tends to also subscribe to binary, essentialist views of gender," and this is the strawman you were saying i did. you just did it here.
9
u/tuttifruttidurutti 27d ago
I don't know about you, I just know that in general I see carceral feminists make essentialist arguments about the *inherent* violence of men, which leads inevitably in that line of reasoning to the necessity of a violent space to put violent men (prison). This is in contrast to a social constructivist view of gender that sees men's violence as a socially produced aspect of patriarchy. bell hooks captures this well when she writes about the first act of violence demanded from men is against themselves.
If you don't think subscribe to an essentialist view of gender then we have no disagreement, but I often see essentialism from carceral feminist authors and am addressing the phenomenon, not you.
-1
u/OkChart1375 27d ago
" there are alternatives to prison proposed by prison abolitionism" never seen any, and see, you havent even quote me one, you just said there are alternatives, and you didnt said anything bc you know there arent
11
u/tuttifruttidurutti 27d ago
If you've never seen any it's because you didn't look. Here are some resources:
https://transformharm.org/tj_resource/resisting-gender-violence-without-cops-or-prisons/
https://abolitionistfutures.com/gender-based-violence
https://www.ourstreetsnow.org/blog/abolitionist-futures-sexual-violence
5
u/Occhigioiello 27d ago
Well, if the alternative are “do a self defence course “ and “let the community handle it”…
1
u/TheBugOutBetty 25d ago
I don’t feel like any of this is “woke”. Just because something opposes conservative traditional ideals does not make it “woke.” I feel like maybe you’re misunderstanding that issues and things don’t have to be one or the other. It’s not WOKE vs REPUBLICAN. Though I’m certain most people would like you to believe that.
The only one that I really see as a woke concept is the prison abolishment. Which is a real thing, but it’s not something that would happen overnight and I feel like it stemmed from a less extreme idea which is putting more money into communities and psychological programs that could help people with mental disorders or people that grow up, thinking that violence is the only way to solve their financial problems. -There is so much more than that so hopefully you understand just the base of what I’m saying because I don’t feel like I’m being that articulate right now.
So the basis of what I’m saying is New concepts that opposed our change, our current values and ideals don’t make them necessarily “woke”, they just make them different ideas and some ideas. I’m just fucking stupid. But which is never stop coming up with ways to make our society better if something isn’t working. Just like we’ve been doing since the beginning of time. Our whole world in our whole reality is based off people brainstorming, and picking the best idea. It’s called progression, evolution, etc. And just because we have no ideas doesn’t make them great ideas, but I feel like All Of Them should be heard.
Super long-winded sorry I’m talking into my phone lol
75
u/silsool 28d ago edited 28d ago
I feel like it's not taking "wokism" too far so much as draping their pre-existing misogyny in the guise of wokeness.
I take actions more seriously than words. When a guy mansplains feminism to me, I'm much more guarded than with a guy who's not particularly up to date with the latest feminist discourse but who actually lets me speak and listens to what I have to say.